the handmade life

A case to hold three cds. It is wanting to hold murder ballads...
A bit of piecing in wool, and hard to photograph...


The last square for the friendship square swap. It just needs embroidered.


That is all for today, I think. I need to go pick nettles NOW.

I have been very little on the computer. I neglect all my online associations terribly. Forgive me...

My life has been rolling under it's own steam, non-urgent and extremely productive.
Here is a pictorial update of sorts, by no means complete.

I had a lovely visit with Kate and Woods a weekend ago. She gave me this fabric for my birthday:



I have been making more log cabins. I think I may spend a year making log cabin squares in various sizes! I am enjoying it fiercely. I had a wonderful collection of fabric, which I had not fully appreciated until I started utilizing the littlest bits...





I know now that I can go to the fabric stores and pick up quarter yards of fabric. I don't have to wait until I could afford 3-4 yds of something. My shopping horizons just expanded! I can't wait to go to town and enhance my color palette.
In fact, I woke up this morning talking about fabric. I was dreaming a charcoal and black plaid with this bright twilight blue fairly singing through the spaces between the checks. I am seeing landscapes and skyscapes as fabric paintings. There is no turning back now, I am afraid.
Funny, Mark says he never thinks about fabric. Never.

Oh, and I made some curtains for under my kitchen counter, finally. Nice counter, a present to me from my husband a few years back.


I was going to sew stars on these, but I am liking the simplicity. A calm space for the eye to rest upon. So rare in my home, but becoming increasingly common!


We have five lambs at the barn and one sweet little bummer lamb who has been at the vet for a week, I can barely remember her by now. I think I find out today whether she will live or die. I got to carry her around in a sling for a couple days. What a way to get a baby fix.

Opal is a star.



Oh, and on Wednesday, I go to Astoria to hear In Gowan Ring and Nick Castro at the
AVA Center. Presented by Miss Heidie of the Hideout. Hurray for guitars!

Yay! Lambs are being born! Here is the first lamb of the year. I think I want to call her Ivy.



I keep waiting for a hen to come out with chicks...

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We went to a party the other day. Here is Alice dressed up for it.



That is her normal teenage expression these days. sigh.

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Cooking and housecleaning take a lot of time! I find I haven't as much time to fiberArt as I would like. I did devote some time yesterday to more quilt squares for the Glitter friendship quilt, though.



I am pretty calm with spending all this time on these quilt blocks, the only rub being that as soon as they are finished, they get shipped out, and there is naught to show for it at my place but some scraps... and these photos.
Everything else has been on hold more or less. Zaftig still sits as I left her a week ago, as do a number of projects in various stages of completeness. I keep reminding myself that this is a year to clean up old projects. I won't stop til the loose ends are tied up. You can hold me to that!
Update on the yarn store idea: I have decided that it is much wiser for me to stay focused on my current goals (of cleaning up and finishing up) rather than go off on some tangent, as viable or legit as the tangent may be. There is time for all this, and if there isn't, well, I will have lived a full life, right?

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So here are some of my homemade pickles. Surplus from a friend's garden last year. All I had to do was pick and pickle. I got to go in and glean about once a week.



I filled maybe 2/3s of a five gallon bucket with produce, and then I brined the lot. Have I told you all this? Well, there's a pic.

Okay, folks, no philosophy today, but plenty of eye candy.

One of my favorite books when the kids were little was The Patchwork Lady by Mary Whittington and Jane Dyer. Everything about this woman's life was eclectic and mismatched from her garden to her teacups to her socks. I suspect the illustrator chose not to paint the heaps of clutter lurking on various surfaces, or perhaps the patchwork lady has truly moved beyond that, as I hope to when I am her age!

Do you ever hang your laundry by color? Sometimes I do. It brings a certain satisfaction.


I had to put the green sock in my pocket. It just didn't fit in.

I made a couple more quilt squares yesterday.


It's funny how my opinion about a project will change as I the process goes on. I didn't like these squares at first, but did quite, by the end.

Here are some of my patchy forebears. Well, not mine really, but yes in that I have been imprinted with a certain aesthetic invented by this generation.


domestic goddess.



leather work.



this bag is awesome!



This could have been me! :)

All from one of my best books, Native Funk & Flash, by Jacopetti & Wainwright, Scrimshaw Press, 1974. Which documents a previous wave of craftivism.