I Like #79

Another week of things to like!  

1.  I like that Blue likes playing with other dogs.  We went to the dog park twice this weekend and he had a blast and got on well with everyone.  Unfortunately, he's been upset since then because we don't go every day (EVERY DAY MAMA I WANT TO GO TO THE DOG PARK), and has been backsliding on the door chewing.  Oh well, he's a lovable dork.

2.  I like knitting.  I have spent years saying I DON'T KNIT very loudly to anyone who will listen, but of course my mom taught me to knit many years ago, and recently I decided to go ahead and start knitting again.  My good friend Melody is helping me with some socks.  So far they are just some tiny heels, but they'll grow.  I'm glad to have a small project for carrying around.

3.  I made a new dog bed (the peach one) this week.  This way there can be two in the bedroom in case they both want to sleep in there with me.  It was wonderful to use random materials I had on hand too.

4.  It has been raining and raining and raining here.  I confess to being really tired of it, although we always need the rain.  Anyway, all the rain has made tons of giant mushrooms pop up everywhere!  I can't seem to get good pictures of them, but they're really huge!  And all over the place, even in the yards of people who have very tidy yards!

5.  And one last picture of Blue who managed to sneak onto the bed before I had a chance to make it.  I was in the shower- stepped out to see him.  He knows better, but alas...

Hope you're having a good week, and thanks to LeeAnna for keeping us connected!

Pets on Quilts 2018

It's time again for the annual round-up of pets on quilts, hosted by Lily Pad Quilting.  After you look at this post-click over to the link party to see more pets on quilts and vote for your favorite.

As any regular blog readers know I'm a big dog person and they come work with me pretty often in the studio!  The past few months have been pretty tough on us pet-wise, we lost two of our beloved dogs, but a new furry friend has joined the family recently and he's a hoot.  So without further ado, some recent pets-on-quilts!

We start with Bullett and Bentley "helping" me baste this whole cloth painted quilt.  They didn't understand why I kept wanting them to move-  the quilt was so much softer than the floor....

And here's the quilt finished, it's one of my dimensional smocked pieces.

Shannon Conley, High Desert Garden, c. 2018

Bullett is one of the pups we lost this year,  he was well over thirteen years old, but it was still too soon.  He loved to cuddle up under the work table with the giant batting roll....

Our new pup's name is Blue, so far he hasn't invaded any quilts, but he did take the opportunity to bed down on top of the clean white photography backdrop when one of my other fabric sculptures was up for picture taking.  Oh Blue, we love you (but not the hair and dirt you left behind).

And finally, the other pup we lost this year was Missy, I don't have good pictures of her on quilts, so I'll share this quilt I finished of her.  She was a grouchy little thing, who used to love riding on the back of Mike's motorcycle with her little pink goggles, and we loved her so much.

I hope you enjoy my pets on quilts as well as the rest over at the link up!  Thanks so much to Lily Pad quilting for hosting and gathering up the sponsors!

I like #78

Welcome to another week of I likes!

First like is from last weeks blog list of I likes!  Last week Sally from Crafts Cavies and Cooking shared a picture of this George and Martha sculpture in her local park.  It was part of a kids sculpture program and I think it's awesome.  I LOVE George and Martha!!! I still have a couple of the George and Martha story books from when I was a kid. I especially love the one where George poured his pea soup in his shoes. I think the idea was that he didn't want to tell Martha he didn't like the soup, and in the end she said he should just be open with her, but I've always loved the mental image of a giant hippo pouring soup in his shoes. So fabulous!

I like my pups!  I feel like we're progressing, we haven't had (knock on wood) too much door frame chewing, and I put non-skid patches under the couch, so they've stopped pushing it across the room.  They did manage to take the cover off the dog bed (where bentley is sitting it should be green not white), but all together things are going well.  We've been having lots of rain, and yesterday morning they insisted they still wanted to go for a walk even in a torrential thunderstorm, so I suited up and out we went.  Of course they went one block before deciding they didn't like walking in the rain.  Is it insane to tell your dogs "I told you so"?

I like my family!!  The other day I found this picture of two of my cousins, Annie and Virginia c. 1960 while desperately searching for the non-skid stuff to put under the couch.  They were so cute!  They live in Tucson, and usually we all meet at my parents in New Mexico for Thanksgiving.  This year I'll get to see them at a family wedding on New Year's Eve.

I like banana bread!  In searching the freezer for something else, I realized that my dead banana pile was growing unreasonably large, so I made up a ton of banana bread.  Hooray!  Now it's in the freezer, though I also took some to the church and have given some away.  Tasty!

I love my plants!  I picked up this sewing table at goodwill the other day for $20 to use as a stand so I could have some plants in the bedroom.  Its top folds out on both sides (that's why the table cloth is so long) so I can add more in future.  There's actually a singer 301 inside it along with a ton of accessories.  I'm not sure whether it works or not, but I don't really need any more sewing machines anyway.  

It's been kind of nice having all the pieces for the big Capitol show done, (thus the plants and baking, etc.) and while I had out that pretty fabric for the table I sewed up a quick case for my light box.  It's fun to do some of these small projects, and I really like this fabric.

I hope you're all having a good week!  Thanks to LeeAnna for linking us up!

I Like #77

New things to like this week!

1.  I like canning!  I don't really like canning, it's hot and sweaty and messy, but it results in tastiness that lasts a good long while.  I decided last night to finally make the crabapple jelly from last year's crabapples (I didn't have any this year).  The juice has been in the freezer just patiently waiting it's turn.  But crabapple jelly is one of the best things ever...  I decided this time to try a pectin free recipe I found online.  It said that crabapples and apples had enough native pectin that you didn't need to add any.  But, of course, I wound up with nicely canned crabapple syrup-- it didn't set at all.  It may be because my juice had been frozen for so long,  it wouldn't surprise me if that broke down much of the pectin.  Anyway, now I have to decide whether to just keep the crabapple syrup (at the very least we could eat it on pancakes) or undo it all, re-sterilize the jars, and remake it using some sure-gel. 

2.  I like plants!  I've been in a plant propagating mood lately, both splitting my own plants and trying to gather up some new varieties of cuttings from friends.  Lots of them will be to give away to others I know who are in a plant mode, but several of them are for me.  Yum!

3. I like my pups!  Of course!  I always do.  Here's a sneak peek of one of my new 3D fiber sculptures;  I had the good clean white backdrop up for Mike to photograph it, and of course Blue had to share his fur and dirt with it.  Oh well!  He's doing very well with Bentley, although sometimes Blue climbs on top of him trying to get to me which makes Bentley a bit aggravated.  At some point I'll get a full post up about the new sculpture.

4.  I like finding out other people are fibery!  One of my blogs shared a picture of a new embroidered altar frontal made by Queen Margrethe of Denmark.  Apparently, she's made several of these to donate to different churches and embroidery is one of her hobbies!  Super cool, and lovely work.  Here's her newest public piece and one of the previous ones.

For to år siden fik H.M. Dronningen til opgave at brodere et nyt antependium til Gråsten Slotskirke, og netop nu tages det så i brug ved en festgudstjeneste. Antependiet har Dronningen skabt med broderiteknikken petit point, hvor detaljer fremstår diagonalt med halve korssting. I mønstret ses blandt andet tre margueritter, der skal symbolisere Dronningen og søstrenes tilknytning til Gråsten. Derudover har Dronningen hentet inspiration til det nye antependium i salmerne ”Alle mine kilder” og ”Som tørstige hjort monne skrige”. 📸 Kongehuset ©️

A post shared by DET DANSKE KONGEHUS (@detdanskekongehus) on Jul 29, 2018 at 12:49am PDT

 5. I like fiber!  My friends and I went up to the Kellyville Fiber Christmas in July this last weekend and we had a lovely time.  There was tons of wonderful yarn and roving and batts and spinning wheels and general fibery goodness.  I didn't buy too much, one skein of yarn and some fiber wrapped wire to use as edging on future quilts.  Of course I didn't get any pictures, alas.  But the yarn I got is great, it's a hand dye that's half black and half white with rainbow neon speckles.  Very me.

6.  I'll just close with another picture of my dahlia, it has a new bloom.  So far it usually only has one bloom at once, but I expect in the fall maybe it will get more.  I'm sorry to say you guys will probably continue to be exposed to a series of nearly indistinguishable pictures of white dahlia blossoms for the forseeable future.

Thanks to Lee Anna for linking us up and I hope you have a good week!

I Like #76

Things to like this week:

1.  I like my new puppy!  He's not really a puppy at all, he's about 4 years old.  He's a generic mutt (my favorite kind) with some pit bull leanings.  He's bigger than Bentley, and though we had some initial anxiety, he seems to be fitting in well.  My friend Trish went with me to the OKC animal shelter and I adopted him.  He's super friendly with all people so far, even ones he doesn't know, and loves to snuggle and play.  He's currently chewing/scratching up the door frame when I go to work, so I have solve that problem, but otherwise he's just a big lovable dork.

 

2.  I like Becky!  She came up this weekend and we got to do some fun grown up stuff- including going sailing.  It was really a blast.

3. I like cool bugs!  This really nifty giant cicada landed on Becky's hat and I took a bunch of pictures of it.  She was aggravated, mostly because she wanted to brush him off but I made her wait....

Thanks to LeeAnna for linking us up!

I like #75

Thanks so much to everyone who shared kind comments on the loss of Bullett.  He really was the best of dogs.  On that note and starting off this weeks I likes is a wonderful condolence note my niece sent me.  I'm so privileged to have such wonderful family, they are so caring.  I love you Anna!!

I like learning new things!  I took a felt hat making workshop this past week with Dawn Edwards.  She makes great sculptural felt hats and was a very good teacher.  I've never done any felting before except for the wonderful but short introduction my friend Kathy gave me, so it was really an informative class.  I made one and a half hats during the two day class and really learned a lot.  I hope to be able to write some more in depth posts about it in future, but here are a few pics.

 I like sailing!  Last night was the first time all year we've had enough crew to fly the spinnaker and I remembered how much I love it, and how much I miss it when we don't get to fly it. 

I like finishes!  Elsewhere on the blog this week I talked about my finished neon crochet shawl and my latest finished smocked quilt.  So check those out if you haven't seen them!

I hope you're all having a good week, and thanks to LeeAnna for keeping us positive.

Neon Shawl

You may remember I've shared a couple of in progress pictures of my neon shawl, and I spent quite a bit of time a couple weekends ago finishing it up.  I was working from the Hotel of Bees Shawl Pattern

From Ravelry- Hotel of Bees Shawl

 I used this great neon sock weight yarn from Tricked Out Ewe, and after gauging, went up a hook size.

After finishing, I blocked it on my guest bed where I could pin it out flat.  Usually I block quilts on my big design wall, but the shawl was very light and airy and I didn't want it to pull weirdly when wet and hung vertically.  After blocking, I quickly pinned it to the design wall so you can see it against the white background.

One of the downsides to going up a hook size and down a yarn size is that the whole thing has a more open structure.  That's good in the sense that it's a summer shawl, but it does make parts of the pattern a bit hard to see (like the small hexagons in the multi-color part below).

Overall the pattern was well written and easy to follow.  I enjoyed working on it, it was varied enough not to be boring, but not so complicated to be stressful.  And it was really nice that you start on the wide end and crochet towards the narrow end so it gets quicker as you go!  I really really love the yarn, and have enough left to make something else, but I'm not sure what.  Possibly leg warmers or crochet scrunchy socks?  That would be pretty 80s....