Are you looking for quilting eye candy, or real candy?
How about a photo of some Japanese lollipops make in Kyoto to kick off my favorite post of the year about (duh!) the Tokyo Dome.
Did you visit the biggest quilt show on the planet this year?
Or did you want to? That would be me of course.
The Tokyo Dome Great Quilt Festival is perhaps the most bountiful feast for the eyes that a quilter could hope to come upon.
Although I didn't make it there this year, one of my best friends did go, and it looks like a lot of other people went too!
- Lynett Anderson visited and posted several really great photos at her blog.
- Queenie also was there and took some incredible photos too.
- eQuilter is another good place to stop by for some Tokyo Dome eye candy.
- Blossom Heart has a photo matrix that may blow your mind.
- Robots-Dreams flickr set has a awesome collection of images from the show.
If you went, and you're posting photos, please do let me know so I can add your link the list here.
For those of your keeping score at home, this is the 7th year I've been blogging about other people's photos from the show!
Next year it will be MY photos you're looking at. I'm going to find a way to get there. Beware, I might be hiding in your luggage.
One of my all time favorite children's books is called "Too Much Noise," by Ann McGovern.
In the start of the story, the protagonist is complaining about all the noise the leaves make when the brush against his roof from a nearby tree. He also doesn't like how noisy his tea kettle is.
The wise man of the town tells him to get a dog, and later a cat, which eventually escalates to a cow, a pig, a donkey and so on.
He ends up living in a zoo.
When the wise man tells him to let all the animals go, the noise of his leaves doesn't seem so serious anymore.
Lately our family has been so busy it seems almost as if we have a cow and a pig already present and accounted for here in our home.
I think it will eventually quite down, but my bet is that it gets even more interesting first.
We're keeping it all in perspective and enjoying the quality moments.
On Wednesday evenings my knitting/quilting group meets at my house and we all work on projects. I recently completed spinning a silk/merino fiber blend by Pigeonroof Studios.
It's not a huge amount of yarn, but it was spun with friends and I'm proud to have a little something completed.
Here's to little victories.
They say that if have your hands on something physically, it's easier to keep it.
This little beanie I knit recently has been fought over to the point where if it's on your head, you feel like you're something special.
I was the lucky one today. I wore it out while the competition had to fend for themselves.
A second one is on the needles but sadly coming along slowly as times have been quite busy lately.
Looking to surf up some of the latest quilty/stitchy awesomeness out there on the web?
Have at it:
Check out Nifty Quilts incredible scrap quilt - a masterpiece of color value in progress.
See more fabric scraps than you probably have in your own collection over at The Design Center.
Falling in love with cross stitch again over a Sew Take A Hike.
I'm not usually one to post about food, but I will tell you that I'm secretly dreaming of eating French Toast sometime soon.
Evil evil toast...evil evil carbs!
Snow is something that just doesn't happen in the California Bay Area unless you drive to the mountains.
This weekend there was a rumor that it might be cold enough to snow, but it didn't ever happen. So much for our snowball fight plans.
I'm amazed by this guy who made a multi-colored igloo for his girlfriend. Check out the cute story - link to video.
Building an igloo is probably not on the menu in my backyard, but hunkering down to do some handwork certainly is.
I'm in the thick of quilt binding today and making some progress. Starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this quilt.
When it's finally finished, you'll be the first to know.
Is it a normal practice to use more than 10 different fabrics when binding a quilt?
Have you ever used more than one?
I think the most I've ever used has been around 6 different fabrics.
For the quilt I'm working on, I have a ton of cool fabrics that I'm going to combine together for perhaps the most funky binding of all time.
Is that crazy? Maybe. Why not though. Life's short. My work is starting to get a bit more crazy the older I get. Stay tuned for the results!
There are a lot of 'how to make quilt binding' tutorials out there. I couldn't find one that was exactly the same as the method I use, but the one by Crazy Mom Quilts is a pretty comprehensive one.
In searching around, I'm getting tempted to create my own 'Ultimate' binding tutorial. Hm...adding that to the to-do list.
If there is a guide out there that you use every time, let me know your favorite!
We had an awesome time on Family Day at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
There were tons of activities for kids, and we got to walk through this cool installation by Tauba Auerbach that looked a lot like a quilt to me. It consists of these extremely bright lights spinning around on the ceiling slowly and a floor that is 50% white and 50% black.
Makes for good running around for kids.
We also did a bunch of art projects with the kid docents.
The highlight was an installation called Frequency and Volume by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. You can run around in this shadow room and different radio stations are played according to your orientation in the room. We had to basically drag our kids out of there.
It's been a busy year so far, even though it's just getting started. I'm working on a quilt binding, and I finished a funky scarf/shawl think that my beautiful friend adopted. She is so pretty that it makes my slightly odd perhaps poorly executed hand knit look like a million bucks. Nice to have supermodel-esk friends.
Finally, since this is my first post this year, I'm picking out a theme for 2013. Not a resolution, but a theme for the year. This year it's 'Togetherness'. More time with family and friends is on the agenda.
