Sunday, October 28, 2012

Lunar Halo

This is tonight's moon from our front porch.

Tighter view

The full view

They call this a lunar halo.  Folklore has it that it "means bad weather, rain, or other foul atmospheric conditions are on the way."  Appropriate even here in the middle of the country where we will not receive the brunt of Sandy, but we'll surely receive residual effects. 

Stay safe everyone!

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Entry Curtain

The entry has a smaller window next to the door that my in-laws have agreed to make a stained glass for, but for now I wanted something that would allow the light in without losing the privacy. I had some fabric from the bathroom curtain left over, but not quite enough to cover the whole window which meant I had to find a solution if I wanted to use it.  So I ran to  the local Hobby Lobby to look at their upholstery fabric. The first one I considered is this one: 


I like it, but it is rather formal.  So, I kept looking and found this:


I LOVE this fabric! Our entry walls are the same color as the darker grey medallion.  My intention was to make a curtain of just these fabrics, but then I thought that I liked the silk as well and it would be appropriate for the holiday season.  So then I thought about making two tops and attaching the gauze-like fabric with Velcro.  

I started to plan these curtains, but as I took before pictures I realized just how close the window is to our wall quilt.



This poses a bit of a problem because I do not want the curtain to clash with whatever wall quilt we have up. So, back to the drawing board.  I had some black canvas fabric left over after making some potholders for a friend.  So, I decided that simplicity was best in this case and made this curtain:



I like it. :o)


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Struggling

in my stats class.  This is not your normal "Oh, I just work so hard and am barely squeaking by" kind of struggle.  No, this is the "I am in serious jeopardy of failing b/c I haven't passed two exams so far" kind of struggle.  I've never done this poorly.  I even got a tutor after the last exam in hopes of just kicking ass on this morning's exam.  Except, I did worse.  I don't know what to do and I'm scared and depressed right now.  

Sorry this post isn't very craft-related, but I can't think about that right now.  I can't think about anything except my misery in statistics right now. So, there you have it.

***UPDATE - I heard back from my professor and am happy to report that I will not fail. I may have to take it over in the Spring, but I won't fail!  I'm still struggling with my emotions, but this is such good news!!!***

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

What I've been up to...

Did you notice the new header? I've been playing around with Picmonkey and created two new headers (one for each blog).

I'll be honest, not much of my time has been spent in the sweat shop.  I just don't have time to spend there.  The semester is bad enough, but October is a little ridiculous with deadlines.  Combine that with a week's worth of freezes which meant we had 5 huge boxes of green tomatoes to process and a long table of partially ripened tomatoes.  So the last couple of weekends, we've spent making green salsa, beet relish, pepper jellies, mustard, etc.

Drying tomatoes
Canning - half of this is green salsa!
Last week, we bought a couple cheap bookcases for the dining room and I thought I should get a bigger one for the sweat shop.  You can see here that I had completely outgrown the one I had there. The plan was to move this smaller one to the bedroom for nick-knacks and bedtime readings after I had cleaned out all the totes of clothes.

Old bookcase
 The hubs put the new one together and the following day I switched the bookcases.  This looks much nicer, no?
New bookcase

The top shelf has a few marketing/business books about growing a craft business (obviously that's been placed on hold), half pint jars full of safety pins and buttons, business cards, and sewing patterns.  The black basket on the next shelf holds my quilting and purse patterns. There's also a jar of taffy and a couple of Christmas books.  Then there's quilting magazines, then the quilting books, and finally, the crochet and cross-stitch books.  I'm quite pleased with it.


Thursday, October 4, 2012

Epiphanies

Yesterday, as I was driving my massive 2.5 hour commute home from class, I had an epiphany.  Despite loud, upbeat music to motivate me on my drive, five hours round-trip still gives me a lot of time to think.  An unfinished project randomly jumped to mind. I began this project a couple of years ago, but lost interest in it as I was trying to complete revisions on my Masters thesis. Once I'd lost interest it was very hard to get back into it.  It somehow didn't fit the intention for beginning it anymore and every time I thought of it in a re-purposed manner it didn't quite fit that either. But yesterday, I knew exactly what the purpose of this project is meant to be!!  The more I think about this change in purpose, the more I am committed to it.  That's a good sign, no? 

I'll post pictures when it's complete.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Memories of Provence

I want this pattern! I just read Thelma's post over at Cupcakes 'n' Daisies about her BOM rehab.  She was grateful for the encouragement to finish half-started projects.  This is where I first heard of Memories of Provence by Monique Dillard at Open Gate Quilts.  Have you seen it?

Photo Courtesy of Open Gate Quilts
Isn't it beautiful?  How did I not know about this before??  I am fond of Dillard, but had never seen this BOM before.  I've been searching for an hour for the pattern, but can only find links to BOMs that are 2-3 months into the deal.  What am I going to do if I can't find this pattern? I want!  I'm sending an email to Open Gate to see if it's even possible to find the pattern w/o signing up for a BOM.  Any suggestions?