A new year, a new gadget

 Hello, everyone.

It's been apparent that some organizing needs to happen in my sewing studio.

A small example of the problem:

This is just a tiny corner of mixed up want-to-be's, a collection of little things for making pinnies out of. They get stacked, this dish is actually an improvement over the stacks on the table that get knocked off by sewing on other projects!--then something happens to mix them up and the layout work never gets started.

I found a couple of things on the Youtube that looked interesting. They are project design boards, but not the wall-sized ones people use to lay out whole quilts. These are just little ones for one block at a time. (Links go to two different ways to make them.) I know I once saw a Youtube look at someone's sewing room where the lady had a whole stack of them on her windowsill, each of them a different block in process, and the stack was neat and organized. (Well, it was a video about her neat and organized sewing room, so of course it was neat and organized, but the idea stuck with me.)

I'm not an experienced glue gun lady, but I didn't want to use up the iron on sticky stuff, so I tried Lori Holt's method. I had a 9x30 leftover bit of foam-core board in the studio. And there is a lot of 2.5" stripping in my stash.

The first, smallest one. 9x6. Much of the border was offcuts from placemats done in the past.

The other two were 9x12. Borders also from stash.

I should have ironed the batting. (Who knew that rumple would stay?) I think it will work anyway.

A new pinny soon to come:

The top is the upper one, the bottom is the lower one. And some more stash will leave the room! 

The Camino stays with us

 Hello, everyone.

Even though this year we have not been able to walk the Camino--not even a short route--there are things that stay with us.

We have been watching Camino videos on Youtube. (Sarah Dhooma's videos give a pretty good idea of path surfaces.) 

Occasionally we make tapas for dinner. We use a baguette recipe to make the barra bread. Sometimes we make garlic soup, too.

And we drink the Spanish and Portuguese wines.

These are three we have tried recently. The first is a lovely white, the other two are reds. We liked the bad rabbits a little better than the other red. (All found at Spec's.)

Just for pretty

Hello, everyone.

While doing things in the yard this morning, before the day's heat hit, I found some pretty and some cheerful things to photograph. (Yay for having the phone in my pocket!)

First, the cheerful ones:

The tiny white dots are Green Lacewing eggs. They're a cheerful sight because the larvae, and also the adults of this insect love, love, love to eat aphids. Possibly also mites! 

And the plumeria blossoms are "just for pretty!" I have been giving a spritz of the avocado tonic from Gary's Best Gardening to various other plants on the way by, so to speak. The plumeria has rewarded me by going into blooming mode. (Link goes to Mr. Matsuo's Youtube video on avocado care. Very interesting!) The native pepper plant has also done that--many tiny white blooms followed by incandescently hot oblong peppers. 

More Bead Play (also uses up Stash!)

Hello, everyone.

I have to give a hat tip to the Russian ladies on Youtube for this idea. They have uploaded bunches of twisted-wire work involving beads for hair, bracelets, whatever.

This is a bridal-style hair pin. A young lady I know thought that her ladies might like to have sparkly bits to tuck into a braid for The Day.

The beading actually grew like Topsy when I started working on it, I think the original idea was the daisy in the middle and maybe three or four beads sticking up, but one thing led to another and here we are. It uses up a number of crystalline faceted rounds and bicones, and some teardrops, some pale pink ones, and some seeds and various sizes of perles and even some cultured actual pearls. (The teardrop shaped ones on stems.) Also an assortment of bead caps.

The twisting has to be done carefully, I actually gave some of the wire metal fatigue by twisting too tightly and it broke. Who knew that could happen? But if y'all are thinking of doing something like this, now you know.

Beads mostly from Fire Mountain Gems, some from Hobby Lobby, wire likewise. Hair pin from the pile in my hair stuff! Rhinestone in the flower from Fire Mountain, it's a montee from a pack I got years ago to replace a lost rhinestone on a sweater. You never know when extra bits will come in handy!