Cloud City

This morning we are once again living inside a cloud that has encased the North Country. It's been a rare day this summer here in Vermont when I have not donned my sweatshirt and wool socks to ward off a chill. Speaking of my wool socks, may I comment right now on the wonderfulness of this yarn I used to knit these babies. It's Sockotta by Plymouth I think and I picked up a skein a while ago because it was a self-striping superwash and enough yardage to knit my favorite sock pattern. It wears like iron! I knit another pair shortly thereafter and both have been worn and gone through the washer and dryer I'll bet 60 times - no holes or thinning at toes or heels. I think I took pictures, let me find them:


I've still been fooling around with the small quilt projects, just not taking photos. I'll do that today and post a few. I'm in serious experimental mode and some of it is not so pretty. --cds

Black and White

A long time ago I started pulling out pages from home decor magazines with photos of styles that appealed to me - you know, in case I won the lottery and had to decorate a McMansion on the quick. After culling through those photos, I discovered I have a love of the graphic -- all things black and white, toiles, transferware, stripes, art with a bold outline, stuff like that. I'm not sure how to incorporate that into these little pieces I'm messing about with, but I tried black thread free-motion quilting on white - kind of fun, but not all that satisfying. Try to ignore the hot pink background - remember my lack of stash.


--cds

Time Out for Strawberries

Stephanie and I picked these beauties on Saturday, and Steph turned them into 30-some jars of the most delicious jam. This winter, she and Josh will be able to smell fragrant strawberry fields every time they open a new jar - me too since I'll be stealing a few jars to take back to Florida with us.



--cds

Sidetracked

I don't really know how to bead properly (and all my books are guess-where), but I found this slightly creepy mermaid button and decided to try beading around her. Not too bad, I guess. Beading is very relaxing, I find.

Quilt viewing is on the agenda today. The Vermont Quilt Festival is in town. I'll get pictures of my favorites. --cds

When Worlds Almost Collide

My sixth grade teacher relied (a lot) on filmstrips as a teaching aid and freaked us all out one day during a science lesson by showing a film of the solar system imploding and Earth being blown to tiny bits after colliding with Mars. I was traumatized and certain that was going to occur any day. These mosaic spheres remind me of brightly colored planets, orbiting happily while maintaining a safe, courteous distance from each other. I'll do some quilting to give it a little definition and texture and will post it later. --cds

Babysitting and Browsing

At the moment I am babysitting sweet 7-week old Baby Max, son of friends of our kids. He is snoozing cozily on my bed after his bottle and some grandma-rocking. I keep wanting to cover up his wee arms and legs, but Max is having none of it.

I am a couple days behind posting my daily art-quilt doings. For all my complaining about palm tree motifs, look what happened here.



I actually kind of like this - I may fiddle around with it a bit more and quilt it up. It's still cold and cloudy here in Vermont - if it's 60 degrees, I'll eat my hat. --cds

Turquoise and Red

Just wanted to try out this color combo, so I made some lollypop flowers and played around with some of the stitches on my Bernina.




The back is pretty, too! Note to me: I need to come up with a red and white design for a quilt to go in my guest room.

Speaking of lollypop flowers, this iris is one of my "heirloom iris" - a progeny of my Dad's iris that he had been cultivating before he died - that's 25 years ago, my friends. And still pretty. --cds