Categories

Tidied up

92scrapbookreorg
92yarnreorg
91knitbookreorgSince Chris is all grown up and working out of state now I felt comfortable revamping his bedroom and moving some of the crafty storage up there. He still has a lot of things here since he doesn’t have a permanent address but those have been moved down to the basement for the time being. All my scrapbook stuff has been moved into his closet and some of the big tubs with various fiber and tools have been moved into the room. I reorganized the knitting books/magazines and yarn and we now have a somewhat tider space downstairs. I really look forward to the day I can have a room with a door that closes for all this stuff!

Colorado Christmas

20080206_0001
20080206_0002
20080206_0004I was given a little scrapbook as a Christmas gift this year and I thought it fitting to fill it with photos from our Colorado Christmas trip. The bits and pieces have been sitting on the table in the living room for a few weeks now and yesterday I finally attacked the project and got most of it done. I have a little something in mind for the front cover but ran out of time to work on it yesterday.

Just Grand

Grand
ViewI spent much of the day yesterday at an all day crop working on my trip album from last summer. I’ve worked up to the Grand Canyon photos and since Heidi made her Sissix available I played around with the alphabet and created some fun titles out of leftover pictures.

Picture perfect

Newspaper_rock_left What with Christmas and all the holiday chaos I haven’t worked on my scrapbooks in quite awhile. Yesterday I finally made it out to a crop and made good progress on our summer vacation photos.  I think I’m about halfway through the trip pictures and it’s time to print up another batch and trim them before the next crop.

Badlands_rightHeidi demonstrated some little borders like these but hers were a Christmas thing. I had little thin strips leftover from making mats for my pictures so I created my own borders following her general pattern but using my own colors and stickers. I don’t usually go in for much embellishment but when there are only a few photos on the page or when it’s just memorabilia I think it makes it look much less bare.

A very crafty day

Railroad_left
Railroad_rightYesterday morning I went to a crop and worked on our summer trip album. My albums have evolved into a very basic type of layout without much embellishment that’s quick and easy to put together. One sort of decoration that I do like to use is squares punched from any excess photos I may have printed. This layout of the Toltec Scenic Railroad is an example of that.

Card_class
In the afternoon I took a card-making class at Ink About It. It was a lot of fun and gave me some great ideas. It was also a great value since all the materials were provided and mostly precut. We did five cards for $20 in about 2 hours. I love the watercolor pencils we used to color in the outline stamps and it’s a technique I’ll definitely use again. I might even incorporate that into my scrapbooking eventually.

The aftermath

22_1Several folks asked what I bought at Rhinebeck. I bought a sheepskin from Wooly Hill Farm, 2 pounds of natural white merino, 1 pound of the silver and black alpaca/silk blend and 5 pairs of clasps for the Arrows sweater. My goals were fairly simple- talk to the lady at Shelridge farm about Arrows and see if more yarn was possible in case I run out and search for a good price on some natural white wool for spinning. I was hoping for 2 pounds of white and a pound of black but I didn’t see black. I came away quite happy with my purchases. I’m planning to spin the silk/alpaca for scarves for Jason and me, possibly hats or gloves as well if there’s enough.

Trip_album
Trip_title
Trip_page
In addition, yesterday was "Croptoberfest" or whatever it’s being called now and I spent much of the day getting started on an album of pictures from the Colorado vacation this summer. Boy it was a busy weekend!

Panoramas

View_left
View_right  I spent much of yesterday scrapping photos from a trip to Cumberland Gap a few years ago. This is the area where Jason’s mother grew up and I enjoyed the chance to see the beautiful country side.

Sunset_leftSunset_rightI very often try to take shots in sequence that can combine to form a panoramic view. For the past few years I’ve been attempting to find a creative way to crop those photos and here are a few of my latest attempts.

A picture is worth a thousand words

AlbumsOccasionally I post pictures of layouts I’ve done for my scrapbooks but I don’t think I’ve ever shown just how many scrapbooks I’ve completed. I started scrapping about 4 years ago with the goal of transferring about 30 years worth of photos from cling albums into photo safe scrapbooks. I don’t spend days on end working on these but I do go to crops once or twice a month and boy does that really add up! Here you can see most of the albums I’ve done to date. There are a few small ones on top of that table as well. I have the contents of about 3 cling albums still to go and then a few years backlog on current pictures. It still amazes me how the tortoise can win with a little persistence.

Relay wrapup

Red_needle_rolls_for_kathyHere’s the last and final prize for drawing winners. Kathy wanted a needle roll and said she liked red and here’s the result. The smallest roll is for sock needles and shows the outside color. The middle one is for longer DPNs and the largest roll is for straights. Hope these meet with approval Kathy!

Halloween_left
Halloween_right
Colorado_trip_album
Yesterday morning I went to a crop and worked on my albums. I love the pumpkin pictures but obviously still need to do some journalling on these pages. I also bought albums for the pictures we’ll be taking in a few weeks on our Colorado trip.
First_harvest_lincoln_peas
Salmon_and_strawberry_salsa
We’ve had our first harvest of Lincoln peas. I can’t wait to eat those! I also found some gorgeous local strawberries at the market yesterday and turned some of them into a salsa to go with my salmon and brown rice, yum!

Strawberry Salsa

2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered
1/2  sweet onion, thinly sliced and sauteed until soft
1/4 cup basil, torn into small pieces
salt and pepper to taste
juice of a lime

Toss together all ingredients, serve immediately.

And the winner is

Kitty_outside
Kitty_inside
Kitty_bookmarksDaniel pulled Wendy’s name as the winner of this week’s drawing for prizes to my RFL donors. Thanks again Wendy for a generous donation! She asked for a bag and let me choose the fabric. I love the little Japanese kitties and red fabric combo. I’m also including some origami bookmarks. Wendy, keep an eye on your mailbox chica, it’s on the way! It’s not too late to donate if you haven’t already, our Relay is June 9 and 10.

Families
Families_left
Families_right
Last night I went to a crop and worked on my scrapbooks some more. I’m up to about 1992 in the old photos. Most of the time I do very plain Jane layouts with simple matting and journaling but I spent some time on this page making a title and a bit of decoration inspired by the quilt-like print of the matting paper.

Spoily_package
I received my Knitter’s Tea Swap package this week from Dani who has impeccable taste! Thanks so much Dani, you chose perfectly.