More plodding

I haven't written for a while. I come home from work exhausted. I stitch for an hour or so each evening and an hour or less each morning before leaving for work.
So my current project is coming along nicely, but nothing so exciting that I feel compelled to write daily. It's six sane crazy squares (i.e. pieced sane, embellished crazy) inspired by my nephews' bar-mitzvah invitations. I am just about finished with the embellishing and perhaps tomorrow will have time to go to Fabricland to buy the border and backing materials.
I was at Fabricland this week to buy fabrics for the Pomegranate Guild's 25 anniversary project. The theme is threads of identity and I have decided to do a strip quilt in blues and whites and then embellish and/or quilt. Since I prefer to work on small pieces in general and the guild project is an 8" (or is it 6"?) shadow box, I really didn't need a lot of fabric. I only bought 25 cm. of each of five patterned blues and 3 patterned whites. But now that I have the cotton fabrics, I'm wondering if I should perhaps stick with the "fancies" I have: royal blue and powder blue dupionni silk and a whole bevy of white fabrics from various family wedding gowns and sources. The fancies would be better suited to embellishing with fancy threads. Don't know. I will finish embellishing project "a" before starting on project "b".
Last week, Menachem and I went up to Newmarket to Evelyn's to look for the blue and white fabrics and avail myself of on sale really price slashed fabrics. I bought a bunch, none of which coordinated with each other nor with most of the fabrics I have at home. But good quality cotton at $1.99 or $2.99 Canadian a metre was just too good to pass up.
I really must stop buying fabric and start using what I have.
I got my supply list for the Fiber Collage online course from Joggles. I must say that the supply list really doesn't give much idea of what we will be doing. So I will wait to assemble the supplies until after the first lesson is posted. Hopefully it will give me a clue as to what fabric I should use for the base. I may just use a natural colour muslin or white linen.
Yesterday actually marked the end of nine months that I have been stair climbing. Someone told me that they can see a difference. I can't. True, I have muscles that I never had before. And muscle weighs. Especially since I've added in a morning walk of 20-25 minutes. But would it hurt the scale to pay me a compliment?

Where does the time go?

A week has gone by since my last post. Since then:
a) Carmit, middle child, arrived for a three week visit on Monday
b) Had lunch with Carmit on Tuesday and started catching up a little on what's happening in her life
c) Wednesday evening was the Pomegranate Guild's first meeting for this year
d) Planned for Rosh Hashana and invited guests (the kind who wait for an invitation because our policy is "kol haba, baruch haba" (whoever comes is welcome). So far, we're expecting 16.
e) yesterday spent the day with Menachem, Carmit and my mother at Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake

Niagara Falls is only about an hour and a half from our house. No matter how often we go, summer or winter, we never fail to be amazed by it. Yesterday, unfortunately, although "promised" nice weather, it wasn't very nice. There was little to no sun, it was windy so the mist from the Falls was almost like rain and we couldn't really see the Horseshoe Falls because of the mist. And although I wouldn't have minded standing longer in the rain, Carmit hadn't dressed appropriately for the weather and I didn't think my 85 year old mother should stand outside in that weather very long.
The ride to Niagara-on-the-Lake was nice but the main strip was disappointing. There were no bookstores and most of the other shops were very touristy. And no quilt or fabric stores that I could see...

Today, Sunday, we have the following planned:
Menachem is at Chaim L's for a meeting about camp expenditures made this summer, then in the early afternoon we're going to Yunkie and Mindy's. Yunkie, Carmit and I will pop over to Roselawn Cemetery to "visit", as is the custom before major holidays. Then we'll shmooze at their place.
I had wanted to get to the Evelyn's (quilt shop) in Newmarket this weekend and perhaps Needlearts (embroidery threads) but both are closed on Sundays. Bummer.

I am plodding along on Auf Simchas II. It has six cq blocks, two of which are pretty much finished -- for the first pass.
I wanted to get fabric for the borders to be quilted.

I also wanted to get fabric for my the Pomegranate 25th Anniversary members' shadow box project. The theme is "threads of identity". Our meeting was about decorating the shadowbox frame itself (i.e. gilding, painting, staining, etc.) and it struck me that I could do something like the diagonal bat-mitzvah wallhanging in blues and whites with touches of silver (for the 25th) but with embroidered and embellished seams (instead of machine quilted). I need to make the "naked" project before I can start tinkering. Don't know when I'll make it to a fabric store now. Maybe I should try online shopping.

Anyways, I'm off to try some "Word" manipulation that I can use on fabric, maybe even some word clouds, so that's all for now.

Bat-Mitzvah wallhangings

So I (i.e DH) changed photos from img to jpg so I could post the photos of the wallhangins I made for the Bat Mitvahs. They look very orange in the photos -- they're more brown, rust, and gold.
I (i.e. DH) also hooked up my new cheap ($30 CDN) colour printer and started printing out the class lessons from Sharon B's Encrusted Crazy Quilt course. (If you don't know about cq and would like to learn, or if you know and would like to learn more, I highly recommend the course.) Mid lesson 3, the black ink from the colour cartridge ran out. Have to buy another so we can continue printing.


Did I mention that Inbal and I registered for "Fibre Collage",another online course at Joggles.com? I have taken university courses with Carmit but we were both in the same city at that time. Here we'll be taking the same course but on different continents. I find that pretty amazing.

I am also making progress on a second Auf Simchas wallhanging, inspired by the lavish ribbons and tassles on my nephew's Bar Mitzvah invitation. It is actually an encrusted embellished sane quilt. I also found in my hang onto that trim it may come in handy some day drawer ribbon and a tassle from her older son's Bar Mitzvah.

If she likes it, I'll give it to her. If not, I will donate it to my brother's kids' school (Heschel) for their annual fundraiser. And I have material left over to do another one. I will try to post a photo soon. I have to buy fabric for the border, backing and binding. We will probably travel to the quilting store in Newmarket to look for some because I'm looking for something blue, gold and silver and doubt if I'll find it locally. The Newmarket quilt shop has an amazing array of fabric.

Today is garage cleanout day because Wednesday is no tag garbage day. So that should take care of all the stuff we have been putting in the garage until we decide what to do with it for the past two years...

Has it been that long?

I can't believe that it's been so long since my last post.
My summer was hectic. Working four and a half days a week, taking the 4 hour train ride up to camp for the weekend, working at camp, train ride back -- exhausting.
Then I spent two wonderful weeks at camp, babysitting the site while it was rented out. I had hoped to do some stitching but got very little done.
Since I'm home, however, I have been busy.
Remember the twin bat mitzvah gifts? Well, my original plan didn't work out -- I couldn't get the printer to print properly so I partially scrapped that idea and made two small wallhangings which are now completed and will hopefully finish uploading shortly. And now that they're finished, I figured out how to print on fabric... So I made labels. Once the labels are attached, I will be ready to send them to the bat mitzvah girls. (So what if the bat mitzvah was last weekend...)