snow? yes, please.

It's snowing in Tucson, which hardly ever happens.

Totally.

Magical.

 

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roll it, roll it, roll it...

We have been angling to repaint the interior

of our house for several years now. However,

we were waiting around for sufficient funds to

kick the whole thing out at once as well as

an end to the Leaky Roof Situation of '98.

With these things recently resolved and the

kids in the midst of bedroom shuffling, we

decided that it was high time to do away with

the purple ceilinged coffee room, the green

ceilinged hallway/kitchen, all the random murals

and even the orange, purple and blue everything else.

As the seventeen-year-old of the house says,

"You guys are moving on to

the old folk's home stage of life."

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the remains of a lunch

This here is the remains of a lunch I had downtown

at Bruegger's Bagel last time I had jury duty. Do

you see the shadow bird emerging from the paper

wrappings? The winter sun was so bright pouring in

through the windows that it cast fabulous shadows.

 

 

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my favorite dishcloth

As I mentioned before, I have been maintaining a few

obsessive pursuits so far this year. Here's one of them:

I was introduced to the wonderful world of handmade

dishcloths by my friend Hannah a couple of years ago.

She taught me that cotton is the best yarn for these

things, since it is more absorbent than acrylic as well

as less scratchy (I hear acrylic yarn can make for good

kitchen scrubbies, since it is slightly more abrasive).

I had seen the sort of homemade dishcloth pictured above

and didn't much care for the way it looked. But I liked

the idea of having something to wipe down kitchen counters

and then toss in the laundry, easily washing out all the

germs and bacteria therein.

So I started with crochet. I enjoyed all the lovely colors

available. I tried single crochet, double crochet, half

double crochet, scallops around the edge, etc. They looked

great! Unfortunately, these all came out rather dense. The

tight weave, in fact, only thickened up in the laundry,

making them very difficult to get dry between uses at the

sink. So I moved on to a Granny Square pattern.

This one had more open spaces but was even thicker than

the last, taking me back to (you guessed it)...

the trusty knitted dishcloth. It's stretchy,

springy, and just the right thickness. When it

gets all bent out of shape, we know for sure

that the time has come to toss it in the wash

and grab another one off the shelf.

If you'd like to try your hand at this, find the pattern here.

Just be warned: it may take you down a long and winding road!

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journal cover in progress

A friend recently sent a couple of Moleskine Cahiers my way.

I decided to do some sort of mixed media cover over the

standard, black flaps. Here's the first stage of the process.

It just entailed fitting bits of paper together and affixing them with

Liquitex Basics Acrylic Gloss Gel Medium. I also added a coat

on top with a sponge brush to seal the whole thing once it was all down.

And a layer on the inside of the cover to keep it from warping.

Next up: select a composition and start painting, stamping, and rolling!

That, however, will all have to wait until this current bout of flu passes by.

 

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