Alright... here we go... This is what I did on my summer vacation (well...fall vacation!)...

 

Oh ain't it good to be back on the road again!...Don't know who sang it, but it still holds true!

Paul and I have been enjoying uninterrupted time together this trip.  I've been able to work on projects non-stop almost.  I finished spinning the gold Romney wool I bought before leaving.  I have some white Romney and white Merino to spin before going home.  I need the space in my suitcase! 

I've also been knitting on my Bernat handicrafter cotton sweater.  I may regret using this yarn to make a sweater.  But I'm learning a lot from the experience.  I'm done the back and three quarters up the front.  Will have to design sleeves next.

I traced another creeping flower pattern onto trigger cloth for Brazilian embroidery.  I stitched most of it today.  I am stitching it slightly different from the first version.  That way when I teach it when I get home, the ladies will see a variety of options they can do.  I am getting excited about teaching these ladies.  I hope it goes well...

I have also been reading "Hand Me Down Blues" by Dr. Michael Yapko.  It is such a good book!  Lisa recommended it to me.  It is so right on!  I've been teasing Paul by telling him I am not handling a particular ambiguity in life well.  He has a much greater ability to handle ambiguities than I do.  Apparently not handling them well can lead to depression and anxiety...surprise, surprise. 

I did not do a good job packing.  I put in some fall pants from last year without thinking...I've lost 18 lbs. right?  Well, I've been wearing these billowing pants for the last two days and have had enough!  Today we stopped at Marks Work Wearhouse and bought 2 pairs of Denver Hayes classic pants for $40CAD each.  They were 20% off!  I will donate my old pair to the closest charity after I wash them.  The truth is, I needed new pants anyway.  I just didn't have enough time to shop before leaving.  I was hoping the weather would be warm enough to still wear my pedal pushers.  Unfortunately it was snowing today.  Didn't stick around, but it was cold.  Not pedal pusher weather!

Food has been good.  Exercise so-so.  I got a good workout yesterday.  Today I did some walking.  Tomorrow is a long day, but hopefully at the end of it is a hotel with a fitness room. 

Food has been largely eaten from our cooler.  In other words, food allowed on my diet.  I had a problem with the cold weather today though.  It was too cold to picnic outside.  I didn't bring a warm enough coat.  So we ended up at restaurants for lunch and supper.  Almost $80CAD in meals.  We have allowed ourselves $250/day in expenses.  But $100 of that is accommodation, $100 is gas.  That only leaves $50 for meals.  So you can see we went a little over today.  That's fine though.  Our first day out we spent less than $5 on food.  Paul surprised me by pulling out a Tim Horton's gift card a client had given him for some work he'd done for him. Our second day out we spent $25.  So going a bit over today won't break the bank!  I expect food to get more expensive the further into the trip we get...as the cooler empties.

So far accommodations have been a bit of a challenge.  The first two nights we stayed places that aren't ones I'd frequent again.  One thing I can't stand is dark rooms with inadequate lighting...and hard beds with flat pillows!  We did find the continental breakfast at the Comfort Inn in Kenora to be excellent!  Though they did not have sugar free spreads for toast.  In fact, there was a real lack of sugar free options on their breakfast menu.   I've really been struggling with the sugar free issue this trip.

We had a wonderful time today driving through northern Ontario looking at the leaves.  They are starting to change colour and the hillsides are sporting a mist of oranges and yellows.  Beautiful!

I spent the morning booking more hotel rooms. I think I have it covered...except for four days in Halifax...supposedly. I'm letting Paul pick those nights. I suspect it will be very serendipitous and spontaneous. My very detail oriented, bean counting husband likes to be let out to play and experience the wilder side of life every now and then! LOL It will probably also be more expensive than the other nights. But better he see that for himself.

Handwork

I also spent some time on my Brazilian embroidery. I'm on the third motif now. I finished the first one in "Sunshine's Treasures" by Cheryl Schuler. It's called "Creeping Flower".


I started two more motifs. I'm waiting for thread from a friend to finish this second one of hydrangeas...


While I'm waiting on that thread, I've started this one of daisies...


So far it's been kind of fun.

I'm also spinning more.  I found some merino wool in my stash ready for spinning.  It's gorgeous!  I took it to a spinning drop-in and a lady loaned me a spindle to spin it with.  It's so much easier than spinning Romney wool.

I've also been working my way through some DVDs on quilting put out by C&T Publishing.  This is good stuff folks!  Very thorough and informative DVDs on various topics.  I love these and hope to have a set of my own some day.  Right now I am borrowing from a friend and watching them.

I think I need to slow down my life a bit. This morning I was up a bit late. Had my shower and rushed out the door to the gym. Came home, threw together my Brazilian embroidery materials and fled out the door for stitching. I'm glad I went. I met a new lady. Also received lots of advice on my embroidery and the class I'm going to teach. Work to do!

Rushed home. Had lunch.  Was on-line and just finished the on-line boards when the power cut out.  They're replacing a power pole somewhere in the neighborhood.  In order to make good use of the time I went through the mail and read more of "Life Coaching for Dummies" which is actually pretty good.

This week has kind of been like today.  It's fall and things are starting to speed up in town.  My schedule is filling up.  Between that and preparing for our vacation there doesn't seem to be much time to spend on-line or posting to the blog.

I finished the rail fence quilt and am working furiously to finish the top for the kimono quilt by tomorrow.  I want to sandwich it then.  We'll see.

I've finished the first design in Brazilian and am onto the second one.  No pictures because the camera is recharging.

While I quilt I listen to university lectures on-line. There are several for free.  Right now I'm working on LectureFox Online.  I've been having an interesting time of it so far.  I've also been listening to the new episodes of "Till Debt Do Us Part" on Slice TV.  Just click on "video" on the sidebar and you'll find a list of episodes to watch.

I finished reading "Imagine: a vision for Christians in the arts" by Steve Turner.  I appreciated what he was trying to say.  As a parent I struggle with some of the interpretations he made about art.  I am a firm believer of "garbage in, garbage out".  Unfortunately children often can't distinguish the good from the bad.   I think it's very important to gauge the emotional maturity of a child before selecting movies for them to watch...and I don't think Mr. Turner would disagree with me. 

It's an odd reaction for me, considering I started out in the arts in university.  I've painted nudes from life and been exposed to some interesting ideas in the name of art.  I will not paint nudes again because I've met some of the models (some are quite nice thank-you...just very poor, or have other issues that modeling is not helping them solve!).  While I appreciate their modeling as an imperfect solution to an imperfect world...I am not sure I want to be supporting imperfect solutions.

But my real challenge came when I had children.  My view of what was appropriate in art took a direct u-turn.  Having had "Titanic" forced on them by their grandma at far too tender an age ("Grandma made us watch it!" and Grandma admitted she had...it was an important social event of her time!  A good history lesson for them!), and having to suffer the consequences for a considerable time afterwards, I am a big fan of censorship!  Children are far more impressionable than people imagine.  It definitely opened my eyes for the need for guidance...to make sure they could handle what they saw.   And, at their request, we stopped leaving them alone with Grandma.  Too many nightmares and fear of water thanks to "Titanic" left them feeling insecure and unsafe around her. 

But I digress...Mr. Turner's book is actually quite good.  It just pushed a lot of parental buttons with me.  I was able to see his concentric view of looking at how Christians could be involved in the arts...and it was interesting to note where my artist friends fit in the different circles. The outer circle is showing the world how their worldview doesn't work in certain areas.  The second circle is the area expressing the Christian worldview to the world.  The third area is the area of art for the church and by the church...hymns, "The Book of Kells", for example. 

I guess my main concern is if we all operated in the outer circle of simply pointing out what's wrong with the rest of the world and not sharing the message that Christ is the only way to Heaven, that soon the message would be lost.   So I think he is right in having all three circles of involvement there.  And, like him, I do not see anything wrong with a Christian choosing one circle over another...as long as he/she has put thoughtful prayer into it and determined that is where God wants him/her.

Anywaaaay...I did not intend for this to become a book review! 

On the weight loss front...I am 169.6 lbs. Down 18 pounds. Yippee!  I am hoping to drop another 3 lbs. before the end of the month.  We'll see!  I am still going to the gym three times a week.  The fitness therapist is setting up a home program for me for winter soon.  I have decided to take Leslie Sansone's "Walk Away the Pounds" DVDs with me on vacation.  I can just drain the weighted balls before we fly home.  My nephews and I have a standing date for kayaking on vacation as well.  Plus I'm trying to convince Paul to spend the odd night in a hotel with a fitness room.  Won't have much luck there, but it sure would be nice to keep the upper body workout going on vacation.  Lots of kayaking I guess!

I've been teaching myself Brazilian embroidery this week. To be truthful I have had a workshop from a lady before. And I attended a few meetings of a Brazilian embroidery group last year. But this year they want me to teach something one night. So the push is on to really learn something fun and exciting to teach. But right now I'm starting with the basics...


I still have some French knots to add for the final touch. But I need a specific type of thread. I have a friend looking through her stash of threads for me. Gotta love friends like that!

The pattern is from...Sunshine's Treasures Book.  at JDR Brazilian Elegance.

As I mentioned...I finished the kookaburra embroidery. It is a complicated construction of seven layers of tulle sandwiched between two layers of organza. The tulle gives the shading to the piece. The embroidering itself is fairly simple short and long straight stitches. Here's my finished piece...




And here are the two quilts I'm working on...

Calliope...



This is a real thrifty quilt. The backing is a sheet I picked up at the Salvation Army Thrift Store and overdyed with RIT dyes. The border is the same fabric. The blocks themselves are leftovers from my other scrap quilt I finished earlier in the year. The sashing around them is a fabric I got for free through the Internet. The batting is pieced together scraps from other projects. All in all, a very thrifty quilt.

And my experimental quilt...



This last quilt really is mega-experimental. It's the first (and only) time I'll use the quilt-as-you-go technique. It is simply too time consuming. The blocks are samples of machine quilting from my first machine quilting class. The colours (gold and brown) are the results of my first experiment dyeing cotton with natural dyestuff. The gold is onion skin dyed, and the brown is cutch. The border pieces are the leftover fabric from a bedskirt I sewed Lisa years ago.

I'm hoping to work some more on these quilts this week. Hopefully when I go to the quilt group this week I'll be able to work on the blocks for my kimono quilt. I really don't want to do machine quilting on the machines at quilt group. They just aren't as good as my machine at home. But I can piece tops on them and sandwich quilts while I'm there. That should keep me busy for awhile!

I finished typing out the pattern inventory and printed it off.  Now I'm looking at it it seems there are a lot of duplicate patterns.  I'm going to go through them again.  I had a talk with a friend the other day and she suggested I might not want to let all the children's patterns go.  Children's clothing rarely goes out of style and can be used over and over again.  So I will go through those again too.  I did manage to divide the patterns I'm getting rid of into bags of different types.

I decided the sewing room needs a TV/VCR for watching instructional videos I have. To that end I spent Thursday afternoon...part of it...driving around town looking for a small TV/VCR unit. They don't make them anymore...the VCRs apparently. At any rate the cheapest TV I could find was $250CAD for a 15" TV. And it was widescreen. Not what I had in mind.

So I did a little searching on the on-line used sites. I found two units that seem to fit the bill. One was a 15" TV/VCR unit. The owner said it was quite heavy though. I was concerned as this has to sit on top of the plastic storage bins. Another was a 13" LCD flat screen. That sounds much nicer. Both were under $20CAD. So, moral of the story...check used on-line before buying in the store!

Other sewing room news...my black Monarch Precision machine is fixed! Yippee! Now I can sew some heavy duty stuff. They didn't rewire it and provide a switch though. Guess I'll have to sweet talk an electrician to do that.

I went to a local stitching store to pick up supplies for an upcoming workshop. I found two gorgeous Christmas ornament patterns I bought. One in canvaswork ("Sisters and Friends" by Carolyn Mitchell) and the other in hardanger ("Heirloom Oval Ornaments 2001" Lynne Hermanson). It was really hard to turn away from them.  I've seen them stitched and they are beautiful.

The workshop I'm talking about taking is one by Gary Clarke from Australia.  He is traveling across Canada and giving classes as he goes.  I am hoping it will be fun and I will be able to stay alert for the full time!  Full day classes are really hard on my system.  I couldn't miss this chance to learn a new technique though.  And the other ladies going are such fun! 

Of course as soon as I sign up for this a friend tells me there is a Star Blanket quilt workshop coming up this month too.  I can't afford both and it was a bit late coming to my attention.  I'm hoping she takes it and then she can teach me how to make one.  I already have the fabric for one.  Just need the instructions.

I managed to sew another quilt block today, but I have no picture of it yet.  I'm going to try and sew another one tonight and then take pictures tomorrow morning for posting.

Paul and I were having problems with the new wireless router, so we took it back to the store and they exchanged it for another one.  This one works just fine.  Of course going into a computer store is dangerous with Paul at the best of times.  I was no help today.  I commented to the owner that I'd love to be able to do more artistic design work with my computer.  I have Paint Shop Pro, but the mouse just doesn't cut it when you try to draw.  Well...15 minutes later we left the store with a new graphics tablet and pen to connect to the computer.  The whole reason for going to the store in the first place?  To pick up Paul's laptop battery which came in.  He is so excited!  He's tried it with the wireless on the main floor and it works. 

I feel bad about spending this much on electronics, but we are getting them at good prices and they will be used.  The laptop was free from Lisa and Carl.  So a new battery was still a cheap laptop.  And the increased versatility I'll have with my computer is worth the money spent.  Now I can get serious with Paint Shop Pro.