Today I was tidying up my magnetic board when I came across a little image of a shepherd woman under all the layers of ideas & inspiration (Please click on the image to see the notes).
About 7 years ago, it had inspired me to start a quilted version. I had lost my inspiration in the project and put it away knowing that one day I would be inspired again. It was forgotten at the very bottom of my basket of WIP. Today when I unfolded it, it was like opening a wonderful treasure! I am inspired once again...
My craftroom wall is much better now. The mold was only on the surface. My landlord cleaned it but not good enough for me so I scrubbed the remaining toxic mold with toxic cleaners and almost all traces are gone now... Life is good again!
And now I would like to thank each & every one of you who left a comment on my Giveaway post. It's really exciting to see how many people visit my blog! And now for the winner...
...and comment number 113 belonged to Jane S from Sweden!
Jane said: Hi, I am living in Sweden and I follow your blog every time when it is possible. Love the things you do.
It would be great to win one of your birds
Greetings from
Jane in Sweden
Congratulations Jane! The little linen birdie will be flying home to you :o)
As part of the "Birds of Change" Exchange, I am giving away this little Linen Bird! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post by midnight Vancouver time on January 22nd. I will announce the lucky winner on January 22nd through the day.
*Update: The Giveaway is now closed. Thank you to everyone who left a comment. It's wonderful to see how many people visit my blog :o) The winner will be announced later today!
I am listing Linen Birds, Cupcake Pincushions, House tape measures, Cup pouches and even some books! Please be patient as I will be listing items all day :o)
I still need to take some photos of the Cup pouches that I assembled last night. I was hoping to finish more than I did but the button ran away and that crafty feeling disappeared...
Today the sun was streaming through my craftroom window. It was so nice to see the sun again after days of grey fog that I just had to stop sewing and take some photos of the wonderful sight! Aaah... Life was good!
Tonight as I was tidying up some projects, a button escaped and rolled across the floor into the corner. I couldn't see it so I moved one of my large shelving units to reveal this...
No wonder I have been sick all winter! I am the only one in the family who spends time in here. Black mold is toxic and can cause flu-like symptoms including coughing, headaches, fatigue, and more. Life is not so good anymore and I feel like packing away all my fabric and clothing into large plastic bags. When I spoke to the landlord on the phone tonight he made it sound like it was all my fault. He mentioned that I should be opening the windows through the day... in the winter?! I want to move but it's not that easy and I am dreading the landlord poking at the mold and releasing more of it into the air... especially with my daughter in the house. I suppose I should wear a hazmat suit to sew tomorrow.
I have been having fun the past few weeks making Cupcake Pincushions for my shop. My huge stash of yummy felt has been asking to be turned into delicious icing! With Claire's new classes through the week and the dark days I am finding it difficult to take photos but I did manage to get a couple shots of some sweet goodness...
I joined my first group swap! All the wonderful bird ornaments on Flickr at Christmas time gave me a neat idea for my tree next year... a tree full of birds with a birdhouse at the top! Having only one bird ornament makes that idea a bit difficult so when I heard about the "Birds of Change" Exchange organized by Regina of Creative Kismet I became very excited! Each person makes five bird ornaments and in return receives five new ones! I believe there are about 350 bird ornaments flying to Regina's house this month!!! For some bird inspiration visit the Birds of Change Exchange Flickr group! I'll be on the search for bird ornaments all year ;o)
I will be giving away one of these little linen birds on my blog on January 20th! ...and because they are so addictive to make there will be a few for my shop too :o)
Speaking of swaps... I received this wonderful parcel from Anne Marie of Life in Yonder all the way from Norway! This cute litle Needlebook was made especially for me and the fabrics are absolutely my style! I love the little tea & sewing charms too! Thank you Anne Marie!
My second felted hat... sort of! It began with beautiful colours from my eye-candy yarn bowl.
It was another just-go-for-it project but I wasn't so lucky this time... only half of the yarns felted! The hat did not shrink in height at all! The rim that I crocheted turned into an hideous ruffle! After the feeling of defeat and frustration subsided, I decided not to toss it but to try to come up with a solution.
I decided to just cut it to the right height at one of the felted parts since I knew that it wouldn't unravel here. The parts that didn't felt were thin and left large holes which left my head cold so I decided to weave in extra yarn.
I am super happy with the results and like it even more because of all the different textures!
I am finally feeling better after my second cold this winter so now it's time to catch up on some blogging.
I will start way back on Christmas eve when it snowed and snowed and snowed some more! We decided that we would not drive the 8-9 hour journey through the mountains to visit my parents for Christmas. The highways can be treacherous during snow storms with not only black ice but white outs as well in which the front of your car is not even visible. We were practically snowed in and so were all our friends. I was quite bored on Christmas eve without the regular family festivities and had the sudden urge to bake 20 dozen more cookies and two of these delicious Cranberry Yule Logs! I froze a bunch of the cookies and a Yule Log to take to my parents house once the weather is a bit better.
Santa brought what Claire had asked for... a Hello Kitty Sewing Machine! She was so happy!! Her first sewing project was a pillow for her little puppy. As you can guess... I was so proud that she wanted to be just like me! We had fun making the little pillow together and then we went through my fabric and made a new stash for Claire :o)
If that wasn't enough crafty excitement for the day Claire was interested in doing her first embroidery so I provided her with the materials and she focused her heart & soul into every stitch for the next hour! She insisted that it was letters she was embroidering ...A...T...X...Y...
Here are a few pictures on Christmas Day when the snow was at its peak! Cars parked in the street appeared as hills of snow! Quite a sight here in Vancouver! We ended up with a total snowfall of 89cm in December. .7cm short of the record set in 1964!
To give you a better idea of how much snow there was... my daughter and husband turned this 5 foot round table into a giant birthday cake!
With nothing else to do on Christmas afternoon, my husband decided to go out in the backyard and play in the snow. He looked quite busy so I asked him what he was doing and he exclaimed, "I'm building an igloo!". I chuckled and an hour later he had built the bottom row of a giant igloo... After doing some research on how to actually build an igloo we all went out to help. We adjusted the base to make the igloo a more managable size for our first project and we had three rows finished by nightfall.
The next day, we finished building our new home! I carved little indents into the igloo walls for tea lights and we sat in our igloo to admire our handiwork... it was magical! Things started to melt the next day...
For anyone who is interested in handmaking their own igloo, here is a great igloo tutorial ;o)
