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| Becka's Library Shelf |
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the pattern is almost right. the colors are good. just not all together. i thought this would work better than it did. the brown is too bright or too red or something. this is about 4 inches of weaving and i think i am going to scrap the whole thing.
becka on 06.29.06 @ 11:53 PM CST [link]
experiments with freezer paper stencils. freezer paper is my new favorite craft material. i have been seeing all kinds of great crafts around the crafty blog world made with freezer paper stencils and i had to try it out. i have used freezer paper for doing quilt applique but never for stencils. this is a tshirt that i made. i dyed it as part of another project (pics to follow soon) and i got inspired by these, thanks to my sisters. the technique is simple. cut out something. iron the plastic-y side of the freezer paper on to your fabric or whatnot. stencil paint through the cut out parts. peel off the paper. stencils are not very re-usable. i found mine were pretty soggy with paint by the time i peeled them off, but you could probably preserve them if you were careful. we found you could also cut out about 3 layers of freezer paper at a time to make duplicate stencils. i used a jacquard metallic fabric paint for this, which also had an interesting property. the "metallic olive green" turned out looking rather coppery gold. the green part of the paint soaked right in to the fabric and the metallic part stayed on top. not the color i was hoping for.
becka on 06.27.06 @ 11:21 AM CST [link]
some one of the blogs i read has suggested a "work in progress friday" where you show a picture of something you are working on. this is really late or a few days early, but that's what i have to talk about today.
this is my first adventure in to knitted lace. the pattern came from here, and the project said "easy beginner lace" and after the 8th time of ripping out the first 6 inches, i was ready to agree. i never rip out knitting. it makes me crazy. but was determined to get this figured out. once i stopped reading "k1 k2tog yo k3..." and just looked at the chart, it just clicked. i think this is about 98% done. i am trying to make it long enough to be a little shoulder wrap with a cute pin rather than an around the neck scarf. yarn is karaoke by south west trading company, colorway is "intensity" and fiber is 50/50 wool and soy silk. it doesn't look too lacy in the picture, but i think that will improve with washing and blocking.
becka on 06.21.06 @ 10:48 PM CST [link]
the pocket on my cafe apron seems to have done the trick. 9 1/2 hrs at the park yesterday and it only started to rain the last 10 minutes i was there. it was quite steamy all day, but all in all much better than i expected. why 9 hrs at the park? i am staffing a kids activities tent at an arts festival. we are doing a fun weaving project and a guessing game with mystery fibers. thanks to a lovely volunteer, i got to escape the tent for 40 minutes or so and go explore the fair with danielle. enough time for a little shopping!
we had a lovely time chatting with this artist. i spotted the dard hunter rose from the sidewalk and made a bee line over there. i ended up with two with designs by charles renne mackintosh, my favorite. the artist got a great chuckle over my exclamations over the dard hunter and renne mackintosh. "you know your stuff" he says. hee hee. he also had some lovely work based on celtic patterns and some william morris. it was fun. hoping for a break for more explorations today!
becka on 06.18.06 @ 09:05 AM CST [link]
i have talked before about felting. what i have been doing up until now is wet felting. soap+water+wool=fabric. kind of like fingerpainting with fuzz. i get questions all the time about dry felting or needle felting. sharp scary barbed needle+wool=fabric. i bought some felting needles a while back and finally decided that it was time to give it a try. i happened to see this artist's blog on whipup, found she has a super cute needle felted dog pattern and away i went. i started with the materials above and ended with...
amazing how a little tiny needle can do all that. it is remarkably easy, though i can see how it would also be easy to stab yourself. not a craft to do while watching battlestar galactica!
now so you can see how it's really done, gorgeous needlefelting. it's in japanese, but just look at the pictures. wow.
becka on 06.15.06 @ 10:29 PM CST [link]
finally finished. i posted a picture of the finished quilt top a while back. i got stalled while i was doing the binding and just finished it up. hooray. (thank you grandma for chatting while i finished a million projects.) this is for a cousin's baby girl. fabrics include a great alexander henry "mod" print, a chinese floral, hand-dyed pink and green, tan sleeping kitties, turquoise with little tiny fish, red stripes and some chocolate brown polkadots. basically a log cabin pattern alternating with large plain squares. quilted very simply with wavy diagonal lines. back and binding are cream colored daisies. i wanted something a little girly but not pink. i get so tired of pink baby things and i figure that moms of little girls do too. it is off in the mail tomorrow!
if you got here from whipup.net, WELCOME!
becka on 06.13.06 @ 07:25 PM CST [link]
i helped out at a friend's garage sale on saturday. to keep myself occupied, i embroidered this tshirt to wear at an art show this weekend. i am staffing the textile center's tent at the stone arch festival of the arts. what better to advertise?
becka on 06.13.06 @ 07:08 PM CST [link]
she was here and has gone on to visit my folks and sister in sunny SD. we had a great weekend. lots of gardening. andy and gramma teased me'n'beth about being able to spend hours in the greenhouse just looking. mom understands. i finally got a pink bleeding heart, which i have been saying i was going to get for years, but i don't know where to plant it. sunday we went to andy's band concert. lots of fun music and extra entertainment with swallows roosting on the stage and swooping out over the band and the audience.
unfortunately the bats have found our attic again. glad they waited until gramma was gone! it seems that andy neglected to plug up the hole that we discovered that they were using last year. we did the "tape netting over the hole" step, so that they could get out but not back inside. we just never got to the "plug up the hole after they have all flown away" step. or rather andy didn't get to that step. i thought he had. this critter made a great show of swooping around the bedroom at 4:30 am. i was ok until he brushed my hair with one of his wings on one swoop. i am not one for screaming, but i have to admit that did cause a little eeek. lucy did her best to catch him, which mostly involved a lot of barking and stomping around. finally andy caught him in a sheet and escorted him outside. all of us were yawning early this evening.
becka on 06.06.06 @ 10:44 PM CST [link]
i wish i had something interesting to blog about, a project to describe or a picture to post, but no such luck. we have spend the week cleaning, organizing and fixing things up. my grandma is coming to visit this weekend, hence the cleaning. besides the fact that we desperately needed to clean. spring cleaning time had come. it amazes me that lucy has any fur left after she is done shedding in the spring. sheesh! then there's a garage sale next weekend and we are making an effort to round things up for the sale so that we can get rid of them. and then our computer server died and so we have been moving all of the files around and fixing that up. we have been putting all of our cd's on to the "new" machine (our lime imac & a big harddrive) so that we can have all the music upstairs but all the boxes of cds in the basement. no more cd clutter. the only room we didn't get to was my sewing room. it is usually the last to be tackled. i am hoping to get a chance to straighten it up and make is presentable this afternoon, but we shall see.
becka on 06.02.06 @ 08:10 AM CST [link]
