I did this

This one is finished. I took another picture because last ones were no good.

I put the finishing touches on this one. Now it is ready for it's final laundering. I'll probably wait so it doesnt have to go alone.
I got started on this one,

and put the last wax and dye on this. Now it needs rinsing and was removal.

I have been reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. Wow. I'm on page 700 and something. It's a good read.

Then I saw Fierce Creatures with John Cleese, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis. That was silly. It's a good thing I didn't make Joseph watch it.

I am watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD. I am having a good time with that. I had thought I wanted to see Sex and the City. We don't get any cable TV, so I have never even had a chance to see it. It was so popular I thought it must be good. I watched the whole first DVD, 6 episodes. It was boring.

After that, I decided to watch House, so I got the first 6 episodes on DVD. Much more enjoyable. I liked it, except that it made me remember how hard it can be to get medical care when you get lost in the medical insurance game. I don't know if I want to watch more of it. It's a good show, but it gives me Brain Itch.

When the season of Battlestar is finished, I will watch another season of Smallville. I'm starting to mis Clark Kent and John Glover. And I want to see what will happen with Arthur Curry. With a name like that, I thought he would re-appear more often with more significance. Was there a comic book character by that name? I thought it was the name of the boot camp that Johnny Rico went to in Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

So how can I get so much done and still read enormous tomes and watch TV? Simple. Insomnia.

Cat Patrol

The Cat Patrol inspects all new products.

Here they are, hard at work.

This is a new Primitive Sweatshrit receiving the Essence of Cat Stamp of Approval.

This zebra print yardage is a fabric I like too much to actually use(!?) but it makes a nice background, I think.




=

Birthday Present.

Dave's Birthday is tomorrow. The cards and gifts have been arriving in the mail. My sister sent something perishable and tasty. It arrived packed in dry ice. The way these guys handle it, the dry ice is a big part of the present!
Joseph still has his Scout uniform on in these pictures. He was at the supermarket selling popcorn for his troop. Friday Night is a good night for popcorn sales. Two scouts did $300 in 3 hours!

I finished up two sweatshirts. I have to photoshop the pictures. I took many, with different levels of flash and different close-ups. Now I have to pick out the best ones and crop them. The last shirt is done with dying, I hope, and is rinsing now. If I don't like it, I may dye it again.

Baby in a Fish Bowl

This is Silver in her sling. The sling has really changed her! I don't know what kind of life she had in her 1-3 years of life before the animal shelter. She had been held, but she didn't like it and was very hard to pick up and hold. Except at the vet, where she got as close as possible to me and was quiet.

The sling was custom made for her by Theresa of BabyinaFishBowl. She makes custom baby slings, but was willing to make one for a rabbit. We emailed back and forth a lot to make sure it was good for Silver. After that, it only took about a week to arrive in CA from NY.
Silver decided the sling was hideous and fought like crazy for about 45 seconds. Then she decided the sling was cozy and settled down for a long (for her) sling rest.

It feels totally different to hold a rabbit who is relaxed and rests her head on your arm, compared to one who is tense and rigid.

The amazing thing is that with only a few sling rests, she has become much easier to handle, even for nail clipping. She is willing to sit on people briefly without the sling, and yesterday, came out of the sling and snooped around a bit before coming back to me to get back in the sling. The sling has totally changed this bun.

Well, not totally, she still bothers the cats.

wasted time

Today I wasted time playing with photoshop. I made Janow's but even bigger, and while I was at it, I made me skinny.

Then I thought "What if I made Janow really long, like a limo?" and after I did that, I figured I would make my butt fit the saddle. That was pretty crazy, so I made Janow's eye bigger in shock.


I'm not very good at this, but I bet I could be if I wasted a whole bunch more time!

Oh Shoot!

I have a saddle pad that I made for Janow. I made the batik myself, on denim, and then built the pad from there. It has two layers of 100% cotton bat and one thin layer of needle felted poly to help give it some hand. I have a picture of Janow with the pad, but it was from a time when he, as well as I, were feeling a bit peeked. SO.......................


I needed another one! Barb was at the barn at the right time and took some pictures for me.


This is our whole photo shoot. In the old days, you figured how many treats you needed for the roll of film. The new digital cams can store many more pictures than that!
You always run out of treats before you run out of memory.

This is the one I picked. Barb positioned herself even with the shoulder, and I did not notice. It would have been better to choose a position even with the hindquarters. It makes the but look bigger and the head look smaller. It doesn't help that Janow has a big Lipizzan head. Photoshop helped, as you can see.

Decide Already!

I worked on this yesterday. It look a while to get it the way I liked it. By taking a picture, I can see how it looks from far away, even if it is flat out on the table.snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap

Janow is a rock star

I took this quiz for Janow. The answer is not surprisng!

"Your horse is a ... DECF - The Rock Star
The Rock Stars are confident and charismatic. They are expressive and strong minded. They love to show you what they know but are hard to get to focus on the small details of the task. They are found in many competitive arenas, usually at the top of their field."

This quiz is on this site.

I found it on Horse and a Half blog.

and while I'm sending you to other pepoles blogs, go here for a recipe for fried oreos on sept 25.

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.