Beautiful Autumn Day in Michigan

We (DH, DD1 & her SO, DD2, P & C, and me, all in one car) took off bright and early on Saturday morning to spend the day in Michigan. The sky was perfectly clear, the sun was bright, and the colors were awesome! I took many, many pictures of the trees, but I am only sharing two. They were all out the window of the car, so may seem a little blurry. It was gorgeous!

We had our annual family get-together, unfortunately without my baby sister, who had thrown her back out earlier in the week. Missed you, Val!

Everyone else was there, and we had a very nice time. Since it was such a nice day, we sat on the veranda of the center where we had our meal: chile con carne con pan de maiz, (chili with corn bread, a favorite when growing up). There was a kids playground, corn-hole beanbags, shuffleboard, croquet, and just sitting and visiting in the lovely breeze. My SIL was very wise and picked up battle tops for all the kids. They were all able to interact, and break the ice by playing that together, a great success! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of this part of the day. I was having too much fun visiting and finishing this:

I think it turned out great! and mom likes it. This is not the handle the instructions called for, it is just an inexpensive set I got from JoAnn's , but I think it fits the mood. All I had to do was stitch the loops down that hold the handle, and add the zipper. The zipper is a little uneven, but it works. Now I just have to finish the green bag!

Later on in the afternoon, I had the chance to go to the open house for my uncle John's 90th birthday celebration, and visit with 3 aunts, and see three cousins I have not seen in years and years. From left to right, this is mom, Aunt Jo, Uncle John, Aunt Flossie, and Aunt Sylvia.

(You can really tell they are related, can't you! LOL)

On Friday morning, I had another finish as well. DD2 had requested a hat with a brim. I found a couple of free patterns, and she picked this one, and requested the colors to match both her winter coats. The band is crocheted sideways in a ribbing stitch, with the crown and the brim added to the edge of that. The pattern in the crown is very subtle, but really pretty. I was very, very pleased when I finished stitching that.

The little flower turned out cute too.

I would not mind stitching this hat again one bit! It was a lot of fun.

Day off from school: MSI!

Last summer, when we went to the Museum of Science and Industry, the only way we got the kids to agree to leave, was to promise them we would go back on their first day off of school. That fell on last Friday, and we were true to our word. (Since we have a membership this year, we can go back all we want to!)

We started the day by spending some time in the "Idea Factory," a hands-on room for kids with all sorts of things to play and experiment with. There is a river with balls floating on it; you can send the balls "up-river" through a pneumatic tube, and splash them; you can spray water and work propellers, and see how river locks work, and play with pulleys, and scales, and gears, and conveyor belts, and refraction, and it was fun!

Then we went and checked out Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle. That is one of my favorite things, and I always try to at least walk around the room, even if I don't stay for the whole audio explanation.

After that we went to the show on the digestive system. C helped make the presentation on the small intestine. It's 22 feet long!

There was a new OmniMax show, so we got (free!) tickets for that: a train trip across the Canadian Rockies. Here are DD2, and C & P waiting for the show to start.

C requested this picture. I love the expressions!

We had a quick, good lunch, and then kept on going. We checked out the hatching chicks:

We had our fingerprints taken, and discovered that P, DD2, and I all have arched finger prints; only 5% of the population has that pattern. C has whorls and loops; those are also the more rare patterns.

P got to calculate the flight path of an airplane from Chicago to Buffalo. He stuck with it, and flew the shortest route!

One of the exhibits P wanted to visit was the You! exhibit, all about the body. Here are P & C filling the wall with their shadow outlines. Both of them got to walk on the "hamster wheel" and discovered that it takes quite a bit of effort.

We also went down another long hallway with one exhibit after another: Networld, the earth revealed (different satellite pictures of the earth, projected on a globe, very beautiful), the whisper gallery, and a whole area on imaging which was also a lot of fun.

Next week, a new Dr. Seuss exhibit is opening, and during the holidays there is an exhibit on all the different Christmas trees from around the world. We will be back!

The Bags are felted!

I was hoping to get to felting the bags yesterday, but it didn't happen, so I jumped right on it this morning. I usually do my felting in the washing machine, running a small, hot load, and flipping through the agitation cycle 3 or 4 times (without rinsing, saving the hot water) until things are felted to my satisfaction. The instructions for these bags suggested felting in the dryer. (?) I had never tried that, or even heard of it, but I'll try anything once.

It worked great! I ran the bags through one wash cycle, pulled them out dripping, and put them in the dryer for 10 (!) minutes. They came out like this:

They were still dripping, but the smaller one was nicely felted. The larger one could probably have gone a little longer, but I think it is fine:

I didn't get a picture of the green one in its unfelted floppiness. Even after felting it is pretty big. I tried to include enough information so you can see the difference in size. The blue/white one covers 2 boards, edging over into a 3rd board, the green one completely covers 3 boards, overflowing on to the fourth. I have to measure them now, so I can pick up the zippers, and I hope they are dry enough by Saturday to take to Michigan.

Do you like the color of the green one? I am pretty pleased by how the 4 different greens blended. I tried to do a gradation, and then I worried the colors were too different and wouldn't blend, but I think it is nice.

It was a race (again!) to finish before the yarn ran out. I skimped on a couple of the zipper facing rows, and ended up with a very small ball of the lightest green left, just enough to stitch down the facings and strap loops.

Today I hope to finish the cover for the bass. Wish me luck!

Doily

I love making doilies... but they do not fit into my lifestyle. DH will tell you that any horizontal surface is an invitation for clutter, so even if I had places to put doilies, they would get covered by stuff. So I was thrilled when I saw a floor doily on the internet some time ago. I immediately got out some of my old crochet books (The pattern I picked came from a magazine issued in 1991! I knew it would come in handy.).

This went so fast it was almost scary, and it turned out too big for the place I was going to put it. The color was for my bathroom, but I do not have this much floor space in my bathroom.

It will probably go on the floor in my bedroom, (on the old shag carpet) along with the braided rug vrom my grandma and a felted/embroidered rug I got from ebay from India.

I have to get going. I have a big project to do this week. DH bought an upright bass, and it needs a cover so we can store it at church. As "seamstress for the band" I accept this challenge!

New Necklace

I finished my kumihimo necklace last night, including the assembly! It was a great deal of fun to braid, and I think I only missed one bead. Quite a few of the beads wanted to hide in the center of the braid, but I managed to tease them out, there is just one place there should have been a bead and there isn't...

To add the clasp, you crazy glue the findings on to the end of the braid. I dry fit the ends into the cups, and they fit (barely), but I hadn't realized how difficult it would be to do the same thing with the crazy glue oozing out. I just about glued my finger to the necklace! I still have to do a little trimming (that part is strategically hidden in the picture below) but it is DONE!

There are 12 strands of a chenille yarn and 4 strands of metallic thread with beads. I have another very similar kit (the colors are just a bit different) so you should be seeing that one soon too.

I had hoped to be able to show you my floor doily. I bought 3 skeins of a chunky yarn, and crocheted them up in an afternoon, but needed a little more for the border. So I bought another skein on Wednesday and added that yesterday. I had so much left from that skein that I decided to go for another round on the doily, and only got 1/2 way around, so now I need to buy another skein. I promise this is the last one, though! I think it will turn out pretty cool.

Autumn Pouch

I started this pouch before the black and white one, but didn't finish it until yesterday. (Please forgive the extra little thread around the top. I am trying to train the petals to droop down. If it does not work I will have to put in a little invisible stitch to keep them folded down.) I like the colors of this pouch, but not the fabric. It is supposed to be a silk fabric, but the store I was in didn't carry silk, so I found this shiny substitute. It looks nice, but doesn't handle nearly as nice, and doesn't feel as nice either.

I love the tassel! C helped me pick out the beads (I may have shown the tassel earlier), but it looks really rich. The kumihimo braids turned out very rich too.

The leaves are appliqued by machine, with just a straight stitch.

I got out one of the kumihimo kits I picked up at the Midwest Stitching Expo last month. The kit is very complete, with a new braiding disk, chenille fiber, and bobbins to keep the fibers under control. Each strand is more than twice as long as anything I have braided before, and having the fibers on bobbins is making a world of difference.

I don't know if you can see, but 4 of the 12 strands are metallic, with beads. It is forming a very pretty and interesting spiral; I hope to get better pictures of the braid itself when it is done. I am not as sure about the chenille, but I will be working with beads again! I do have another kit with both chenille and beads, so if I do something different, it will be after that.

Twirling Triangles

I finished a temari this week, and it was very satisfying. I found a picture in the Kii temari book (page 14, number 7, if you want to look at the original). There was also a diagram, but that was not very helpful, I mostly followed the picture. It is a 32 face/facet temari. While I was stitching on it, it looked very much like a soccer ball, but adding the brown bands changed the look considerably. I am so glad I didn't stop stitching; I was very tempted to call it quits, but the bands really transformed it.

The pentagons and hexagons really needed to be stitched more densely, and with more rounds, and I may still go back and tack down the brown bands in the pentagon centers, the bands bend around those centers, and tend to want to migrate a little bit.

I didn't get a picture before I started the brown bands, but I took one during the stitching, just because things were changing so dramatically.

I think I will be stitching this one again, probably in different colors, just because I want to improve my stitching, and because it is so cool. (I might start with a smaller mari, and use pearl #8.) As you can see, this is quite a large mari. Bold and beautiful!

While I was stitching, I kept thinking of this variation, and that variation. I am hoping, right now, to do a series of 32 face/facet temaris, just to see what I can come up with.