a practice post

Hurray!!!!   I can put a photo on...had the high speed guy come today and now will have to learn a few things but loving it already.....Amy glad you changed the opening with the colored weaving...beautiful...and been loving all your posts on here.....now I can join you....and the photo?...is of a part of a little collection I have....they are pin cushions and believe they are called around the world but not sure about that...the green one on the right was our Moms...rest were found at thrift stores and the tiny one with just one guy 'around the world' was a gift from Gail....

another card

I made this card last week but didn't get it posted until now. I'm not sure if the little guy is an alien from outer space or a robot but I'm pretending that he arrived in the space craft. The stamps all came from the same stamp set but can't remember who the manufacturer is. The silver piece on the left side is a piece of sticky back duct tape that I put through an embossing folder in my Cuttlebug. This is the type of tape that people use to tape around their duct work to keep it from leaking, not the fiber type of Duct Tape that people are using to make wallets, etc. with. I found the flowers in my stash  The black one is leather and the silver one is a corregated cardboard. There is a plastic cog attached to the center of the flower with a black brad. It's a little hard to see. The little guy and spaceship were colored with Copics markers and there are some black sticky back gems on the spaceship and under the word "world."

Santa ornament class

 Yesterday five wonderful women came to my house (Gail's) for a Santa ornament class. The ornament is shown below and it is about 6" in diameter. I copied some ideas from the net so you may have seen something like it already. The tree sprigs, center bow and Santa are stamps from Flourishes. We used Copics markers to color the Santa and bow. They were stamped with Memento black ink and the sprigs were stamped with Memories Hunter Green Ink. We used red liner tape, Tacky glue, Score tape and glue sticks in the construction. All the circles were cut from Spellbinder's Nestabilities and the Cuttlebug and attached with pop dots. The fluted circle is composed of two 3"x12" pieces of cardstock that I scored on Martha Stewart's Score Board and then they were accordion folded, stuck together end to end and then flattened into a fluted circle. The class only took 1-1/2 hour and everyone enjoyed it. 

I'm having issues with being able to write captions for the pictures so will just have to say that in the last picture you will see (left to right) my daughter Laurie, Amy, me (Gail), Charlotte, Mary and Diana.

Here are Diana and Amy working away with Laurie behind Amy.

Ornament Exchange

This first ornament is made from can tabs laced together with ribbon.
The second wreath is made from buttons.

Some years we have had a project to work on
at the exchange. This year we made trees
with cardboard cones from the craft store
and cardstock. We cut and layered the paper.
This would be a good project to do with kids

For the last 30 years, a group of us have been exchanging ornaments. We usually get together before Christmas and have a little dinner and exchange our ornaments. The last few years we have been choosing a theme. One year we did a country and we brought ornaments that would be part of that countries' tradition. Another year we did era of time, we had everything from a caveman suit (with a bone) to poodle skirts. This year we had to make an ornament from recycled or from material that you already had in your home. We make about 13-15 ornaments which are all the same and then pass around our ornaments for others to take one. One of the ladies that we trade with was a baby at the first ornament exchange, sitting in her infant seat!

 The top ornament was made by my sister, Diana. She took
a wooden spool, covered it with sheet music and put a wire through it
with beads. The second one was made by a friend's daughter.
She took a small bottle and put small beads in it and charms on the outside.
The envelope is the one that I made. It has my woven trees up
in the corner.

The snowman is felt on a medal can lid. The little Raggedy Ann was
made from small fabric scraps. The little house is made from Christmas
cards. The bird was made by my sister, Gail. It is a little fabric scrap with a
vintage yo-yo and is estampad with "brrr"

Weaving surprise

This is what I thought they would look like,
straight tabby.

Instead this is what they turned out like-I love the texture.

I spent yesterday doing some sewing on edges of things that my husband and I have woven. He had made some dish towels using some rug warp and cotton yarn. He was only doing tabby, so I wasn't so sure how they would be as dish towels. Boy was I in for a surprise when I washed them. I thought I would just get a straight tabby look but they became very full and have a V shaped pattern! I have no idea where that came from-I told my husband that we should use that combination again because they really made nice towels, who knew! I also put hems in some of my handwovens. So I put 6 towels in the Christmas box from Sam and 2 small towels and 1 dishtowel of mine in the box. Sam also had enough warp for a washcloth, dishcloth and a dish towel for us.  So now the only thing left of our handwovens are the place mats that Sam made. I am avoiding them because I hate putting on bias binding. And I couldn't find any that I thought was the right size at the fabric store, so I bought some fabric to make them, another thing I hate to do, make bias binding.
Amy

musings

I simply cannot post photos and this is the week I see about some high speed...what am I waiting for...have also decided to buy me something for Chrismtas...I am pretty cheap with myself....but going to do it, but not sure just what....do I want a laptop, a 'pad', a smart phone, a reader.....not sure yet...so will have to do some thinking and studying to decide...but first things first...and that is the high speed so I can put a photo on here...a good one would have been the barn owl that was in our spruce tree yesterday...right out the window from the computer.....beautiful and been years since I saw one so close...it sat there for about 45 minutes....was our entertainment for the day....................I have been staying busy working on Christmas gifts and today will be real busy when kids all come for birthday beans...chilli beans that is....we have 5 birthdays in our family over this weekend....I am baking brownies and some apple crisp this morning for dessert and will take a trip to the store for some ice cream.    I love my sister's posts on here and wish mine had a bit of color.....but just wait...

Photo

I was looking at the placemat picture that I put on the blog yesterday and it appears to be orange. Actually it is green and white. My camera seems to be giving everything that tint. Not pretty. Today we had snow, not a super a lot of it but enough that my husband had to shovel and the neighbor kids were having a lot of fun in it. Today I started to warp my Gilmore to make some overshot bibs. It isn't a long warp and shouldn't take me very long. I am also on my 4th and last rug on my Hammett. I will move from the Hammett to the Gilmore. Yesterday I tried to do some baskets with my four year old grandson and decided that he wasn't ready for that-I'll try it when he gets a little older.
Amy

Placemats

Placemats-waiting to be cut

I am on the computer when I should be upstairs cleaning for Thanksgiving. We are planning to have all our children and grandchildren here for the day. Hopefully the pass will be okay for my son from Seattle to make it home. Another thing that I should be doing is cutting apart some placemats that my husband wove. He wasn't happy with the results but I think that they will be okay. I need to cut, wash and  put some bias binding around the edges. It is from a pattern in an old Handwoven magazine. When I looked at the draft, it didn't appear to be the same as the picture in the magazine but I suggested to just make it according to the draft and to not worry if the pattern is a little different. What my husband did not like was that the design will be under the plate instead of along the side. If we ever make this pattern again, we will have to make some adjustments.
Amy

More Quilted Things

These are a couple of my favorite things. The heart was made by my sister, Gail. and the quilt was made by my Grandmother. How does that red heart look against the orange wall?  My grandmother made quilts for all her grandchildren and hand quilted them. Her quilt hangs in my weaving room.

Amy

Yesterday

Yesterday I had to take my IMac back to the store because I did a very stupid thing. I was going to put my camera memory card into the slot that is on the side of the IMac. However I wasn't paying attention to where I was putting it and I put it into the cd slot. Then it just disappeared into the machine. I tried to force it out but it was no go-when I went to the store the clerk took a piece of paper and folded in half and slipped it in the cd player and just flipped the card out. The good news is that he didn't charge me for my stupidity. I would have hated to pay for such an easy fix. He said it is just one of those things that you learn to do with an IMac. I suggested that they should have put the two different slots on opposite sides. So now
I have my memory card back and I wanted to show a couple of things that my sister, Gail has made for me.

Sorry this picture is a little blurry-this is a wall hanging
that is 24 inches square

This wall hanging is only about 12 inches square-these pieces are very
small-this was done with paper piecing-Gail does a beautiful job. 

My sister, Diana has suggested that with 10 boxes of jeans, I may be starting to collect too many things just like our mother, actually that ship has already sailed.
Amy

Jeans

I was reading Craigslist and someone locally had offered 10 boxes of denim jean legs. She had used the other part of the pants for some project and had the legs left. Did I mentioned that they were free! So today my husband and I went to her house and brought those boxes home. We had the trunk full, the back seat full and I was holding a box on my lap. We got them home and now I will have to get with it and make some denim rugs. I have so much material to make rugs that I will have to get with it, but this weekend I have to finish my 15 ornaments for our ornament exchange that will be on the day after Thanksgiving.
Amy

Weaving stuff

I received my new temple and it is working very well. I am just making a random rug of different types of blue fabric. I am trying to use up some fabric strips that I received from e-bay. I just finished paying for some more wool yarn on e-bay, hopefully I will be able to use it for some rugs. Today I also finished washing and ironing my last warp of napkins, they don't look too bad. I am thinking ahead to putting a scarf warp on the Gilmore. My husband has been doing some weaving, I have some towels that he made that I need to sew the edges and now he is thinking about doing a placemat warp on the 24 inch table loom.
On another note, we went to the Sons of Norway annual dinner on Saturday. It is the first time I have ever gone, even tho they have been doing it for 31 years. It is the first time I have ever tasted lutefisk. I really wasn't very impressed with it, not much flavor,  even after I smothered it with butter.
I am reading "Skeleton Lake" by Mike Doogan. It is a library book but I am enjoying it so much that I ordered another book by the same author on www.paperbackswap.com.

My rug about 1/2 way done and my new temple.

My napkins after I ironed them-can you see the mistake?

The End

Amy

problems posting

seems I can write something on here but I would love to attach a photo and yet my computer doesn't want me to....think it is just this dial up but yet it is even worse than that.....love seeing all of my sister's entries though, Gail with her wonderful cards and Amy with her beautiful weaving.   I also have been playing with a craft item...a new Cricut given to me when I retired.   I hadn't used it till this week because I wanted a personal teacher and my daughter in law came and gave me a lesson...she was paid with dinner.  Kim has come and played with it too so it is sitting out on the table for all of us to use.  Now the rest of the world has probably been playing with and using them for years but I am just now doing so.   It sort of reminds me that I have never done what is popular at the time.   I am still waiting to wear one of those starched petticoats they wore in the 1950s.....

Rug warp again

I thought by this time I would have at least one rug done, but I experienced more problems with this rug warp. My first mistake was using a 12 dent reed. I decided to use 8 ends per inch, so I warped the reed, 2 ends, skip one dent and 2 ends. Just as I was ready to weave the rug and after having everything tied etc, I noticed that I had skipped more than one dent in one place, so I corrected that mistake by resleying  half of the reed. I got everything ready again and discovered that I had a thread missing from one heddle (no idea where it went), so I resleyed the other half of the reed and tied on again.  But of course I had skipped 2 dents instead of 1 and of course it was in the middle.  So I left it for now and will try to correct it tomorrow. I have two temples, one of them is too short for this warp and the other is too long, so I had to order another temple from Webs www.yarn.com.  Maybe by the time it arrives I will be ready to use it!
Amy