'Tis a loovely day for a walk, they tell me

Hello, everyone.

I woke up this morning to weather that even the dogs and chickens don't want to go out in: 48F, north wind, and drizzle/rain from time to time.

In weather like this, the Irish ladies assured us that it's a "lovely day for a walk!"  

The poncho kept the pack, and contents, dry! And I needed it a lot that day. (Zubiri)

Quick comments on the rain poncho: this is the taffeta type with the extra long back that will cover the pack. It doesn't reach down to cover the lower legs, but if it did I'd probably trip over the hem. The snaps at the sides are easy to open, sometimes by accident, and if you don't use them, the whole poncho can turn around to where the long parts are down the sides instead of front and back. Especially in wind! It's also very noisy to wear--hey, it's taffeta!--and since it is water resistant and wind resistant, it will keep heat in.

I wore it over the green windbreaker because it was a day like today, and over my green sun hat, to keep the rain off of my glasses.

Note that the snaps came undone and the wind has worked its magic. (Alto del Perdon) 

...And another one down!

Hello, everyone.

The Red Quilt is finished!

From miscellaneous squares in need of a home in September

to UFO with strong diagonal elements and sashing (the dark blue strips) to separate the squares

to completed baby/lap quilt at the end of the year.  (Which I am unwilling to wait for the final wash to complete before posting this, so y'all can refer back to the last time the Red Quilt was discussed to view the navy blue satin blanket-binding borders, instead of seeing a new picture here. There are no changes from the last picture except the final hand sewing.)

This means the decks are cleared for the Peanut Quilt: which I already have the fabrics for. I'm thinking something in the tesselated crosses line, maybe with an accent square in the center of each cross--a pieced fish square?--and with the colors being: soft greens, yellows, some oranges and golds, some purples. The fish squares, being pieced from two fabrics, will either mirror one another across the quilt--allowing me to use the "solid" prints economically--or be a mix of "solid" print and white. I haven't decided yet.

It's also possible that a pieced boat or two will materialize inside one of the tesselated crosses.

The one thing I do know for sure is that it must be completed by the middle of February!

I wish for everyone a happy and prosperous new year.

Quilting progress

Hello, everyone.

I have made progress on the Red Quilt.

Side bindings done! End bindings half done!

I hope that this will be finished this weekend. (All it needs is the hand sewing and the final wash.)

Then I can begin on the baby quilt for DD1, and none too soon as she's due in less than 2 months.

My sweetie and I  have been talking about walking, too. We find that we're drawn to return to Santiago--or maybe to try the walk from Switzerland down to Rome. All we know for sure is that the trail calls to us. We shall see what becomes of this yearning over time.

Christmas greetings

Hello, everyone.

It's 60F and my sweetie wanted to show off our mandarin oranges!

Merry Christmas to all, and may you enjoy all the blessings of the season!

Embellishments

Hello, everyone. I was clearing off a flat surface in my “office”—that being the room that the computer, the sewing machine, the beading stuff, and a lot of books live together in—and it occurred to me to discuss some of the books that I referred to during the Great Dress Project.

The Great Dress Project was my daughter’s wedding dress, which included a shrug and many assorted false starts. During the adventure, I bought a number of books about various embellishment techniques and formalwear/wedding projects.

One I had on hand at the beginning of the adventure was Bridal Couture, by Susan Khalje. This had been my assistant for various sewing projects over the years. When my daughter got engaged, I pulled it off the shelf and went through it again. When she settled on a shape (the first time) I used it and some off the shelf patterns to come up with the prototype strapless bodice. When she changed the bodice to include band sleeves, it was back to Bridal Couture again! I cannot say enough words about how helpful this book is. You can use it for bridesmaid dresses and high school formal dresses just as well as for wedding dresses. And its discussion of various fabrics is a good start on the process of creating the whole project.

She decided on a beaded dress, so I accumulated books on beading, to go along with one I had already: Bead Embroidery Stitch Samples, by Yasuko Endo; Beading on Fabric, by Larkin Jean Van Horn; Beyond Beading Basics, by Carol Rodgers; Fine Embellishment Techniques, by Jane Conlon; Bead & Sequin Embroidery Stitches, by Stanley Levy.

  

The one that was already here was Designer Bead Embroidery by Kenneth D. King. It was helpful, but other than the very wise advice about underlining to give structure to the fabric and using an embroidery frame, I didn't end up using actual words in it much. It did get me started on prototyping various stitch ideas, though, and that taught me a whole lot! In particular, that less can be so much more in design, and that sequins really weren’t going to be needed.

Sequins and shapes--oops, too busy! Loopy stitches--totally not needed!

Test of various floral elements and bead combinations.

This bit of testing became the springboard of the final design. (The pinkish part on the left was the keeper. Done, of course, in ivory like the dress and silvery-white.)

Here is part of it, being added to the bodice-front pieces. (3mm Swarovski perles, Miyuki size 11 seeds and size 15 rocailles)

The blue lines are the tracing lines, which are not on the actual fabric. They're on Sulky Solvy! Which, conveniently, dissolves in water. And that's what it did at the end of the beadwork.

Octopus

Hello, everyone.

I suppose y'all can tell that the Christmas seasonal rush has been keeping us busy. The group activities are done, but there are still many family things. Gift shopping. Cookie baking. This year, for my first time, cookie decorating. (I think I don't like almond extract.) Fruitcake baking. Wrapping. Checking the delivery progress of mail-order things that haven't come yet.

Today, as I was getting ready to roll out a ball of dough, my sweetie said, "What are we having for dinner?" Umm. So we pulled an octopus out of the freezer and put it into the sink to thaw. Then, because the food that goes with octopus is baguette bread, pulled the two frozen loaves out to thaw and rise. And when I sat down at the computer and riffled through the pictures in it, I came across this:

The old fortress of Carlos V--or is it San Carlos?--in Fisterra. The nice man who showed us around the Fishing Museum inside is on the right. Check out the gorgeous hydrangea bush!

 And especially this:

Lobster traps/octopus traps.

The man told us that these round boxes are lobster traps. They put the bait (chicken necks or something like that) into the trap and leave the little door open for the lobster to go into it. Apparently the lobster can't figure out how to get out again. Or he is trying to take the food with him and won't leave it. At any rate, it developed over time that the fishermen would pull up the trap and find, not a lobster, but an octopus. The octopus would come along and either go for the lobster bait himself, or even more likely, go for the lobster. Then he would look around and say, "hey, nice cave. I think I'll just live here." And he'd stay. He'd even stay while they pulled the trap up. All because he's greedy (for the food) and lazy (just moves in on this little "cave.")

I wonder, now, how many of our bad habits that we get are basically us acting like octopus? We do something because it's easy and seems to solve a little problem. Then we get comfortable in it, and don't even think about changing. Even if the little habit turns into a bad problem, often we don't open our minds to getting rid of the habit. And all the while that rope is getting tighter on the trap, and pulling it up and up...until our self-created bad habit make a big wreck of some thing that we really care about.

Frutas del bosque remembered

Hello, everyone.

The Camino lives and grows in your soul, and at the oddest times you find yourself missing one particular moment. That happened to my sweetie this weekend. He went to HEB and saw the ripe (imported) cherries and came home to say that I should pick them up. It's a great deal, he said. Well. Maybe, for midwinter, but they were still about $6/pound. (4-plus euro for the half kilo, ouch!) I didn't get them. But I thought about it--and here is where my thought led me:

In the last part of the Camino, in Galicia I think, we were walking along over green and often woody hills. We passed one particular bit with some houses, my sweetie walking ahead as he so often did, and I looked up and found I'd caught the eye of the sweetest little old lady. She was sitting on her chair in her drive, just off the trail, and arranging frutas del bosque (raspberries) in baskets for sale to the passing pilgrims. She smiled at me with the brightest twinkle in her eye...I caught up to my sweetie a few steps later and said, "I can't believe you passed that up." Well, he didn't know what I was even talking about, so he went back, and there she still was. He got a basket of berries and we munched on down the trail, quenching our thirst with the wonderful berries.

And that was what he was really after with the cherries. He wanted to be there again, on the trail, meeting this nice old lady and getting a basket of berries to eat.

Once I figured that out, I looked around for something that was a little closer to frutas del bosque. And there were fresh blackberries there, marked down to about a dollar for 6 ounces. I got two packages of those and handed them to my sweetie with "I got your frutas del bosque at the store."

Now I want to be back there, smiling at that sweet lady, and then tasting the lovely juicy berries. (and as with so much we saw toward the end, neither of us had a camera out!)

This and the next one were both on the same day. The path was slanted and rocky, so we walked on the road instead. That bright red speck is my sweetie, up ahead.

We saw so many different pilgrim statues. You can see, he has his staff, his water gourd, his Cross of Santiago on his coat, and his shell on his hat.

Top of the pilgrim monument at the overlook Monte de Gozo just before Santiago.