........................still snowing................

...................so ....................I'm still playing.....

Made this face shorter and rounder and placed the nose, lips, and eyes closer to the centre of the face to have her appear younger .....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

also had a play in the kitchen...with some leftover strawberries from the last batch of Mr. BV's lunch muffins I made.  Last time I was at Safeway, I saw strawberry/white chocolate scones and now...I wanted to try them.  But, the tv was on blaring away the news... all bad...and I wasn't concentrating I guess (on scones that is...) .... so, all of a sudden I realized I hadn't added the sugar to the flour.... rectified it....but, then...just as I popped them in the oven... saw the egg still sitting on the counter... dammit..... and further insult... what the? ...there sat the white chocolate square as well... still wrapped.  Sheeeesh!!!

And, then... even worse, for me ... (not for Mr. BV ) ..he loves overcooked baking.... I turned off the oven while I stirred some soup and began toasting big slabs of home made bread to eat with it...I forgot the scones!   After all that...I can't believe they were even edible...but, they are ...and very tasty too, I might add... even without an egg... how is it possible?  Guess I can bake them that way if I want next time I'm out of eggs....hahahahhaha....less cholesterol!  Bonus.

Look at this crumb... still great...

I prefer them a bit lighter than this ..

'specially on the bottom.... but, ehh..... they're okay....

And, I bet some of you noticed.... white chocolate drizzled on top... I was not going to do without that after I wanted it inside them in the first place.... so, I popped the square in a baggy..... put it in a bowl and poured boiling water on top of it... melted the white square and snipped off a corner of the baggy...and drizzled it on instead.  Lovely....

..... plus... had some ginger/apricot biscotti that I just baked the other day and thought I'd give the last bit a try on a few of those as well... haven't had one dipped in my tea yet....just off to do that now...
wanna join me? ... ....

... and, then?? ...I better do about 40 minutes on the treadmill !!!!

Shiva Paint Sticks

Perhaps just a bit tentative yet... but, it does make a nice difference and I'll try to get it a bit thicker next time...

Here is the first one I tried ..
You can see the coloured pencil lines quite clearly..

Then, ...mix up a bit of the paint stick colour... easy to do, not messy and no smell.  What fun sticks!  I just need to learn to put more actual paint onto my paper.  Mix a nice colour for the skin....

...apply to the face ... et voilà !  Smoother and prettier looking ..... Martha used more I know, because portions of the graph lines are not noticeable in many of her whimsical girls....I'll get it.....

A young Shirley McLaine? ...

........ number 4 .....

whoops...

My third gal.....

I've done faces before.  When I took a class on face painting for dolls.  I learned it then, ....but totally forgot I guess...hence the reason to refresh a person's little skills and crafts...

.... and, I forgot... finish off the eyes totally before I bother doing any other part of the face really... see what happened here?  I grabbed a Pigma pen for eyelashes... it was a .05 instead of a .005 .... sigh.... and now they are too bulky and can't be fixed.   Oh, well....now, she is either going out on a dark evening... to a dark club...or ... perhaps she is pretending she is an aspiring stage and screen star...hahahhah.....

They aren't even all the same size or direction...I gave up on them after I got them so bulky and not really what I wanted at all...

Oh, well... there are more girls where she came from...........................

more fun drawing some today ....later.....

Happy Spring!!

... and, our day looks like this.

What do you mean you can't see anything? ... Neither can I!  The wind is blowing at 50 kph... and the snow is driving straight from the north... as well as swirling in every direction because of the winds ... sheeesh...  temperatures dropping to -15C tonight ...

We know it's too early...but, after a few days of +15C...well, ....we got lulled I guess....you know.... right into a false sense of security ... a hope that spring could indeed be just around the corner.  Then, whammo... good ol' Mother Nature whacks us  ... For a nice little old lady she sure can be mean sometimes....

Today I'm doing a different kind of art....

Making muffins..

with a nice warm stove on ...and the scent of strawberries and apples in the air.... mmmmmmm...    and I can't even eat one..... just had some dental surgery on Monday.... can't really have anything firm for a few more days or it will trash the site where the tissue was harvested from the roof of my mouth....  maybe there will still be one left next week.

New online class

Drawing the Girls...with Martha Lever.

Here is my first attempt.... hair seemed to be the hardest part for me...  must look at some styles .. and practice, practice, of course... haven't done any eyes for ages....  since I did my dolls ... they'll be a bit tricky for a bit too... but, these are just fun gals... done on graph paper as you can see.  

The graph is to get a feel for the positioning of eyes nose and mouth and to more or less get things in proportion....  although, they are not supposed to be anatomically correct.... they are just fun.... still looks a bit like an alien.... 

..... I'm back... with my second attempt... and I like her...

I fiddled less with the eyes and used much lighter pencil strokes in the beginning.... although, now that I see her in a photo... I may just add a bit more depth to her eyes....

And... I might just leave the hair like that... my own little idiosyncrasy or style or whatever.... seeing as I don't really have a way to colour it how I want.... yet, anyway.  I may come up with something later .... . what fun just drawing the girls...

Egg-stra stitching..

.... oh, brother....I suppose I could go on forever with the eggy titles...but, I should quit...hahhaha.... but, why? .... it's kinda fun and ...funny to me..... good enough.

Doing some extra stitching on the scalloped edge of the lace on the top of this one.... Karen's little frilly dilly stitch...she calls it Frilly Picot.  I never know if I've got it quite right...but, it looks right to me and with the number 12 Perle cotton and if I pull each stitch pretty tight...I can get it tiny.  Click on the photo to "biggify" and you can see it so much better.  I love it.  And, I think it really enhances the flat lace.  Gives it more body or something... and makes it more interesting to look at.


See the four little tiny scalloped bits on the lace edge? ....  just above the umbrella looking machine stitched flower on the cotton fabric I used for the base fabric?  Those are my little frilly dilly thingies ..... with some French Knots above holding the lace in position.. until the whole egg gets a backing of white silk.




I'm debating what to use for trim on this other guy...and ... more or less leaning towards a bit of this lace on the top end of the egg......

Not much time to stitch today ....but, must do a few each day at the very least.........every little helps, as my Mum was fond of saying.... then she would add...... "said the little old lady who peed in the sea"....... must be an old English saying ..or ... maybe she just made it up .......

Hatching some eggs

I made up a second sheet of fabric in bright whites.  The piece with the flowers embroidered on it was sent to me in a fabric swap organized by the first group I took a class with.

If Lexxie visits my site... which I don't think she does ...she may remember this piece... look Lexxie!  I'm using it.  It is shiny and she loves shiny ... well, actually ...who doesn't? ..hahhaha... I think Magpie is the middle name of most women.

I did the same thing I did when I was making the pin cushions.  Seeing as I just can't visualize things finished without a frame to view it in....I viewed it with my newly made egg template.  Perfect.  Now, I can work away on it ...inside stitched lines...but, always with my viewer nearby.  Grab. Place. View.

Love it....

I decided to make several ...    in the same style as my cushions.

 Here is the first one so far.

I'm egg-cited....

I dreamed up something else to do with my special fabrics and trims.   Egg day is not far off.  So.. I thought... why do pincushions or hangings have to be rectangle or stocking shaped? ..  and drew myself an egg shape too.

Look how cute an egg will be when made from a piece of the fabric I made using narrow strips.  The sheet I got busy and made and then had nothing to do with it once it was done... hahah... except for using as test pieces and perhaps on a page or two of my stitching journal......but, now.... I want to get busy and make me some eggs!

I just want to do some stitching...

hiding...

...in the house.
It's pretty brisk out there ....-24C and the wind is blustery at 25kph ... that means it's ..uhm, .... cold.  Too cold to go out.  The snow isn't conducive to building snowmen anyway..

Pinned a silk backing to my pouch.

Stitched around 3 sides and a portion of the fourth and then, turned it through that opening.  Now I need to close that opening by hand... stitch a portion of the folds closed and stitch all around the outside edges  ... buttonhole around the edges.... ... hmmm... still quite a bit of stitching to do really.  But... happy to get this done today and see how it is going to look... still haven't decided exactly where it will fold over... and..... it's a pretty large pouch...hahhahah...

The back in this folded configuration.... who knows if it will stay like this... maybe it could even be overlapped and have buttons or toggles or ties.... We'll see.

Baby, it's cold outside.......

Yes it is.... I'm staying in the house today ......doing laundry, baking and ... hoping to do some stitching...... 

Friday, February 28 2014

-20°C 

Partly cloudy
Wind: N 13 km/hHumidity: 59%

Fri

Feb 28

-19° / -33°

Sat

Mar 01

-25° / -33°

Sun

Mar 02

-21° / -31°

Mon

Mar 03

-15° / -24°

Finally... proof of why..

... why it is still cold and snowing ...


I'm with the guy who wrote this sign near a church in our area...    ......... stoppit!!

Laugh a little....

Here's a good one that goes along with yesterday's post and several other blog posts I've done in the past...

Perfect!



"The secret of success is to go from mistake to mistake without losing your enthusiasm".

Anonymous.





Enthusiasm and perseverance ..   I've got those......

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Yesterday I was playing with  my gauzy square and trying to get a pretty piece of FME (free motion embroidery) out of it.
It's much easier to stitch on than my cheesecloth for sure ... and look how it gathers it up between the stitching... tiny puckers and lovely areas ... I added some bits of tulle type lace and some edges of trim here and there to see what each looked like..... just a fun time of playing....

A page..

I cut up my fabric that I've been playing with ....and decided to make an opening on my page to display a portion of it.  It will serve to remind me of what I did with this particular piece... how I stitched it ... how I manipulated the bits of lace and silk... the actual stitches I used...

In this particular case..it will also serve as a reminder never to stitch a piece directly onto my page!!  Wow!  What a tricky thing to try.  Why didn't I just use double sided tape like everybody else?  Oh, no..not moi.... I figured it might be just as easy to stitch it onto the paper.  Wrong!   the down stitches were just fine, but the ones coming back up again?  from beneath paper and several layers of fabric? ... arrrgghhh!  I couldn't see the holes even when I held the page up to a bright light... and ended up having to poke a needle through each hole from the topside... guide my sewing needle to the exact spot and withdraw the top needle and carefully poke up with the stitching needle.  As you can guess ... the air was particularly blue at several points during my ordeal.  And, yes, it was a bit of an ordeal.  Next time...play with paper stitching and just enjoy it ... .. tack on fabric later...

Oh, and... I also did the unthinkable.  Stabbed my finger a good one and bled on the paper before I even realized it.  Luckily, I also licked the bloody area immediately...  and then had to lick again because it just smeared... ... and then, luckily ... I was able to blot it off easily with paper towel.  Whew.
Saved the page after I had worked so diligently with my stitching...

I was having some fun with FME also... onto a gauzy square with a few little embroidered flowers on it.  I'm not sure what it is ...perhaps a table protector of some sort... too big for a hanky ...  not really a doily... too small for a scarf...... Maggi found it for me...

I love how the FME looks on it...I'll try a bit more and try for better photos of it...  I cut a bit of it and added it to this smaller piece of the fabric...

some embellishment...

...and some stitching too.  And, I even managed to adjust a few things on my editing program... to make my photo appear nicer.  More lightness to it than the original for sure ..and more definition... thanks Karen.

I found a use for a beautiful small piece of very fine silk sent to me by one of the girls in my first stitching class all those months ago.... I ruched it a bit as I was stitching it into position and added some French knots and bullion knots here and there.....

Playing with placement of a piece of a bit of FME fabric that I made a while ago.... haven't decided where I'm going to put it yet.....

Buttonhole lace edging around the edges to tame some wild straggly bits.  I'm going to double wrap the three cross threads.... the threads I wrapped were only a few threads on cheesecloth... pretty delicate and fragile.... it maybe needs bulking up a bit ....

a page..

I've begun a ledger in which I am documenting stitches and information ..  all the girls in the classes seem to be doing it ...and ...Karen has some doozy pages in her ledgers... just check out her blog sometime ... and, well, I didn't want to be left out I guess.

Haven't a clue what it's all about really...but, I'll be having some fun doing it.  From what I've seen, just trying to put a cohesive and beautiful page together is a feat in itself.  Mostly I'm sure mine will be sort of fly-by the-seat-of-my-pants .... or, as my younger sister always used to say ... "fake it 'til you can make it"......and she had some dandy jobs back in the day even though she had never attempted anything remotely resembling the positions prior to applying.

I think I'll even make an attempt at making some small journals.  I found some tutorials online.  Meantime... in my big spiral bound art book.... this is my page for this week... because heart day is approaching ....

French Knots on paper....

There is more to do yet... more French Knots; some paper pricking ... and some more embroidery ...

less utility, more fun...

This piece of fabric strips is my latest little project... well, not a project really...just some fun. There are still a few utility stitches used to hold the strips in position... but, then... some machine free motion work will come into play and also some hand embroidery and some embellishment.

The dark strips are from a piece of what I think is metallic and silk..it is actually open weave and see through, but, it is a bit darker than I'd like... however, it does go nicely with some of my off whites.  Some day I'll organize a swap or something and get me some of the real thing... in a lovely nude colour or perhaps some silvery... we'll see.

Who knows what will become of this piece of fabric...   some of it could even end up as a pin cushion I guess ..... we'll see as it progresses.


I have to say, the bears and other assorted animals that live at my house are not always totally helpful... take the other night for example... I was going to sit under some bright lights in the office so that I could see well enough to do some tiny stitching... because my hobby room is still in disarray and I have no clue where my Ott light is... but, I wasn't quite sure how to take this.....maybe I should just be thrilled that they think my bum is only that big.....

If you didn't know better, you might think kids live here......

Utility stitches .....

...taking some photos of my tiny stitches on my blocks.... talking out loud of course, to anybody who would listen.... mentioning about utility stitches and how the women of old used them so neatly to piece things together and make them look pretty, and how they were the basis, really, of our stitching classes with Karen... etc.....

Here I've done tiny stab stitches
















Here, a tiny running stitch along some silk edges..

They may, or may not, be finished with just the little utility stitching...but, I'll wait til I get all the blocks pieced to make more decisions on that.


All of a sudden.... Mr. BV was beside me .... holding something.... and saying he had "something that I could practice my utility stitching on" ....

I looked up from the fun stuff and discovered this ....

.....a button had totally broken in the centre and come off his slacks...... sigh....yep...that'd be utility all right.... right back to basics.


One of the few things that I could do for years.... stitch on buttons and hem slacks and dresses by hand...seeing as I didn't have a machine and...didn't know how to use one anyway.....  some days I got lazy and took them to the cleaners and had them stitch hems...but, they got to be over $12 each pair and I got penurious.... especially when we were saving for this house.

This is the first day of the rest of the year....

... stitchery wise that is ....

I stitched.

Only a couple of web stitches .....literally.... two.......and a few French Knots....

Disappointed?

I'm not.

I stitched.

I'm happy.

My pretty box worked a treat.....

And, it was cold and snowy...so I put out some sunny yellow flowers.... ahhhhh....that's better.

Today, I'm stitching away on my pouch... you remember those blocks.....that originally were going to be a wrapping cloth..but, I re-purposed them... now they're gonna be ...a pouch!

It's tricky to stitch through many layers...just as Karen said it would be.  In some areas there were 4 layers.  And, ... it is difficult to stitch together the blocks in the middle of the pouch too ... so much more so than at the edges or sides.

I managed some running stitch on one or two loose blocks... and some French Knots here and there ....so.... yes.... definitely some stitching happening...finally!

Little boxes...

Pretty things they are too.  And, they were already full of fabrics, trim and embroidery cottons for the classes I'm taking.

But......

... I noticed Deanna, from our stitchery classes, is doing daily stitching as a project for 2014 and to make it easier, she suggests a box or container full of all you need to just pick it up and "go".  Perfect.

I wasn't totally out of it....I did have a tiny one with just needles and threads and a few other things and thought how clever I was being, but, honestly.... I still had to gather up the other bits and pieces and move them each time I decided to do a few stitches.... and, you know how it goes...you just get sat down and realize you forgot ...scissors...or hoop. ..or ..whatever.  It's just plain silly isn't it?

Right now, there is an extra love seat and also a couch parked in the hobby room..so, ...no room in there to play.   Still looking for somebody to take the furniture.... which means I move from front room to kitchen, to downstairs ..etc...

I love my pretty little boxes and chose a medium size one to use for my project pieces, then, re-organized all the other stuff in the two other boxes.  Now, I'm armed and dangerous!  With needle book, cottons, scissors, small hoop, etc. in my trusty "go box", I'm set.

I'm sorry

I used to have an easy BlogLines thingy....I just clicked on it and it showed a list down the left side of my page... heavy type for those that had updated ... and I could just click on it and go immediately to your blog... no problemo.... it was fun; I enjoyed it.

Now... something has happened.  I can't figure out how to fix it.  I'm a techno dweeb. Now there is a page of ugly grey narrow boxes and I can't make them do anything...no clicking to read..no clicking to go anywhere ...except on the first 4 in the list...and then..no way to click on and say "done" or "read" ...I have to clear them all at the same time even if I can't make them open...sigh......and, so....I haven't been around much to your blogs.

I have to go to my page where I do my new post.... close that ...look for you on a "reading list" ...which is truly a trying experience.  I have been deleting most of my blogs I followed .in order to shorten the list to those I visit regularly ...but, even that is a pain....so, I am going to make a paper list... with your addresses on it...or ... list you on my sidebar and then from there I can get to you and your postings....

I WILL see you soon..... and, in the meantime...I AM trying to keep a smile on my face... and, I promise I'll shave as soon as I find a spare moment.....I definitely ain't waxin' !!!