Happy birthday to me....

Rather narcissistic to blog about one's own birthday, no? And yet the picture opportunities!

First of all, Husband sent me flowers at work one day early.Then the staff gave me flowers too the next day, with little cake and brownie snacks, which I shared of course, and a balloon, but best of all, a book:That would be The Big-Ass Book of Crafts by Mark Montano. Favorite projects from the book:

Tabletop covered with peel and stick laminate tile from the hardware store:Felt-applique quilt:There's totally kitchy and totally cool stuff so I'm looking forward to doing some of the projects.

And here's one project that belongs in that book but I did way back in, um, some time so long ago I don't even remember, but probably last fall, about a year ago:

This piece is 4 feet by 4 feet on a wooden base. I took scrapbooking paper, tore them up into irregular shapes and glued them onto the wood. Then I sketched a lotus flower onto a sheet of flipchart paper and glued more scraps of scrap book paper onto it. Sharpies bleed through paper pretty well, so once it dried, I could cut out the shapes from the back side.

Using ModPodge, I glued on the lotus flower pieces, and then also the little dragonflies in the 4 corners.

Began the project probably last fall and finished it, almost, today. Now I just need to get 16 feet of ribbon to glue onto the edge of the wood to give it a nice finish. And to figure out where to put it and how. It's pretty heavy. But that can wait until next year.

By the way, for dinner on my birthday, Husband took me to Bacchanalia, apparently the only 5 star restaurant in Atlanta. It was a prix fixe 4 course dinner (appetizer, entree, cheese, dessert) where I tried veal sweetbread -- brains -- for the first time. It was $75 per person base price. Then there were the wine pairings and some choices for each course carried extra charges, which they called supplements.

Each portion was tiny but oh, the flavors. And by the time dessert came around, I was full. Could barely finish my donut holes, I mean, bomboloni.

But I managed it. Leave no chocolate covered Italian donut holes behind, is my motto.

Cross stitch show

Over the weekend The Sampler Guild of Georgia opened an exhibit of cross stitched pieces. They were lovely. I used to do cross stitch but haven't in years. This made me want to pick it up again.

On the face of it, this one seems easy enough to do. But just think of the counting you have to do to make sure each motif is nicely spaced apart from each other.

This long one was pretty cool.
The green at the bottom was achieve by stitching in a checkerboard pattern in green. Here's a close up. The intricacy of the border alone on this one is impressive. Again, each element, each letter, zig-zag, or swirle doesn't look hard, but each one needs to be done precisely to achieve the overall look.

These Santas aren't by cup of tea, but are done very well.

I love this red house. Apparently, the pattern for each room was mailed separately, like mystery shawl knitting patterns are done, and the entire picture doesn't emerge until end.
This one has a different feel, and I like the verse about the lady leave alone the fake flowers and enjoy the real roses instead. Which is ironic, considering the pattern is all about stitching fake flowers!

This last one uses all kinds of needlework, including pulled thread work.

Maybe one day I'll go back to cross stitch. I still have all the DMC floss....

First Face

In pottery class, we're learning how to make the human form. This is the first face I've made. Can of V8 for scale.

It's been fired once and the next step will be to glaze it and then fire again.

This guy will just be bald, but the next one, I'll poke holes for yarn hair afterwards. That's one way to use up left over yarn.

Aching Elbows

Last night, I laid in bed, feeling my elbows throbbing. But this was a price I was willing to pay for an afternoon throwing pottery.

It's been a while since I've done that, especially with large chunks of clay. I got really beat up from the wonky clay trying to center it. But in the end it was done. Now I have three pieces of a vase thrown. On Tuesday, when I go back for class, I'll cut them off the batts and join them.

I've done it before for Husband's 18 inch tall amphora so it shouldn't be too hard.

But I'm going to give the knitting a rest for today and tomorrow. I've been putting in some marathon knitting on the weekends which strains my elbows and wrists too.

Reorganized

This is how exciting my weekend has started out. I reorganized my yarn stash. Last night I frogged my big oranged sweater and now had all this yarn to put away.

The stash is in a drawer/armoire thing from IKEA. The top section has one shelf dividing the space and closed with doors, the bottom is 6 drawers.

Before

The entire top half are the wool yarns.

Top shelf: At the very top is the Bag of Malabrigo, resting on a box of brown yarn in the Amazon box, and a ziptop baggie of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Sapphire Heather. I'm using it to make an Opulent Raglan sweater for myself.

Underneath that are 2 wicker baskets lined in cotton, standing on their ends. I like to be able to see all the yarn at once. The basket on the right holds the superwash wools, the basket on the left are non-machine washable blue and green wools. The blue yarn in the plastic bag is left over from the sweater I made Sister here.

Just realized that the top shelf yarns are majority worsted weight, with a few skeins of sock weight thrown in.

The yellow cone is cotton, but I put it here since I have no where else it fits.

Bottom shelf: The open box to the left are the Manos del Uruguay, Berroco Foliage, other varigated yarns, Cascade eco-wool, Lopi. Interestingly, those are the bulky weight yarns.

This is what's in the wicker baskets: pink wool on the left, mohair on the right. The mohair is for the Modern Quilt Wrap by Mags Kandis, from Folk Style. The yarns are mostly Kid Silk Haze and Aura and bought at 40% off at a going out of business sale. The colors are much more muted and earthy and sophisticated than my usual primary color brightness as evidenced by all my other yarn. Hmmm. I should think about that.

You may notice some red around the edges of some of the pictures. That's because the study where the computer and my craft things are has a red carpet. And blue walls. With white trim. See? I'm a bright, primary-color kind of gal.

In the first drawer below are the dyed and dyeable yarns. The orange and yellow are my dyed yarns, and Knit Picks Bare superwash on the left. In the middle is a big back of Rowan Felted Tweed that I got on sale. And some swatches. And some gift yarn, and some leftover red yarn.
I guess it's more than just the dyed and dyeable yarn. It must be my yarn equivalent of the junk/random drawer.

The next drawer are the machine washable yarns: cotton, linen, bamboo (that's the yellow half-finished scarf), synthetics, and my one lone skein on merino silk in the brown bowl half hidden in the back. Felted wool swatches on the far right.

After:

Top shelf: no changes.Bottom shelf: Mohair in a clear container, ziptop bag of superwash wool afghan I started for Brother Two discussed here, and rearranged the wools for more visibility. The clear plastic box holds the mohairs and the top box is 8 skeins of Wool of the Andes in the Ivy green colorway for my mom's shawl.

And again with the stuff in front taken out. Purple Felted Tweed to the left, the mostly pink yarns in the middle, the bulky yarns on the right.

Top drawer: Dyeable yarns. Took out the purple Felted Tweed, put in the yarn from the giant orange sweater. Makes more sense, since one of the oranges I did dye, discussed here.
Drawer of Machine-Washable Yarns -- unchanged. The green, grey, and lavendar linen stitch thing is the middle of a baby blanket I started then abandoned. It was for a co-worker but then I ran out of time. I ended up buying her something off her registry instead.And a new drawer: The Drawer of Red Yarns. All that Lamb's Pride is for an Emerald Sweater for Best Friend, like I made for Sister. I'd like to make one for me too, from that orange-dyed yarn. Eventually.
Well, that's enough excitement for one day. It's a gorgeous day, sunny and near 80 degrees F. I'm going outside to play with clay. I'm taking a class on how to make the human figure and we're starting with heads. I'll post pictures as they come along. So far, everyone's heads are asymetrical, lumpy, and somewhat grotesque. Rather appropriate for the coming Halloween.

Husband wants a bust, complete with laurel leaves, so I better get working on it.

Frogged

I ripped out the giant orange sweater last night and wound them into these huge yarn cakes.

Headed for the frog pond

Since Sept 14, I've been working on an orange cardigan, based loosely on the Long Coat with Chevron Lace from Fitted Knits, pictured here (scroll down). It's a top down raglan sweater. I didn't know how much yarn I had, so I knitted both sleeves before finishing the body.

I bound off the bottom hem last night.

It's absolutely huge. I would felt it to shrink it, except one of the yarns (I held three together, discussed here) is superwash and won't felt.

I'm going to set it aside and finish my dad's vest. Then I'll probably end up frogging the orange sweater and starting over.