31 Days of Halloween - Day 3

A change of pace for today's post. Someone had mentioned those little sets from Michaels and JoAnns. Mine are all thrown together so I can't identify which sets these are from except that the little skeleton is PSX and the kitty is from Inkums Boo2. The cute Halloween frame is from Northwoods and I'm reasonably sure the alphabet is Zettiology. The tiny bit of coloring is watercolor pencils and, of course, the boxes were stippled.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 2

I was so glad to see other participants using Zettiology stamps yesterday. They just can't be beat for weirdness. My main image is an old one that I got when Tracy and Teesha used to come to a stamp convention in Cleveland. I sure miss seeing them and all their new stuff every year. Background images are from Stampers Anonymous and the cloud in the corner is from A Stamp in the Hand. Color on the main image was stippled on randomly.

I really enjoyed seeing everyone's projects yesterday. They were all exciting and fresh and so well done. Hopping around trying to keep track of where I had commented was crazy since I don't know everyone very well yet and also because a lot of my day was spent driving around Ohio getting family stuff taken care of. The leaves are starting to change but there was no sunshine lighting them up - just wind and drizzle. But gorgeous fall days are on their way!

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1

My first project is a pair of Halloween jumping jacks, in this case, Jack and Jill. The arms and legs are stamps from Stampers Anonymous, the girl's head is from A Stamp in the Hand and the hooded skeleton is from a I Love Rubber Stamps sheet. The bodies were just made up from small Halloween stamps.

After over a year of absolutely no posts (the garden 2011 did fine), I've committed to posting a Halloween project every day in October. Not sure if this is called a challenge or a game, but it's sponsored by Smeared Ink, an online stamp company that specializes in alternative, vintage and Gothic art rubber stamping. Pam introduced me to their companion forum Smeared and Smudged and this project was one of the first things I read about there. Since Halloween themes are one of my favorite things to stamp, I decided (not without a lot of wavering) to participate. Online challenges are quite the thing in the stamping community but this will be my first experience.

There is a list of links to all of the participants on the sidebar for the 31 Days of Halloween so if you've gotten here looking for garden news (HaHa) and you're as crazy about Halloween as I am, check them out.

So this is my introduction to the stamped projects I will be posting starting Saturday, October 1, 2011. Enjoy!!

Garden News Part Two

First, I want to explain all of the straw bales in the last post. We had been trying to come up with a compost system for the whole last year and nothing was coming together. I saw a system described in Eliot Coleman's "Four Season Harvest" based on straw bales that end up being part of the compost in a few years. We had priced the bales at $5 at the nurseries and ended up being at the right place at the right time to find a farmer who sold them for $2. We hadn't thought far enough ahead of the situation to realize we only needed half of the bales to start with so ended up with half of them in the garage. That's OK for now because the cats love them. Cats? Cats???? We haven't given a cat the time of day for 40 some years but Ken wanted some barn cats and happened to mention it to the goat folks and pretty soon somebody showed up with cats. I liked them immediately because they matched the dogs in color so we kept them. Juniper tried herding them for a week or two but has resigned herself to their wild ways.

The garlic that we replanted last fall, after learning that garlic pretty much likes to be planted in the fall, was ready to dig last week so Ken dug it up for us and Kei Chi and I braided it three days later. So authentic!! Now we just have to get used to using fresh garlic instead of those handy jars of pre-chopped stuff. The asparagus spouts are getting bigger and bigger and are starting to look like asparagus for gerbils instead of asparagus for crickets. Next year for people we hope. The cucumbers are planted along a chicken wire support and just starting to bloom as I got them in so late. Next year, I'll try something similar for the peas which were going gangbusters until a really hard rain just washed most of them up out of the dirt. The tomatillos we planted for fun and for salsa and they are just pretty, like little lanterns hanging on the plants. Inside the bonnets they are about the size of small cherry tomatoes so I guess they grow until they fill them up. I may put some more photos up on Picasa where I don't have to explain and you don't have to "listen."

Garden News

I've been very negligent about garden posts because the weather, rain, rain, more rain and mud, had me pretty depressed for some time. Ken kept telling me to accept what I couldn't do anything about but it took me quite a while to get into that state of mind. We had gotten a really early start and perhaps bit off more than we could chew: an enclosure around the septic tanks, a second herb bed, sodding around both of those beds plus the front yard, setting up our tiny greenhouse, making a compost pile, building an asparagus bed and building a second raised bed for carrots and celeriac. May was gorgeous and we were getting lots done and then it was time to get all those lovely hardened off plants plus all the seeds into the ground and it wouldn't stop raining. By about the middle of June we had had 5 inches of rain and counting. The green bean seeds and the lima bean seeds rotted in the ground and when I reseeded them it started to rain again. I got the viney stuff in very late in June and had to reseed most of it plus the okra. Today, the middle of July, things finally feel like they are coming together. We have green beans and limas and most of the squash up, and although the rows aren't full we will get all that we need. I'll put more current photos in the next post.

Birthday Present for Kate

Birthdays are such fun!! I made this fabric book with the theme of Insomnia for my sister's birthday. Parts of the collages were made in Photoshop and printed onto fabric. Other parts were printed first and sewed onto the substate later. This is the first time I've printed onto fabric although I've had the materials to do it for a while. It was so wonderful that I vowed again not to always be afraid to try something new.

The idea for the pieced spiral on the front cover was "borrowed" from a photo I had saved for years from a quilt magazine. The photo was so small I couldn't tell how the spiral developed so I scanned it into Photoshop at a 600 dpi resolution and then zoomed in on it to see how it worked. It goes together very slowly and I kept getting confused and thinking I had messed it up. I'm definitely going to make more of those. Got a whole quilt planned for them.