BOO!

Are you scared yet? Halloween was a big success here at our house! The kids went to a harvest party and played games and ate and watched a puppet show and did a little Trick or Treating too...The three of them have a pumpkin full of goodies and lots of stories to tell about their great time...I planned to do some sewing today, and did none...I did finish another art doll yesterday for a "funky doll swap". Her name is Madame Zella....I am getting dolled out as it really is not my thing but I only have two more left to do and then I think I will leave the dollmaking world behind. Happy Halloween everyone!

Back to the 70's...

Yes it is a tie dyed quilt! I named it raspberry float and this is the one I have been yammering on about....The way this quilt came about? well, someone at the store ordered all these hand dyed panels called "solo" panels from timeless treasures... Probably because as I have mentioned before, we have a hippy turned fifty and up population here. These panels have sat on the counter because jeez...what do you do with the things....Now we know and hopefully there will be a mad rush to buy them..ya never know! I remember the days when the cat and dog were right there when I was working on a quilt to "help". Usually by lying in the middle of it. Now it is my little boobutt. He thinks it is a great peekaboo quilt for a little troll. So here it is, the quilt from the seventies, rockin the house....

Where does time go?

It is supposed to "Fly, when you are having fun" but I am not sure that I have been having fun at all! What I have been doing, as usual is running around like a chicken with it's head cut off....Which when you think about it, is a really gross expression....In the last two weeks I have had two really sucky migraines...I hate the darn things! Not only because of the pain, but because I am bedridden and I lay and think of all the things I would rather be doing. I know they are stress related...(stress? not in my life!) but what do you do about that! Besides throw everyone out in the cold, mean streets and move to the Bahamas with no forwarding address? I threw an all out temper tantrum two days ago and demanded that I get my sewing time or ELSE! Days are just zooming by and it gets harder and harder to squeeze things in. My main problem is I am crazy about having my house be clean. I mean "eat off the floor clean" and I want it to smell pretty...ALL the FREAking time! I spend most of my time picking up and I have to either let it go to some extent or get rid of the kids...so the kids are going....just kidding! really! but it drives me bananas! The moral of this story is I either clean or sew, I don't think I can do both, it is too time consuming. I also am the taxi now too...something I have already done once in my life....The kids sure are cute little buggers though. Andrew just had his second birthday and he was adorable! We are getting ready for Halloween now. We got costumes a few days ago and we are going to carve our pumpkins from the garden tomorrow night. Expect pictures!!!! Liv has her Halloween party at school and I am helping. She is pretty excited about that. On the creative front, it has been hard. I got it into my head to do a massive interior and exterior fall cleaning and paint the entry way and hallway.....which I did. I also made more curtains and some place mats and that is about all I got to....I finally went down two nights ago and got caught up on post cards that I owe and some atc's that are going in the mail tomorrow. The Jack' postcard is for the "something with J" series for Arts in the Mail and the Halloween ones are going all overseas to some ladies from the same group. Tonight I also quilted the raspberry quilt I talked about a while ago and I will finish the binding tomorrow. It is a wild tie die thing....Whidbey Island actually had a hippy fest here this summer that was quite the big do....the tie dye thing would've fit right in....It is not my taste though I love the batiks in it...Especially the great colors! It is for a store sample. That's about it for tonight folks......

I love the fall!

It is starting to feel like fall here now and I just love it. The air has this wonderful smell and I have gotten over the fact that my flowers are all dying. We took the kids to the pumpkin patch today and it was so beautiful out! We went to a place called the "M Bar Ranch"...they had an old fashioned ghost town all set up with a jail and saloon and stuff...It is in a really awesome location. I have a friend that volunteers there in the summer at a camp for the mentally disabled kids. She helps them with the horseback riding. They do the pumpkin patch thing to help raise money for the camps which is a great cause. I took pictures that I will post later. In June, before I even had any kids here, I planted one pumpkin plant in my front garden, just for the heck of it. Now I have exactly three pumpkins....Cracks me up. One for each of the kids. They are still growing and I am going to leave them on the vine until right before Halloween then the kids can go pluck them. I had everyone cracking up at work the other day and I thought I would share a quick little true story with you....Our house is right on the Puget sound and behind the house there are woods and on the side is a holly orchard and a vineyard.....A little bit of three different worlds is how I look at it. Needless to say we are surrounded by all kinds of nature, and with nature comes nature noise.....The sea lions are in the bay because there are anchovies in schools out there and Sea lions love them....We also have Great horned owls in the woods and right now the grapes are ripe to bursting and putting out this delicious grapey smell that draws birds from all around. The farmer put up netting but they still get to the grapes. His next brilliant plan has been to play a looped tape over a loudspeaker of jungle noises and birds in distress...Now, I sleep with my window open at night and the other night this is what I heard........"ooh ooh ooh...(imagine a monkey) shriek shriekkkkkkkkkk, ARR, ARR, ARR(sea lions) (Cooper now is barking like a fool) hoo, hoo,hoo.......(Andrew is now awake and shrieking) at this point I opened the window and screamed "SHUT The @##$%$%###% up!" Did it help? no,,, but it made me feel better...It really is a jungle out there I guess...I am hoping for a quiet night tonight since there is no full moon, we will see.....Liv asked me the next morning what all the noise was...I told her all the nice animals were having a party...she asked me why if they are so nice was I screaming at them...no answer for that one I guess. Now on to things made......I made a couple more ATC"S for my ATC group....I also made a table runner for the store as a sample and I really like it. It is kind of a small one so I bought fabric for me and I am going to make four of them and use them for long place mats over these suede leaf place mats that I have. I think after cutting the fabric, it probably only took me forty minutes to make...The fabric is soooo pretty, I have been admiring it since it came in. I might makes some pillow covers for the living room too. I always have big plans, I guess.....I also have been working on completing a couple of big quilts that I will post when they are through. And a picture of the jacket......Now, keep in mind that this was for an embellished fashion show of clothing so it fit right in......It has six different fabrics in it and assorted beads and trims....Pretty wild. Too much stuff for me, but I had fun making it.This is on a dressmakers dummy at work.......Back to the jungle for now I guess!

Ok, I have been bad about blogging again!

I still have been creating all kinds of cool stuff though! I also managed to paint my kitchen a nice sunny, buttery yellow and I made some retro curtains and hung an old wooden ladder over my antique table to dry my lavender and hydrangeas on.....I have to say, it turned out awesome looking...Looks like an old farmhouse kitchen which was kind of my idea. I have been scouring the local antique stores for red handled rolling pins and have found four so far so I have those hanging on the walls too and I like it a lot...Now all I need is a redone gas pump...Why do I want one? I don't know, I just do...and a coke cooler....ya never know, it could happen...

The fashion show that I have been talking about happened last Saturday...It was a whole lot of fun and we made a lot of money for hospice. I got a lot of requests to make things and some commissions out of it so that was cool....I did get my jacket done and it turned out good....I will maybe take a pic of it tomorrow...It was quite the embellished outfit. Nothing I will ever wear but it was perfect for the show. I actually have some one that wants to buy it and the vest too, so that is a great thing. I don't ever want to sew something with a lining again though...All that slippery stuff sliding all over the place! It is just more work than I want to do. I did buy some beautiful hand dyed silk and a pattern to make the coolest in the world three way wrap. We will see if I ever get to it!

I have been making some atc's the last few days trying to get things rolling again on one of my groups....They are all fabric with stuff on them and the theme is fabric with a bit of orange.....I also am working on a quilt with a "solo" panel...It is very 60's looking and has a beautiful raspberry batik as a base. I am going to call it "raspberry float." Also am showing a picture of my latest spread in the "color me silly" group altered journal round robin....Rachelle's theme is "pleasure" and yes I had some naughty ideas but I was good and did a layout on sewing and how it gives me pleasure.....I just have one more book to do then hopefully, I will get mine back full of gorgeous art! Currently, it is still lost somewhere in the Canadian wilds, but one can hope, right? Now back to the first season of Carnivale on dvd......Very strange so far, but I have been sucked in......