Good-by to February and the Daily Thing!

Daily Thing: Mobile

(I was inspired to attempt a mobile after looking at this Flickr group. There are some really cool variations in this pool.) I was going to add an apple, a boat, and a car - made the same way with bright fabrics over Timtex. Howevah'--- I don't much like the letters, so this is probably the end of the mobile project.

Maybe I'll try again with some needle-felted items like these flowers or pincushions I made back in 2006. I think maybe some needle-felted creatures (birds, butterflies, weird insects) or even needle-felted letters would make a cute mobile.

Current Project & Complaint Free?

Here is a detail from one of my current projects (I'm losing count of all of the things I've started, all of those PIP's (projects in progress). Love that needle punch!


Christine Kane has issued a challenge: Go 5 weeks (it takes 21 days to form a new habit; I don't think I'll ever get there) without complaining, whining, criticizing, or gossiping.

Well, who could question that this is a worthy endeavor? And who could possibly manage to go 21 days without complaining (or criticizing, whining, gossiping--much less 5 weeks)? The trick, of course, is that when you forget, you just start over. If you have managed one complaint-free day, and then complain on day two, you just start over. If you are five days, ten days into it and forget, you just start over.

Soooo-----I imagine that I will remain on DAY ONE for the rest of my life. At least if you count my silent whines, the ones that are in my head, but never make it to my lips. I will have to work on a complaint-free morning or a complaint-free afternoon. Or a complaint-free hour.

Nevertheless, I'm gonna try--knowing full well that I will fail. And fail again. And again. I AM going to try this challenge for a while. It will be interesting to actually track my behavior.

Kane posted this list: 9 Irresistible Reasons to Go Complaint-Free Starting Today:

1 - When you’re complaint-free, you learn to find solutions rather than staying mucked in the problem.

If you don’t offer yourself the option of complaining, then you might start training your brain to actually find solutions and get ideas. As Maya Angelou says, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” (note: I love that quote!)

2 - When you’re complaint-free, you shrink your ego.

Complaining builds your ego. It makes your ego stronger because it makes someone or something else wrong. And it makes you right. You become inflated and puffed up. Well, actually you don’t, but your ego does. Ceasing the complaining/criticizing/gossiping habit tells your ego that you are in charge, and that you want to create new habits. (note: I never thought of this, but complaining is a way of laying blame elsewhere)

3 - When you’re complaint free for 21-Days, you’ve started a new habit and created a new you.

4 - When you’re complaint-free, it’s a conversation starter.

Imaginary scenario: Someone rushes into your office to gossip or whine. You get to simply smile and say, “Gosh, you know, I’d love to join in, but I’m in the middle of a Complaint-free Contract. Would you like to look at it?” And the person says, “Huh? What’s that?” Then you get to propel the conversation in a different direction.

5 - When you’re complaint-free, it’s a conversation deepener.

That same person who rushes into your office will listen for a while and then say, “Wow, that’s a really great idea. I always notice how easy it is to complain, and I want to be more self-responsible…” You’ll then share a deeper connection when you each admit that you want to live more happy and focused lives. (note: I some how doubt this, but who knows? I suspect they might look at me, nod, and back out slowly)

6 - When you’re complaint-free, it becomes viral.

You start attracting more positive people to you. The negative people will walk away and just think you’re a complete moron. But then, you’ll start noticing positive curious people coming into your life because you are so much fun to be around.

7 - When you’re complaint-free, you banish lazy thinking.

Think about it - you can’t get much lazier than complaining and gossiping. It’s the same well-worn neural pathway you’ve trudged down day after day, along with 85% of the population. When you’re complaint-free, you find other things on which to focus. With alertness and alacrity, you find new ways of seeing things. (And you get to use words like “alacrity.”)

8 - When you’re complaint-free, you create happiness.

9 - When you’re complaint free with a group, you get to soar on the updraft of the great group energy.

11:24 -- Just started over at hour one!

Adrift

Adrift is 7 1/2 x 9 3/4". The batik background has an embellished piece appliquéd to the front. I love the batik with all of the circles and the combination of colors.

South view of cabin which will face the pond. Do I love this wrap-around porch? Oh, yeah!

Embellisher Trouble and Scarf? Muffler?

The center needle in my embellisher won't stay in. I've tried everything, and I guess I'm going to have to give up and take it to the shop. Which is WAY across town. It works quite well without it, but I get frustrated when I put it in over and over, thinking maybe it will work this time. It needs to be seen by an expert...maybe just a change of the screw.

Received more from roving (Merino) from Try Our Designs, and it is so much finer than the Corriedale. Although it is just as wool as the Corriedale, it has such a silky feel to it. Plan to play with it some today, but have several projects going right now and new fabric from Equilter, too.

Here is the scarf/muffler I just finished. Instead of using batting, I used muslin as the middle layer. The strips of Asian fabric had been cut long ago for a possible coin quilt that never got started.
I've taken all of the machine quilting out of Circles & Squares and am now hand quilting this at night as I watch television. When I get tired of it, I put it away and take out the little embroidery piece and put in more running stitches.

Cuffed

Yesterday, I ended up sleeping or resting most of the day. Thought about going to the doctor, but didn't feel like going. Right now, I feel OK; stopped up and as if I have a bale of cotton between my ears, but no achy feeling.

The only thing I accomplished yesterday was to cut a piece of wet felting in half and bead it to make wrist warmers/cuffs. The green was applied with the embellisher later, after the eggplant had dried for 24 hours.
First picture of cuff without beading.
With beading.The cuffs should be useful in the winter; the can be worn with a coat, sweater, or just under a long sleeve tee. There is also a possibility of the fingerless gloves out of felt, which would come down closer to the knuckles.

Jane Ann gave a link to a felted notebook cover, and Deb H. made some suggestions about other uses for the felted items.

We'll see what today brings...

Sort of Sick and Tired

I've been feeling a bit tired all week, and yesterday was so tired and uncomfortable that I decided to check the thermometer. Sure enough, running fever. Cold or sinus. Blahh.

Anyway, although very tired, I didn't feel too bad and medication helped so I continued to play with the embellisher and wet felting, slowly.

Both of these are wet felted, but on the second one, I added additional colors with the embellisher...originally it was black with purple. Remember that I'm still learning ; I have a long way to go. Both pieces had thin spots.

What will I do with them? Not sure, may just keep them as samples, may work on them some more with the embellisher and free motion quilting.

Below: I took a bunch of tiny scraps from various projects and, using the embellisher, needle punched them onto muslin. The process sort of "aged" the fabric, making it appear more vintage.
Rian asked about a tutorial, and I may try some more of both embellishing and wet felting today, and will take pictures of the process.

"Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleeve of care"

I've been playing with the embellisher some this morning; yesterday, I did some wet felting. I haven't done any wet felting or hand needle felting for a year or two. Even then, I was just experimenting and didn't pursue it for long.

Here are some pincushions needle felted by hand when I first got my hand needles.

Journal quilt of a lion in the style of those used for the Chinese lion dance that was needle felted by hand then quilted in March 2006.

And this is one piece of wet felting that I then free motioned over.And this was needle felted by hand, then quilted and embellished for a still life challenge in 2005.Will take pictures of some of my experiments from yesterday and today and post them later, but I'm eager to hear of any hints or tips about using the embellisher...the instructions and possibilities included with the machine are extremely limited.

After reading this article about the importance of sleep, especially on children, my mind turned to MacBeth and his comment; he calls sleep the "Chief nourisher in life's feast" (2.2.35-39).

Here are a few excerpts from the article (emphasis is mine):

Using newly developed technological and statistical tools, sleep scientists have recently been able to isolate and measure the impact of this single lost hour [of sleep in children]. Because children’s brains are a work-in-progress until the age of 21, and because much of that work is done while a child is asleep, this lost hour appears to have an exponential impact on children that it simply doesn’t have on adults.

The surprise is how much sleep affects academic performance and emotional stability, as well as phenomena that we assumed to be entirely unrelated, such as the international obesity epidemic and the rise of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A few scientists theorize that sleep problems during formative years can cause permanent changes in a child’s brain structure: damage that one can’t sleep off like a hangover. It’s even possible that many of the hallmark characteristics of being a tweener and teen—moodiness, depression, and even binge eating—are actually symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation.

and

With the benefit of functional MRI scans, researchers are now starting to understand exactly how sleep loss impairs a child’s brain. Tired children can’t remember what they just learned, for instance, because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory.

A different mechanism causes children to be inattentive in class. Sleep loss debilitates our body’s ability to extract glucose from the bloodstream. Without this stream of basic energy, one part of the brain suffers more than the rest: the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for what’s called “executive function.” Among these executive functions are the orchestration of thoughts to fulfill a goal, the prediction of outcomes, and perceiving consequences of actions.

and

Convinced by the mountain of studies, a handful of school districts around the nation are starting school later in the morning. The best known of these is in Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, where the high school start time was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30. The results were startling. In the year preceding the time change, math and verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of Edina’s students averaged 1288. A year later, the top 10 percent averaged 1500, an increase that couldn’t be attributed to any other variable. “Truly flabbergasting,” said Brian O’Reilly, the College Board’s executive director for SAT Program Relations, on hearing the results.

Another trailblazing school district is Lexington, Kentucky’s, which also moved its start time an hour later. After the time change, teenage car accidents in Lexington were down 16 percent. The rest of the state showed a 9 percent rise.

and sleep and obesity:

Three foreign studies showed strikingly similar results. One analyzed Japanese elementary students, one Canadian kindergarten boys, and one young boys in Australia. They all showed that kids who get less than eight hours of sleep have about a 300 percent higher rate of obesity than those who get a full ten hours of sleep. Within that two-hour window, it was a “dose-response” relationship, according to the Japanese scholars.

In Houston public schools, according to a University of Texas at Houston study, adolescents’ odds of obesity went up 80 percent for each hour of lost sleep.

The article is long and there is a link to another article, but both articles are well worth examining.

What in the world...

Yesterday afternoon I put on The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (can't remember whose blog suggested this movie, by I put it on my Netflix que some time back) at about 4:00 and worked frantically on my needle felting in attempt to finish up. Later, I watched Heroes and Studio 60, continuing my frantic progress. I've worked on this project for days and couldn't figure out why I continued trying to make 7 of them as they were obviously not going to work and would, eventually, be discarded. Then, on the final step, everything came together, and the silly, gaudy things worked.


This is a mystery photo because you can't tell what they really are, but they are both flamboyant and useful, silly and functional. Now, I must get on to finishing the post cards that will accompany them.

More Miscellaneous Musings

Yesterday was a beautiful return to fall here in northern Louisiana. From 86 degrees on Friday to the crisp, cool 60's yesterday. My roses, moss rose, and salvias are still going strong, and a few late re-seeds of Queen-Ann's-Lace have graced my garden. This morning I set about gathering seeds to take down to the land and cast with a prayer of hope for future wild and rambunctious flowers. The sunflowers will be beneficial for birds as well as beauty...if they take. I've also added leaves and coffee grounds and shredded newspaper to my compost heap this morning; by spring I should have another good batch.

Nina and I were the only ones in the second Tai Chi class yesterday, so we had lots of room for practice. No work on the straight sword, but lots of help in reviving the flagging saber form. It was an excellent class in refinement and forgotten details as we have not worked much on the saber in the past months. Master Guerin moves seamlessly through all that he does, and I never fail to be impressed. It is harder to reach an approximation of what I want to do in Tai Chi than anything I've ever tried. Ballet and gymnastics required more physical exertion at times, but not the same kind of discipline and attention to detail, which I think is strange. Maybe it is just that I started dance and gymnastics as a child, and the movements became ingrained early, but there is still a difference in the practice of these forms. Here is a link to an especially lovely demonstration of empty hand Wu style. Click on the "Stream" to view.

I've been playing with my NZ Corriedale wool and some needle felting. Love the colors, but the needle felting is rough on the fingers, especially as I am often careless.

Now that I've found my book, I am again immersed in Ruth Reichl's life. And what an unusual one she has led compared to my limited experience. I'm still enjoying her adventures, but am more aware of what it must have taken to survive her unusual childhood. The other book I've become involved in is Atwood's Alias Grace, and I read for about 4 hours last night (until 1:00 this morning) on first one, then the other.