Me Blog.... :)

Blog Threads
1

Well, I’ve never had a blog so this should be interesting. I’ve always got lots to say so I don’t think this will be too much of a problem.

I’ve just turned 66. I have lots of white hair and just a sliver of the dark brown stuff with which I used to be endowed. It’s on the left side of my face and I think it looks quite odd being so dark among the gray and the white! But, I’ll take it! :slight_smile:

I used to knit an awful lot when I was younger. I was taught by a young lady I met when my son was born. She was quite ‘outraged’ that I didn’t know how to knit so she was determined I should learn. “I’ll teach you something easy”, she said. “Socks!”

Yup, with 4 dpn’s… was she crazy? Yes, I suppose so but I’m awful glad she taught me. I knit 4 pairs of heavy socks for my Dad that Christmas and he, who was confined to a wheelchair at the time, was very proud and happy to have them.

After that I knit Indian Sweaters for every family member I had. Made two for my younger brother when he and his wife got married and for my parents, I made sweaters that had a couple doing square dancing on them.

But time passed… I forgot about knitting and took up quilting. Loved doing quilting… all by hand too - took ages to do one. One sold to Japan and 2 sold in the States, Carmel, Calif. Proud of them - sold the same day - on my birthday, can you believe that!

But then there was this car accident… gimped me up some and made quilting very hard to do… won’t go into details but after a while I got back into knitting. I started up again a couple of years ago then quit… got really ill and couldn’t do my artwork during that time so knitting filled the bill.

I’d forgotten a lot so I made socks, (thanks to Silver’s Sock Class) and tons of scarves and hats with the yarn stash I still had.

It got me thru one very tough summer.

So that brings me up to date and to the present.

I’m in the middle of, once again, knitting for a wedding. My younger brother and his wife’s youngest daughter is getting ready to march up the aisle in March and I’m knitting for her and her hubby to be.

The knitting is all done… just doing the blocking now. I knit her some ballet socks (leg warmers) and a shrug (very simple) and he’s getting two pairs of socks… one pair is thick; the other pair is made of sock yarn… the thinnest yarn I’ve ever knit with… took forever…

But then, today I bot more sock yarn… think I’ll make a pair for my hubby. He’s pretty under the weather these days and deserves a good pair of wool/nylon socks.

I guess you must have figured out that I’m a glutton for punishment!
:slight_smile:
TEMA:knitting: :knitting: :knitting:

2

Hi, Not much happening in the Lounge so I thought I’d check out the blogs. I enjoyed reading about you and your knitting experience. I kind of did the same thing with knitting I was taught by my mother when I was about six years old. I kind of gave up on that and switched to crochet and later, needlepoint. Now I’m back to knitting. [COLOR=MediumTurquoise]:waving:[/COLOR]

3

:waving: Hi Ellie… nice of you to drop in… welcome to my world… LOL!
TEMA

4

Sunday and we actually got out of the house today… hurray! Even if it was only for groceries…

I’m in the middle of knitting nothing… well, it’s nothing right now. Once I get it knit, I will know what it is. Right now, it’s just some skinny black mohair that I sometimes, when the feeling hits, add some varigated sock yarn to.

The mohair was given to me as a gift from a nice lady who lives in the same building as I do. Such a nice thing to do… then I had to find something to do with it…

This ‘thing’ is on a 16" circular so I’m thinking it could become a hat but if not, probably a scarf… but time will tell… or at least, the time I tire of knitting it will tell. I really like the combination of the fuzzy black with shots of white, grey, blue in it but it really does add the the texture of the piece.

If I decide it’s a hat but it’s too big to be a hat, I think I might add a brooch to it to make it smaller and a bit more stylish as well and then I’ll probably knit a scarf to go with it. I’m feeling a bit odd doing this because for the last little while I’ve been knitting like mad to knit for other people. I’ve been inundated with projects and suddenly… the push is over. a bit of a let-down` :wink:

Still I bot more sock yarn with the idea that my hubby will be the next lucky recipient of a decent pair of socks. The ones I knit for him at Christmas are now a shadow of their former selves… LOL!

I got a phone call afternoon… it seems my youngest granddaughter has done harm to herself.
For some reason, out of the clear blue, on Friday, she decided to swallow a Toonie… why? Because, she says, she was hungry!

Anyway, she is now in hospital as they try to figure out how they are going to remove the darned thing. She been taken to Children’s Hospital and they are now awaiting a bed for her. There is talk of an operation if they can’t fish it out and there is an opinion that the coin may have damaged her asophagus (sp?)… poor chick! Her step-Mamma sent me a photo of the xray… quite a sight!

I guess I will be knitting the night away waiting for news…
TEMA:chair:

5

Tema it would help if you would break up the paragraphs or topics with a blank row. It makes it way easier to read.

I adore sock yarn, but I’m just not into knitting socks. That could be in part because I can’t wear them easily…I have sensitive feet and they are wide so it’s crowded in my shoes. Those tiny needles aren’t my favorite either. I do love heavier weight ones for house socks though!

Oh no…your poor grandaughter! Hope she gets it taken care of easily. How old is she and what the heck is a Toonie?

6

Thanks for the post, Jan… I see what you mean…

As for my granddaughter… Children’s Hospital managed to get the toonie out of her (toonie is a large Canadian coin worth $2, bigger than an American 50 cent piece). She’s 11 but is mentally delayed and she tends to eat the oddest things. Thank goodness she is back home.

Valentine’s Day… It was an odd day…
Hubby and I had planned on going out for lunch to celebrate but he still isn’t feeling too well and I just couldn’t see us going out anywhere as long as he is so uncomfortable so we stayed home… well, except for at about 11 a.m., when I had to go to the lab for a blood test. He walked me to the lab…it’s almost next door and then continued on his journey.

By 11:30, when I was still waiting my turn for the dreaded needle, in walks my hubby resplendent with pink lilies. He presented them to me right there in the waiting room of the lab infront of all the other people sitting there! I was so amazed!

As I told him later… don’t let anyone ever tell you you are not romantic… they don’t know what they are talking about.

My husband and I have been together for 18 years. For the last 11 or those 18 years, we have been married. During that time, he has had triple bypass heart surgery, brain surgery and, in the last 18 months, he’s been trying to recouperate from radical prostate surgery. He’s still on a catheter and it’s made him so low at times.

But despite all that, he still loves his little woman (that would be me… :slight_smile: and I wouldn’t trade him in for all the money in the world or even Elvis, for that matter.

He has always backed me in whatever endeavour that I’ve decided to undertake from painting to quilting to carving to knitting. I want to buy a how-to-book, he’s okay with that… I decide I just have to have this fabric… he encourages me to buy it. He bot me a carving set when I was carving… a short-lived endeavour once I sliced open the heel of my thumb and required 9 stitches… ugh! A still sad and painful memory… :slight_smile:

When I started collecting buttons, he faithfully came with me to every button haven I went to to watch me rummage around in boxes and cartons of them for hours on end. Now I have about 5000 buttons… so I made a quilt with about 500 buttons in it… still 4500 buttons to go! :slight_smile:

Now, of course, the knitting bug has hit and I’m collecting yarn. For sure I don’t need to buy any more… I have enough… but if I should succumb, he never says… ‘not again!’ And for that, he is worth his weight in gold…
TEMA:muah:

7

Another day, another project…

I’m feeling very good about this one. I’m kind of inventing but not really. I invented the yarn shall we say…!

I bot some thick black stuff at Walmart a while back… mainly because I love black and I liked the feel of it in the bag. What I was going to be able to do with it, I didn’t know but it was cheap and I have a nagging fear that Walmart is going to close down their yarn area permanently soon… probably because it’s been jammed into a tight spot and they don’t seem to be replenishing it at all.

So I bot it.

And then yesterday I decided I didn’t want to knit an all black sweater. I’d look like I was in mourning for someone and besides I’d look all pale. Perhaps my grandkids would run from me, thinking I was a witch or something. So I thought it over for a while and my eye fell on some sock yarn I had left over from a sock project and it hit me.

Why not add that yarn to the mix!

So I knitted a swatch (first one ever, I’m sorry to say), love the way it knit up. The sock yarn was varigated in blues, whites, greys and a bit of purple… it looked wonderful showing up all over the place in the black.

But, of course, the yarn was not the right gauge… but it wasn’t far off so I decided to make the sweater in a larger size than I would usually need.

I figure I can use it if it is too big but not if it is too small - tho’ I do have some smaller female relatives that might welcome it if I can’t get into it.

The best thing for me is - I’m using my stash. I don’t believe I will need to buy anything else to finish it off. Oh, that would be great!

In any case, if I should run out of this particular black, there are other blacks and I know I have enough for the body of the sweater. The sleeves could always be a different colour with the sock yarn running thru it.

Okay, so I’m hyped… thank goodness! :woohoo:

TEMA
:thumbsup:

8

Two days after Valentines Day… sad day here… hubby not well at all and I’ve just had a call from my dr to ask me to come in and discuss yet another blood test I did on Thursday… can’t get in until March but that’s okay. Evidently she’s said its not urgent so I can just sit on pins and needles until I hear what she has to say about it.

My first thought was - oh, no, I thought this was over…

Hard to deal with hubby being sick… so thankful I have knitting to turn to so I don’t stuff myself with food or cry my eyes out…

Okay, so today I did quite a lot of knitting. The sweater that I began the other day is getting bigger - at least, the back of the sweater is… just have to knit about 4 more inches and then I bind off and start the right front.

I really like the material is is making - hard to describe but it looks like a tweed… not exactly but sort of… if you get my drift… :slight_smile:

My brother finally gave me the measurements of his daughter - she’s 16" across from shoulder to shoulder. I am much relieved as I was waiting to finish off the shrug I made for her until I knew for sure. Now I just have to add the ribbing around the middle. The ‘sleeve’ ends have already been done… so one more present finished…:woot:

TEMA :knitting: :knitting: :knitting:

9

[COLOR=“DarkOrchid”]Okay… so I jumped right in… but I enjoyed the knitting of it so much I just didn’t care…
Last night, watching t.v., I frogged the whole back I had just finished knitting. It just wasn’t going to fit me and I was darned if I was going to go thru the rest of it knowing it wasnt’ going to work. :slight_smile:
I still love the yarn and the look of the beast but… well, it just had to fit… unless, of course, I decided to finish it and stiffen it up so it would stand by itself and use it as art… :teehee:
What I learned in the frogging was… it’s much easier to knit two threads together if they are wound on the same ball and, if you use a pair of larger needles… it gets larger… :thumbsup:
Today is a ‘tired’ day… I call it that because I haven’t really woken up all day. My typing is hap-hazard at best and I’m correcting like mad!

10

I forgot to mention that I ran away from home yesterday for a few hours of undisturbed knitting in the park.
TEMA

11

Today I posted on PATTERNS asking desparately for help with the thingamajigs that are causing me problems with this sweater.
I am lost because someone posted as a comment about the sweater that they found the pattern for the collar to be backwards and it won’t lay right if it is done the way the pattern says it should be done.

So… now, what do I do…!?
Also I’ve found as I go along - what with me changing the length of the darned thing (who knew what a problem this simple change would be?), I’m getting lost in the maze of many lengths the pattern gives at the end of each shaping or however long they say the sweater should be when you finish knitting this.

It’s not at all straightforward and straightforward is what I need. My brain just goes into whirling caniptions if it isn’t straightforward.
:eyes: See what I mean? :slight_smile:

The back looks wonderful and best of all, it looks like it’s going to fit! Hurray! :woot: but it would be a disaster if I cannot get the fronts to do likewise…

Oh, well, I’m sure some knitting guru from this site will take pity on me and help this poor knitter out. :hair:

Before I go bald, I mean…
TEMA:knitting:

12

Man, I will be so proud if this sweater turns out. I’m knitting it in hopes that this will happen. But I have my doubts…

For one thing the collar is knit in a very funny way and I’ve had to search all over and ask lots of questions to finally get what I think is the answer.

The collar is in two parts. IT’s a shawl collar but, when you look at how the pattern is written, it looks like the directions are all wrong. IT looks like the collar naturally falls into the chest instead of the shoulder. Honestly… I knit the right side and that’s done - looks mighty funny to me… but I’m not giving up yet.

After asking lots of questions to all the lovely knitters both here and on Ravelry, I finally looked back to the original pattern online and read the comments that 3 people had left about it.

None of them were thrilled with it at all… but one lady gave me the answer to the problem of why the collar looks the way it does.

She said:
This collar has two sections. There is a facing and a collar.
The facing folds into the slipped stitches. This is then sewn to the collar section. IT will be doubled.
then you turn the facing out as it has the st. st. pattern.

Well, this sounds really good to me and I’m continuing to knit it in hopes she is right and that when I come to that part - the sewing it up part - I will know what to do.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to leave all my markers in place as I climb the fronts so that later, when the finishing is done, namely the sewing of all the pieces together so that the collar makes sense and the seams all come together properly, I’ll have something to go by.

As it is, you make the right front and the left front, 3" longer than the length of the back… they are a part of the collar.

I’m not a great sewer-upper so wish me luck!

I’m gonna need it.

TEMA:knitting:

13

Up early after a late night… had to drive hubby to his Neurologist for the very last visit he will ever have with him.

We just found out at this visit that the doctor is retireing in the middle of June. We are glad he is going to retire for his sake but it has hit us pretty hard.

Back in 2003, my hubby had brain surgery to help to alleviate his seizures. They were uncontrollable back then so the removed his right hippocampus (used for memory and speech) and he went one full year without a seizure… some kind of record as far as he was concerned… :slight_smile:

Then they came back… so disappointing but the surgery was still a success because now the meds could control it. He can’t drink a lot of coffee or eat grapefruit as both of those things counteract his meds and he will seizure… good to know that…

The kind of seizures my darling hubby has are called Partial Complex Seizures (he is absent for their duration and has no idea that anything has happened except for some overwhelming tiredness). I’m the only one that gets to see them… most of the time.

I suppose others see it happening and don’t understand why he acts the way he does or that he is in seizure at all. He looks perfectly normal. He doesn’t fall down and thrash about on the floor.

Whatever his last thought was before the seizure hits is the thing that he will be doing during seizure, only now he’s sort of on automatic and it is up to me to tell the poor fellow that one has occurred… which I hate to do but it must be done. He has to know why he took his shoes off or tried to walk into a stranger’s yard.

In any case, after many doctors who had all kinds of theories as to why he had seizures, we finally found someone who knew a thing or two about them. My dh was put in hospital for about a week, with a camera on him at all times, a lady behind a window that watched him as well. They stopped his meds and, of course, the seizures began but because they began they were able to pinpoint why he was having seizures and that it was operable.

This is where our favourite doctor comes in. HE did the testing and all the prelim… set up the surgeon to do the operation and saw to everything until my husband was out of the woods. He even gave us his home #!

Anyway, hubby’s been having seizures again, 4 in the last month and a half so it was worth taking the long drive to see him. IT was a good meeting but I have to say, on the way home, we both felt quite sad… like we’d just lost our best friend…:cry:

We left home at 9:00 a.m. and managed to get back at 4 p.m.

Quite a long day… but the upshot is our beloved doctor didn’t think my darling husband needed any more meds or a change of meds feeling the latest seizures were caused by the stress he’s been under lately… He had prostat cancer and is still getting over the operation and after effects 17 months later…

Good grief!
TEMA
p.s. Most doctors do not recognize a Partial Complex Seizure if it bit them in the face.

14

When I’m not knitting, I can be found in my little bedroom that I like to call my ‘studio’.

My studio is full of all sorts of things… paintings I’ve painted, knickknacks that I just couldn’t pass up and so bot with the idea that they would be able to give me art ideas (at least, that’s the excuse I always gave myself), tools of the fabric trade, things full of buttons like the mirror in front of my desk… and fabric pieces I’ve meticulously sewn over the years.

Here’s my vent…

Yesterday I wrote to a fellow that had a piece in the paper about a Call for Submissions… seems any kind of art would do so I thought… great! I’ll enter some of my fabric art… or will I?

The first thing I read, at the top of the list for Submission Guidelines was that I had to be a professional, or emerging, artist.

Bingo, I’m out!
But of course I didn’t take it lying down… I may be aging but I’ve still got a little of the feisty in me…

So I wrote the poor man and enclosed a picture of one of my pieces. I told him that it seemed I wasn’t eligible to submit. I had not had a gallery show in years, had not taken any art classes, didn’t have a lot of people who wanted to buy my art, and the last guideline “The artist must have completed training and have been out of school for one year or more”… huh…!

Well, I’ve certainly been out of school for more than a year or two but I’ve had no training… unless you want to count the years I’ve spent teaching myself how to do what I do…

So I’m pissed off.

I’ve seen it all before.

Once when I was applying to become a member of an art group, they judged my work to be a craft and therefore not fit to be considered art… why? Because it was made of fabric… and they never even looked at my work before they threw me out! grrrrr!

So, for years I’ve been swimming upstream, especially in Canada… I’ve sold work in the States but then American people don’t have a problem with fabric being an art form even if it’s a quilt… :thumbsup: but Canadians… maybe not all Canadians have a blinder on when it comes to fabric.

Why should they buy a beautiful quilt made of seagulls flying for $1,000 when they can buy a ‘quilt’ (that’s comforter) at Sears for less than $100?

Well, I sold that quilt to a person from Japan who took it home with him and didn’t seem to think that $1,000 was too much for a handmade original piece.

My dream is that someday most people will feel the same way.

So that’s my vent… more like a bit of ‘getting it off my chest’, I guess… but then I’m not really mad; I just want to get even… LOL!
:wink:
TEMA March 3, 2011

15

Is there anything more fun than finding someone to knit with?

My hubby has been sick for a long time and I am his caregiver. That means I do all my knitting at home and hardly ever get out by myself.

Last year a small group of women gathered at my place for a couple of meetings. We were a fiber art group who were tired of belonging to groups that were so restricted that most meetings meant you discussed administrative issues instead of actually learning from each other and finding our own paths.

The meetings didn’t last long as they could not always have them at my house and no one seemed interested in meeting anywhere else and I’m sorry about that but something really good happened because of it.

I met a friend… and a knitting friend, at that! :woot:

Since we moved to this town, I’ve been totally friendless. As I said, most of my time has been spent in the house.

But she came to my house with this group… she was the only knitter and she was knitting lacy baby blankets. I was in total awe… not only because she knit so fine but because she was quiet, imaginative and friendly…

So I sought her out after the meetings ended and on Tuesday, she invited me to her home and we had the most lovely time.

We knitted, talked, listened to El Divo, had green tea and took down each other phone #'s while making a date to meet again in about 3 weeks time… I’m a happy camper!
-------------------------
Today I finished knitting the little shrug I’ve been knitting for my niece and its a week ahead of her wedding day - talk about perseverence! :wink: Talk about frogging and tinking - it was a marathon! :slight_smile:

Today there is a pair of house socks for my darling hubby on the needles… gotta keep his feet warm!

They are being knit out of a grey yarn of dubious lineage and a thin varigated sock yarn. They will be very thick, which makes them ideal, but they are a great pain to knit and my hands are objecting by the end of the evening… not that it matters a whit. He needs them; he gets them… and then I will make an identical pair for me. We will be housebound twins… at least, sock-wise…!

May everyone everywhere be blessed with a knitty friend, unending quality yarn, circulars the right size and length for every project and a great lys in their immediate area!
TEMA :knitting:

16

Okay… so dr now says I am hyperthyroid… that’s the opposite of being hypothyroid - or at least it’s nastier cousin… scared me at first. I know hyper can kill you… but I’m going to be okay, I’m not that badly off… er… so far.

So my pills have been decreased to before summer levels… and now I just wait to see if I start feeling any better.

To date, it’s not fun… pain is hitting all over my body, neck, right shoulder, left wrist, right ankle and I’m soooo tired…

However…

I have finally finished the little shrug I was knitting - haven’t taken a picture of it yet. It certainly is a sweet thing. Just worried a bit that it might be too small for her. I knit the small size because she is quite tiny. She will be getting it sometime this week, or at least by next weekend as that’s when she gets married.

If it doesn’t fit her, I’m going to get it back from her and knit her a larger one after first being able to get her measurements… that was definitely a stumbing block to an accurate fit.

If I get it back from her, I’m thinking I might stuff it and stiffen it and use it as a fiber sculpture… :slight_smile:
TEMA:knitting:

17

A glorious day today. Hubby and I actually got out of the apartment to go for a nice little walk… nothing like a walk into nature to make you so glad to be alive!

Today is the day I was finally able to post pictures of some of the things I have been working on for my niece’s wedding presents.

The Kaya Cropped Shrug has finally taken it’s rightful place among the two socks for her husband-to-be and the pair of legwarmers for her. Very pleased with myself…:yay: as you can see… LOL!

I cannot say just how many times I tinked this one, not to mention a good frogging as well… but in the end, I think it was worth it… now if only it fits…

TEMA

18

A great weekend… the wedding of my niece that I mentioned before.

The wedding was wonderful… the Sunday brunch where she opened her presents was also wonderful. I had a great time.

If you remember my presents to her and her hubby were things that I knit… so I was holding my breath when my parcel was opened. I’d knit her a shrug and some leg warmers. He got two pairs of socks.

She opened the wrapping paper and found two white tissue paper wraps inside. She handed one to her fella and he opened his. He loved the socks! I couldn’t believe it… he even put a pair on and wore it for the rest of the afternoon… what a nice thing to do!
She opened her present and took out the shrug.
Now my problem with this shrug was that I was sure it was way too small for her but she is petit and tho’ I had no measurements for her, I knit her the small size.

It looked awful small to me… sort of like it was for a kid… but she put it on and it fit to a tee and she looked lovely in it. So she wore it and then put on the legwarmers as well. They both lay back in the couch, he shoved his feet up in the air and she showed hers as well and their pictures were taken… I was so thrilled!

So I’m bragging now, but that’s okay. It doesn’t happen very often.
LOL!
TEMA

19

Waiting for tomorrow when I take off for my Mom’s for the next 3 days. My younger brother and his wife are going away on vacation for the next 6 days and they certainly deserve it.

They have had 2 daughters married off in the last 6 months and watching out for Mom as well.

Mom is going to be 95 in July and she is just beginning to be unable to do some of the things she’s always done… and the things she is able to do are taking longer to do… she sits down and sleeps a lot during the day but she still lives in her own condo, which is usually no problem at all as my bro and his wife just live a few blocks away and one of their lovely daughters just lives down the hall.

But she’s not going to be there either. She’s going to be on her honeymoon! :slight_smile: So, basically… Mom is completely on her own.

My brother bought all the groceries she’ll need for that week even if she ate like a horse, which she doesn’t, and has said his good-bye to her as well. They left this morning at 4:30 on their way to Mexico.

I volunteered for this quite a long time ago but it’s not chore. Mom is the greatest mother any girl could have. She has more commonsense than anyone I’ve ever known and she finds me unbelieveably lovable… :slight_smile:

She’s the lynch pin of the family. She’s always had cookies fresh baked when the nieces and nephews arrived… especially at Christmas when certain of her nephews just swoon over her iced Christmas cookies of stars, holly and trees.

And I am her daughter… the middle child… the only girl… and oh, what I put her thru in my growing up! How she survived me, I have no idea, but she did and now I get the priviledge of looking after her - just a bit… because I would never insult her by doing anything for her that I know perfectly well that she can still do for herself. It would take away her will to live…

She’s in pain these days… lots of debillitating pain. She sits in her recliner in the frontroom wearing the purple socks that I knit her over her black ones, stockings, trousers, a blouse, her pink bath robe, her black shawl… looking tiny and wrinkled with blackened patches of skin on her arms and legs - bruises from where her purse sat on her arm or where she crossed her legs.

Her skin is very thin and clear and her hair is a bright white and still full and beautiful. Her hairdresser loves her and will even make house calls if Mom can’t come in for her cut.

So I’m waiting for tomorrow… just knitting on my latest project… a knitted shawl that I’m inventing as I go along. Thought of Mom when I first started it but, really, it’s for myself… for when I cannot do the things that I’m doing now, for when I need to be warm but never am… I shall wrap myself in this shawl, feel the comfort of it’s warmth, enjoy the surprises of flashes of blue in amongst the black and grey and remember when I could knit well enough to make it… and dream of Mom, of course.
TEMA

20

I’m still knitting but these days I’m trying something new.

I’ve returned to my fabric art stuff and am trying working on a new project. It involves the recycled cardboard of cereal boxes and even some corrigated cardboard on occasion.

I got the idea because I wanted to send something in the mail to a dear friend who is having heart troubles right now… to totally unfair to her. She’s been fighting cancer for most of her life and now this…

What to do?

Well, I have tons of fabric pieces and even more fabric scraps so I decided to make her a bunch of little fabric hearts. I ended up with 14 of the little things. 10 @ 1 1/2" and 4 @ 1".

Here’s how I made them: I drew hearts on a piece of cardboard and when I finally came up with one I liked, I traced it 10 times on the cardboard. Then I drew a smaller heart and traced it 4 times.

Then I grabbed my scraps and began to paste the cardboard hearts in between two pieces of fabric, sewed around the shape of the heart with colourful thread and then cut away the excess fabric leaving only enough so that the stitching would not fall out.

They looked quite beautiful cascading out of the envelope and in my mind’s eye, I could see her opening it and seeing a delighted surprise coming into her eyes. The note I sent with them says… ‘thinking of you with all my hearts’… :slight_smile:

Later that day, I was on the internet and found something called Zentangles. It’s a kind of artform and the more I looked into it, the more I wanted to try it, but with fabric instead of paint.

I’ve been practicing on my computer in the paint section to try out some ideas and I’m really taken with it… tho’ I doubt that my Zentangles can anywhere nearly match what I’ve seen on the internet… it makes no difference.

Today I began my first fabric Zentangle. I started with a drawing, cut the drawing into pieces of paper for pattern, pasted the paper patterns to the cardboard pieces, cut them out carefully and then attached fabric pieces, enough to cover two sides of the cardboard. Now I am doing some embroidery-type stitching around the pattern form created by the cardboard patterns.

In the end, what, hopefully, will happen is - all the pieces, wrapped and sewn in fabric will come together and look more like a little statuette that hangs on the wall.

So far, so good…

In the meantime, I’m knitting my shawl in my spare time in the frontroom in my recliner… mostly at night… :slight_smile: And I have a vest ready for having it’s ‘sleeve’ holes decorated.

I do so love crafts…!cloud9
TEMA