Hurricane, anyone? and other stories …

So we had a hurricane hereabouts this past weekend.  Not *here* in Austin – we didn’t get more than a few sprinkles, some nice cool breezes and a low pressure system.  But my parents and Jeff’s mom live in or near Houston, and they certainly got a lot of hurricane Ike.  Jeff’s mom has been here all weekend because her town has been under mandatory evacuation since last Wednesday (she lives 20 minutes from the coast).  Neither of my parents have power and some trees got uprooted, but their houses are okay.  From what I hear, people are doing the Post-Hurricane Refrigerator Fest:  grilling/cooking everything in their refrigerators on their grills and campstoves because it’s going to go bad if they don’t.

Meanwhile, I spent the weekend up to my ears in fabric and other materials for my swap.  Such fun!  I am so far pleased with what I’ve come up with – also pleased that what I planned is working out instead of having to switch course midstream.  Sometimes I come up with kooky plans that are way too impractical.

I put my daisy-flower afghan up on the wall to see how it looked a couple of days ago – you may recall I was thinking I had all the squares done.  However, when I got it all tacked to the wall I realized it was not going to be the size and shape I wanted, and that I also wanted to rearrange the colors.  One issue was that I decided not to put a border on the squares, but just to stitch them together as they are so I had to deal with the loss of several inches.  The end result of my reconfiguration is that I have nine more squares to make.  I was kinda hoping I was more done than that, but it’s better to have it turn out right than wimp out right at the end.

I don’t know if you ever look at the “currently reading” section over there –> but lately I’ve been trolling through this Embellished Crochet book almost every night trying to decide what I want to do from it.  I don’t know why, but the prospect of beading and/or embroidering a crochet garment is attractive, whereas normally I think something that sounds like thhhbbbbpppttt when I think of making clothing.  I really am not fond of making clothing, but I think I might make that sweater there on the cover.  I bought this book while going to look for the BH&G Holiday Crafts magazine that Anna VS mentioned – I liked the snowman on the cover and the mention of lots and lots of felt crafts.  I like felt.  That magazine is going to get me in trouble, because I’m going to try to do too much this fall again.

Seems like September has inspired a fresh bout of crafting, eh?

I <3 fabric

Good day for fabric! I’m generally excited about fabric and nothing is more interesting than new fabric techniques & types. I do love exploration of new stuff.

FIRST: in my wandering I discovered the wonder that is Ah! Kimono, which is a site that will sell you pieces of fabric from kimonos. I received my first package of fabrics (<– over there) with a lovely note this week. These are all green-hued, about 9″ x 9″ and I think (totally not sure!) they’re silk. Let me just tell you that my photo does not do these fragments justice. They’re beautiful, and have awesome texture and sheen. One is pebbly and rough and thin, another is thick and silky…

Having a weakness for fabric, I joined Ah! Kimono’s quarterly fabric club. I did that so that I wouldn’t be able to choose what colors or styles I get. I have a bad habit of picking the same things over and over, and I thought this would be a great chance to get something new and unexpected to play with. What will I do with it? I don’t know. I have an idea about a skirt, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Also! SECOND. I got this book in: Fabric Art Workshop by Susan Stein. Very nice. I’ve looked through it about 5 times today since I got it. Fabric painting is something I’ve done a little, but technique and materials was sketchy for me. This clears some questions up, while giving me new ideas about things to try for decorating fabric. Like dyeing fabric with rust, that’s a new one. Got plenty of materials around here for that idea.

I ordered the book because I was curious about some techniques I saw reading a recent issue of Cloth P aper Scissors that I picked up (not the current one, the one with the yellow birdhouse on the front). If you haven’t seen it, it’s a lovely mixed-media magazine from Quilting Arts, seems like a nice bridge between sewing and painting.

So clearly I’m not doing well on the “fewer things to do” classification of life, but hey, I don’t actually have any fabric paint right now, so at least I can’t hare off to do it right now. The kimono fabric, on the other hand…