July, 2011

Friday, July 29th, 2011

August Break 2011

It’s getting to be that time again…

Time for me to dust off my cameras and get a bit serious about taking daily photos again. As with last year, I’ve decided to join Susannah Conway in her quest to capture summer’s end with August Break photos. It was an amazing experience last time – filled with beautiful images, wonderful people, and inspiration galore. I am very excited to shift gears from “work-work-work” to “work-work-play a little more”, as I haven’t spent a whole lot of time being artsy-creative over the last few months.

Thing is, I want this August to be just a little different than last… somehow. I’ve been fantasizing about making more “Hipstamatic”-like images for a while now – and I absolutely love the dreamy photos some of my 2010 August Break pals have been making using textures and whatnot. But as I have neither an iPhone nor a Photoshop program, it’s been kind of hard to realize that ambition. Then I stumbled upon on this brief TED clip on Boots and CatEyes’ blog…

And immediately after that, I read a post about online photo editing programs like Pixlr.com on Dancing Matilda’s blog…  and I knew I had to just take the plunge and make it happen. And so, I will dedicate my next month to posting photos that have been digitally altered in some way – more so than the minor “transparency” or “colour” adjustments that I have been doing on occasion.

Anyhow. I hope you will enjoy my endeavors as much as I will – even the duds that I am sure produce (they’ll be good for a laugh, at least…). ;) Alright, then. Here we go. Wheee!

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Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Summery Blooms

Just a few snaps of what’s been going on in the garden the last couple of months…

Spring eased it’s way into summer with the blooming of the lilacs.

Then summer started off with a bang, thanks to the showy peonies.

And the many the wayward daisies.

The bees were hard at work in the geraniums.

And the poppies dazzled from beginning to end.

They were soon followed by the day lilies.

The bluebells.

And the roses.


My containers provided much joyful colour.

While the thistles provided much frustration.

With the harvesting of the lavender, things slow down.

The days are getting shorter, and the produce is just starting to be enjoyed. Soon there will be echinacea, lamb’s ear, and Russian sage flowers, and before you know it, fall will be right around the corner. But hopefully not too soon. ;)

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Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

More Surprising Myself

Okay. So. Manymanymany moons ago, I purchased Kelly Rae Roberts book “Taking Flight: Inspiration & Techniques to Give Your Creative Spirit Wings”. I even did a post about my experience with the book and the whole “standing on the shoulder of giants” thing. In that post, I promised that when I finally did finish my collage, I’d share it with you. Well, guess what? Today is that lucky day! Woohoo!!!

As luck would have it, my “domestic assistant” came over today. For whatever reason, the kids were driving me crazy, so I packed them all up in the car, gave them some money, and sent them to the mall for a few hours. It was so peaceful, so quiet… and so necessary for my sanity! As I was enjoying my quiet cup of chai, I realized that I had no desire to work on anything today. Yes, a bunch of things needed to get done (they always do), but today I really needed to just play.

I decided to do something creative. Not just anything, mind you – something I wouldn’t normally allow myself the time to do. And there it was – my collage. It’s been half-finished and collecting dust on my shelves for a very long time. Filled with patterned papers that I adore and gentle reminders for how I want to live, but only half-finished nonetheless.

Alrighty, then. First, I needed to tidy up the kitchen table so I’d have somewhere to work. Then, I had to dig out all of the supplies I might need from my disaster of an office. And after I had procrastinated by cutting some fresh flowers, finding some good music, checking in on Facebook… I forced myself to just START.

You have to understand, starting the painting part of the collage was the hardest part for me. Not only have I not done any serious painting in, well… years… but I have this little negative voice inside myself that says “your painting is SO naive” – and not in the charming kind of way. But I did my best to ignore that little voice, familiarized myself with Kelly Rae’s techniques again, and got to work.

Long story short, after several attempts – twice for using the brayer to apply paint, three times for adding the shading, and I-lost-track-of-how-many-times for the face – and my girlie was finally done.

At least I think she’s done. I am still trying to decide if I want to add wings to her or not, as well as some black tape around the edges of the frame to “finish it” a bit more. But there she is. Done for now. She’s hardly perfect – the zoologist/scientist in me says “she’s not at all symmetrical… her neck is weird… and where exactly are her shoulders?” And I don’t really like that the collaged paper edges show so much. But the artsy-fartsy in me says “Woohoo!!! Look at what you can do! Way to go, girlie!”

And I think for now, that’s the voice I wanna listen to. ;)

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Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Separating Embroidery Floss

So, yesterday I put up a post about crochetting a rock cozy. When I found that regular crochet thread was too bulky for my project, I decided to use a few strands of embroidery floss instead. The trick was… how to separate them from the twisted 6-strand length. I tried to look it up on the interwebs, but the techniques they offered were for short lengths of thread – only about 1 metre at most. Unfortunately, I had 8 metres I was wanting to separate (so that I would have enough to crochet a large motif), so the ideas I found wouldn’t work for me. Hmm. At first, I separated out 3-strands and started pulling them out, trying to untwist as I went – but I just ended up making a big, knotty mess. Time to put on my thinking cap…

Eventually, this is what I came up with.

Step 1: Open The Skein. Remove the wrappers and find the center of all the loops.

Step Two: Slip The Centre Around Something Heavy. Like a book, or piece of wood, or something similar.

Step Three: Separate Out Your Threads. Initially, I chose two sets of 3-strands, unwinding the thread clockwise to unravel it, then wrapping each set of strands in a tiny, little ball. But this was very time consuming. So…

Step Four: Attach Your Separated Threads To A Small But Wide Object. I took two sets of 3-strands and taped them to a little wooden block that my son had. You could use anything for this – a piece of cardboard, a toilet paper roll, another small book… Or, you could also separate out different sized sets of strands – three sets of two, six sets of one, etc.

Step Five: Rotate. Turn the block like a propeller to unwind the thread. For me, this was clockwise. When there is a good length of unraveled yarn, roll the block up like a roll of wrapping paper, taking care to keep your sets separate. Unwrap a bit more from around the book and repeat until done.

Step Six: Use Your Strands. You can work with it right off the block, or as I prefer, you can wind the string into separate tiny, little balls.

And voila – separated floss threads, in nice long lengths! I like to have all my thread ready to go before I even start my project, and since I only had one block that was that size, I ended up doing four bunches of floss ahead of time. Kinda pretty altogether, don’t you think?

Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? ;) Happy crafting!

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Monday, July 25th, 2011

Is That A Rock Cozy?

As you may well remember, I relatively recently rediscovered my love of crochet – remember the Angry Birds Hat? Flower Power? Poko? Although, while making these projects, I also rediscovered that I was lacking some important knowledge – that being, what the names of stitches actually were, how to read a pattern, how to follow a pattern, etc. And so. When I came across this book in Michael’s (craft store) a few months back, I knew I just had to pick it up.

Beyond The Square: Crochet Motifs by the talented Edie Eckman. You can visit her at edieeckman.com.

It’s wonderful!!! Lots of big, shiny photos. A glossary of names and terms. Instructions in both visual and textual forms. PERFECTION! I can’t recommend it highly enough. Anyhow. I slowly worked my way through the “Workshop” section, familiarizing myself with the “how to’s” of crochet, and then I tackled some of the motifs I liked using some cotton yarn ends I just had kicking around.

Woohoo! Look at me go! In no time at all (okay-okay, the actual time between purchasing the book, reading the book, and practicing my skills was actually several weeks in length, but overall it wasn’t so long) I became comfortable with my new skills and felt ready to tackle something new. Namely, this.

Behold the gorgeous creations of Margaret Oomen, a rural physician and textile artist from Ontario that I happened to discover via one of my “inspirational” links. You can find her work (both the crochetted stones and the photographs she takes of them) in her Etsy store, knitalatte. I totally fell in love with the multicoloured crochetted stone, but just couldn’t bring myself to spend $150 on it. So, I took it as a kind of challenge instead.

I went out and got some thin crochet thread and a teeny hook and tried a new motif. It ended up being a lot bulkier and larger than I had anticipated. Hmm. Well, maybe I should try to separate some strands of embroidery floss and use only a few of them instead? So I gave that a try (I’ll put up a whole post on how to do that tomorrow, for all those DIY-ers out there…) and this is what it looked like.

As you can see, it was finer – lacier even – and I was pretty satisfied. Next, I tried using some different colours in the motif. (I still can’t believe how tiny the work is! If I keep up with it, I may need to get glasses again…)

When I was done, I went out and found a nice rock in the alley, stitched the two pieces together, and voila – my version of the “rock cozy” was done.

Front…

And back.

Just for fun, I grabbed a couple of my beach treasures and made a quick-and-dirty collective…

Not too shabby, huh? Maybe when I have more time, I’ll do some more experimenting – and put a little more effort into my photography… but for now, I’m pretty happy with my new windowsill decoration. Maragret’s stone that I really like has pieces of embroidered cloth stitched in, which will be yet another challenge, but I’m sure I’ll figure out something. Yay, me! Sometimes, I surprise even myself. =)

P.S. I Googled “crochet rock covers” and found this tutorial in case you’d like to try to make one for yourself. Yippie! I love the interwebs.

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Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Speaking of Inspiration…

A few months back, I went down to Venice, CA to visit both my best friend and my sister, who just happened to be living in the same neighbourhood at the time. The house I stayed in was being rented by my friend and her family, and it was… amazing. Soooo cute – sunny and open, porch swing, hardwood floors throughout, pretty little garden, interesting nooks and crannies… But my favourite part was that there was art everywhere!

Starting with actual Picassos – in the bathroom!

There were framed pieces on every wall…

Sculptural pieces…

Mixed media pieces…

Garden pieces…

Functional pieces (the swimmers form a lamp base!)…

And even pieces done by the home owner’s children.

It. Was. Awesome. There was always something new and interesting just waiting to be discovered, and I’m sure there were a lot of happy memories and associations for the home owner too. It made me want to do the same sort of thing in my own home – even though we don’t have nearly the same wall space, nor do we have a collection of work as vast (other than some pieces done by Monkeyboy Junior…) or which includes Picassos.

So. When I got back, I decided to begin my own little collection, starting with a couple of these. The following month, I ordered a print of this. Then I picked up some photos at the local Lilac Festival, and just this month I ordered one of these. I figure not only am I decorating my home with things that inspire me, but I’m also supporting artists directly. Win-win. And, with the purchase of some inexpensive frames at the Wal-Mart, I am also showing off the talents of my offspring. Now. All I need to do is find some wall space to display everything. ;)

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Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Creative Inspirations #24

Another site I’ve stumbled upon recently (by clicking through links on other sites) is Posie Gets Cozy, hosted by Alicia Paulson.

The first post I fell in love with was about her new work space (I’s gotta get me one of these!) But then I poked around a bit more and found tons and tons of great stuff I adore – like her Daisychain Sampler pattern, her gorgeous back yard, and her adorable knitting and crochet pieces. I have spent many hours poking around and getting inspire by her and her amazing taste. *sigh* I think I really need to get myself an iPhone to make some dreamy photos too… Enjoy!

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Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

Well, Well, Well…

As you may have noticed, I’ve haven’t been blogging much lately. Too much to do, too much in my own little world. Yet another of my summer projects has been to try and reclaim our garden. When we moved in 9 or so years ago, I convinced my husband to get rid of about 2/3 of the grass on our property in favour of a cottage garden out front and raised veggie boxes and fruit trees out back. And when I had time to tend to it, it looked pretty nice!

 

But alas, a second child with even more acid reflux issues later, and the weeds kind of took over. So, this summer (thanks to a couple of mornings at “Daddy Dayhome” per week for Monkeyboy Junior Jr.) I’ve decided I’m taking it back.

Step One – The Tree Wells

This involves removing the mulch and the old, crappy weed barrier and hand digging out the weeds, trying not to disturb the roots too much. Then the dirt is amended with compost and organic fertilizer, a plastic weed barrier is pounded in below ground and a new “construction grade” weed barrier and mulch goes above ground, and it’s all held nicely in place with bricks or rocks or whatever.

I decided that dealing with the rest of the front garden is a bit… overwhelming. It’s just too much to take care of in one fell swoop, and I never feel like I get much done when I do go out there and weed my little heart out. In contrast, the back garden boxes are SO easy to care for. The beds are slightly raised and surrounded – so nobody ever steps in them or compresses the dirt, which makes weeding *super* simple. Plus, I can totally tend to one (or more) in an afternoon and see that I’ve accomplished something.

And so, after discussing various “time and effort saving options” with a landscaper (and feeling like he was really just in it for the money rather than to actually make my garden any better), I’ve decided to divide the front garden into several mini raised beds. The first one is going to employ an actual bed headboard that I’ve been reluctant to give away, to become a true flower bed. But first, there is much more weeding to be done…

Therefore, when I have time away from the kids I’m usually in the front yard trench weeding like a mad woman, and when they’re around (and need to be corralled by a fence) I’m in the backyard working on the tree wells back there. Turning this…

Back into this…

I doubt I’ll get it all done this summer – neither the weather nor our immune systems have been cooperating very much, but at least it’s a start. I have a vision, a direction, a plan. And little by little, it will become a paradise once more. Now, I just have to figure out what I want to put between all the mini-beds out front. More mulch? Rocks? Ideas?

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Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Cabana-Bana-Fo-Fana

So, one of my summer projects has been to make our back deck a little more “livable”. Long story short, it’s an awkwardly sized south-facing thing, and finding a way to enjoy spending time on it without getting cooked to a crisp in the summer sun has been, er… challenging. A few years back we got fed up with the whole umbrella meme – they were never large enough and always danced around dangerously in the wind – and we finally found a retractable cover that actually fit… after I’d built some 10″ tall stands to put the legs on, that is. But the fabric hasn’t done well in the weather (heat, wind, cold, ice, etc.), and once it hits 6 pm around here, it offers very little in the way of useful shade. What to do, what to do?

The sad, old cover – laid out on the grass for measuring.

Why, take advantage of the local fabric store’s outdoor fabric sale, of course! Sadly, the choices of colours and patterns were quite limited, but I managed to find 14 metres of some rather “festive” fabric that I didn’t hate – for just over $4 per metre, no less! (Naturally, the fabric I *really* liked wasn’t part of the sale, and was going for $36 per metre… So, yeah. $4/m fun fabric it was!) Next, it was time to use the old cover as a pattern for the new, and then use the rest of the fabric to make some new half-curtains – long enough to block out that 6 pm sun, but not so long that you couldn’t still enjoy the garden…

The new cover and half-curtains creating a cabana-like feel.

A bit of rearranging of the bbq and furniture, and the addition of some flower boxes, an old IKEA rug, and some colourful solar lanterns… and voila – an awesome “new” retreat was ours!

The cover and one set of curtains, as seen from the side.

Eating outside… reading… watching the children play in the yard… why, everything is far more enjoyable when one isn’t worried about getting fried or squinting so hard that you give yourself a headache. ;) The curtains are easily detached (thanks to the use of Velcro) and the cover can be drawn back during storms – and this time I’ll be sure to take all the fabric in over the winter, so hopefully we can enjoy it for years to come. Next up, painting that hideous “by ALL SPAN” – covered chipboard shed. I’m thinking of using a whole lot of colours – a different combo for each wall – so that it might provide some interesting backdrops for photos or something. Wish me luck!

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Posted in Crafty, DIY | 2 Comments »

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Tsadziki

Last week, whilst waiting with friends at our place for dinner to arrive, I pulled out some hummus that I had made earlier to snack on. (If you missed the recipe, you can find it here.) Our friends seemed to really like it, and it got me thinking that I had yet to find a really good tsadziki recipe to accompany it. Up until then, my favourite yogurt-cucumber dip could be found made by the “Greek Girls” at the farmer’s market, but none of the recipes I had tried had measured up. Hmm.

Well, during the last few months of de-cluttering and downsizing, I unearthed an old cookbook from the early 80′s entitled “Greek Vegetarian Cooking”. Why not give their recipe a shot? And so… the perfect tsadziki recipe was found. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. ;)

Tsadziki

  • 2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
  • salt and pepper (to taste)
  • 2 tsp olive oil (I used extra virgin)
  • 1 tbsp cider vinegar (wine vinegar would work too)
  • 1 cup Greek-style yogurt (that’s the really thick stuff)
  • 1 cup cucumber, coarsely grated (I used a Long English)

In a bowl combine the salt and pepper (start with 1/2 tsp each and work your way up after you’ve tried the finished product if need be) with the garlic. Smush them all together, really working the grains into the pulp. Add the oil and liquify the pulp. Mix in the vinegar. Add the yogurt and slowly mix until blended. Add the cucumber and mix well. Chill before serving. So easy, but soooo good!

Note: If you can’t find “Greek-style” yogurt, you can always try to make some thicker yogurt yourself – doing the whole straining out the excess liquid from regular, plain yogurt through a cheese-cloth covered sieve in the fridge for hours – but I’ve never had much luck with that. Also, if the cucumber is really fresh (and thus really liquidy), you can always try to absorb some of the liquid with paper towels or strain it through a strainer with a pinch of salt… but for me, this always seems like too much effort for the end result.

Anyhow. I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but here’s something to chew on for a bit. Hope your summer is going well, and hope to see you here again soon! =)

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