Rock Wall Sunflowers

While relaxing in my Mom's garden, I finished the binding on five more minature sunflower quilts. I'll post them on Etsy when I return home. My Mom's garden is the perfect place to photograph garden flowers.

Enjoy!

Hat or Bowl?

This week I am vacationing in Ladysmith, BC at my Mom and Dad's house. It is lovely here and so relaxing to sit in the garden. Instead of twiddling my thumbs, I have tried to knit a bowl and then felt it. I did learn to knit when I was a teenager, but had to re-learn this week. I don't think I've ever finished a knitting project before, so completing this little bowl was good in all kinds of ways.

Anyway, here is the bowl. It is only about 3" across the top and 2.5" inches tall (mabye not even).

Enjoy!

Twitter-brained

My twenty-one year old daughter... always watching out for my best interests... taught me how to Twitter on Thursday. I am here to rave... a bit. As a marketing and business exposure tool, Twitter is probably one of the best. Some say Twitter is old news, but I think it will work for me just fine and dandy. Worth a look if you want to boost some traffic to your web sites and spread the word at no cost to you!

Thanks to my smart daughter :-)

COLOUR!

I have been hand-dying fabric and getting it ready to sell on Etsy. I have photographed some of the fabric today... takes a lot of time, but is fun too!

Go to my Etsy site if you want to purchase any.

Enjoy colour...

Sunny Sunflowers

This weekend's creativity involved two-dimensional gardening. Here are three miniature sunflower quilts I made to sell on Etsy. Cute and sunny and fun to make

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Canadian Designer

This has been an exciting week for me in design. I have been featured as a Canadian designer in the Canadian Quilting Association's magazine "The Canadian Quilter". It is a five-page feature, which is wonderful! One page is about me and the other four pages feature my pattern "Counting Sheep".

This pattern is also availble on my website http://www.sunflowerdesign.ca/.


Thanks to CQA for this opportunity!

Fibre Art Network

Do I have anything to show for my creativity this weekend? I don't, but I did spend a lot of time being creative! This weekend was spent catching up on graphic design work, both paid and volunteer. One of my latest volunteer ventures, started in the winter, was to become Assistant Website Coordinator for the Fibre Art Network, also known as FAN.

There are a variety of things that I do... post recent newsletters, help people with setting up Artist Galleries and trouble-shooting various problems. I had some success solving problems this weekend, but I still have work ahead of me. I volunteered for this position because I wanted to continue to learn about web development... and I am.

FAN is a group of women (so far, but men are always welcome!) fibre artists in Western Canada. We have over ninety members! Many are professional fibre artists who exhibit regularly, and many are part-time fibre artists who want to belong to a group like this to network and learn together. It is a fabulous group. Please explore our web site if you have time. I always have a link to the Fibre Art Network on my blog in the right-hand bar, so come back later and explore if you don't have time today.

So... even though I don't always have work to show at the end of a period of creative activity... I am still busy being creative behind the scenes :-)

Pink Cupcakes

After spending all day Saturday watching the rain (and snow) fall from the sky... I got bored and decided I had a craving for pink cupcakes. Too lazy to drive anywhere to get one, I decided to add a treasury to Etsy about pink cupcakes. Ironically, every pink cupcake I chose was inedible. Fun, but did not do much for cravings.

Today, May 24th, is my daughter's birthday. Sam is 21 years old today. And though an adult now, she still enjoys celebrating special days with the same enthusiasm she had when she was six or eight or fourteen. Lucky for me!! Thus, my pink cupcake craving will be taken care of tonight after supper and a good old round of Happy Birthday is sung.

I was up early this morning (read 10:00) :-) and Sam's cupcakes are complete. There are 21 candles in the top cupcake, which was a clever suggestion by Sam's boyfriend, Jordan. We are also feasting on fresh crab and mussels and will have garlic fettuccine with scallops added for a treat. I really hope I have room for a pink cupcake after all of that. If not... breakfast tomorrow!

Something Old, Something New

I've been away for a while and then sick for a bit and now life is ready to get back energized. I travelled to the Canadian National Quilt Show in Calgary with my very good friend, Elaine. We had a marvelous time, despite the snow and explored a lot of different places in Calgary as well as attending the show for a couple of days.

I had my first quilt exhibited with FAN (Fibre Art Network) as part of the GeoPhysical exhibition. There were many pieces and all were worthy of being hung. What a creative bunch of people... and I am proud to be part of this group. This exhibition will be available to see on our FAN website soon.

Elaine and I visited many quilt shops and other specialty shops in the Calgary area. Our favourite quilt store was Out of Hand with its unusual assortment of goodies. We also enjoyed Shuttle Works which had a fantastic assortment of wool, books and DVDs on fibre, knitting and weaving and other assorted spinning and weaving paraphernalia. Worth the drive South of Calgary... better not to drive in snowstorms, but can be done :-)

On my way home from another trip, I decided to see if I could remember to knit. I was excited that I could, although I think I dropped and picked up stitches quite easily and completely by accident. Could be the complex wool I used... too beautiful to resist. I did learn to knit when I was a teenager, and I was glad to see I could remember the basics. No idea how to cast off... probably because I never finished a knitting project before.

And as a final note, I am including a photo of the lovely birthday card my Mom made for me in March. She carefully punched the holes and sewed fine threads into this lovely design. Blue and yellow are my favourite colours. Thanks Mom.

Enjoy everyone!

Birthday Surprise

My birthday was last Monday, March 29th. I had a good day... considering my age :-) I turned 45 and I am really happy about it because I didn't really like the number 44. There was just nothing special about it.

I got many nice gifts, but received this extra special one today from my daughter who is away in University. It is called a Wordle and it is crafted by hand not by computer, which is the normal medium. I love it! It will always be very special to me.






















I did get some creativity achieved this weekend. I was looking through the inspiring online shop of Creative Every Day Mentor, Leah, and I just got antsy to spend time in my studio. So down to my studio I went. I received a new felting machine for my birthday from my family, so I decided to try it out. I have a couple of pieces on the go now and have discovered the machine is a lot of fun... and  lot easier on my tennis elbow, which has been plagueing me for some time.

Here is a photo of one of the pieces I am working on. It is Northern Lights...

Enjoy!