I'm Back

I'm back from my house sitting. I really miss the backyard already. Every morning I take my coffee, a bunch of Rughooker magazines and notebook out to sit at the patio table to wake up and enjoy the greenery of the yard when I'm over there. Just me and my dog, listening to and watching the birds and squirrels. I get up between 7 to 9 AM depending on how rough a night I've had. Hard, long lasting, deep in my chest coughing spells were waking me up a lot with lots of junk coming up. But I always feel so much more alive and creative over there. Here I wake up in front of the computer in a non window room with fluorescent lights and stare at the screen and read my messages and groups. I like the internet but I really didn't miss it that much and enjoyed getting so much done on projects and actually spending lots more time on them as well as planning new ones.

I didn't do any new dyeing or got new clothing to take apart this last week. Still have a bag of clothes to cut and wash up left to do. Spent all day, 8 hours plus cutting up fabric for the Walk Me dragon for the rocky background. I ended up with 2 big Walmart bags full of #8 strips in shades of tans, creams, grays, browns, rust and lavenders in spot dyes, dip dyeing, solids, plaids, herringbones and others. I picked out from the fabrics whatever I though may work. What doesn't get used will be put back in my tubs for future projects and will be that much less I have to cut up.

I did redo the Here Be Dragons mat, and designed a random shapes cats paw runner on some monk's cloth. It'll be about 12 x 50 when done. I haven't decided on a color scheme for it yet. I also played around with my experiment in dimensional and combination felting and hooking. I'm doing a Tree Man on a piece of 19 x 45 burlap. I sort like it but it's bugging me in spots. I'm using my dyed and undyed fleece and rovings and may use some spun yarn and wool strips. I started it Saturday after drwaing the design up Friday. I had been wanting to do this for awhile. I think it's going to end up as a free standing sculpture so I will be doing a back and sewing it into a tube or bowl shape. The goddess maybe be moved to the back instead of coming out of the top like I have it drawn right now. I also have ideas to add branches and leaves to this coming out from the background and am working through several ideas on how I want to achieve this.








I got some hooking done on the Family rug and have now repositioned it to hook a new section. The sun was not cooperating when I took the pictures of the rug off it's frame.





My husband Bill as a Metal Rabbit. The tiger in red is getting hooked not the big head. The tiger is me by the way and after looking at the head I decided it didn't fit in with the rest of the full figure characters.


Got lots more done on Walk Me and the bad picture of it was taken inside on the floor. I am now working on the right side bottom of the mat where the little dragon is.



Off and on during this time I was doing bits of yard work. Managed to get my new grape vines and blackberries planted. Planted some herbs in the dragon topiary. Still have to plant the 2 rose bushes I bought in the front yar. Only one of the 5 I planted last year survived. These two are a white and pale lavender and white with plae pinks. I also have butterfly flowers to plants and a bunch of veggies. Need to get some tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant starters going soon. Eric next door took pity on me and cut half of the big backyard. Though he did kill one of my apple trees as he didn't see it. We may leave the rest of yard to stay wild. It looks so pretty that way with all the morning glories and other native flowering plants and bushes.

Meanwhile back to answering all my accumilated mail and getting caught up on my net groups.