Crafters block

Is there such a thing? I got a little excited last week when we had some sunny warm days and moved all my sewing projects downstairs. I had planned on waiting until Easter but my daughter called and told me that her brother had complained that we weren't eating at the table as a family. She told me to pack it up and give the table back to dinner. So I did. Family dinner is one ritual I have always insisted on. We were quite the oddity in town, no nanny, no maid, must eat dinner at the table with parents. Horrors.
So, now I have to go downstairs to work. It's not like sitting in our sunny dining room with big windows all around. Its a nice basement all finished off but natural light is only available on one side, In the winter the sill is home to my collection of tropical plants and scented geraniums. This year I have neglected them,yet they thrive and block about half of the light that comes in . Makes me wonder how our forefathers managed to work though the winter in their homes with little or no natural light.
I have a ton of stuff to sew, all cut out and neatly stacked. I have a craft show this weekend . Monday is spring, I'll shoot for then.

Owls Away

Well it's been a while I know. I actually wrote a nice long post last week and then had a major crash before I posted. I guess I should write in word where I have auto save, I just don't. So, I had the crash while my Palm desktop was open and lost 7 years of data. Yes I had a backup, but it took me a half a day to figure it all out. So my post was about owls ,which are suddenly popular. I have been an owl person for the last 15 years. Back when I was living in Hawaii, they seemed to appear when ever I was in a difficult time. A friend told me Pueo (owl) must be your amakua ( guardian spirit). Which at the time made perfect sense to me. So over time I began collecting them and then of course when you start collecting something all of a sudden people are giving them to you . I never really liked anything too "cute" but now with it's popularity at an all time high there are some wonderful owls flying about. So I decided to try my had at a cute owl and made some pillows to sell on Etsy. I like the way they come out . I have decided making and selling things on ETSY is perfect for me. I have too small of a house to keep all that I make and so by selling it on Etsy I get the satisfaction of creating it and I don't have to worry about where to put it.

Woot 2 posts in one day

Per tigerluxe"

I'm inviting everyone who reads my blog...if you have read this far...to list on their blogs 5 books that have changed their life...i hope this hasn't been done before (in the many corners of the intranet)

It was difficult to just pick 5 but here are mine in the order I read them.


1.The Collected Works of Dorothy Parker
2. Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut
3 Silent Spring Rachel Carson
4. Fatu Hiva Thor Hyerdahl
5. The Life and Times of Michael K JM Coetzee

And why....
#1 My father gave me a volume of Dorothy Parker after my first heartbreak, I laughed and survived many more with it's help. She is one of only 2 poets I can recite with authority.

#2 War is hell This book turned me into a pacifist.

#3 We need to protect our planet This book turned me green

#4 This book made me question organized religion , missionaries and it was an amazing adventure story.

#5. I can't describe it, our connection to our spiritual self and nature, dignity


I read the first four books before I was 20 and the last one after I was 40. I read hundreds if not thousands more in between but those first 4 really shaped me into person I am today. Thanks Rachel for the mental exercise.

Wearing a turtle neck sweater is like

being strangled by a weak man .........All day. Mitch Hedberg
Rest in peace Mitch. I am sitting here procrastinating. Comedy Central is airing a half hour of Mitch. He really had one of the most perfect deliveries ever. His comedy was so original. The other night I was questioning if there are any original ideas left. How do you know we haven't seen or heard something somewhere else, long ago and instead of thinking it up we're remembering it? My husband is an inventor, an engineer. What he does is science, everything documented, researched. He has patents on his ideas. The last couple of weeks I 've been working on a new design for a purse. I was pretty excited about it, thinking it was so original. I've never seen anyone do anything like it. I toiled over it, dream of it at night. Sewed and resewed the prototype. Last week I'm in a used book store. I open up a book from 1957 and there it is, staring me in the face. Did I see it before, or just think of it?

I've been working on income taxes for the past couple of days. No fun and definitely not the time to get creative. I can't work on taxes and listen to Mitch at the same time. I decided to upload some more of my son's pictures from his trip to Greece into Flicker. He took 160 digital ones and another 80 on film. (it was a photography class trip) At 6 at a time it's taking a while.
I was happy to have comments on my Kokeshi doll pictures. Nice to be able to share them and see others collections. I decided to take some more pictures of my Japanese things and now I'm uploading them. Mitch is over and now Stephen Lynch is on. I love him too. Comedy is good. We need more comedy in the world today. I have to finish my taxes. Joy .

Waiting

My husband hates the name of this blog. He thinks Attention Deficit is a condition and I shouldn't joke about it. I really think, he thinks people will not understand or somehow look down on me. For the record, I am not joking about it, nor have I been diagnosed with ADD, but when it comes to crafting and gardening, I do have a difficult time keeping focused on one thing at a time. There just aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I want to .
In the winter, I like to work with fabrics and foods. In the summer it's tiles and glass and plants and paper. It hasn't always been this way . When I lived in Hawaii, I worked onall my crafts year round. Here in the Northeast you spend so much time indoors. Days on end. Short days. Long cold nights. My sunny Hawaii crafts of making sailors valentines, stringing leis and making beach glass mosaics just don't cut it on these long cold days.
I took a classes in stained glass, copper foil and lead. I made mosaics from pottery instead of glass . I painted and decopaged wood and I started sewing. I sew in the winter upstairs where it is warm and bright. I break glass and cut tile in the summer when it is too hot to be in the garden, and cool in my basement.
This year, winter came too quickly. I didn't have time to finish off my downstairs projects. On my workbench, summer crafts wait for me. A mosaic I started for my front entryway, a kaleidoscope that just needs a touch of solder and several small pendants, all waiting. Waiting for the sun, waiting for me to tire of the warmth of wool and cotton, roving and thread. Waiting for me to trade the chug chug chug of my sewing machine for the sharp high whine of my grinder on a piece of glass.

Here comes the son

Well my week sans son will be over tomorrow. I haven't accomplished much , but it was great to have a break. I really needed it . It's the first one I've had in at least 6 months. But I did miss him . I'm looking forward to seeing his photographs and hearing his adventures.
I did manage to finally make Deb's apron and get it into the mail. It didn't turn out quite as I had envisioned . I like the two fabrics together but the pieces were too big. I should have broken it down more. That is the problem when you work on a deadline. I know she'll like the style and maybe it will look better once it's broken in.
I spent the Monday holiday at my husbands workplace. He's an electronic engineer and while he worked on an attachment for my total gym ( a footboard-I have the cheapy model without one ) I recycled some of his bits and pieces and made some cute earrings from resistors. I've listed them on etsy, If no one buys them soon I may just keep them , the style and colors suit me.

Procrastination and inspiration

I haven't been able to get much of anything done this past week. It's winter break time here. I spent most of the week getting my son ready for a 10-day visit to Greece with his photography class. Now that he is gone, I'm hoping to make progress on some of ideas. Inspiration arrived for me in the form of a bundle of fabric from my best friend Deb. She is an accomplished seamstress and her fabric stash is amazing. Included in the package are several very posh pieces of vintage upholstery fabric, a bit of bark cloth, vintage cotton kimono fabric, and silks from Japan, Thailand and Italy. My favorite is two pieces of Shibori silk. The sizes range from 5x5" to 12x24 ". I have been sewing lots of felt lately so I will have to start to think more delicately for the silks. Possibly some small bags or hair ornaments. First I have to get to work on making Deb an apron. I bought some Amy Butler fabric before Christmas intending to make her an apron for a Christmas gift. Somehow I never got around to it. Her birthday will be here soon enough and the weather is so dreary the charm fabric is just what I need to put me in a springy state of mind. I'll post when it's finished.

got got got no time

I am amazed at the creativity of the crafters online. They are both inspiring and intimidating. I have been having a difficult time getting anything done this past week. I can't seem to get more than an hour here, twenty minutes there. If I was more organized, that would be more than enough time, but I'm not. Two weeks ago I had a creative burst and filled pages of my idea book with things I wanted to try. The only one I have worked on so far - a handbag is not turning out anywhere near my vision despite numerous alterations. I believe I should keep at it, I had a dream about it last night.

Everyone has to start somewhere

This is my where. A little about me, who I am. A middle aged mom.Actually I prefer mid century, I was born in the fifties and now I am in my fifties. I come from a family of artists and other creative types , but I never considered myself artistic. My mother worked in many mediums and was a crafter before they had crafters. My father was an airline pilot whose regular route from the fifties to the early seventies was the Orient. I grew up with all things Asian. Every trip home a treasure, a treat.
My dad was the hero of my elementary school teachers when after a trip to Japan he brought back a package of "Magic Markers"heretofore unseen in colors. They were smelly, made very thick lines that ran through all but the thickest paper, but the colors were so intense, so bright that my teachers would have paid almost anything to get their hands on more. ( My dad sure missed an income opportunity there). Soon, there were American versions, but it was some time before they could compare with the originals.
So I've already strayed off my course, which happens to me quite a bit, which is why I named my blog what I did. I do have trouble focusing on one thing at a time, but I'll try to keep to the subject which is crafting. Crafting, a word I love because it is both sufficiently vague and all encompassing.
"What have you been doing today ? "
" Crafting"
For me it sounds productive, like I accomplished something.
Today I crafted.