Walk Me Dragon progress

I'll be doing another round of week long house sitting starting tonight until next Tuesday while the kids go up to NC to visit Corey's grandmother for Easter. I'm here long enough to check my mail, and resupply myself for the weekend.


Spike


volunteer potato plants


Volunteer strawberry plant.


Views of the backyard and hoping to get someone over to cut the grass. It's a foot tall already.


Most of last week I was sick with sinus and allergies and coughing up my lungs alot. Spring has sprung with a vengeance and the pollen is really bad around here. I finally got some Benadryl and have been taking lots of Echinacea plus drinking herbal teas and feel a little more human and together than I have been. Even the dog was worried a few times and I really need to get a cheap phone for when I'm over there alone. Outside of rain a couple of days the weather has been gorgeous into the 70's mostly and sunny. I love sitting in the backyard and working. We have a round outdoor cast iron table with large umbrella and lots of chairs that I sit at to work. I can finally get the right working angles for my larger projects if I prop them across the table and chairs. I've been able to get lots of work done on both Walk Me and the Family rug. WM is in a large quilting oval hoop and FR is on 30 x 32 stretcher strips. I've been alternating work on both of them.





I got all the wool clothing from the thrift stores washed and dried but not all cut up yet. I had probably 20 jackets, 10 skirts and 7 pants to cut up. I'll get them done this week. Some of the cut up has already hit the dye pots, I tried some experiments in marrying colors. I'd layer different colors together in a scrunched up bundle tied up together with left over wool scraps then put them in a big pot of salted plain water and let them simmer for a couple of hours alone. I got some amazing color combinations that way which will get used sometime in projects. I even tried onion skin dyeing for the first time and got lovely yellows, apricots and golds, though at one point I pushed the colors and added toothpick bits of yellows and oranges to the mix to get the colors I was dyeing for. At the same time I was dyeing the big bundles and there was a lot of purples in the batch so I got purple colored water, I dipped in some of the graduated yellow strips I was doing and got some wonderful shaded lavender and yellow pieces similar to what I had seen in an article by Wanda Kerr in Rughooker's magazine. The purples grayed the yellows just enough that I'll be able to do the kind of graduated shading I have planned for Green Cat on some of the cat flowers.



I only got two designs drawn out, because of being sick and not being able to think. Both are on the new rug wrap I got to try out. One is a half moon shaped welcome style mat that has all the uses for wool, a spindle, rug hook, knitting needles, crochet hook and felting needle plus a large sheep. I've had this in my head for awhile seeing similar ones by different artists on the net. Though none of them had all the craft uses for wool spelled out and the different tools for them. It's 20 x 27. The other didn't turn out that well and I am going to redo it. It was a "here Be Dragons" welcome mat and the dragon just isn't right. The lettering is good but my art work on this sucks. I am hoping this week to get more designs done. I'm thinking of even trying to do some xmas and Halloween mat designs and maybe try designing some 3D pieces too. Maybe a stuffed Dragon?

Also need to take 2headed dragon over to the house to work on so my youngest son can have it for his birthday. The oldest son I am thinking of doing him my revised McIntosh family coat of arms as a mat. I was born a McIntosh. We're from the Oklahoma and Kentucky branch. The family motto is "touch not the cat but with a glove" I had fun with that image. It was going to be a tattoo but I didn't get around to doing it.