Happy Dance

So I did all this embroidery.

The reason was so that I could sew it onto the sweatshirts that I dyed last month.

So I'm laying it out and so far I'm not liking this too much.


And then there was this online contest. DO this and get a chance for a prize in a drawing. I almost never do them. This one was easy, and one of the prizes was an art card. Art cards are standard baseball card size. Usually original art, sometimes prints. I like art cards, so I did this one. And I won! So I was hoping to get the art card.


A package came in the mail today, from Canada, in a matter of DAYS, must be my prize, hope it's the art card.

Well....it IS the art card, and ALL THE OTHER STUFF! Wow!
Three little notepads of blank paper, two bactieriology notecards--hand drawn! Really nice earrings. Subtle in color, not really long, very lightweight, with one bead that sparkles Iridescently when the light is just so. Very very fun!

If you like any of this small stuff, you can see more and bigger stuff at Ulixis.etsy



BTW, Mama, the answer is "Yes." That fingernail WAS dirty, but I cleaned it for the picture because I know you read my blog and I KNEW you would notice!

Mistakes can be good, really!

Here is flag ceremony at Milpitas City Hall. Troop 92 does this for the city council meetings. This time, somehow, they got the flags in the wrong order! They will NEVER get it wrong again. The thing about making is mistake is that it is embarrassing. But if your whole group makes the mistake together, it can bring you closer.








...and here is one of the new cornerstones in the mystery quilt. I had two cornerstones and two mitered corners because I didnt have enough fabric to maek all mitered corneres. THen I decided the cornerstones looked better so I changed them to all cornerstones. It was a mistake that that made the quilt turn out better.

That's the part I like best about quilts. Mistakes can be good.

Monkeys are done

I finished the sock monkeys and the pants. Here they are, all dressed up and ready for the BSA Troop 92 Court Of Honor Silent Auction. It is today, right?

I don't know what amount I should start them for the auction. I don't want them to go for $1.00 each. I should figure that if they don't sell at the Court of Honor, I can put them on ETSY and put the proceeds in the scout fund.

Here in the back, you can see I left tail accommodations, and the little tail vents are sewn down nicely, not just unsewn seams or raw edges. They are just tail vents, what else could vent from the back of a sock monkey?


I put the pants making in reverse order, blogs kind of do that anyway. I mean, yesterday's (?) entry is below this but comes before it....
Here is the final pants, with slight, very slight, modifications to the second prototype. Modifications like leg length. You can see three prototype pants on the left, the final pants mid construction are in three fabrics on the right side of the photo.



Here is the second prototype, not quite right but better than the first. Sock Monkeys are easy to dress because they have no joints and bend anywhere. And they don't complain or try to get away.

This is the first pants prototype. As you can see, it is a bad fit. Even for a sock monkey who isn't going to hop around much by himself or complain of riding up. But, if you're going to go commando, you better have good pants.

Batik Egg

Melanie asks: "What is Batik?"

That's a good question. The birdhouse picture I posted on September 6th is batik on 10oz duck canvas and it's about 2'x3'.

Batik is a method of fabric dying in which hot wax is put onto the fabric in the desired design. Then the fabric is dyed. The dye will color the fabric where it is not covered with wax. On the wax covered part, it will bead up and not get on the fabric. After the fabric is rinsed, the wax is removed, leaving the design in the original color of the fabric and the rest in the color of the fabric when dyed.

Different colors can be built up by applying wax again, adding to the design, and then dying again. The second part of the design will be in the first dyed color, the part still unwaxed will be the color of the fabric with two dye applications. The dye is additive, so it gets darker, or, if the first application is yellow and the second application is red, the second color on the fabric is orange(if the fabric was white to start).

This is a traditional method of dying fabric in Malaysia, India, and Africa. In Africa, mud is sometimes used instead of wax and the fabric is called mud cloth.
This dye method is also used to dye egg shells that have been blown out and are hollow. Ostrich eggs, as well as chicken eggs are used.
This is not what my father did with the Ostrich egg I had shipped from The O.K. Corral Ostrich Farm in Rancho Oro California. The egg arrived in Nevada, in great shape.

I highly recommend OK Corral for their product and great service.
My father was not home when it arrived. I called and my mother asked me what she should do with it. I said:
"Put it in the refrigerator." She replied:
"Oh."
He hard boiled it and my mother made egg salad.




A lot of egg salad.

batik

More batik pads. I have three more to finish up before I pack up my batik stuff for the winter. If I get the pads done in time, I may make a few more art cards. Batik is fun, it's hard to stop.

Sticky Buns

There is a rabbit activity going on in the Bunny Blog world. It's called Sticky Buns. What you do is:
Take a picture of your rabbit.
Print it on an 8x11 sheet of sticky label paper.
Cut it out.
Go out in the world and stick it somewhere.
Take a photograph of your rabbit sticker.
Take the sticker off--no defacing property!
Post the picture on your rabbit blog.
Leave a comment on Rabbit Guy's blog.

What happens then is that Rabbit Guy will put your photo up on the official Sticky Buns site.

So I took the picture.

I cut it out in photoshop.



I put it on a flash drive and took it to staples where they treated it like any other important business copy job.


Then I stuck it here:









Go to Silver's Buns of Silver blog to see it.

monkeys need pants

Janow's fetlock is fine today. I was going to ride, but Dave it turned out that Dave didn't put my saddle back after the weekend. Boy, is he gonna feel rotten!

I finished the monkeys, but it turns out that the Court of Honour is next Monday. That gives me a week to make them all some pants. The first monkey has had his nose changed from buttons to French knots and now he has a smile. The second two are made with the sock inside out. The insides of the soles of the socks are terry, and the sole becomes the monkey's back. I thought they would look better with hairy backs, so I made them with the socks inside out.

Here are the other two cornerstones for the quilt I made at camp. I haven't put them in the quilt.


Then I made more of these. I didn't need them, but I made them.

The first coat of poly went on this birdhouse canvas today.





Paula supervised.

Monkey Honor Court

These monkeys are getting closer to done. I am making thme for the silent auction at Troop 92's Court of Honor, which is tonight. I better get busy.
I also want to make cornerstones for the quilt top I made in Camp Stitches. I put a pic of it here yesterday. I like the cornerstones better than the mitered corners, and they are easy to change.

I also plan on putting another coat of polyurethane on the bird canvas, and hopefully to iron the birdhouse canvas today so I am ready to put poly on it as soon as the bird one is done.

That's about all I expect to achive today, between an appointment in Cupertino, Joseph in and out of school, Janow whose fetlock may be swollen again today, and making a dish for the Court of Honor potluck.

Back from Camp

I returned from camp stitches last night. I was going to come home at noon, but I was "almost" finished. I made this quilt top. It was the Mystery Quilt. There were about 20 people who made the same one, but they are all so different because of the fabric choices.

Today was some unpacking from camp. This canvas batik got it's first coat of poly.

Silver and I had some sling time this morning. I fixed a new cardboard mat for her platform. I peel back the first layer of corrugated and it keeps her feet from slipping on the plastic. I also made a bigger one for the whole cage bottom this time.

I got to the barn and Janow had a swollen rear fetlock. Two grams of bute, 15 minutes of hydrotherapy and 20 minutes of hand walking and it was Nealy normal sized. It might be swollen again tomorrow, but it might not.

I'm still pooped from camp so I'm having my own private Battlestar Galactica marathon today.

So much to do!

Busy here, very busy. Here are some shirts that were dying yesterday. Today they got rinsed and dried so they look like this:
These are the faces that looked like Lex Luthor. Now they have hair. They like it!





Here are the purple shirts that I mentioned yesterday. I uploaded the picture today.This is a one yard piece of fabric that I dyed to put in the Camp Stitches Silent Auction. I hoped to have another one, purple I think, to go with it. I ran out of time. Seeing this, it doesn't seem so special, so I don't even know if I will take it.

I have spent a lot of time today getting ready for Camp Stitches. I am signed up for salad at the dinner potluck so I cut up fresh vegetables: Carrots, bell pepper, jicama, yellow squash, celery and radishes. I am taking some ranch style dressing to dip them in. I wont dip them myself, but other people might. I got a burrito at Burrito Express for myself. I can have half tonight and half for lunch tomorrow. Dinner tonight is a weenie roast with s'mores and tomorrow is taco salad. The weenie roast is a migraine for sure, and taco salad has many migraine possibilities. Easier to take my own food than worry about it. What a pain!

It will be fun. I will just eat my burrito and not make a big deal about it. They should be used to me by now. I made a half a peanut butter sandwich and a hard boiled egg for breakfast. It will be the big Newark Days Festival and the parking lot will be closed all day Saturday, so if we go out, we can't get back!

WIP and tractor

More monkeys in progress.


Dave and joseph's lawn tractor. It took a whole day to figure out how to get it out of the truck. They are going to paint some parts this weekend and hopefully find the fuel leak.

Silver in her new sling. She was not happy with this new sling for about the first 30 seconds. Now she is addicted to the sling. She sees it approach and starts jumping back and forth, shaking her ears. I got it from BabyinaFishBowl.

I am still dying sweatshirts and a piece of yardage for the silent auction at Camp Stitches this weekend. I took pics of the purple sweatshirts and the faces with hair. but they are still in camera.

I am almost(ha) done cutting my fabric for the Mystery Quilt with Denis Mullinex, and I have to pack two other quilts I may work on, as well as my silent auction and book sale items, and food, and pillow, and airbed.........Should I take my polar bear jams or my leopard print jams?

Janow

A while back Melanie commented that she liked the name Janow, she thought is was Polish. She's right, its Polish.

I'll tell you what I know about Janow's name, off the top of my head, without going back and checking sources or doing new research.

Janow, my horse, was foaled in January 1989, bred by Laura Leafgren in Southern California. Laura had recently lost an older Arabian horse named Janow to the ravages of time. They had enjoyed many rides together and she missed him terribly.

A short time after her loss, the new foal was born. On his first morning out, a hawk circled the paddock and landed on the fence, looking at the foal. This seemed an omen that the new foal, though not Arabian, should also be named Janow.


I bought Janow from Carol Swangler of Los Osos in 1993.

About ten years ago, an old cowboy told me that Janow was a popular line name in Arabians a long time ago. Judging from the possible age of the cowboy, the foaling date of my horse and the possible age of Laura's original Janow, this was probably in the '60s.


Then I read in a book from my friend Peter that Janow is the name of a big Arabian stud farm in Poland. My guess here is that the Janow line so popular in the states was based on stock imported from Poland.

Janow is registered with the United States Lipizzan Registry as Siglavy Destina I

Is it done yet?

I have worked on many things this weekend. I have not finished anything.

All the Lex Luthors from my August 21st entry have received hair and wait to be stuffed. After that they will go onto Prim Sweatshirts. I have nine in progress. I have done some further work on the hand stitched sayings. I have three panels left to do. I have begun dying the shirts. I did three this weekend, in two kinds of blue. They look fantastic and are tumbling in the dryer after the last rinse.

I have begun two more sock monkeys. all the arms and legs are stuffed and they are ready to be stitched together.

I was not happy with how the Running Horses tank was progressing. After much thought, I have chosen a course of action. I had requests for more of the kind I made for Erica, the mushroom/snail one and the stars one. I turned it down. Those take so long to do and I really have decided to focus on my pads and prim shirts.


It was too hot to wax for batik this weekend. The hot wax has to cool before it can bleed out into the fabric. At the temps we had for the past week, it would not have happened!

The 'boys' went up to Mt. Hamilton again this weekend. They came home early because the temp up there had reached 99 degrees F. They brought the lawn tractor home with them. Its still disassembled. Now it's disassembled at my house.


The pictures are of some floor cloths I listed on ETSY recently. I will move them to doublecatbatik soon.

block monkey

Here is a sock monkey I made with a pair of Cub Scout socks. They are official Cub Scout socks, that a self respecting Boy Scout would never wear. So they became a monkey. Dave and Whiskers played with him and had a great time.


Here are the blocks in the Block of the Month drawing. Do you remember seeing them in progress last week? Not a huge number of blocks, but 9 is a perfect number to make a square quilt out of. I entered all four of mine as Community Quilts. The next person to put block up entered both of hers as Community Quilts also. I couldn't stay to see who won.

I finished the book Queen City Jazz by Kathllen Ann Goonan. Really good! There are 4 books in this series, but our library only has this one, and the local book store doesnt have any. I guess I'll have to order them. I have to wait though, we are netering the time of year when you don't buy anyhting for yourself. My family has all the birthdays except Joseph between Oct 5th and Dec 31st. I already have Dave's and Maura's birthday gifts. There are so many, I have to start early.

I checked out Ken Follet's Pillars yesterday at the library. That should keep me until Christmas! If I can renew it that many times!

snails and static

Here is the last tank I was working on. It, as well as the mithraic stars one and the running horses one are curing. They will all be ready for heat setting and laundering tonight. The running horses one needs more added to it. The other two will be done and I can get them to Erica.

I'm not especially happy with how the horses one is turning out, It looks better in pictures. It's teh one I posted here last week. I will see how it is in the end anyway. I may like it more when manes and tails have been added.

Yesterday was dry and warm, with flies that needed swishing. Perfect weather for static electricity. I didnt brush it to get it this way. If we collect it, can we sell it into the grid?