when we saw pirates

The coolest thing about the Woodinville Fool's Day event that we witnessed. We missed the parade, I imagine that was pretty good. The booths, miserable, with the exception of a woman who made real soap (not the melt and pour stuff) and a couple who made wonderful glass and driftwood sculptures.

Puppy love I've been making lately. Been inspired to make some art that would be wonderful for the nursery. Not sure if the puppy's are a good idea though...just how early will our little man start asking for one?

Blocked and ready for the nursery! Lots of leftover yarn. I'm going to make a hat and use the remaining wool in the scrap blanket (coming along nicely).
ArtFest in 2 days!! I've pawed through my boxes a bit and found some of the supplies, hoping for the kindness of classmates on some of the tools because I don't want to buy second sets just because I cannot find mine. See you there! (now back to trade making)

A little more about my fabulous denomination.

a blessed weekend

Saturday's sky was *gorgeous* - would have been the perfect day for our Easter Egg Hunt. (pictures follow, it was on Sunday between services, and it rained *a*lot* before, during and after church, so we had the egg hunt inside, for the most part, though we did have some eggs in rain proof outside areas too.
I love these sculptures on one of our favorite walks.


A tradition at our church is for the youth to colour a butterfly during service and then placing the colourful butterflies full of love and transformation onto another cross at the end of service. It's great, all the children who've grown up in the church line up to be included too, college kids home for the weekend too!
A very talented, musical church. Who doesn't love a children's choir. Precious. In front of them, the flower filled cross.

I spied 4 eggs in this photo. You?

Baby's first hat. Our little pumpkin.

I think I'll do an F, fish to complete the pyramid.
A requested closer up shot. Though, you can click on any of these photos for a closer up shot of any photo.

Gotta get back to making trades for ArtFest!

an afternoon by the fire....

...and i got it done! cleaned out the photos, freed up some space and
we have photos again! yippee.

Scrap Happy Blanket. As seen on looseends flickr site. I loved the look. And decided this would be the perfect scrap knitting project for me. Her specs were 350 stitches, size 9 needles. As I do the long tail cast on I decided that the 334 stitches I got to were enough. I love this project. If you have any little bits of yarn you'd like to share with our little guy, I'd really appreciate it. I'm hoping to have it completed by the time he's in his big boy bed. (smiles)

Inspired by the felted blocks in Nature Babies. Made from the silk tie remnants -- perfect for a little boy I'm thinking. They haven't been stuffed yet. I'm trying to decide, bells inside or no. Comments? Any suggestions for the E block. (No elephants in our household, it's too associative with the party for me to have in the house)
I love, love this! And have been wanting to knit it for ages. Finally ordered the yarn (Eco wool, is *so*soft*) Planned for his christening blanket. I'm on round 103 for those of you in the know....I think it's nearly done (with the knitting, this is clearly really about the blocking).

Yeah, photographs!!
Artfest is fast approaching. Gotta get more trades done, so the knitting will be a bit slower for a while. Though my goal is to get the Hemlock Ring done before I head out so that I can block it and it'll dry while I'm away.

no pictures, frustration

our laptop is *full*
neither of us is computer savvy
i've been trying to delete unused stuff in hopes that i'll be able to download my full camera to insert new photos here.

i'm quite certain the computer is full due to my enourmous files of photos,
however, i *cannot* for the life of me figure out how to get those photos out of 'my documents' and onto the stack of writable CDs that i have ready for them.

sigh.

new photos of new projects as soon as i figure this out.
those photos include:
silk baby blocks
scrap toddler blanket, knit
hemlock ring blanket for baby
more daily collages

blessings.

Hi, How are you? What's your Middle Name?

Exile's Return tagged me for this middle name meme. Here are the rules:
1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.
2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use your maiden name or your mother's maiden name).
3. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged.)

Quickly, quickly this is what came to mind -

Eclectic~all over the place with interests, beliefs, opinions
Loving
Insired by nature, God, friends & family
Zebra (isn't that always the Z word?)
Artist
Baby Mama
Ephemera Collector
Tone Deaf~maybe not completely, however, I don't sing well, just often
Hiker

I tag (even though some may have already been tagged and at least one of you, i think, doesn't do memes, no worries, i just feel like meeting the request to list y'all here):
Cordelia Knits
Gwen
Tara
Wende
Two Moms
Dispatch from LA
Kristie
Dawn

More later, including some photos some of you are requesting of latest projects.
In the meantime - so much going on: house hunting, house offer, bidding, inspection, follow-up, posting new things on etsy, applying for shows, meeting with the artists, church auction planning, baby necessity research (crib, stroller, car seat - yes; glider, video monitor, changing table - no, for now, any suggestions to the contrary?)

be back soon with some photos and more news

all you need is ....

What a great time I had making these. They are off, on their way to join others to be made into banners and returned to the many artists who worked on different words. All meant to bring an abundance of those words to our lives, our studios, our homes. I loved playing with the fancy stitches on my little machine.

Had a great day at Freshy's. Met some fabulous artists. Got to see another part of Seattle. At the end of the day we went to a great packaging store and I bought a bunch of fun stuff - paper, oh how I love me some paper!
So, so good! And so easy to make. That's it. water, oil, egg, mix - stir, pour, bake, cut and eat. Yum.

Homemade Brigade Art Show

If you're in the neighbourhood, stop by. A new venue. I'm excited about meeting more artists, and getting to know another coffeehouse. I love coffeehouses. Thanks Tara for the invite.

Fluffy clouds and blue sky today

Added a couple more layers to soften up the contrast a bit. Now it just needs framing.
What a gorgeous day today! We went to the Kirkland waterfront. Which has usually left me feeling freeked out because this part of downtown Kirkland is eerily like touristy coastal Southern California (so *not* in any good way). However, we took a different route today and were mostly able to stay away from the chaos and overspending of the trendy shops downtown.

Super good Thai Chicken salad. I so need to make this myself in the future.
Yesterday we walked along the water by us. I love a changing sky. The pink eye is gone, gone, gone -- yippee, that was creepy. Our house is so clean though, making sure that no one else was going to get it. Disinfected everything as I touched it. If we weren't living out of boxes still, I'd invite you all over to see.

rest here

The bird drawings/paintings continue. I actually took some of my favorites and made stencils of them.
My "rest here" raven.
I'm thinking of finishing this as an encaustic. Maybe. Thoughts?
Needs a frame. Fighting the urge to add words.
The gorgeous sunset on the drive home from my Urgent Care experience getting treatment for pink eye. Yuck. I usually let illness take their natural course, because I don't like to add any chemicals to my system. However, this *freaked* me out! I could not see from the symptoms (which I'll spare the details of here, if you've seen a wicked bad case of pink eye, I had *that* - *disgusting*) and I wanted all of those symptoms gone *now*. So, after two days of drops every two hourse I'm awake, it's gotten quite a bit better, though I would still scare people, so I'm staying home and maintaining the maintenance of eye drops and disinfecting everything I touch.
I so love my public library. This is my favorite ever. This system is so, so good. I love the onslaught of books as soon as you come in. Though I do find it frustrating that the books in this collection aren't entered by title, so when you check them out the receipt (and your list on-line) shows as Paperback Picks 2008. I keep my receipts in a journal to keep track of the books I read during the year, so I have to handwrite the title on the receipt, however, I don't always remember to do this. sigh.

Some of the projects I've been working on these past few days. C picked up my much searched for gesso last night.
I have a gallon container in one of these boxes, but, I didn't write that item on the box, so after weeks of going through the boxes thinking, this time I'll find the box with "gesso" on the list, I gave up the wishful thinking and asked C to zip into the Daniel Smith store right by the hospital (a pastoral visit). Yeah! Now I just have to find that little Japanese saw to cut the pieces for framing. I do know where our hacksaw is, so, if I must, I'll use that.
I did something weird here, so I've put these aside while I wait for the patience to pick it up again. I love how they look and hope they'll be stretchy enough to fit -- the pattern mentioned variations to use, but I've never had a problem with socks fitting before so I didn't take any of the increase stitch options mentioned. Colinette yarn from Cannon Beach. Azure socks pattern from Knitty.

wintery warmth

I have a big pile of these done. I do love the excitement of finishing small things like this. I've also spent time on some of these bigger canvases (16" x 20"):
So in love with this I'm having a hard time adding more layers.
Oh, the icy warmth of this piece.
I'm struggling with my full on support of Obama. But I do love the youtube videos from his campaign. And who doesn't *love* the idea of CHANGE for our country. But, um, *does* he have enough experience to be our president? I'm certain though that there is no shortage of super smart, progressive folks who will be in his administration (a welcome change, no?).
Always wanting to add more to this piece. But, now I like the wintery canvases more. Need to finish them though...gotta get some stuff up on the gallery walls at church.

p.s. Forgot to mention. More daily collages have been made availabe at my etsy boutique...

inspired

lots more photos of this gem of a playground! so inspired for some collages.
i love a fence...and with moss, all the better.
love how blue the sky looks. it was quite cloudy and misty this day (yesterday) though.

this morning we could see the mountains. then it poured!
i've been painting and layering for hours tonight. i picked up 5 canvases on my way home from an art group. i have paint on three of them already. i've taken the plastic wrap off of all of them though. i have the goal of getting paint on all of them before 9:00 tonight...off i go!

routines

Some of my favorite routines. I love this cafe, in this picture is one of the reasons - a water feature. I love, love, love the sound of water! And they serve Tully's coffee here. My other favorite about this particular place is the outdoor seating area -- too cold and wet this season for sitting out there, but I will definitely be back as soon as possible. Also this is inside an *amazing* plant center - full of inspiration for the kind of lush garden space I'm planning to create in our own yard one day.
I'm co-facilitating the Lent art projects with the children's group tomorrow. We're making purple stolls with stencils and paint (and stories to explain the symbols chosen to represent Lent).
I love knowing that I'm doing something good for myself everyday. Even when it's so blech outside that I can't go for a walk by the water.
Oh, the personality of trees - knots and moss and wonky branches! A psychology class in college...one of our grad student instructors gave us each an apple. We were to look at it for 5 minutes. Then describe it. Better than an art class. I really got to know the details of that apple. And have really paid more attention to the details of natural things since then.
Preparing for another pair of socks. This is Colinette yarn. Purchased in October on our roadtrip up to our new home. I think I'm going to knit the Azure pattern.