Beady Eyed Fancies is live on ETSY

What a journey this has been.  I've started new business's before, run business's successfully, but this is my first time setting up a business electronically.  Etsy is an umbrella under which artists and crafters can sell.   I am now under the Etsy umbrella.    you can go to Beady Eyed Fancies here 
I feel a bit like a cook with lots of pots on the stove, pots that need careful tending, stirring, and adding ingredients as needed

 The first six Hand Stitched Artist's Soft Booklets are up.  Each has an an original cover, and they all have pockets on the inside covers, and 4 soft felt pages in the middle.  I have now cut out a new shape  - a heart.  And then there is the butterfly shape, inspired by this antique needle case found in a garage sale.  We'll see how it all goes.

I love working with my hands.  I love the satisfaction of making something, stitching something, knitting something or crocheting something.  Knitting for me is a meditative process, especially when I am doing a gazillion rows of garter stitch like I am right now with the new afghan, which is coming along nicely by the way and will be ready for a photo op soon.   And so it goes.  Stay tuned.

 

Meet the new Afghan

Our new Chesterfield/couch/sofa arrived this past week.  At long last the livingroom is starting to come together.  So, what's a girl to do but dive into the yarn stash in search of just the right colours to make an afghan that goes with this lovely new piece of furniture. A new colourful afghan will be great for snuggling under this coming winter with a good book or a great movie.  The background colour of the sofa is a soft sage green, and the pillows are a brocade with dark wine red running through them. This grouping is what I've come up with and I think it will work well. 
I have cast on 215 stitches.  The plan is to knit lengthwise in garter stitch which will make the afghan reversable.  It will also be fringed as I go along.  I want the focus to be on colour rather than stitches.
One of the yarns I chose from my stash is sari silk from Nepal.  And it was a beast to roll into a ball from the twist!  Sari silk yarn is actually warp ends from the big factory looms on which are woven silk material for  sari's in Nepal and India.  Some bright soul seeing these discarded ends on the factory floor had the idea to sweep them up and give them to spinners to spin into knitting yarn.  Great idea, gorgeous colours, and a pretty soft hand.  However - all these sari silk yarns are single ply, thick and thin, and all spun in one direction which means they twist pack on themselves like nobody's business.  They also have the odd twig or bit of paper spun into them - after all they started out as floor sweepings didn't they. 
So, there I was, merrily rolling the first skein into a ball and watching with horror as the skein became a bigger and bigger knot.  It looked like a bird's nest and I had to cut the yarn and start again twice, but the beast is now tame and ready to knit with and all the chosen yarns are in my work basket waiting for their turn on the needles.

the Lilacs are here - finally

when I was a little girl we had a lilac hedge in our back yard.  It marched down the side of our vegetable garden and separated our yard from Mrs. Stewart's yard.  In the spring it was a mass of lavender blossoms.  Mum would fill vases so we could enjoy them in the house. 

I have planted three lilac bushes in our new garden and we were thrilled to to find a large existing bush which is now completely in bloom with gorgeous, perfumed purple flowers. 

We also have an apple tree which I pruned quite heavily last fall and which has rewarded us with blossoms this spring.  Perhaps, once the fruit sets, we'll be able to figure out what kind of apples they are.  Last year the apples were so diseased it was impossible to tell.  They looked like wizened apple dolls on the branches.
So the little garden is coming along nicely I'm pleased to say, right down to a perky crop of dandilions littering the lawn.  I'm working on that.

On the Bluebird Trail

 Here is one of the lovely weathered bluebird boxes on the Bluebird Trail. 

Meet  Mr and Mrs Bluebird who were somewhat alarmed as they watched us open their front door

 And here is why.  Hopefully these wee eggs will hatch and the fledglings will make it.  Keep your fingers crossed for them.
The Bluebird trail in the southern interior of BC is all maintained by conscientious volunteers who look after the bird houses, monitor the state of the eggs, and compile the statistics.  Good on them I say! 

 Mind you, not all the houses contained eggs on the lovely Sunday morning we tramped Cora's section of the trail  and not all contained nests constructed by Bluebirds. But the Bluebird population is increasing again and this is a good thing.  We found some sparrow nests, and some swallow nests started in some of the houses and we found some completely empty houses - wrong neighbourhood I'm guessing. Even Bluebirds have a wish list when it comes to property ownership apparently.
 Following all that, a picnic, a cup of tea complete with a gorgeous country view were next.  And then it was back to town and reality.
Good luck Mr and Mrs Bluebird!  May you and your children have a happy, song-filled life full of good bugs to eat.

I have been restoring  old black and white family photos with the help of my wonderful Adobe Lightroom program.  This is my Grandfather as a young, newly married man, who, sadly, I never knew.  I shot a copy with my Canon rebel XT of the original which was 11" x 14" and cropped and cleaned it up with the clone tool. 

I used to run a black and white darkroom in my journalist days and I remember lots and lots of spotting black and white photos for dust specs, etc.  Believe me when I say this, the clone tool in Lightroom beats the taste of the spotting ink by a mile!  This is my Grandmother.  Isn't she pretty?  It's good to know where your eyebrows come from I think.  I did know her.  She had a delightful laugh - like bells.  Her daughters had the same laugh.  It was an infectious sound.

And this is my wonderful dad at 21.  He was goofing around, probably on a Sunday, for his sister who was on the working end of the Camera.  He was working on a Threshing crew at the time so this would have been taken in September 1926, southern Alberta on a hot sunny day. 
All these black and white treasures are little stories, little bits of "being", memories on celluloid and paper.

This one is a treasure for sure.  The original is a tintype, handcoloured, of my great Grandmother, my Dad's grandmother.  Lots of spotting went into restoring this beauty.  There is no date on it, but judging from her dress it was the middle to late 1800's when it was taken.  Her name was Mary.  There is quite a store there.  She caught the eye of my Great Grandfather when he was shipwrecked and her family helped rescue the crew off the coast of Cape Breton Island.  Apparently he caught her eye too. 

One last shot - I'm on the left.  My friend Marilyn and I were holding two geese, part of the bounty my dad brought home.  As I recall, Marilyn took her goose home to her mum for their dinner. 

I am absolutely obsessed with my garden at the moment.  Meet some of the new additions, resting in pots and waiting to find out just where in the garden they will be taking up permanent residence. 
The weather here is cool and rainy, which is good for watering and softening the earth for digging.
My goal is to tidy up the front beds, make things presentable, and then concentrate designing on the back yard.

Libby the border collie is helping - except her holes tend to be right in the middle of the lawn.  She climbed into the rabbit's play tunnel the other day, the better to watch the goings on.

As for the work, the first 6 little soft artist booklets are finished.   I hope to open an ETSY shop to showcase these beauties.  The goal was to have the first 6 done before I moved onto the marketing end.

 Each booklet cover is original.  I have used my fantasy crochet flowers, buttons, exotic ribbons and thread to create them.  Inside, they each contain a front and back pocket, and 4 soft pages for stitchers, knitters, and crocheters to put sewing needles, pins, tape measures, embroidery scissors, all in one neat little book that is easy to carry in a work bag.

I'm pleased to have the first 6 created and am now designing again.  My stash is full of surprises.

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post.  I have been away on a working holiday/road trip, first flying into the very warm California desert, and then driving back to Canada on scenic highway 101 which winds its way up the west coast of North America from California to the Canadian border.

The Southern California desert is fascinating and in places below sea level.  South of Palm Springs about an hour and close to the Great America Canal is a massive folk art creation, the imagination of Leonard Knight, called Salvation Mountain www.salvationmountain.us. Leonard is very frail now and no longer resides on site. However, he was there the Saturday we arrived, smiling and greeting tourists come to see his work.

 Here is Lois- cousin and traveling companion-  standing by the Mail Box

 Leonard used found and recycled objects collected from the desert - a great example of "steampunk"art.

And Paint, lots of lots of paint, straw and cement - tradition adobe techniques.  These flowers are made by punching a hole in the middle of a glob of cement and then painted.

Next Stop was Cabot Yerxa's Adobe home,now a museum

 Adobe techniques used very differently than Salvation Mountain,  Cabot's Pueblo Museum www.cabotsmuseum.org , another eccentric and wonderful creation built in the 1940's by Cabot Yerxa, using found objects to build what eventually became a Pueblo style 35 room residence.  Everything - doors, window glass, lumber boards was entirely recycled and rescued from his explorations into the desert.  I expecially loved the windows - using pieces of glass and every one different.
And then it was down the road home, and into the magnificent Redwood forest in northern California and out to the Oregon coast.

This is Arch Cape and the Pacific Ocean.. 

And then home.
 April showers turn to snow about 3000 feet and spring is a wish and a hope yet.

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