KnitPony

Swap Complete

This is what Laurie sent to me for the Sinister and Sweet Swap.  She sent them way before the official mail date so I kept the box out of sight until my stuff was boxed up and mailed out.  On Monday evening, AB took Mel to her vocal lessons and I had a few minutes all to myself.  I sat down with a glass of wine to fully enjoy the moment.  Everything is so cute and it felt like Christmas opening up the packages.  I have the Halloween fairy hanging in my sewing room, the candy boxes are displayed in a window niche.  I'm afraid to put anything out where Victoria can get at it.  She has a talent for shredding paper.  Laurie also sent me a supply of Halloween paper, a cute black and white bag with matching pen (that Mel tried to steal), a glitter "D", a pearl "D" and two cute vintage coaster - and some candy. 

I hope that Laurie likes what I sent to her.  I didn't do much paper crafting, I sometimes feel all thumbs with paper.  I finally realized how everyone got such great gathers on their crepe paper - they sew it.  I've been gluing it into place, trying to pleat it at the same time and sometimes ending up with a big gluey mess.  What a fool I was to not figure this out sooner. 

Laurie - if your packages have not arrived don't look any further or you'll ruin the surprise.

I stenciled two craft pumpkins for Laurie.  That's a jar of gooey eyeballs (better known as chocolate) in the back.  Laurie likes polka dots so I made a little runner from fabric yo-yos.  Continuing with the polka dot theme, I made a pearl and black bead necklace - pearls being the polka dots.  Maybe that's stretching it but I really was happy with the necklace and sad to send it off.  I need to make a similar one for myself now.  I trimmed a little tote bag for Halloween goodies and filled a box with crafting goodies also.  After the picture was taken I decided the box needed something else so I added the word, Nevermore to the top.  Then Mel suggested if I did that I should include the Mr. Poe's poem, "The Raven".  This is the second swap I participated in.  The first was about 3 years ago before I had even heard a lot about blogs. 

Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom

During our New York City trip, last Christmas we visited Ellis Island.  After hearing so much about Ellis Island in films and books, I was excited to have a chance to go there.  We did not have much interest in stopping to see the Statue of Liberty (although it was very cool to be so close to it while on the boat).  While I was looking forward to touring Ellis Island, I wasn't sure how interesting it would be for Mel.  She found it fascinating and spent far more time examining the displays that I had anticipated. 

There was an exhibit of photographs by Stephan Wilkes of the unrestored Ellis Island buildings.  The photographs were fantastic, haunting and strange, full of green light and very organic feeling.  After we came home I looked for a book of the photographs but could not find one.   On July 1st, "Sunday Morning" on CBS did a story about the photographs - I found out there was a book.  It was published last October, I don't know why I couldn't find it before.  It's a great book, I highly recommend it.

Ellis Island, Ghosts of Freedom

Breaking the Silence

There is no good reason why I haven’t blogged in FOREVER except for life.  I started this blog thing to inspire me to make more things.  I felt a dearth of creativity for the longest time – I couldn’t get started on anything exciting.  I just knit socks, socks and more socks.   

Since last August I’ve wanted to put together some sort of memory album for my friend’s daughter, Kira.  We all became great friends through Pony Club and when they moved away I just could not bear the process of saying goodbye.  So I put off starting any thing.  Since they were coming to Las Vegas for the World Cup, I decided to have her album complete when she got here.  Nothing like deadlines to get you started.  I got my basic idea from one of Teresa McFayden’s Silver Bella kits.  Using a 7 Gypsies portfolio, I glued in folders and covered everything with patterned paper.  I didn’t want to just stick photographs in there because Miss Shari is the camera queen.  I made a list of everything Kira had done in Las Vegas Pony Club, printed that on some mylar paper and that was the beginning.  I had bought some library pockets but they were too small for photos – so I ended up making my own pockets from card stock, again covering them with paper.  I glued the pockets on the inside of the folders for photos, labeling them “camp, rallies, meetings, shows, etc”.  Towards the back I put four black pockets with horses stamped on them and asked friends to write a little note to Kira, then stuck those notes in the pockets.  I put a report card in to grade her on her activities.  I printed a ton of tiny pictures and used a 1.5 inch circle punch on them and glued them through out the album.   I was pleased with how it turned out; Mel wanted to know why I had not made her anything like that.  Of course I didn’t take pictures of it but it was very well received.  Here's a picture of Kira and the gang looking at her album.

The point of this is that now I feel like my creativity has returned.  I’m making a list of things that I’d like to do.  I am planning to start making Mel some skirts from Sew What! Skirts – it’s a great book. 

A Little Rambling

I sort of feel like I'm cheating by using the word cloud to start a post, I like the idea of the word clouds but I've seen them at other blogs.  I would like to see an Atlas Shrugged word cloud.  I wonder what that would look like. 

I like this quote; "To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect."
Alexander Calder

I'm an engineer, I strive to be an artist.  Alexander Calder is the engineer's artist.  I saw an exhibit of his when it was in Las Vegas at the Bellagio.  Yes, Las Vegas does have some art venues.  I loved the toys he made.   I've wanted to make some like his but I never seem to have time.  Isn't that always the story, no time.  I really thought when Mel was much younger that I would have time once she got older and did not depend on me so much.  It's just not true.  She's pretty independent but AB or I have to drive her everywhere.  Then I used to feel comfortable to allow her to be at the barn by herself but things have changed there and unless her friend, K, is there I'm not comfortable with it.  So now I have additional barn time away from home. 

Last weekend was filled up with a horsey trip to California, schooling in Moorpark, showing in Flintridge.  It was cold and wet but a very good trip for Mel.  She came away from the weekend feeling great about herself and her riding.  I came away with a lot of knitting done while Shari drove, finished majority of Mel's Ribby Cardi, a hat for my sister's soon to be born daughter, worked on AB's socks, started a hat, frogged a hat, restarted a hat.  Tomorrow evening Mel's going to a local hunter jumper show.  AB is taking the plunge by getting Whisper and Mel there tonight to set up and school.  I was going to meet them but realized I could get some crafty/sewing time in (and process a couple loads of laundry and make dinner).  So, I'm letting go and letting them handle horse show things and trying to carve out some time for me.  What shall I sew?

Happy Valentine's Day

I was not able to sew much on Friday but I did find the time to play with art supplies.  I made a bunch of ATCs - they are the first ones I've ever done and I had so much fun creating them.  You can take a look in my photo gallery.  I was amazed at how much time was eaten up by just cutting and pasting paper. 

Saturday I left Vegas at 5 am with three sleeping girls.  We went to Norco, CA for a Pony Club "Teaching to Teach" clinic.  The girls slept for the first 2.5 hours of the trip and I just flew along the freeway, noticing the changes in light and shadows as dawn crept up and then as the sun rose over the mountains.  The day was very successful, the girls (and I) learned a lot, they were inspired and remotivated and the weather was perfect to sit and watch the young riders and their young instructors.  It would be tough to think of a better way to spend a day (outside of crafting - but I was able to start a pair of socks for AB and got almost all the way through one cuff).  When we drove home, there was more sleeping involved, dinner at the Mad Greek in Baker and then Mel organized a rousing game of improv she learned in her drama class.  It was fun to listen to and they couldn't stop laughing. 

Sunday after taking Mel to two riding lessons, I was able to at least cut out a few tee shirts from some great fabric I had gotten from Emma One Sock and hope to be able to sew a couple up during the evenings this week. 

One source of major frustration to me right now is my iPod.  I have not been able to update my music files on the iPod.  I checked iTunes and updated my iTune files, still no updates.  I checked on line and saw that I may need to update my iPod - so I updated it and lost all my music on the iPod and I still can't update anything.  Frustration galore!  I guess I'll sort things out this evening.

I am looking forward to this Friday - it's my Friday off.  I have a list of things to do that I'm pretty excited about.  I want to make some Valentine cards, work on my heart shaped box for February's Month of Softies, I have two different ideas that I'd like to work on.  I'd like to do a bit of sewing also.  Of course there are the normal things that I have to schedule during my Friday's off, this week I will be walking Mel's (while she's at play practice) horse, Whisper, down to the vet's for her shots and a Coggins test. 

I hope to get some of my projects set up over the next couple of evenings.  Yesterday I stopped at a market that I've been meaning to investigate for a couple of years.  It's just called "International Market" and I had no idea what they carried, but it appears a bit of everything.  They had Middle Eastern, Greek, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English foods - mostly divided into countries but I did find English condensed milk on the Oriental side of the store.  I was sort of dazed and confused when walking around the store but I did manage to grab some things.  Next time I'm going back with a plan and hopefully a friend who spent time in Japan and can explain things for me.

These are not the best photos - I've "borrowed" AB's office digital camera which is a few years old.  I'm hoping for a new camera to play with for my birthday.  This is some of the stuff I picked up at International Market.

When I got home my package from Hannah Grey was waiting for me.  I got a quick chance to look through one of the books and can't wait for some time to curl up with the other.  Inspiration! 

I just realized that one big benefit of this blog is that it refocuses my mind after a day at work.  One of my favorite quote is from Picasso, "Art washes away from the soul the dust
of everyday life", maybe blogging does too.