Last outtings until 2011!

Let's see..we ate dinner out Tues. thru Thursday saying good bye to some folks! Tues. was dinner with Peggy and Sammy (you'll see more of their artwork further down my post). We ate at a great Italian restaurant called Parvarati's! Garlic knots were to die for!!! A must 'go to again' next year!!
Wed. was our last dinner/margarita's at ElTorre's with Carol and Tony. This is our usual Wed. hangout..great food and 99 cent drinks! Can't beat it!
Thursday we had dinner with Larry, Jan, Marilyn and John at Stumpknockers! Another favorite restaurant of ours.
Jan was so sweet and made up this little vase with orchids and other greenery from her yard! I love it!!! Thank you Jan!
This is one of the views from outside of Stumpknockers. The restaurant sits on the river and you can take boat rides. personally, I'd just rather eat!

They have a little tiki bar and you can eat outside as well. They have the best deep fried shrimp and catfish. We only ate here twice this year which is so unusual! We normally get to Stumpknockers four times or more!!

It's always crowded inside and here we are just waiting for our food!!! This is Bob (back/left), Larry and Jan.

Marilyn, John and my hubby in the back (still!).

Friday, Carol, Peggy and I had our last girls day out for 2010! We headed out early to the farmer's market where we picked up some really good strawberries, grapefruit, green peppers, the largest carrots ever! and lots of other goodies!

Our next stop was to a granite yard to check out some pieces Peggy is looking at. Carol had her granite installed last month and Peggy has been trying to make a decision for the past year. She's narrowed it down to a few choices which are beautiful. After the granite yard, we headed off to a really cool art supply store call Red Swan. The place is huge and reminds me of Dick Blick's (which is a chain art supply store). Good thing we're heading home or I would have bought lots!! Carol & Peggy are coming out the door but you can't see them very well.

Of course we stopped for a great lunch and roamed around a used books store that was really nice! I even purchased a large print book for the ride home, The Cell, by Stephen King.

To end our day, Carol and I stopped at Peggy & Sammy's to see the latest art work from this talented couple. Peggy has a picture of an old boat sitting by the water that she's now painting. Peggy will have to send me a picture when she finishes so I can post. Here's the start of her painting.

This is Sammy's latest wood carving. Beautiful and I love the colors he painted! Such a talented couple aren't they!

And I have to show you the antique clock Sammy found! It's a Seth Thomas II from 1920's! It's an original and Sammy took the entire clock apart and cleaned each piece! Isn't it cool! Sammy has lots of clocks around and can get any clock working again!

Here's Sammy winding up the Seth Thomas piece.

So now we start packing clothes...actually, I've already got some clothes packed up that we won't be needing. You just do a little each day then packing isn't bad at all. Most of my art supplies are packed and today I'll put all my fabrics around our printer that we bring. Good way to protect the printer and pack my fabric!

I do have hand work but won't be posting any pictures for the next week or two. I did trace out a shibori design on some white fabric that I hope to start stitching on while on our drive home. We are also planning our side trip into Tenn. or Ky which we do each year. Just makes the drive home a little more interesting. You never know what you'll find when you venture off side roads! One time we had meat loaf with alphabet soup poured on top! that was a trip for sure!

Temp still in the high 70's/low 80's and breeze. perfect weather for all of us!

Stamping

Here is the fish stamp fiber card I finished yesterday. I did end up using fabric paints to embellish and enhance the fish print. I really like the wood block stamps (fish and butterfly) and think they make cool fiber cards and even fabric. I made this fiber card for Pat, the lady who told me about the wood block stamps and dropped in the mail yesterday. Here is one of the fish prints that I overlaid with the fabric crayons (transfer). You can see it didn't transfer much of the color but it was a good experiment.

The butterfly crayon transfer came out a tad better. I'm also transferring onto darker fabric than just white so that could account for the faint coloring. I've transferred onto white fabric and that does seem to work better. I can see beading or stitching to enhance these so it's not a total waste of effort.

I think the stamps also be cool for rubbings with oil pastels but I have to wait until we get back to Michigan. I did get about 75% of my art supplies packed up yesterday. I put away my sewing machine and just kept organizing and packing up. I like to have everything organized so all I have to do it put items back on my shelves at home..makes it a lot easier packing and unpacking for sure!

Temps still in the 80's and just beautiful. I do have hand work that I've kept out to keep me busy and I started to read the 19th Wife which is pretty good. So until the next post, have a great day!

April BJP Finished

'April Showers Bring......' is finished! And lots of beads on this one!! All my monthly BJP pieces are 8 1/2" x 11". If you want to see more beaded work from members of this project you can check out one of the BJP blogs here.

The umbrella is beaded from my zentangle design using #11 seed beads.

Each raindrop is made up of 3 different beads: delicas, two different size bugles and finished off with a drop crystal bead! This part did get a little boring stitching..whew!!

For the handle I did a rope stitch where a line of beads is laid down in your pattern then 5 beads (I used #11 and #8 beads) are laid over your beaded row. The edges are finished off with #11 crystal seed beads.

Stamping Monday

Before I get into my Stamping Monday, I couldn't resist showing another picture of the azalea bush out front. It's packed full of flowers and is just beautiful!
Here's one of the two stamps I purchased after the weavers meeting. I couldn't wait to start playing with them.

First, I did rubbings using the fabric crayons (by Crayola). On the butterfly I did color in some of the areas after the rubbing.

I ended up cutting out each shape and then doing the transfer on fabric I that I had already stamped. This way I could lay the wings, fish body directly ontop of areas I had stamped. I don't have a pic of results here but the color was very faint. But I also had stamped on hand dyed fabric that were already in dark colors. I might try to transfer them today onto white to see if they come out better.

So then I started to stamp! I first tried my alcohol inks (Liquitex) but the result was quite light on the fabric (top left is alcohol ink stamping). I switched to my old favorite SetaColor which worked perfect and you can see the difference where the areas stamped are darker.

The butterflies turned out quite nice too. I think these would be fun to color in with fabric paint.

I had a piece of Friendly Felt leftover from my umbrella so I thought I'd stamp on it! Who knows..perhaps a BJP in the making!

Nothing is safe when I'm in the stamping mood...when the kids sent the flowers for Easter, they came wrapped in this really cool paper which feels like Lutradur and appears to be quite sturdy! So of course I kept the two pieces and stamped on one side! You never know when it might come to be in a piece of artwork!

This piece stamped really has more movement in the background color than the picture shows. After I stamped a white piece of fabric, I painted over it with SetaColor and scrunched it. It looks better in person.

Ditto with this piece.

So that was my stamping Monday! Weather was in the mid 80's and a slight breeze which was nice and perfect for painting outside. I did sandwich a piece of the butterfly fabric yesterday and I'll do some stitching on it today to make some fiber cards.

I'm putting the beads on the edge of my BJP for April! Yippee!! It's almost done and I hope to get it finished today and then get my design ready for May. That way I have some more hand work vs machine work since we are starting to get our mind set ready to head back home in about a week or so. That means packing up all my 'stuff'!!

We will miss our friends and all the food for sure! But it's always nice to get back to our own home! We are so thankful to Larry for allowing us to stay in his house. It certainly has made our winter so enjoyable and one to remember!

Happy Easter & other ramblings!

Happy Easter! Here's two of the grand kids back in Michigan enjoying their new 'shades' the Easter Bunny gave them today! Kids are off to meet Auntie and Uncle Jeff to have brunch at Kruse & Muer. They do have a wonderful brunch and all the kids love it!

Amber and her mom were busy yesterday baking cake and cupcakes! I took all three of these pictures while we SKYPED this a.m. Not bad for taking them from the webcam.

Yum...

So yesterday I attended my last Weaver's meeting for the winter! I will miss all the ladies! Our show and tell was started off actually with me, but you can read my other blog posts to see my 'stuff'.

Dianna didn't have show and tell but was quite excited from attending the FTWG conference the end of March. She said she's so psyched and can actually read some of the patterns from her weaving magazines now! I can't wait to see what all Dianna produces this next year! You go girl!

MaryLou didn't have show and tell either but did share her excitement at attending some opera's that are simulcast in Gainesville! That's one of the reasons we haven't seen her at our meetings recently.

Queen of Purple was up next and before I get into her fun time at conference...here is a beaded bracelet she made. Not sure I heard her correctly, some of the teachers stayed after school or was it at the conference? anyway, it was a really pretty bracelet. Click on the picture to see it up close.

Here is a beautiful shawl Jan made from one of the workshops at the FTWG conference. Very soft and a different yarn (at least to me!). And in purple, go figure!

Of course, Jan was given her own personal name tag at the conference. Each lady rec'd a name tag. You'll see Pat's later. A classy touch I think.

This is a sample from a mini workshop Jan attended called a Dragon Boat. It's open just to show how it's made. The teacher gave Jan the sample. A project for next winter for our guild??

Here is Jan's finished Dragon Boat. Note the colors and pattern.

This is a bowl (I think that's what you would call it) Jan made a few years ago and do you notice the pattern and color of the paper? In the mini workshop the instructor ended up using some of Jan's papers she had woven before! Small world isn't it.

Last month Jan showed some of her towels she made for the FTWG towel exchange. We were lucky enough to each receive a copy of the instructions for Jan's towels she made. Each person in the exchange made a copy to hand out with their towels. Jan brought her book with all the samples in them to show us as well.

Here are some of the towels Jan received in the exchange.

Pat K. (who was our host for this month! Thank you Pat!) also attended the conference and had a great time at the weaving workshop. sorry I don't remember which class Dianna and Pat took.

Pat did also take a bracelet class but that didn't turn out so great only due to lighting and because she was a bad girl (not really!) and was put in the corner which complicated learning/seeing/doing that much more! But Pat does have the instructions so I'm sure we'll see the finished product at a future meeting!

We all know that Pat K. is an angel (you need to read further down on why I know this a fact!)...and she was also an 'angel' at the weaver's conference and was given these really nice note cards with woven fabric insert on each for helping out in one of the workshops.

You have to see these in person to really appreciate the woven inserts. Click on the picture to get a closeup.

This was Pat's name tag. I'm still impressed someone made all of these name tags. I think Jan said there were over 100 made! And she thought by one lady! Whew!

These are some really cool earrings Pat bought at the conference.

This is some silk/alpaca yarn Pat purchased. Really nice. I could see knitting a few hundred lace scarves with it! At least I think there's enough yarn for them!

Pat McL. brought us goodies and the blueberry/orange bread was delicious! I didn't stay for lunch so i don't know how good the cookies were but they sure looked good!

Pat has been busy making place mat's and a table runner. These are the colors and different patterns she ended up doing.

I believe the one of the far right is the table runner. They are really cool together! Quite nice and I love all the different patterns.

Our Theo had busy hands giving away some books (which I did take one! Thank you, Theo) and other items. When she was finished with her handouts, her hands were busy making gloves!

Theo just got back from France (if I remember correctly) and is now off for 3 weeks to India! Is this a busy lady or what!! Have a great time, Theo!!

So now to talk about my 'angel' Pat K.! During our meeting, Pat mentioned that she saw some wood blocks for printing at an antique shop in Dunnellon. Well, I could barely contain myself and sit through the meeting! but I did..I just didn't stay for lunch and had to head out to see these wood print blocks.

I wasn't sure where I was going and I did call once to say "am I going in the right direction", which I was. Turns out I knew exactly where the store was at! Carol and I have gone to this store and the other antique shops in the downtown area just about every year! But not this year!

I was also lucky enough to spend about an hour walking around the rest of the town and looking at all the sidewalk vendors. What fun! Too bad I didn't have one of my gal pals with me but I enjoyed myself.

For those who might want to go, here's address.
And here is where I found the wood blocks!
I bought two of them. One a fish block...
And a butterfly!

Aren't these great! I was going to stamp with them today but don't think I'll have enough time. Now you know why Pat K. is my angel! If she wouldn't have thought of me when she saw these & remembered to tell me about them I'd go home without these prize possessions!! THANKS, Pat!!

Bob should be home from golfing early and we have things to do, places to go and people to see! OK, not all that but an enjoyable day to look forward together. He golfed early (8:15 a.m.) so he'll be home early. So I'll hold off on my art work until tomorrow.

Anyway, see what you ladies miss when you don't attend a meeting! FOOD, FUN and FRIENDSHIP! Again, Happy Easter to my family and friends!

Internet Friends

I received this blogger award from a talented and very kind Internet 'friend', Jan, from Laughing Dog Arts who I found from another talented and kind lady, Anne, from her blog here! You see how this Internet friendship can get started! Thank you Jan and Anne!!!
So I guess I'll comply with the 'rules' of accepting this award!

Here are the rules to be followed for this award:

1. Thank the person who gave this to you.
2. Copy the logo and place it in your blog.
3. Link the person who nominated you.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that no one would really know.

5. Nominate seven 'Kreativ Bloggers'
6. Post links to the seven blogs you nominate
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them.

Seven things folks might not know about me! Hmmmm
1) I was a lab tech for 19 years then became a computer programmer/manger for EDS for 15 years before I retired in '99!
2) I was raised on a farm and I also raised & showed horses (quarter) until 1989. My current hubby sold his boat and I sold my last horse in 1991. Our comprise! Actually, I had two LS disc surgeries and it was really time to settle down.
3) I collect/save stickers from fruits and vegetables! I know strange but my MIL got me started and it's a hoot! I have a little book (3" x 3") where I keep these! I even have some new ones I found here in Florida to take back with us. My grand daughter thinks it's strange too but she'll even find some in the grocery store for me!
4) I like to be alone! Sounds weird but I don't mind being by myself and just sewing, reading or doing my art. Now that I think about it maybe I'm never alone because of #5.
5) I love all animals! I've never NOT had a dog and have had up to five dogs at one time. I've had birds as well and raised cockatiels back in the early '80's.
6) I don't like to fly or leave home...guess this goes back to #4!
7) I played the clarinet in high school and I was terrible! I think the band instructor just took pity on me. I was always 3rd chair but not last! Thanks goodness! And I took Latin for a language! No, it only helped me in college for lab tech! Otherwise, it's not that useful of a 'language'!

Here are my nominees for the Kreativ Blogger Award (who can just accept the award or follow through with the 'rules'. Either way, these ladies have and do daily inspire me with their talent!

Judi at Approachable Art
Laurie at Artsy Chick Quilts
Lisa at Indigo Beads
Sally at Sally’s Stuff
Diana at The Lone Beader
Melody at Melody is in the Garden (used to be Fiber mania)
Morwyn at Another Country Bead Works


Thanks again Jan!

BJP Progress and Flowers!

Before I get into the progress on my BJP for April..check out what was delivered to me from my son and his family! Kris called to make sure they were delivered since they left them on the porch. Kris said she likes to surprise people and that she did! We are lucky to have such great kids between the two of us! Guess we did something right! Thanks again, kid!!!

I just love these daffodils! They are starting to open up and are so pretty!!

And speaking of kids! Ron and family were almost to their house from their spring break in Florida when they hit two deer!! No injuries other than to the car! We are thankful for that but kids sure don't need another cost or car injury!! Fortunately, they have a friend who loaned them a car to use to get to the house.

Now on to my BJP for April. I finished the umbrella and started to stitch beads for the handle. I used #11 seed beads to lay a line down then used #8 seed beads for the handle.

Next, I laid 5 beads across the straight row of beading to create a padded handle.

Yesterday I started to stitch my umbrella down with my rope stitch of beads.

I finished the handle and the umbrella last night! If you click on the picture you'll see more of the detail of the handle. Using the #8 seed beads for the bottom of the handle worked out great.

Today or tonight I'll get started on the rain drops. I have two different size of clear bugles and some crystal drop beads I'll use for the rain drops. At least that's my thought process right now! You never know how it will turn out. I'll then add some crystal seed beads on the edge so as to not take away from any of the other beading.

Weather has been BEAUTIFUL! Temps in high 70's or low 80's for the remainder of the week. Always a slight breeze which is what I love about the winters in Ocala.

Today is 'animal' day! Beak and nail trim for Gracie, shopping for NoName's food (our Australian Grass parakeet). Then to the library and pharmacy. I'll take Mandy with me to get her out of the house for awhile. We don't have far to go to any of the places and other than the pharmacy and library she can go inside with me.