A good Rabbit is hard to find.

Flannery O'Conner said it best in her short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find".  A good rabbit is just as hard to find.

Longears is in the Kansas City metropolitan area, and I gleefully hailed the news that Google chose KC for the very first installations of their new, super-high speed Google fiber network.  No more waiting for my Flickr uploads!

Google started with a few communities nearby, and then expanded out toward Longears.  Each city would receive Google Fiber based on the percentage of the population willing to sign up for it.  Naturally, I signed up faster than a rabbit running from my shotgun sights   Airedale.

Sadly, the city I live in had some concerns about the wording on the Google contract - you know the kind of thing you find in so many documents, similar to the "hold harmless" clause in every school filed trip permission slip:
"I will  hold the school system harmless for any injury befalling my child".
I always added, "I expect reasonable care and supervision to be provided."  Not that I believe it is legally possible to sign away your rights, but just in case they ended up dropping my son off at the local strip club with a fake ID, I thought I should clarify my intentions.  But I digress.

My city became so concerned with the contract wording (that same wording that a dozen or so other local cities had blithely nodded and agreed to) that Google announced they could not wait for my city to agree, and they moved off to other areas.  So I will be without that good rabbit.

The irony is not lost on me.

My chances are 50:50

Embroidery thread comes in adorable little hanks like this:

Note the 2 loose thread ends.  That's where you pull out the thread as you use it.

One end, when pulled, dispenses lovely lengths of thread ready to be used.  The other end, when pulled, results in a huge tangle.  Obviously, my chances of getting it right should be 50:50.  Then why am I getting this with far greater frequency than 50:50?

It feels as if I'm caught in a version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where, instead of all heads, I'm getting all tails.  Tangled tails at that!

Not scheduled for an appearance on Hoarders ..... yet!

I added the words "Knot: A Secret Garden" to the lid of this tin.

 I bought this Chesterfield Cigarette tin before 1975 and dutifully carried it with me in all subsequent moves.  For a while, I kept match books inside, but no one at Longears smokes, and I prefer those really long matches or a long automatic lighter for starting the gas in the fireplace, so the tin has been gathering dust in the piles that could, one day, qualify me for an appearance on Hoarders.

This month, I finally found purpose for this tin:  it holds an embroidered and stump-worked (is that a word?) miniature garden.  Using my  new books on stump work, I designed a miniature garden and re-purposed one of my late mother-in-law's old linen napkins (another victory over Hoarders or is it more ammunition because I've held onto the napkin all this time?)

I used the "berry" making technique from Jane Nicholas' book to make the round "topiary shrubs",  which consists of french knots and beads.  I learned stem stitch, long-armed cross stitch and turkey stitch for the rest of the garden furnishings.  As a girl, my mother taught me french knots, lazy daisy and backstitch, and the only stitch I retained was the French knot, so this was a big learning experience.

Perhaps I may now be known as someone with foresight....not a Hoarder?

Adding your own QR codes!

My packrat tendencies provide me with plenty of fodder for drawing

I cannot stop picking things up when I walk.  I bring them inside...to draw or decorate with....and then they end up in jars all over the house.  On the plus side, I find them endlessly inspiring.

Recently, Quilting Arts Magazine included an article on how to add QR codes to your work.  You simply download an app from Stickr.it.com and while you are there, order some QR patches.  They come in sticker form and in cloth form so you can sew them onto the back of your fiber pieces.  When you scan the code and you can upload photos and record information that you'd like to include about the piece.  So much fun!

A brief online search shows other services for this king of thing, and if you try another one, please let me know how you like it.

Think creatively to save work and time...

"No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn"
Edith Sitwell

 I've chosen Edith Sitwell's optimistic quote to title this art quilt (you can read it on the left side of the quilt) and to serve as inspiration for all of us who have experienced this miserable winter.  In general, I love the way things look in winter, all sparse and full of subtle color, but this year I need to believe spring is coming!  Somewhere beneath all that snow are the seeds that will bring back my beloved Queen Anne's Lace.

Stone inclusion - gift from a friend  and an old sketch printed on silk organza

Dried redbud seed pods,  coated with resin for strength,
and a pressed ginkgo leaf

So what about the time savings?  I called this an "art quilt" because it is made of sandwiched layers of hand dyed silk organza, organza printed with drawings, linen, cotton batting and a backing fabric, the entire sandwich embroidered and stitched.  A real quilt would require finished edges, but the word "art" allows me to leave the edges with curling pulled threads.  And of course, the stitching is nothing like the precise work a real quilt requires.  Time and sanity saved!

Inspred by Jane Nicholas' book Stumpwork Butterflies and Moths,
 I took the liberty of showing the seed stage of the Queen Anne's lace.
The change from blue/brown to green/white signifies the arrival of spring.

The 5 Stages of Gluttony

Stage 1:  Denial

I will just fill a bowl with candy corn and peanuts to make the house look festive.  Of course I will eat a little, but only a few morsels each day, so it will last till Halloween.  Besides, it looks so cute and festive on the counter.  It gives me a chance to use that adorable dish I won at the Office pumpkin carving contest one year.

Stage 2: Anger
I can't believe I ate it all so fast!  It just disappeared.  I'm so mad at myself!  And I think

my husband is helping himself to the dish way too often!  I'm going to have to get another bag of candy corn.  (See stage 1:Denial.  It is still operating though I have moved on to Stage 2.)

Stage 3: Bargaining   

I promise I will only eat 10 candy corns a day and I will skip putting peanuts into the mix.  If I give up the peanuts, the temptation will be cut in half.

Stage 4:  Depression

I can't believe I have now eaten a whole pound of candy corn.  I have nothing but an empty dish.  I am fat.  I don't have any friends.  I will never lose weight.  That song keeps running through my mind, "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I'm going to eat some worms..."

Stage 5:  Acceptance

Ok, I am not capable of resisting the siren call of candy corn in October.  I'll start my diet in November.   There is no way I'm going the whole month of October without candy corn.  I'll just be fat.  And that dish will be empty again before you finish reading this post!  

Make your own wash tape - tutorial!

Commercial Washi tapes

If you aren't familiar with Washi tape, it's a paper tape made with Japanese Washi paper patterns.  The tape has gotten so popular that now it's available in all kinds of patterns. The backing on Washi tape is not very sticky and I often have to glue it down to keep it in place.  Since it's a paper product, it has a translucent quality that plain printed tape does not have.
I got the idea for making Washi tape from a Joggles  tutorial, which showed making Washi tape with tissue paper and rubber stamps.  However, this tape is made using your own art images.  And the best thing about it is that it takes advantage of the Thumbnail Principle.  You know what I mean, in the old Flickr system for posting things your work initially appeared in a small thumbnail size version, and, voila!  It was instantly improved and way better looking.  I consistently call myself the Queen of the Thumbnail (as well as the Mistress of Longears - one cannot have too many titles!)
Here's how it's done:
Use Photoshop, iWork Pages or Word or Excel to make the vertical height of  your image equal to the desired width of your tape, anywhere from 1 1/2 inches to 1/2 inch or narrower.  Copy the image over and over in rows on a printable document.  It helps to space the rows so that they nearly touch each other.  That will make cutting the strips easier.

Printed without photo editing - a bit pale!

 Print the page on your printer.  If the image is pale like the one above, scan it into a jpeg and edit it in Photoshop or i Photo to intensify the colors.
Then print it on paper.  You can use several kinds of paper, but I prefer the translucent papers.  I used vellum which had a white leaf pattern printed on it, plain laser print vellum and tracing paper.  My printer had a hard time handling the trace paper.  It had no problem at all with the leaf-printed vellum, which is technically not recommended for laser printing.

The first row is 1 1/4 inches tall and is printed on the leaf-patterned vellum .  The row below is printed on laser vellum, ordered from Amazon.  Paper Source used to have it, but have not had any for a while.  The first row was printed without intensifying the colors in photo editing.


Next, apply a double-sided tape to the back of the printed page.  For this, I used 2 different products:
Scor Tape - available from Joggles and Peel-n-Stick that I bought ages ago at a JoAnn's or Michael's store.
To apply the tape, just peel off the protective coating from one side and stick it down to the back side of the printed page.  Cover the entire back with tape.


Finally, turn the page to the right side and cut the strips of washi tape!  When you want to use it, just peel off the other protective paper and stick it down!  This tape is a bit thicker than the real thing, but it has your very own imagery! 

Some of the final tapes

 If you try this, please post your results!  I'd love to see them.