What I've been working on

As promised, here are some of the things I've worked on recently.

Tracy's block for the Coast 2 Coast Block Party. She wanted blocks inspired by the Story People artwork. So this is my Queen. I embroidered her eyes and mouth and the clouds. And then I set down my needle and cannot find it for the life of me... luckily my bare feet haven't found it either!

Ellen's blocks for the C2C Bee too. She wanted "inside-out" blocks. I used Little Miss Shabby's tutorial for the second block and created my own design for the first.

I learned to be careful when working on a block in progress and removing cat hair with a lint roller...

And here's the front of my mom's birthday quilt I started last summer. I've had the quilt front done since August (of last year!) but was scared to quilt it since it is the largest quilt I've ever made. Mom volunteered to take it to a long-arm quilter so I gave it to her yesterday.

 Front

 

Back

Close-up of front

It ain't pretty but...

Blogger Jandi posted a challenge yesterday: photograph your crafting space as is. Without cleaning anything up. So here it is:

The stuff shoved into the machine is the quilting bee block I am currently working on. That needs to get finished this week. And hanging over the chair is my Quilts for Kids quilt that I still need to finish! The camera bag, water bottle and black t-shirt belong to Mr. Crafty. This is our dining room table that is really my sewing table. It's the first surface that things get put on as you walk in the house so it is usually full of random stuff when I am between projects or busy working on my homework.

The other angle... all that Tula Pink Hushbye is waiting for me to make my quilt from my quilting bee. Except that I am still missing blocks from one member. From March :-(

Here's my stash, for the most part. Some is under our bed but nearly all of it is here. Fairly well organized but Mr. Crafty and I are going to rearrange the room and he keeps talking about giving me my own craft space in the corner of the room where the couch we're selling this weekend at our yard sale is currently wasting space.

That TV is getting sold at the yard sale too. Otherwise, I would be quite annoyed that it was blocking my stash.

Here's a shot of our "office"/guest bedroom (has nothing to do with my crafty space, other than cluttering my brain this week). This is the stuff for our yard sale, so far. The yard sale is to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

(The Dyson is NOT for sale, I love that vaccum. It just ended up next to all the yard sale stuff.) My parents came down yesterday to drop off stuff for the yard sale.

Woah!

I'll have some updates on the limited crafty projects I have done very soon, I promise. They are sitting next to my sewing machine waiting to be photographed and mailed off to their owners.

(Perhaps I can convince Mr. Crafty to use his new (to him) camera and lenses to take some pictures for me. Mr. Crafty & I bought one of my brother's, the photojournalist, old cameras and finally found a great deal on lenses a couple weeks ago. This is Mr. Crafty's new hobby and one he loves.)

I was on the Craft Magazine blog this morning and I found myself saying "OMG, that is freaking awesome!" more than once. I don't actually talk like that but that is the equivalent of what my brain said. I felt I needed to share this awesomeness with you.

#1 Twister raincoat - yeah, it's a raincoat made out of an old Twister game. It's fully lined too!

photos courtsey of her Craftster post

 

#2 Miniture Quilt Cottage - and she MADE almost everything in this room!!! I would NEVER have the patience for something like this. Seriously, this woman must have the patience of a saint!

Photos coutesy of http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.com/

I NEED this. Someone please explain to Mr. Crafty why this is a MUST-HAVE!

So it's no secret that I love me some gnomes. I just can't get enough of them. Now I don't run around buying every one I see, no I am a selective gnome owner. However, Crafty Mama (a.k.a. my mom) did buy the mister and me tickets to a Diamondbacks game last month specifically because that night was Diamondbacks Gnome giveaway night. We may have gotten to the game 2 hours before it started to make sure we were one of the 5,000 that got a Dbacks gnome... just maybe that was us. And Homer sits next to our TV. I'll introduce you sometime.

Anyway, I don't know if you have seen this fabric line by Monica Solorio-Snow aka The Happy Zombie for Lecien. I saw it a couple months ago and tried to convince Mr. Crafty that I NEEDED it and that it was the perfect Christmas fabric for us. We have a less traditional Christmas aesthetic and currently sport a blue & green (I know, we had that blue/green discussion earlier today) mod-looking tree skirt (found at Big Lots but I am pretty sure it was the previous year's Target).

I mean, really Mr. Crafty, the gnome's name is Gnoma Claus. If that's not perfect for me (maybe not you! but definitely me), I don't know what is.

So if someone can please explain to Mr. Crafty why this is a necessary purchase, I will be eternally grateful!

P.S. This is me and a real live gnome I met at the Dbacks game. He was in the section next to us and they kept showing him on the jumbotron.

Have you seen this?

Amy Bulter hand towel!!! (Sorry for the poor picture quality, I snapped it with my phone on my way out the door.) I love Amy Butler's designs and stumbled across this when I was looking for new towels at Bed, Bath and Beyond for me and the mister. I bought only the hand towel because I wasn't sure how he would feel about having Amy Butler towels to dry off with every morning.

His response "does everything have to be blue & green?" (Which I took to mean, no, he did not want Amy Bulter towels)

Hello, Mr. Crafty, is this thing on? We have a lot of blue & green because those are the colors we can agree on for home decor! I managed to splash a little yellow in the kitchen but all my pink/girlie stuff has been sent to my office. Which means my office by default looks super-duper girlie.

So anyway, there is an entire line of Amy Butler stuff at Bed, Bath and Beyond! Which some of you probably knew but I have been living on a tight budget for the past couple years and try to avoid temptation whenever I can, which is hard with all the fantastic lines of fabric out there and the fabric designers crossing over into other aspects of my life!

Oh, and the towels I did pick? I got these super soft towels (in Glacier) that were actually half the price of the Egyptian cotton ones I almost got. Mr. Crafty's comment this morning? They were too soft. Too bad, I like them, especially since I couldn't have the Amy Bulter ones!

Yum!

While at work everyday, I check in on the Craft magazine blog. While they no longer publish Craft anymore, they are constantly updating their blog with new projects and items they find in the crafty bloggy land. Is that a realy word - bloggy land? Ah well, it is now! At least in my little world.

One of the posts this morning is a recipe for homemade peppermint patties! Oh how I love peppermint patties!

Photo courtesy of joyfulabode.com

Now I really want to make this. Problem is that my food processer doesn't want to work. I turn it on and the light comes on but nothing moves. Gotta keep my eye out for a good sale or a Bed, Bath & Beyond coupon!

Oh and my other problem is that I am on this 2 week long no-dairy, no-sugar, no-fun diet. OK, it really hasn't been that bad and my face looks skinnier (about 4-5 pounds down on the scale with 3 1/2 days left to go) but I miss milk in my coffee, cheese, yogurt with fruit (I can have the fruit, just not the yogurt), cheese, chocolate, and cheese. I haven't been craving it as bad as I thought I would but I still want to put milk in my coffee every morning before I run out the door to work. And some cheese - to snack on, on my sandwich, wherever!

Photo awesomeness

I'm still alive. I think.

Several months ago, it seemed like a great idea to go back to grad school full-time and complete a second master's degree. In a year and a half. And still have time to have a life. And fundraise for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (while training for a marathon).

Somewhere in there, my craft time got reduced to about nothing. I crave it more than ever but I have made it my "reward" for getting the other things in my life done.

Soon, I will have new bee blocks to share. But they are currently in various stages of doneness on my cutting board.

In the meantime, How About Orange posted a link today that I really needed to share with you. The Victoria & Albert Museum (in the UK) has an online patchwork pattern maker. You can plug in a photo and it creates a pattern using squares and triangles so you can recreate it onto a quilt. How cool is that?

I played with it a bit earlier (shhhh, don't tell my boss!), and here are a couple things I made. I only have a few pics to chose from on my work computer and it seems to work best with close-ups of an individual image.

Fun giveaway at Jandi In Stitches!

Blogger Jandi In Stitches has a fun giveaway on her blog. She is helping out a new blogger Jaymie of Sassy Pants Patterns get her start in the crafty-bloggy world. Head over and check out the giveaway.

This is my favorite of Sassy Pants Patterns' items.