Hello internet! I've been reading your news voraciously, (Perez? check. Dooce? check. Craftzine? check. Good and Planty? check.) but I haven't been putting anything out there. Internet, I know that one sided conversations are hard to keep up, and for all 12 of you that read our blog (who I love to bits and appreciate so much) I am excited to continue chronicling our crafting exploits.

As this is a crafting blog, I am so happy I can skip over all the stuff that I has been occupying most of my time these last 4(!) months. (Fun stuff like getting our house ready to sell and such...) I have been cramming in some crafting, but as most of my stuff has been packed away, it usually involved a big mess, some swearing, and me saying repeatedly "Why did I not label these boxes" whenever I needed something like a hole punch or tapestry needle. Happy days are finally here and they started at an auction. Laura bought me a great work table at the Berea College surplus auction for 20 bucks. It looks like it was a lab table or something and has all kinds of stuff carved into it- "Tennesee Vols" ("sucks" added by a University of Kentucky fan) "Ruedy" and an alien looking hand. Best of all though it's really big and I have tons of room to set up my sewing machine at one end and work on other projects on the other end. I love, love, love it and know that I will make many cool things there. Thanks Laura!

She is re-doing her studio and gave me a shelf she doesn't have room for. I arranged my yarn and fibery stuff on it and it's a little place of organization and beauty in a tangle of other crafting supplies waiting to be sorted out. I put a bunch of yarn in the  yard sale pile and sorted out neutrals that I want to dye with. I love the rainbow order stash and it makes me think one thing of course- I need more yarn! Also, until I did this I never realized how much blue yarn I buy. I have been saving scraps and little bits for crafting and they fill a whole bin on their own. BTW- those are "decommissioned" tubs, Michael worked for the USPS a while ago.

Anyway, I am excited to finally  be blogging again, pleased to have my materials available, and space other than the dining room table to work on projects. I have a bunch of projects that are "rough drafts" or prototypes and my goal for this spring is to re-do them and find ways to make them super- cute and cool. I think I am up to the challenge.

Well, I'll skip the apologies and guilt for not blogging and jump right into the good stuff. Here is one of my favorite projects I have been working on lately. A painted rain barrel for Sustainable Berea's rain barrel festival:

Katie and I were inspired by Pennsylvania German Frakturs, the foliage in the paintings of  Rousseau, and other things that delight us.

Our barrel was well recieved in the live auction, and was a great reason to have to hang out at this great community building event. A couple other barrels that caught my eye:

Painted by Beth, a local painter who's work I love and whose last name I can never remember. 

Isn't this guy great? Painted by Heather Richardson.

What a fun day of building a more sustainable community, educating us all about water issues, and getting folks to buy local art pulled off in a remarkable way by Sustainable Berea. Hooray!

I threw together a small bottle to stitch on our way to Pennsylvania the night before we left. I didn't have time to dye anything so I used Setacolor fabric paint to paint up some silk. I don't know if that stuff is even for silk, but it turned out watery and blue green just like I wanted. My kit ready to go:

I got cracking before we even were out of our county:

I got an amazing amount done before succumbing to car sickness. The neck of this bottle is tiny and gave me fits whenever I sat down to work on it in PA. I finally finished it when we got home. I figured out a simple way to enclose a washer in fabric for the base. (For weight and stability-it also gives the bottle an authentic heft.) I'd been stitching two layers of fabric into a circle, turning it right side out, inserting felt and a washer, tricky to get just right. For this piece I bought a washer just the right size and pulled fabric around it, the gathered extra fabric will be hidden inside.

This solution was inspired by a yo-yo quilt my Mom has on her couch...

My family got to take an impromptu trip to Pennsylvania to visit my Mom, Dad, and sister Abby earlier this month. Kate and her boys came too: 1200 miles, 13 travel hours, 9 days, 4 boys, 3 adults, 1 van. Super fun.

Highlights:

Roadside America-awesome vintage tableau with trains, villages, a waterfall... (Eli's paradise, he is planning something similar in our yard after he decided his room was too small for what he has in mind.)

Fasnachts-PA Dutch fried dough traditionally made to mark the day before Lent. 

 Thrifting marathon. No photos, I always take my camera but get too distracted to use it. Re Uz It relay, many bargains.

Kramer Yarn Mill Tour. Also no photos, but an inspiring and magical hour. Kate and I have been wanting to tour this place for ages, and the women who work in the yarn shop really went out of their way to help us since the regular tour guy was on vacation. I could gush about this peek into an amazing process for too long, But I have to mention-drum carders bigger than my van-pallets of raw, washed wool from all over the world-one woman named Olga who IS the quality control department.Very cool, made me appreciate all the work that goes into this yarn.

I've been neglecting my blogging, but boy have I been gettin' other stuff done! It is so hard to keep all the balls in the air...while I do plan to tell you about the creating and traveling I've been doing, I'm not posting photos of the unfolded mountain of clean laundry breeding in the corner of our bedroom.... I'm really loving my creative pursuits right now, the poor laundry has a hard time competing. OK, anyway, I finished the rusty funnel.

Beginning the stitching is a relief after fiddling around with constructing the form:

I rolled the edge of the lip over onto itself to form a nicer rim. Here I am ready to attach the separate piece that makes up the spout:

I love the variegated thread that I used. I've got to get back to the bead store and buy one of all the variegated colors they have:

Finished! I enjoyed making this even though it took longer to stitch than vessels with narrow necks, because each stitch had to look good on both sides of the "bowl".

Here with it's companion piece:

I am considering making shadow boxes/shelves to house my vessels so I could create an atmosphere for them to reside in. We'll see...