While Tangerine Dreams

Ka-Bluey Yellow

Edie taking it easel. Her daycare teacher loves her so much so she lent her her painting easel when she heard the poor thing didn't have one yet. Call child services! I had big plans this weekend to have a sewing FO to show off here  (I received my Sew U Home Sweat recently - yay!) but those plans all went ka-bleuy when I broke my serger. There's probably not a sicker sound around than two hard yet delicate looking mechanical pieces crunching together (that sounds kind of dirty now that I'm proof reading). What's the opposite sound of "ca-ching!"?

Thankfully, I miraculously found a serger repairman in the general vicinity who happens to work in our teeny tiny town who's going to pick up my machine this afternoon. I was almost ready to ship it out to Calgary again. Craig's like "maybe you should learn to use the machine before you use it". Ouch.

So I took this trauma as a sign from the Universe to giddy up on the spinning front especially seeing as how I've signed up for a festival here in September I hope to sell some at. This is an experiment. I have all these vintage silk chiffon scarves on hand so I nuno felted some that I will cut up and spin into yarn. Hmmm... we'll see how that turns out.

And here are the finished scarves. I cut them up last night and hopefully will have a chance today to see if this will work.

Summer Fun and Summer Spun

Here's the Quack House in all its summer glory. Lots of action going on here these days including putting up deer fencing around 3 acres of our flat spot so we can grow veggies, flowers and animals with a little more ease next year.

One of the purchases we made with the money we made from pimping out the Horniman is a canoe. You can see the back of Edie's pink head but you don't see that she fell fast asleep quickly into the ride. Felt like a scene from Weekend at Bernie's ...

... and some nekid sprinkler jumping while Cuzin' Jim Bob played the jug.

And the summer spun. This one's called Electric Mermaid. I hand dyed the merino roving in mermaid colours and added some leftover bits of princess crowns from this little princess's birthday.

And Lite Brite. Another score from Loop's Spontaneous Batt club. These babies just keep coming and coming! I'm going to put these two and some more up on my shop over the weekend. Have a good one!

Here Lama, lama, alpacas, lama...

My friend Lisa has a really idyllic home here (really, who doesn't though? Not to be cheeky) but super enhanced with sheep, alpacas, lama, horse and chicken (though the chicken comes complete with chicken shit on the porch that both Edie and I were initiated with healthy toe-full dosees). I took a load full off of these guys' shoulders. Now if only they could come a bit closer for a photo op for my blog. So here I was like a crazy lady calling out "Llama, llama, llama!" with various whoops and alpaca pellet impersonations.

No, no, not you. You're awfully cute and all but not exactly spinable. I want your Flock of Seagull lokcing buddies over there. So, I get back in the car, and everytime I do so, they come a little bit closer. Of course they wait until I have Edie fully buckled into her car seat to inch closer and then she wants to come out whenever I get out. So after three or four times of this dance I'm able to get these shots of Lucy, Tinkerbell and Ewok:

Bet you can't guess which one's Ewok! About three pounds of these critters followed me home and will be spun up into further lusciousness. And check out this little home away from home.

Craig is putting the finishing touches on Edie's kick ass Rapunzel tower and slide he built with milled fir from our forest but this little house was so sweet. Complete with front and back porch and kid hammock for siestas. Perhaps a little munchkin suburbia in our backyard?

Project: Cute

I don't know if it's the early phases of nesting or what but I have this burst of energy and it's reflected in my craft room. Edie pokes her little nose in there and sees my roving bin opened and says "let's make a project together!".

Can I just say I dropped whatever was in my hands with a loud thunk and then a smash and said "sure, baby!!! What does mama's little princess wanna make?". She said a doll and she was really excited about using the pipe cleaners spilling out of my knick knack box. So we made a fuzzy wired skeleton and garnished it with warm woolies and her little dolly was born, along with Edie's art direction (loved the green pig tail call!), in no time at all. She bonded with this baby faster than a crazy glued construction worker to a beam.

It's at this point Craig came barging out of his office and put an end to our own little Hallmark made for tv moment. He heard our photoshoot in session through the window right behind us with me saying "okay, now squish your cheeks against your dolly's and keep your face toward me but your eyes rove to the right... no, your other right, and have a look of serious love going on..".

Dyeing Around Here

I've been playing with my dye pot and finally cracking into a whole swack of local sheep fluff that's been kicking around here since pre-conception. Lot's more dyeying to be done and these hot summer days are perfect for having the fibre dry off in no time at all. Actually, perfectly time with a quick dip in the slowly warming river. Starting to feel like a hippo again. In a good way.

Thank Heaven...

... for little girls because they let their mamas dress them up in vintage pillow cases. I made of few of these and were super quick and fun. This one's one of two of a kind. Because, well, there were two of the same pillow cases I found at the thrift store. To make, I followed this awesome tutorial. I love the faded out flower power look, the softy feel and even the smell of these seventies sheets (and I got super picky smelling devices right now!). Reminds me of the sheets I slept on on hot, hot Montreal summer nights growing up where I had to flip my pillow over throughout the night to get some cool side to be able to get back to sleep.

So this project was an extension of my Good Sheet Collection. Being pregnant (ha! bet you thought I was going to forget to bring that up) I'm also super picky on the materials and fibers I want to don my offsprings. I'm starting to get icked out these days about even buying cotton from the fabric store. Did you know that conventional cotton uses a sheet load of pesticides? A sheet load! Options then are to buy second hand, which is pretty much what we've always done, buy organic cotton or bamboo and hemp which are naturally poison free or vintage materials such as sheets and towels which are used enough that everything's been washed away or hasn't yet been so liberally dosed up with the crap.

We found Edie a used play kitchen. Not exactly the most Waldorf-y thing I've ever laid my eyes on but she loves it and wants to play with it all the time so I deemed it her outdoor kitchen . The skeeters come out right before supper time so it works out perfectly. I'm not exactly sure I want to bring this thing into the house yet or not. Craig says I'm picky; I say I'm nesting because, you know, the bun in the oven thing.

Garden Gnomes

It was that time of year again; the Valley Garden tour. What an inspiring ride. Now that we sold 'the Man' we've got some temporary cash to be really busy with our own landscaping projects including a fort for Edie, deer fencing, and Craig's little project of building himself a strawbale office. We only did one stop which was a bed and breakfast down the road from us we haven't been to in a couple of years. The owner is an artista (oh yeah, I'm taking Spanish lessons Monday morning now! Aci in mi casa! - I don't know how to do upside down exclamation marks yet) and her whole home and landscape is her canvass. Everywhere my eyes fell there was, hiding in botanical beauty, some little fairy or reflection of us peering back.

From Here to Maternity (Wear)

This is my face before latte. Craig was leaving to go out of town so I had to communicate to him, without the use of words, that I needed him to take my picture wearing my new shirt. It was like "uh. uh!" and  me shoving the camera into his hand.

The pattern is a Hot Pattern's Poetry In Motion Top - the swing top to be specific, and I used some gingham fabric I scored at the Yard and Yardage sale this spring for a knocked-up Daisy Mae feel. Super easy. It's in their No Sweat easy sew category and righteously so. Easy sew is what I'm all about these days. Wickedly baby brained. I had a few hours to sew one day while monkey was at her play care place and I just kept sewing the same seam and then ripping out the mistake over and over again. It was so weird how it wasn't totally pissing me off. Guess I'm just really enjoying the sewing process these days.

Yeah, my body's ready now for accomodating clothes so I broke the pledge I took a few years ago and bought some spanking new hemp pants. Soooooooo comfy! They're Nomads Hemp Wear -  a really sweet local couple own the company. Highly recommended for expanding belly regions.

Spinning Clouds

Lots of spinning going around here. Even the clouds are in vortexing action. Lots of creating happening in general. Craig got a new camera and is happily playing around with it. He's also started construction this week on his uber cool office building. He's dealing with the cement truck as I type.

Me? Oh, I'm just creating one meal after another and, oh yeah, a whole other human being to throw into the mix. Craig caught me, with his new toy, in my favourite spinning spot around the house at my favourite time; right after my latte and right before Edie wakes up. Edie's busy spinning up new cuteness everyday by the way.

Something my wheel spit out this week. A rainbow love child between Loop and Zen String. This is in my shop now that I'm slowly bringing back up to stock now that spinning doesn't make me want to throw up anymore.

Yes, this last photo's the ultimate "does spinning still make you want to vomit?" test. Nope. All better now.

Garden Bounty Hunter

Me: What's in the bucket, Edie?

Edie Strawberry Shortcake: 'member we talked about this Mum? My name's Strawberry Shortcake Barbie Cinderella but my nickname's Strawberry Shortcake. These are strawberries and mint from the garden.

We made some ice tea with the mint, and jam with the strawberries. There's oodles and oodles more. And some flowers, too: