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| Becka's Library Shelf |
| Becka's Games Shelf |
i can't remember the last time i stayed home sick from work. i am never sick. and yet, here i am in my jammies at 4:30 having barely moved off the couch all day. i am running a little bit of a fever and i seem to be able to read my book for about 20 minutes before i drift off to sleep again. i watched "for me and my gal" (1942) judy garland and gene kelly. it was gene kelly's first movie.
becka on 08.28.06 @ 04:49 PM CST [link]
lovely leafy earrings for my friend amy. enameled glass on copper.
a "wedding purse" for my sister's friend bridget. silk and semiprecious stones, including peridot, pearls, crystal, moonstone, shell.
becka on 08.27.06 @ 06:12 PM CST [link]
rachel really did have more fun than it looks like in this picture. here is a picture of our kids summer camps exhibit. we put up pieces from almost all of the camps from the summer and invited everyone to come and see what we were up to. it comes down tomorrow and i will miss it. it was a fun exhibit.
here's rachel with an inkle woven belt that she made for me.
becka on 08.27.06 @ 06:04 PM CST [link]
some great and some.....
today's work. i love the tiny leafy ones. those are earrings for my friend amy. the backs are a solid pale blue-grey. the mermaid is pretty good. mermaid? yep. she is a little paler than i would like, but that blue one has a green compass rose and a blue mermaid printed from a hand carved stamp. i traced over her via photoshop so you can see where she is supposed to be. it is a little more pronounced in person, but only just. the dandelion is also a stamp, which i like but the colors thwarted me on this one. the yellow was too pale . so then i traced over with transparent lime yellow, which turns out to be very much greener than i thought. i did a little more with a transparent orange and i am half pleased with the result.
becka on 08.23.06 @ 11:28 PM CST [link]
it is that time again! camp ickyanu is underway (aka the annual summer visit of my sister rachel). so far we have...
enameled
celebrated scott's birthday
walked dogs
embroidered jeans
read books
watched pirates of the caribbean
played games
dyed shirts and socks
walked to caribou coffee
turned down a tv interview
watched half of the goblet of fire
... and that's in just 2 days.
becka on 08.15.06 @ 09:16 AM CST [link]
finally got an image and made a loony wristlet for my swap partner. thank you for all of the great suggestions. one of my favorite adventures since we moved here was sailing on one very calm day and having a curious loon swim back and forth under our boat checking us out. he was fun and definitely playing with us. i also read a story as i was thinking about my MN things - the 10000 lakes were created by footprints from paul bunyan and babe the blue ox walking across MN. this made me chuckle, so i put together a babe the blue ox embroidered card case lined with some nice lumberjack plaid.
becka on 08.15.06 @ 09:07 AM CST [link]
the first three enamels from my tiny little kiln in the basement. i am resisting the urge to go back down and make more. these are experiments with stamps, stencils and a bit of silver leaf. each one also has a couple of layers of a solid color on the back. fun fun fun.
becka on 08.11.06 @ 05:23 PM CST [link]
i joined up with a swap. we are all making wristlet little bags for each other and sending them all over the world. my swap partners both happen to be in the USA. my task is to make a bag that represents where i am from. i started one with a great idea, but i have stalled. what says minnesota? i have all kinds of south dakota ideas since that's where i am "really" from, but i like the challenge of figuring out minnesota. my initial idea started with the northern lights. one of my very favorite minnesota moments was pulling off the road with my friend danielle and watching the brightest and most beautiful northern lights i have ever seen. i can't go with the minnesota "icons" of moose, loon, etc because except for a couple of loons, wildlife sightings are mostly limited to goldfinches and chickadees for me. so i have a lovely piece of dyed fabric that reminds me of the northern lights... now what?
becka on 08.07.06 @ 10:12 PM CST [link]
this is part of my job that i love. here is my pajama pants class from a couple of weeks ago in their finished pants. ages 9-12. started with white muslin, which they dyed, stitched and customized all on their own. (gotta love the technicolor shoe choices as well!) this is the third year my friend jen and i have co-taught this class and i think it is our all time favorite.
today i had a group of 6-8 yr olds who made mouse finger puppets and quilts to go along with this story.
to make little mouse sized quilts, i ironed some heat-n-bond to a piece of white flannel and cut it in to 9 inch squares. then i set the kids loose with the scrap bin and said that they had to cover up all of the white and no overlapping. they cut squares, shapes, characters out of the prints and covered up the "glue". then they brought it over, i ironed it all together (with a scrap of muslin on top to catch the gaps) and tah-daah! it worked like a dream. the best was when moms showed up to see what they'd made. the class was titled "rhythm & blues". we created these class titles without having chosen the stories first (shhhh don't tell) figuring that since it could be any one of us teaching, we should have options. i went through all of my books looking for something music related and then realized that this story was perfect. little mouse was afraid of all of the night time rhythms (tap tap of the branch, wheeze wheeze of snoring) and it gave him the "blues" so he kept trying to climb in to bed with big mouse.
becka on 08.03.06 @ 06:00 PM CST [link]
i had a couple of days off last week. i mostly sat around and read a book, but i also did a little bit of dyeing. these are called parfaits. three pieces of fabric, gradient of colors. i am making some sets of handdyed fabric to put in my etsy shop. color coordinated fat quarters that you could use for many projects.
my enameling supplies have also arrived. i took a class a couple of months ago on doing glass enamel on copper. had a ball! i decided to reward myself for the completion of the symposium that has been taking over my life, by getting the set up to do some enamel. i now have a kiln, 24 colors of glass powder and i can't wait to get started. i still need to round up a couple of supplies and get a work space set up on the workbench in the basement.
becka on 08.03.06 @ 08:28 AM CST [link]