...in which I'm AWOL...

This week is one of my work events in which I moderate a conference call every evening of the week; because we're a national organization we have to schedule the calls at Past-Our-Bedtime in Eastern time zones in order to hit Barely-Home-From-Work in Western time zones. And it always takes me a couple of hours to "come down" from the calls when they're over--IOW, stop my brain from spinning with everything we talked about on the call so I can finally (and generally with the help of pharmaceuticals) drop off to sleep. The first day or two I'm filled with energy and excitement. By mid-week, I'm dragging. By the end of the week, I don't trust myself with heavy machinery or sharp objects.

So I'm not able to post a podcast this week. Nor blogging. Nor actually touching my sewing machine.  

I have, however, made a priority of getting to the gym for as much time as I'm able between work and the conference call. Yay, me. 

Friday night is the last call and I have Monday as a comp day, so you should be hearing from me again soon. 

Memories of Sue

We have lost a shining light in our world.

This past weekend, one of the members of my quilt guild, Sue, passed away quite unexpectedly. She had been on our guild retreat but began to feel unwell; two of her friends had driven her home on Friday night and advised her husband to take her to the hospital where she was admitted for observation and testing. It was quite a shock to receive word that she had passed away late Saturday night. I'm glad my guild friends at retreat had each other for support and comfort in such a difficult time.

I just returned home from the calling hours at the funeral home (the funeral itself will be private). I went with three of my guild friends; when we arrived, the line was out the door and into the parking lot. There were several hundred people that wound their way through the funeral home and into the chapel to greet the family. I remarked to one of my friends that it went a long way to appease my sadness to see such an outpouring of love and the number of people whose lives Sue had touched in one way or another. Most of my guild were there, as well as members of several other quilt groups that Sue had been a part of. We talked about how none of us had even known how many things Sue had been involved in until people were running into each other at the funeral home and sharing stories of how they knew Sue.

Rather than a casket or urn in the funeral chapel, there was simply a display of a couple of her quilts and other handcrafts that Sue had made, with several professionally-done photos of her with her family. There was a small sign on the photos that said those photos had just been done the weekend before. What a treasure for the family to have.

As I'm writing this, I'm still trying to imagine our next guild meeting without Sue there. My head won't wrap around it. Next month's meeting will be hard in some ways, but in others it will give us the chance to have our own memorial, I suspect.

Sue had a wonderfully dry, often sarcastic sense of humor. She led us in the Hokey Pokey and other stretch breaks during retreats, and then would quietly sit at her machine, periodically cussing it out under her breath if it didn't cooperate. (Okay, sometimes not quite so much under her breath.) If I teased her, I could rely on her looking at me with a twinkle in her eye while she said, with feeling, "Bite me." Sue made me laugh.

She also had a tremendous heart. It was Sue who spearheaded our monthly donations to a local women's shelter and often led other charity projects for other sites. Whenever I made a donation quilt, I'd hand it directly over to Sue with confidence that it would go where most needed.

I will miss Sue's laugh, her caustic wit, her willingness to be silly, and her fervent cussing at her machine. And I will miss her drive to make the world a more soft and comfortable place for people during their time of need.

The next donation quilt I make, Sue, will be in your honor. Thanks for all you did for our guild. I count it a privilege that I had the opportunity to know you. 

A Weekend Away

Just a bit off-topic, then back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

It's Sunday afternoon and we're back from our anniversary get-away to Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada. We go every year because, forasmuch as we love to travel and see new places, it's nice to have one place to go you don't have to figure out. We know what restaurants we absolutely need to eat at, we nearly always try to see a play, and we pretty much always hike or walk most of the time we're there. Niagara on the Lake is a gorgeous town right on the point of connection between Niagara River and Lake Ontario, and it has a beautiful walkway along the Niagara Parkway and along the edge of the village. In October, it's beautiful.

We were fortunate in our weather on Friday--a beautiful, crisp fall day. We walked almost all day; however, it started looking cloudy after lunch so on the spur of the moment we drove a half hour back down the road and spent the evening in Niagara Falls. Saturday was pretty cruddy--we got some walking in during the morning but it was wet the rest of the day, so we hung out in our room and read for awhile, then went to see a play and went out to dinner. Soggy, but relaxing.

I didn't take too many pictures, but I did throw them into a Flick album if you want to check them out. I had fun playing with the new panorama feature on iOs7. :-)

When I got home, Mad Quilt Scientist took over and got busy in the basement again. 

In addition to some things I just needed to get done, I'm also testing out a couple of new techniques I saw on Ann Johnston's new "Color by Accident" DVD. I've been using her book for the last year but seeing her techniques on video is extremely helpful. I'll keep you posted.

Now, to get back on my sewing machine and finish off some baby quilts. Tomorrow is DS's 23rd birthday (not that I've aged a day) so we're taking him out to dinner tonight. I have just about enough time to finish the top of Baby Quilt Remix and maybe figure out backing... 

I know, I know, it's been awhile...

A mixture of being out a lot of evenings, having family events on weekends, trying to fit more exercise into my schedule, and having several days of being just plain' dumb-tired after work have meant that I've been a social-networking slacker of late.

The upside is that I've been getting some quilting done in there too. And I hope to get some dyeing in this weekend. So there is that. 

Also in the works: Two new interviews! Look at it this way: I'm not Podfading, I'm Podbrewing.  Things are just roiling around in my head until I have both the time and the verbal energy to sit down at my microphone again.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: I've determined my winners for the 2013 Banned Books Week Challenge. Congratulations to Dianne, Jackie, Carol, Daisy, and Carole! Yep, I threw in one more book so all five of you could win something! I love being able to say thank you for playing along.  Whee!

I plan on getting a podcast out in the next couple of days even if it's a shortie. Bear with me... 

LDSI Recap, Project Hope Finish, and More!

What a great weekend! What a productive weekend! 

Of course, I didn't even approach getting everything done that I'd thought I'd get done over my extended Labor Day weekend, but then, I always tend to do that. Free time? Let's fill it up with a completely unachievable list of goals! 

Still n' all, it were fun. And what a great time we had on Twitter. I enjoyed Very Lazy Daisy's twitter giveaways and was glad that Pam of Hip to Be a Square and Katie of Katie's Quilting Corner hosted a Google Hangout, though I got so involved in one of my projects I completely and totally lost track of time and didn't realize it was time for the hangout until probably two hours later. Oops. Sounds like they had fun, though.  

And let me also say, thanks to all who played along with my giveaway. And I'm so pleased to give a great, congratulatory shout-out to Ethel, the winner! Woo hoo! (Everyone join in the happy dance for Ethel!) 

Now, what all did I get done? Lots!

I finally got the pillows done! Woo! And you'll hear more about those in a blog post later this week since I decided to describe the process I used in case you find it helpful. I also cut a few scraps, although not nearly as many as I actually need. Still poking away at that. I also finished cutting all the pieces for one of my two pregnant nieces' baby quilts; now it's sitting by my sewing machine waiting for blocks to be pieced. 

I got some baby gifts for the other of my two pregnant nieces done (the one whose mom does *not* read this blog).  

These two onesies were hand-dyed; I used Color Magnet and stencils to create the design. Note to self: Color Magnet works better in a lighter dye bath--there's more definition of design. These are okay, but I'd have liked the designs to be more prominent.  I have a third onesie in the works but that one I've dyed and will be using other techniques on. Pictures later.

This maternity shirt was ice-dyed (you're seeing the front and the back). Not sure I'm a huge fan of the results so I'll offer it to my niece with every assurance that my feelings won't be hurt if she doesn't like it either.  

I got a pillowcase made, when I went to cut a fabric into scraps and decided it would make a very cute pillowcase cuff. Boom. Pillowcase for donation. 

I got my project done for the Banned Books Week Challenge (see above). In fact, I actually finished it twice, when I decided I really hated the way the new-to-me binding method had worked on the first one and did a somewhat-new-to-me binding method instead. But I'm not showing it until BBW commences. So y'all will just have to wait.  (And I'll give more detail about the binding then.)

Second, I finally got the backing and binding done on this puppy.  

For simplicity's sake, I just named this one "Sandy's House." Not creative, but this was a class project and not something that felt like it sprang from my soul or anything. 

Although I did enjoy it! And here's the link to the blog post where I talk about the class and how this came together.  

I really like her fused binding method--in fact, it worked well enough on this one that I used it on my next finish.... Yes, drum roll please, I finally completed my Project Hope Online Quilt Show project, which has been languishing since last June.  

 This one is named "Somewhere." You can probably figure out the reference. 

I had a completely different idea in my head--an art quilt that may still someday get made. Meanwhile, I led a creativity challenge at my guild's May retreat in which we randomly drew words related to a beach party theme out of a bag and had to add something to an ongoing project somehow related to that word. This is done entirely with my own hand-dyes, btw. The first word drawn on Friday night was "Bucket and Shovel."  When I woke up Saturday morning, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was the image stuck in my head. "Sure, the pot is a bucket of sorts," I thought. The next word drawn was beach ball, so I added the gold coins (round like a ball) coming out of the pot (bucket).

The third thing I had people draw randomly out of a bag was a little rubber duckie.

Great variety packs of rubber duckies from Oriental Trading Company, by the way. I had a bunch of different ones. This little guy was the one I drew. 

Challenge participants could interpret their duck any way they chose. I decided to use his colors, so I have a purple and blue variegated thread in the words on my project.  

It was right around the rubber duckie that I realized where I was heading with this project and that it also met the theme of the Project Hope Online Quilt Show, and so it became that project. To me, hope doesn't always have to be a solemn matter, and silliness can often have a very deep point (witness Monty Python and Mel Brooks).

I did a lot of hand-stitching (as per Laura Wasilowsky's class), and then machine-quilted some clouds in the sky and used her fused binding method. I wanted to keep things relatively simple. But you'll notice this time I took a page from my Carol Ann Waugh Craftsy Class, "Stupendous Stitching," and ventured into a decorative stitch on my machine I hadn't really known was there before. I love it.  

My artist statement for this piece is: 

Somewhere there is hope. 

Somewhere there is peace. 

Somewhere there is love and joy and unity. 

It is our job and our calling to bring somewhere, here. 

(For more Project Hope Online Quilt Show, visit the Flickr group. Although our main show "ended" back in June, you're always welcome to add more quilts to the group!) 

Thus ends my LDSI recap. Again, be on the lookout for my next blog post all about the Banned Books Week Challenge!

Let There Be Light (and Color!)

My sewing room and home office are in one space (as well as my husband's computer, and formerly the kids' computer until they left home and I kicked it out!). It's a nice, big room--the bonus room over the garage--but it's pretty narrow and although it's got a nice big picture window at one end, it faces east so I get great sun for about two hours in the morning and then it gets progressively darker for the rest of the day.

And let's not even talk about November to March, when we're lucky to get even 10 minutes of actual sunlight in a day.  

My new lights ended up, just by a happenstance of scheduling, becoming a day-after-birthday gift to me. And what a birthday gift.

Before... 

This was taken at 9:00a, when I should be getting the most light of the day. It was a gray, dreary day, so this is actually what I normally dealt with most of the late fall through early spring. (Yes, I blurred out the office side--you can see the sewing side.)

Note the number of floor lamps and table lamps trying desperately to give me working light. I'm standing right next to my design wall--the darkest corner furthest from all lighting available. Also note how yellow everything is. I had an Ott light at my cutting table and would have to pull fabric off the shelves and lay it under the light so I could see what color it really was.

After... 

Taken later the same day. It looks brighter outside just because it had stopped raining, but it was still just about as gray as it was in the morning. All the light you see is now electric. 

I had them install bulbs that were as natural-daylight-colored as possible. My fabrics look fantastic. The electrician really worked to figure out the best placement and number of lights to minimize shadowing when I'm at my cutting table. They're "cool" lights so they don't heat the room up at all.  

And, best thing--there's one right near my design wall. 

I can see!!!!  Woohoo woohoo woohoo!!! Serious happy dances up in here.

Best thing? I'm getting rid of the table lamp that's been taking up space on my cutting table for years! (I'll still keep the floor lamps around until I experience the room through all times of day and a few more months of seasonal light changes, but I think I'll eventually be able to ditch one or two of those too.) 

And, as another happenstance of timing to feel like it's a birthday present to myself, two color wheels I'd ordered from Dharma Trading came today. These are designed especially with fabric dyeing and painting in mind. 

This is a "CMYK" wheel. Some dyes/paints apparently work better if you use the CMYK wheel when figuring out dye combinations rather than the traditional wheel. Joen Wolfrom also prefers to use this color wheel in general--her 3-in-1 Tool is based on it.

I like that it has percentages for mixing. If you look below the red where it has the tones, it has percentages written along the sides. In other words, if you create a dye solution that's 90% the pure color (red, in this case), and 10% of it's complement (cyan), you'd get the first color down from the red. If you have an 80/20 proportion, it's the next color lower, 70/30 is the next one down, and 60/40 is the lowest one. See? (Did you know that? Mix a color and it's complement and you work your way towards gray! )

The back of the CMYK wheel has another very helpful tool in determining proportions.

Look under yellow. If you mix 80% of the pure color (yellow) with 20% white, you get the tint--which is the lighter swoop on the left. If, on the other hand, you mix it with 20% black, you get the shade, which is the darker swoop on the right. Next one down is 60/40, next is 40/60, and lowest one is 20/80.  

The graphic in the middle also gives you at a glance what the complement, split complement, triad and tetrads are, plus it shows analogous along each side of your chosen color.  

The second wheel I got is based on the traditional color wheel, but it has another very useful tool for choosing dye combinations.

Look at red, center top. You spin the wheel to see what color you would get if you added the colors at the top of the inner wheel. In this case, I've spun it to show what would happen if you added blue to red--you get the color in the window (which is violet). It may seem straightforward, but it's particularly useful in the tertiary colors. In other words, what's the difference between adding blue to orange, versus adding blue to yellow-orange? It will allow me to more easily fine-tune my color recipes. 

The back has the tints, tones, and shades again, with the graphic in the middle giving a quick-glance visual of complementary, split complementary, triads and tetrads of any chosen color.

So while there are a lot of similarities between these two color wheels, and between these wheels and other ones I'd already owned for quilting, there are some very useful differences for use in my hand-dyeing and fabric painting. I can't wait to get back in my dye studio and play.

And yes, my dye studio is also very well lit. We had them install new lighting in the basement as well and there's a natural-light florescent in the corner where Mad Quilt Scientist lives. All is right in my little fiber arts world!

In fact, you'll have some more hand-dyeing results soon--playing with discharges and resists and magnets (Oh My).  

Sauntering through Sedona

My husband flew out to Phoenix to meet me at the end of my work event, and we drove a little north to spend a few days in Sedona, with a brief jaunt up to the Grand Canyon via the Grand Canyon Railway.

I took tons of pictures. I even deleted a bunch after I got home, and still have a lot left in the album. Some pictures were just for a sense of place, but most were for color or texture or line inspiration, as we quilters are wont to do. 

If you're interested, I've embedded a slideshow of all my pictures here. (I captioned them so you know what you're looking at but I think you may only be able to see the captions if you're actually looking at them in Flickr, not in this embedded slideshow. And note that you can click on the little arrows symbol on the lower right if you want it full-screen.)

And yes, that color inspiration has led to my current dye experiments that I've termed my "Sedona Series." 

I'm about to go start the wash-out process now, so results tomorrow! 

A little more patience, please...

Every two years, the organization I serve hosts two major national events (plus) nearly back to back. This is one of those years. I just got home yesterday from the first event weekend, and now am in the throes of finalizing details for the other which is at the end of July (and is actually three events in one). 

So this is just a bid for a little more patience! I haven't stopped blogging. I'm just using up all my energy for work. I got back in town Tuesday and am now nearly recovered from that trip, so I hope to get some blogs up later this week or over the weekend...not that I've got all that much to blog about...but I think I may have some stuff I got done before the mayhem hit but didn't get posted yet.

Meanwhile, have you listened to my episode with Jane Dunnewold yet? It's a good one! 

This explains a lot...

This article from LifeHacker came onto my Feedly feed on a particularly opportune time this week: "It's True, Thinking Hard Really Can Wear You Out."

​No wonder I'm so fatigued lately! Intense days at work. Good thing I'm going to the gym in the morning. Doesn't bode well for the post-work quilting sessions, however.

Yes, I'm a Dog-Person

With thanks to @quiltscapes for sending me this link. Wonderful. And Doofus came over to sit next to me and laid his head on my lap when he heard the video playing. Apparently he wanted me to know that really this video was about him.

On the 8th day, God made a farmer. On the 9th day, He made a dog. With gracious thanks and credit to: Lindsay Kennedy Photography - http://lindsaykennedyphotography.com/ Erin Vey - http://www.erinvey.com FidoJournalism - http://www.fidojournalism.com Photohound Dog Photography - http://www.photohound.biz Marilyn Jeffers Photography - http://www.marilynjeffersphotography.com Evocative Photography - http://evocativedogphoto.com Once around Venus Photography - http://familypetphotographyflorida.com Murphy Dog Studios - http://www.murphydogstudios.com & Unlimited ----- If I used your photo but didn't give you credit, so sorry.

A little color inspiration...a bird in the hand

​(Pardon me while I continue to test out the different methods of placing pictures in my blog. Have to see how well they all work!)

While on vacation in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I spent a morning at the Audobon Aquarium. We got there when it first opened and wasn't at all crowded; by 90 minutes later when we were ready to go, it was pretty full. So fair warning--if you go, go early.​

In any case, my favorite part of the aquarium was, interestingly enough, not the aquatic creatures. It was the parakeet house. I grew up with parakeets--my grandmother had those that came to live with us a few months out of the year when she did. I only really remember one of them. His name was Gentleman Jim, or GJ. We'd let him out of his cage and he'd fly around the room, but he mostly liked to be right where we were. I did a lot of homework at the kitchen table with GJ perched on the end of my pencil or trying to sharpen his beak on it while I was writing. He may or may not have been the same parakeet that liked to dive into the fish tank. That was a little more of an adventure. My sister also had birds as pets most of her growing up years, and still does. Me, not a fan of birds in the house myself. Too much seed tossed around, too noisy. But still, I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the parakeets in the parakeet house.

So I'm including two galleries here--one is just photos from our trip that may entice you to go to New Orleans yourself. The other is strictly for the birds.​

The galleries are on autoplay, but you can speed up or slow down using the control buttons at either side of the gallery, or you can click on the thumbnails below.​

​First, general scenes around New Orleans, including random parades that spring up all the time, St. Louis Cathedral, the statue about immigrants (didn't get the actual title), various music ensembles we would stumble across (favorite part of the trip), Audobon Aquarium, New Orleans from the ferry to Algiers Point and one great house in Algiers, and the bayou boat tour (see if you can spot all the critters).

And now for the birds...fantastic colors! Definitely could inspire some quilts.​

This blog and podcast are moving soon...

...as soon as the domain redirect happens, in any case. Which could be any time in the next 24-48 hours.

I am moving my blog and podcast show notes all under one roof. This is a change I've been wanting to make for some time, but never had the time to put it all together. However, some changes on one of my hosts ticked me off and made it too difficult for y'all to be part of the conversation. So I finally enacted something I've been poking away at for awhile.

If you subscribe to my podcast through iTunes, no fears. Nothing has changed there.

However, as soon as that redirect goes into action, when you go to www.quiltingfortherestofus.com you'll see my brand new, whiz bang website! (I'm not making the link in that sentence active because at the moment it still goes to the old place.)

There's a page for my blog.

There's a separate page for all the show notes to my podcast episodes, plus you'll be able to stream or download episodes from that page too.

Each of those pages has a separate RSS feed, available through a link on the sidebar, so you can subscribe to either of them however you want. You can subscribe to my blog through Feedly or Bloglovin' or whatever your what-you're-using-now-that-GR-is-no-more-of-choice is. You can use your favorite podcatcher to subscribe to the podcast, if you don't get it through iTunes.

The most important thing to me? You'll be able to leave comments on the show notes to my podcast without having to bow down to the Evil Overlord of Facebook. 

Okay, so I use Facebook. I don't mind Facebook. I absolutely detest being forced to use Facebook as my commenting system on my podcast and I detest having listeners not be able to leave comments unless they have a Facebook account.

But let me not get venting again. 

I'm excited about the new site. It's pretty. It has some very nice features for me from an admin point of view. I hope it's easy and attractive for you to navigate from a user point of view. I'm still poking away at some things--it probably won't be fully set up by the time you're first able to visit it. 

But I hope you'll visit. And I hope you'll help me test it out by leaving all sorts of comments!

I'll post here again when the redirect has happened and I'll leave RSS feeds here and such too. Eventually I'll take the time (when I have it again) to actually post a redirect here. So this is just your heads-up. Keep posted!

Are you reading this through Google Reader?

Google just announced it's plans to shut down Google Reader in July. I'm not panicking. That's plenty of time and, given the backlash, they may have been surprised by the number of people actually using Reader and may extend it. Still, it's a good time to explore how you follow blogs and perhaps make some changes.

Just don't change that you're reading this blog. :-)

I've been doing some research for my own use, so I thought I'd pass along some links to articles for you for now--these may help you check out some alternatives. Everyone has different needs and likes/dislikes so what works beautifully for someone else may not work for you. For example, when I first got my iPad, a friend told me I should use FlipBook because she just adored it, best thing since sliced bread, etc. I didn't like it at all. That doesn't mean she's wrong, just means we have different needs and tastes. So, test them out, play around a bit, see which one you like best.

http://lifehacker.com/5990456/google-reader-is-getting-shut-down-here-are-the-best-alternatives

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/14/google-reader-alternatives/1986865/

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-57574201-233/google-reader-is-dying-but-we-have-five-worthy-alternatives/

http://marketingland.com/12-google-reader-alternatives-36158

(These are just a few articles--more will likely be coming out every day.)

These are simply the articles I've come across today--more will be written in the future so keep checking the web. It does seem like Feedly is coming out strong in terms of top recommendation, but as I'm writing this on vacation I can't test anything out until I'm home this weekend. By the way, as Google continues to tighten it's offerings-belt, I had already started the process of moving this blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Blogger has begun to annoy me, for one, but I'm seeing the writing on the wall. I'll give y'all fair warning when it happens so we can make sure we don't lose any of you! Meanwhile, have fun looking at your other Reader possibilities. Find what works for you.

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