Elsa's Snake

I got the snake finished in time for Elsa's birthday party. I was really tickled with how it turned out. It looked great once it was stuffed. Here are a couple of pics: 

I've been working on a stuffed snake for Elsa. The pattern is from Rumpled Quiltskins. I love her animals. I made the elephant for Reid a couple years ago.

For the snake I created a piece of fabric for the contrasting fabric:

Then constructed the top of the snake.













Here's a picture of it sewn together and waiting to go into the washer and hot dryer to shrink the muslin inside to make it wrinkle. When it comes out of the dryer it will get stuffed and get its eyes put on.






I haven't checked my resolution list in a while now so have fallen behind on it. I have continued to track my food for weight watchers, though. Lost 1.2 pounds last week. Now to see if I can lose some again this coming week.

Didn't get any letters written this past Sunday. I forgot about it. I guess I should put it on the calendar. This coming Sunday I have my art quilt group and we'll also have Reid here so I probably won't get it done again unless Reid will sit down with me and write a letter. He loves mail so that might work.

TroubleMakers at My House

Had a fun day with the TroubleMakers today. There were only eight of us plus I invited Kathie. Marv made a wonderful turkey breast on the grill and I did up a big plain salad. Shelia made a scrumptious apple pie and Jo brought tangerines. Most everyone worked on projects except Shelia and Linda. Well, they worked on a project only it was a jigsaw puzzle. I was going to make fabric paper with everyone, but they were all talking and working on things so I decided to not get the mess out. Now I have a nice stash of Steam-a-Seam2 to play with. Maybe I'll have Annie over one day to play. She wasn't able to make it today because she had to take Bill to the Dr. He's on antibiotics now and the Dr. is watching him. His lungs aren't in good shape and he was coughing up a storm Annie said.

Steps Today: 14,455
Wow! That's great. Kathie stayed after everyone else had gone today and we took a walk. I think the walk was around 3,000 steps for me. We were gone about half an hour. I was really good today about eating except for a piece of pie. Well, I had two half pieces so I had some twice, but pretty small pieces. And no other snacks. And I've tracked for the last day and a half. Since I start my tracking at the dinner meal I've tracked two dinners, but only one breakfast and lunch so far.

Creativity Today: Well, I did get out the rooster quilt today and picked the next couple pieces of fabric for it and got one of them appliqued down. And I brought out the piece of Thai silk Alice gave me for Christmas and talked with the TroubleMakers about what to do with it. Still need to study on that one for awhile, which is ok since I have so many other projects to catch up on. And I put rosy cheeks on Esther's snowmen on her applique snowman quilt. It's a block of the month but she's making it into two smaller quilts. I'm working on the same project, but I'm not nearly done. She's got one of the halves mostly together already. I think I may split mine into two, also. One for Reid and one for Elsa.

I have some pictures of the boy cats enjoying a treat that I need to download. We just about finished the turkey noodle soup tonight at dinner and it needed to be gone, so Marv gave the little that was left to the boy cats and they were so cute all busy scarfing it down. I'll try and remember to download the pictures and put one up here.

Volunteer Day

Spent the day today at Kitten Rescue and the Library volunteering. Shelia and I got lots of little problems looked at for the end of the year closing of the KR books. Finished searching a huge lost book list at the library so think we're getting caught up a bit there.

Steps: 6376
Not too bad a number I guess. I think I forgot to close the pedometer so that it would start tracking steps for a while, but I'm not sure. Spent 2.5 hours at the library and most of that was searching for books on the bottom shelves, so I feel like I got a lot of exercise squatting and standing. Stopped and took another picture of my two weird growths on may way out of the driveway this morning. Didn't look like they had changed. I'll keep checking every couple of days.

Here are pictures of the translucent thing and the toasted marshmallow looking thing. I still have no guess what they might be:




Creativity Today: The closest I came to doing something creative today was to take pictures of the weird things above; straighten out a few things in the books at Kitten Rescue; and stop at Sue's Quilt in Time and buy some fusible for a project I'm going to try and get people to do tomorrow when they come to be TroubleMakers.

Busier than yesterday

I'm reporting on yesterday. It got to be late and all the computers shut themselves down so I didn't blog last night.

Steps taken: 9926
This looks like a lot more than I thought I took, but I was busy and put the pedometer on fairly early.

Creative play today: Well, not really anything. We had a weevil invasion in the bake room and took the morning to thoroughly clean all the cabinets and appliances in there. Then Punkin had a vet appointment so that meant a trip into town with a stop at the library thrown in for good measure.

Today is my volunteer day so I'm off to Kitten Rescue and hopefully the library. I spent my whole day at Kitten Rescue last week and didn't get to the library and they also have end of the year projects that need to be done. And if I have time I'll stop in at the Senior Center to see if there's any movement on February's newsletter yet.

More this evening.

Computer's about to die so just a short report.

Steps today: 3422
Really short even though I took a walk for an hour. Well, a stroll, really. But I forgot to putthe pedometer on until around noon, so probably had another 1000 steps before then.

Creativity today:
Again, not much. Went walking and took some photos and stopped and did a sketch of a neighbor's canoe. It was wet so I did the sketch standing up. Don't seem to have the patience to get the detail. That's something to remember to add to my resolutions--practice drawing. I think I can draw, I just need to practice.

Need to stop here. Have a cat laying on my arms and the computer is about to die.

A Quiet Day

My friend Shelia had some questions about the accounting and the kitten database at Kitten Rescue where we both volunteer so I ran in and spent a couple of hours there with her this afternoon. We were ecstatic that we figured out how to rename the new copy of the database for 2010.

Just looked at the Kitten Rescue website and the little guy, Joseph, who is the featured kitty right this minute got adopted today while I was in working with Shelia. Wahoo!! He's such a cutie.


Steps Today: 5,464
That's a more realistic figure for me than the 11,000 yesterday. I was keeping track in the hopes of working up to 10,000 every day. I guess yesterday the vacuuming I did helped boost the count up. Tomorrow I promised my friend Kathie that I'd go walking and report back to her how long I walked and what interesting things I saw along the way. Should be a fun way to get out walking. There are always interesting things or shapes to see in the woods. I live too far out in the boonies to really find someone to meet up with to walk everyday, so maybe this will get us both going. Told her I'd walk even if it was raining.

Today's Creativity:
I didn't get much done in the way of creativity today, though I did try out the stamp I made for Reid last night and was tickled at how it came out. I think he'll enjoy it. I'll get a picture of some of the stamping I did with it tomorrow. I forgot earlier and am now sitting in bed.

I also studied the little pieces of watercolor paper I painted yesterday to try and decide if I wanted to go on with the project, and if so, how I wanted to use them in the project.

Happy New Year

I started to post last night, but we lost our network connection about the time I wrote the Title, so I turned off the computer and went to bed. I plan to write everyday even if it's just to report the couple of things I want to accomplish each day.

I've started a 2010 Resolutions document that I want to be ongoing through the year. One of the things on it that I want to report each day is how many steps I've taken that day wearing a pedometer. This is actually a category that includes walking, yoga and other exercising to help lose weight and feel better. So. . .

Steps recorded: 11,346
Can't believe I hit that many steps as I took two short (10 minute or so) power naps yesterday. But then I did spend a lot of time running up and down the stairs going after things I forgot to bring with me.



I belong to an Art Quilt Group and we have decided to challenge ourselves to doing something creative everyday this coming year. There are also several online groups that I read who have a similar challenge going, so I'm going to partake of the cues, ideas and inspirations. There are so many new things that I want to try and so many things already on my project list that this seems like a wonderful project to get things done this year.


Today's creative activities:

So, on January 1, I did the first step in Diana Trout's article, Color Wheel Journal Quilt: a mixed-media approach, from the January/February 2010 Cloth Paper Scissors magazine. I painted 18 five by five and a half pieces of water color paper with watercolors and then tried lifting the wet paint with different things. Some worked better than others. Some I'm happier with than others. Some turned out better than I thought they were going to. None of them show up very well in the photo, but I had fun doing them. I'm not sure I'll do the rest of the steps in the article, but I may.



Then I made a stamp for Reid. I wrote out his name using the bubble style lettering I made up for myself when I was in 6th grade a hundred years ago. Haven't tried it out yet as the glue was still wet last night. I'll try it out later today.