Little Cypress Tree - Before

On a foggy day last week when I was looking for a nice bouquet, I found a little Cypress tree.  I'd never seen one before, and was taken by the perfect miniature scale of the branches.

It's 15" tall from the bottom of the pot to the tip of the tree.  It's a blank slate, waiting for some decorations.

After going through all of my stuff, I pretty much settled on this small mix.  I won't really know until I try them, because they have to be really light.  The branches aren't very strong at all.

I tried all kinds of yarn and ribbon and silk strands, but the scale was all wrong.  The green ladder yarn and the orange nubby yarn are the only two possibilities.

I'm not sure what color scheme I'll go with.  I do know that the light bulb beads are too large, darn it.

I'll use the colored metal wire as hooks.  That will be a lot of fiddly work to cut tiny pieces, bend them, hang the item, then decide if I like it or not.

For such a small tree, it's going to take a long time, but hopefully not more than another day or two.

New Toys

I went to the store for pencils last weekend and by the time I was done, I had all kinds of new toys.  I'm excited to be doing some new kinds of fun.

This is why  I needed pencils.  I recently bought myself some drawing notebooks and I didn't have any pencils except the ones you use to write up your grocery lists.  I decided to get two kinds of notebooks - the one on the right is for sketching.  Then I figured if I really liked what I drew, I could do the same thing on the multi-media notebook (with heavier paper) so I could paint / color / embellish it.

It took me a half hour to pick out these two pencils  This was my first time and I didn't know what I was doing.  Some pencils are encased in wood, some aren't (and they were naturally all broken), and some had metal sheaths.   I finally realized some pencils were graphite and some were charcoal, and that helped narrow the search.

Choosing an eraser and a pencil sharpener took another who-knows-how-long.

I like this pencil sharpener because it keeps all the shavings and graphite dust nice and tidy in a little container that you twist to open and close, until it's full enough to empty.

Then I found this book with different knitting patterns.  I'm not much of a knitter, but I kept seeing books on knitting things for your home.  That seemed much easier than knitting something for me.  Surely I can knit a flat little something and find a place for it.

Knitting on the Net is a website that has free instruction on nearly 200 knitting stitches (twice as many as this book has), but for me, the Knit Stitch Guide book is more convenient.  

I really don't have much yarn, so I picked up a few skeins.

The top row is Caron's Sheep(ish) by Vickie Howell, 70%acrylic and 30% wool.  Vickie was the host of Knitty Gritty, a knitting/crocheting show on HGTV and DIY Network.  She is the new host of Knitting Daily TV.

I was going to use Sheep(ish) with Patons' Melody (bottom left), but now I'm having second thoughts about combining yarns of different sizes.  But part of being a beginner is not knowing any better, so I just might go ahead.

I think I'll pair Bernat's cream boucle (bottom center) with Deborah Norville's pastel Serenity (bottom right.)  That's a different color palette for me.

The Painted Home is a decorating book, full of color.   I just started reading it yesterday, and it seems like all the photos in it are of her home.  Dena is a designer of fabric, bedding, home decor, gifts, greeting cards, and more.

If you like color in your home, check out the books by Susan Sargent.  All of them are available in your local library system.

I'm pretty sure my days of sewing clothes are behind me, but I'm still interested in looking at them.  The Vintage Pattern Selector combines a history of fashion from the 1920s - 1970s with current interpretations of those styles.

And this is for the times when I feel like sewing, but not making a quilt.  Stitched Whimsy is full of 3-D projects.  The first one I'm going to make is the house.

Things To Do On a Foggy Day

It sure is foggy today.  There's still lots of fun things to do.  Like...

Take a walk and enjoy the warmish weather and the soft air.  You know it's only going to get colder.

Smell good smells.  Last year I stopped cutting back my rudbeckia in the fall - the seeds smell SO good when they get wet.  

Go to Pier One and buy strings of decorative lights, like these miniature paper lanterns.  Then take a nap while your husband assembles and hangs them in your sewing room.

Maybe you'll get lucky and find a set of umbrella lights, exactly what you're looking for, on clearance.  And since this is the only set, you feel like you won the lottery.

Watch Chickadees flit in and out of the bird feeder.

Get groceries and treat yourself to a bouquet.

Make ten little bouquets to spread around the house.

 

These three will go together.

At four inches tall, this one's my favorite.

Give a Little, Part Seven

Hey - I finished something sooner than I predicted!!!

This is the fabric for the charity quilt I started on Saturday, November 23rd.  I was hoping to have it finished by this past weekend, and I finished it a couple of days early.

In order to get it done so quickly, there was a lot of this going on.

You can see that it's a simple pattern.  I alternated 2" x 10" white strips with 5" x 10" patterned strips.  So simple, yet so pleasing.  I guess I like the symmetry of it.  

I also like the mix of light, medium, and dark prints.

It's a small quilt, but it's not THAT small (it's 36" x 47".)  This pig thinks it fits just right in his cradle, and I guess it does when you keep folding and folding it.

Aside from the simple pattern and small size, several other things made this a quick finish.  

 

The quilting was simple - I echoed each rectangle, then sewed a large X.  For durability, I machine stitched the binding.

The backing was one single length of fabric - it's so nice not to have to do any piecing on this side.  And since I'm giving it away, there was no need for a sleeve or a label.

And here's the finished quilt.

Not Just Another Pretty Face

If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.
                                                                 --- Timothy Leary