Quotes

I saw this quote on another artists blog. I think it is worth sharing.

"Only too often we see the people not like they are, but how we are."
Anthony deMella


Another quote, this one much more down to earth.

"Mom! The one with the weird eyes is a medicine jar!"

Joseph said this to me on Wednesday at the Museum of Anthropolgy at UC Berkeley. We were looking at artifacts from Ancient Egypt. I looked at the group he was pointing at. Only one had eyes and they were not weird. Another one....was the figure of a woman but the head was broken off. I said

"Those aren't weird eyes."

He looked again. Sure enough, mom was right!

Free ePatterns

Make this little Annie yourself, and more!


You can print these out on your own printer.

Free ePatterns (That's a link, you can click it.)

Witch in my Computer

I have a witch in my computer. I need to back up my photos because there are a lot of them. I need to clean house. But there is a technical problem. I don't know what's wrong. I'm working on it between other things. In the meantime, no pictures. They will stay in my camera until...whenever.


But if you want a witch of your own, one that won't bother your computer, then check out this ebay listing. This witch was made by my friend Judy. A special witch, one of a kind. Nobody else can get one like this. Guaranteed to ward off lesser witches from Wal*Mart and Target, and make you house Halloween Compliant.
click here, it's a link

Today is the big Quilt Guild day, I go to sell opportunity quilt tickets. After that, we are planning a trip to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Planetarium.

Yesterday Joe and I went to the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. It was fantastic. I would have stayed longer if not for visiting with an 11 yr old. He learned what Cultural Anthropology is.

Tuesday we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The exhibit on jellies was fantastic.

Can I be tired yet?

You know, there's a new exhibit at the Tech Museum.......

Ready or Not, Here They Come!

My Friend Karen is ready for Halloween already!She made this great pumkin stack and listed it for sale on ebay. You could be ready too, just click here to go to the listing and place a bid! or at least read a better description and see better pictures.

I'm not ready for Halloween.
Then she made this fantastic harvest owl. This owl could carry you through November and Thanksgiving. I'm not ready for Thanksgiving either, but you could be, if you get lucky with bidding on ebay. Click here to bid and win.

And of course, to make me feel even more 'not ready,' she made this phenominal Santa and listed him too. If you have the winning bid on him, he will arrive promptly in the mail and the rest of your friends, family, and neighbors will also feel 'not ready.' Go here to win Santa!

So spread a little aprehension and anxiety to those around you by being prepared for the upcomming season ahead of time and ahead of them.

I bought the epattern for this owl from Karen last year. It was easy, I just sent payment with my computer using PayPal and she sent me an email with the pattern as an attachment. I downloaded it and printed it out. Ta Da, the pattern was here at my house! The hard part is clearing away the stuff to make room to make the owl. I probably have everything I need.....somewhere......

You can see other good things made by Karen, and some available in epatterns as well, at RK Creations.

Chicken Mola

Here is my chicken mola floorcloth, all the dye is done and it is ready for ironing.I have many that are ready for ironing, and only one still in the dye process.
I also made my President Blocks. The quilt guild I belong to makes these for all the outgoing guild prezes. Its a 2 year term. Everybody makes a block and the X-Prez can use them to make a whole quilt. We all make the same block, but with fabric we have. The person who chooses the block also selects a color theme, so there is some continuity. This time the colors were cream, light tan and earth tones. The first ones I made were ugly, so in the second one, I broke the color rule just a little bit and my "cream" is more pastel. I signed them in thread painting and the are ready to mail.

I also made our guild Block of the Month. Block of the month is part of the General meeting once a month. The BOM committee decides a month in advance what the block will be. Everyone who wants to makes the block and they are posted at the meeting. Each participant puts their name in a drawing and the winner gets everyone's block. Well, participation had fallen off, and I hadn't been doing it because the last thing I wanted was to win another unfinished project! So I made three of them anyway, and entered Community Quilts in the drawing three times. Community Quilts is like the Linus Project. Well, Community Quilts won! Since then, participation has increased. I don't know it it's from my idea or not. But this month, I made three. That was hard! The block the committee chose has four twisted flying geese and 32 different two inch squares. 32x3=96. Those are done too. Most of the points match.

The changing weather is making me kind of panicky. The end of batik season is near.

Denise got sick. I made her chicken soup. Then she got antibiotics, so she is better.

Janow got shod this week and he was good. The changing weather is making him grow carpeting. He likes winter.

Pumpkins Progress

What do these pictures mean? I'll tell you later today, if things go smoothly! You never know what will happen!
Well, maybe tomorrow, which is today. This is my pumpkin floor cloth which is done with the batiking process and ready for wax removal. I posted previous in-progress pictures of this piece on August 31.

This is me, working on my website. I searched for broken links and fixed those, and I decided to make the "Click to enlarge" pictures bigger to show more detail. That's a big project with lots of hours. That's after I added the shopping cart!

This horse is the first one I have done. I took new photos for it and reduced the file size to show the detail but also load faster. On some monitors it might make you feel like Mr. McGoo with a magnifying glass. You can see it by clicking on my site banner to go there. It's on the Dubisary page, but there is a link to it from the Horses page.


Click on this sign to see my website.

Other stuff: Yesterday I saw a bobcat with a long tail in pasture 3. Actually, Elise saw it but she wanted me to see it because she was afraid that nobody would believe her about the long tail. Sure enough, it had a long tail and it was a bobcat. Not a mountain lion. Mountain lions have been seen in the area, but this wasn't one.

And...I accidentally saw an infomercial for something called a Bean. I decided I needed it so I called and ordered it. Joseph was so excited. He has been a big fan of infomercials since he was two and got hooked on a show about vacuum cleaners, but this was the first time we had ever ordered from the TV! And then he couldn't wait for it to come! It finally came and I left it out on the step so he could bring it in. I told him he could open it and inflate it and he had it set up so fast! It was funny, at least to me.

Berry Patch Designs

My friend Deb has started blogging! Her blog is Berrypatchdesigns2.blogspot.com
I put a perma link on the right side here.

She has a web site of folk art that's pretty nice, not all grungy like some prim stuff. You should see Dracula Bear, the vampire teddy. I promise, you've never seen anything like him before!

This banner logo doesn't show up yet because I have to upload it to Doublecatbatik. Hang on.......But you can still click on it to visit........


Berry Patch Desings.net is not the same as Berry Patch Designs.com, which is a very nice site and definitely worth looking, it's not Debs.

Trained Cat

This is Whiskers.

She is an escaper, she slips out between your feet so soft and fast you never even know until you see her outside. Ever since Mary Shelley killed the magpie years ago and I cried for days, cats are not allowed outside. The magpie had been scolding me and scolding me every morning while I worked on batik. Then Mary Shelley got out and killed it. The quiet was awefull.

So now Whiskers gets out. She is hard to catch. In desperation one day, I turned the hose on and sprayed the bushes until she ran back in. It was much easier than catching her.

Yesterday, she got out in front, so I turned on the hose. As soon as she heard the water rushing in the pipes and pushing the airbubbles through the hose, she ran back in.

Hand dye

Here are some fat quarters that I hand dyed using Procion fiber reactive dye. I'm going to take them with me when I go visiting another guild later this month.
Three of us Piecemakers members are going to the other guild to sell raffle tickets to our opportunity quilt. Selling quilts to quilters is hard. Really hard. So I'm taking these and another I haven't done yet. I'm going to try including a drawing with that day's Opportunity ticket sales. For every opportunity quilt ticket they buy, they will be entered into the hand dye drawing that will be held right there at the meeting, tickets only available on that day. Someone is sure to win! Do you think it will work? Will we sell a lot of tickets?

Mountains out of Mole Hills

"Mom! There's a big spider on you!"

OK..... In the front seat of the big pickup, Papa Bear in the passenger seat, Mama Bear behind the wheel, and Baby Bear buckled into the middle. Down hill on Calaveras, between Downing and Evans Rds.

For those of you not familiar with this road: two lanes and winding and downhill. On the right, straight up. On the left, straight down with lots of undergrowth and running water at the bottom. There is very little shoulder.

And Baby Bear has clicked his seat belt open and is scrambling into Papa Bear's lap, the high whine of anxiety broken only by "It's big!" and the truck is still moving.

Her grasp on arachnophilia not as strong as it could be, she stops the truck and sets the brake and gets out. Baby Bear informs that the huge spider has escaped into the bottomless clutter of the back of the cab, while Baby himself is now plastered against the passenger window.

Papa Bear is too busy trying to sooth Baby Bear because Baby Bear is far less scary than the spider. Mama Bear is on her own.

In the end, the Daddy Long Leg's panicked flee was guided onto a piece of magazine and he was carefully placed on the road outside the truck where he was probably run over.

Ms. Kitty, moving up

Another garage sale and another perfect thing for Kitty! Doesn't she look stylin' in her little chair with matching table and lamp?

You remember Kitty from last month, of course.

I saw this bench there too, so I took Dave back to see if it was what he wanted. He bought it. Ms. Kitty had to gave it a try. Here she is under the Magnolia.

And here is the weather vane horse I got as a good customer prize!

Yippy Skippy!

Ardenwood

This is what I made using the painted tissue paper on cardstock that you saw on August 28th. I made three in all, and posted two at IHR ande one at the feedstore.They were kind of puckery and would not iron flat. I think I'll try it next time with polyurethane instead of laundry starch.

And here are some pictures of our recent trip to Ardenwood Historical Farm. We were planning on going to the Niles Canyon Railroad, but they were having their Antiques Day whcih had turned ointo a community garage sale that went on for blocks. We woudl have had to walk a couple of miles from the nearest parking and we would have missed the train. So we went ot Ardenwood instead.


James Patterson came to California for the gold rush in 1849. It didn't work out too well for him as far as gold, but he got into farming instead and ended up growing cabbage and selling it for $1.00 a head. That was a lot of money 160 years ago!We took a tour of the house he built. His descendats were living in the house unitl the 70s, then it was sold and restored to the way it had been when Patterson himself lived in it.

Click on this picture to see it bigger, you can get a good look at that old CD player.

Dave had the camera for this part. You can tell because he took a picture of the bathroom. Remember? He did that at Hearst Castle! You remember that from my blog entry on July 31st, don't you?


And...it's a farm, so they had farm animals!
There was an open train car pulled by this great big horse, and we enjoyed the ride. This was funny, the horse knew exactly what to do because it was the same thing every day, just follow the tracks, and he really seemed to like his job.



Then I said to Joseph, "I was looking at the pictures from Ardenwood....your're taller than my shoulder!"
"Let ME see that."
...and he came over and looked at the screen...
"Holy cow! I am! Stand up so I can see." I did and he passed that flattened height measureing hand back and forth, and then we went to the bathroom to look in the mirror. We both laughed!

Horse Ts

Here are the shirts I have been decorating with Procion dye thickened with sodium alginate and Shiva Painsticks. They aren't quite done yet. I hope to get to that today, but I have a lot of other things I hope to get done too, and a kid who is probably too sick to go to school.

When they are done, I will claim one as mine and wear it and wash it a bunch of times to make sure it holds up before I offer the other ones for sale.
I have spent many hours this week adding a shopping cart to my website. I checked the sites I have links to on my front page and found that many of them were down, apparently for maintenance. When I uploaded mine, I checked it a bit later and found a simular page showing that mine was not available. I tried going to my hosts website but was only offered many tutorials for different FTPs so I could learn how to upload. At least screen shots of part of them, not the actual tutoials. But I uploaded it the same way I have been doing it for over a year! I did not want to download a tutorial and I didn't even click to the end to find out if I had to purchase one. I went back re-did the upload and it worked. Should I be suspicious?