Grade Six Lessons

I spent a large part of my weekend with my camera in my hand.  I was playing around with black and white images which was something that I had wanted to do for awhile with my new camera.

One of the images I took, was of a couple of books on the bookshelf in my living room.

 There is something about a shelf full of books that pleases me somehow.  I love photos of it, and recently I even saw a quilt that was a shelf of books... but I am getting off topic.  I will get back to that one in another post!

Two of the books that I photographed were my grade six textbooks if indeed they were called that back then.  I haven't looked at them in years - in fact I forgot that I even had them. One was a Grade 6 Speller, and the other was a Grade 6 Arithmetic book... tells you something about the age of those books, doesn't it - who says arithmetic anymore?

I opened the Grade 6 Speller... and the first couple of pages had me spell-bound (no pun intended) in seconds.  Here are the general instructions at the beginning of the spelling book....

I was 11 yrs old when I was in grade 6 and believe it or not, Grade 6 year was  very memorable for me for several reasons.

The first is that is was 1967 - Canada's Centennial Year!  I remember that well because all the grade 6 classes in all the schools in Manitoba chose girls to dance in a huge celebration for Canada's 100th Birthday at the Winnipeg Arena that year.  I was chosen as one of the dancers in my school.  There was a specific dance routine we had to learn, and in fact every other dancer across the Province was learning the same routine.  We would be dancing for the Queen who was to be in attendance at the Celebration.  When we all gathered at the Arena for the dress rehearsal, I was overwhelmed in a way I had never been before in my young life.  It was an event I will never ever forget!

Another reason that Grade 6 was so memorable, was that myself and most of my friends were fixated on training bras.  It was the year they appeared one by one below the thin white cotton blouses of many young girls.  Some appeared for the right reason, others just because not to have one meant you did not fit in.

And it was the last year of grade school.  It was the last year to be a child before we all had to become pre-teens and enter junior high school - the big scary step towards adulthood.

My, that was so long ago... and all these memories jumped to the front of the stack from one little Spelling book.

Cutting Some Slack!

I have totes full of yarn, and I have totes full of fabric.  None of the yarn is enough of one colour or kind to make even a sweater, none of the fabric is enough to make even a dolls dress.  I am not a hoarder, so why do I have these totes full of fiber that are really starting to drive me nuts!

I guess because I keep thinking that someday I will put all the bright colours together and make something wonderful - scarves, mitts, afghans - quilts, wall hangings, pot-holders.

It is not for lack of inspiration that the totes remain full.  Inspiration abounds from sites such as Ravelry, Craftsy, Freepatterns. com, Pinterest, etc etc etc!

Darn it all anyway, that alone drives me nuts - seeing all these great creations, knowing full well I have the supplies and talent to make it happen.... and still?

Here's the thing!

Somehow I have become a TV watcher.  Yikes - not me!  No, No, Never!

Yup - sad to say.  I have become hooked on Netflix, Shomi, TCM...   Shows, movies, new stuff, old stuff, until the PVR is full...  It's really bad.

What is worse yet is I watch without a needle or a hook in my hand.  I watch with my feet up, my tea cup full and my attention unwavering... Told you it is bad!

I think it's a mind thing.  My mind is still not at the happy place it should be.  Stress from a difficult job and difficult people continues to pull me down to the point that all I want to do is sit and stare at a TV screen.  It surely does not help matters at all that my son gave me his 40 " HD TV when he got an even bigger one!

Maybe I shouldn't beat myself up about it so much.  Who says people can't change?  Where is it written that just because I have always been a crafter in my spare time, I have to be one now?

Okay - I feel better.  Thanks for the support.

Think I'll go and watch last Sunday night's episode of Downton Abbey!

Our World Through My Lens.

Have you noticed the difference in my pictures since a year ago?  That is because after I  lost my job last year, my sweet husband decided to surprise me with a new camera.

He didn't buy me one, he asked me if I was to get a different camera, what would I buy?

He already knew part of the answer to that question, because I have be whining about wanting a SLR ever since my 35mm camera and all my lens were stolen, about 10 yrs ago.

He insisted we go camera shopping, so off we went one day to look at cameras.  What I really wanted was not affordable, and I knew that before we even left home.  So I decided to try and get the biggest "shot" for my money.

I wanted a Nikon and I wanted something with some flexibility and with some room to grow.

What I ended up with was a D5100.  It is not high- end, but it has everything I need, and what the basic camera is missing, I can acquire over time.  It is HDR - I have an 18-55mm lens, which is a good place to start, and already I know the next lens I will be adding to the camera.

I love the clarity of the photos it takes.  In fact I love everything about the this little camera.  I find myself reaching for it everyday.

I still haven't even learned a quarter of it's capabilities, but I am experimenting with it more and more as I go along.

Of course one of my favourite subjects is dolls, but I think I get some of my best results shooting flowers.

Here are a couple of pictures I took in the garden last summer.

These are all from my own yard, but this spring and summer, I plan to take the camera with me whenever I go walking.  The possibilities are endless, and there are some awesome gardens in my neighbourhood.

I am so happy my husband took me shopping that day.  This new camera has sparked something inside of me that had been missing for a long time.  What joy it is to see the world through the lens of a camera, and better still - to be able to capture what I see and share it with others is a precious gift for sure!

Who Says Winter Isn't Beautiful!

Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than a Cactus flower?  My Christmas Cactus is in bloom and once again it is glorious!

The plant was started from a slip of my Mother's plant over thirty years ago.  It had a rough beginning because I was always moving it around, but then someone told me that they don't like to be moved.  She advised me to find a place they like and leave it there.

When we bought the house we now live it we converted a front porch to a year-round sun room.  It has east and north facing windows, gets beautiful full sun in the morning and bright light the rest of the day.  I put my cactus in a big pot and hung it in front of the north window, and it has been there ever since.

It must be the perfect spot, because over the years it has grown to a massive plant and every year it blooms from late December until late February or early March, without any intervention on my part.  I just water it when I remember to - never fertilize - pretty much it thrives on not much attention at all!  And for that I get an incredible show of beauty for several months.

It is coming to the point where I am going to have to take it down and reduce it's size.  I am terrified at the thought of this task, what if I ruin it or worse still kill it.  I have started others from it, but none of those smaller plants have ever bloomed.

You can't really see in this picture, but there are hundreds of buds starting on almost every tip of this plant.  I will try and get another picture when it really gets going.

I have another plant blooming in my sun room.  It one of my three orchids.  It too started just before Christmas and will continue for months.  Orchids bloom lasts a long time, nothing they do is ever quick... but Oh is it beautiful!

I am so blessed to have summer colours when winter is everywhere I look.  To see the snow outside, I first have to look through the blossoms inside my home.... how wonderful!

Neither of these plants would ever give me this show in summer - only in winter will this incredible beauty come to life... 

God Bless Winter!

Unfinished Business

I took a little time going through some posts on this site last weekend.  I discovered I had over 30 draft posts - posts I had written and never published for anyone to read.  My immediate thought was - Oh Goody - I can use some of these to fill in days when my mind is not on writing!

Have you ever tried to go back in your thinking?  Well this is sort of like that.  I read the posts, and try and figure out what I was trying to say, or what point I wanted to get across... and so far I have been completely unsuccessful in finishing even one of those draft posts!

Guess you really can't "go back" - even if the older I get the more "going back" I tend to do!

When I was young, it always bugged me that as people got older they tended to reminisce much too much about days gone by.    Guess what?  Here I am doing just that with alarming clarity!  It's not just me either, my younger than me brother and I can spend hours on the phone talking about days long gone.

Last night we were chatting on the phone, and as usual one of us brought something up that opened the door for a "In the old days" conversation.  Believe it or not we were talking about fabric and craft stores.  Sometimes when you talk about something from the past that you once had - it only makes it more clear of what you no longer have - like fabric stores and craft stores!

Thirty years ago there was a fabric store in every mall, as well as the larger stand-alone outlets like Fanny's Fabrics (my Mom's and my favourite Friday night outing).  I spent a good portion of my pay check at Fanny's every month and it was always so busy there... so how come they are no more?  What we have now cannot even come close to that particular store  - and even if it had four times as much material at half the price, it probably still would never come close to that store, because Mom is no longer here to share it with me.

That is why when we get older we dwell more upon the "good old days".  That is our best opportunity to remember loved ones who are gone, and the memories we made together...   If not for this, why would we "go back in time" at all.  After all, it's just memories, the time has gone, it already has been lived and cannot be re-lived - except in our memories.

I for one love my memories - I am happy to say my life has given me more good memories than bad... and yes, the older I get the more precious they become to me.  I don't ever want to loose my ability to "Go Back"...  so you see, the youth have it wrong... or at least I did as a youth!

Just Monkey-ing around - Cheeko Revealed - at last!

I thought that this monkey project was from 2014, but in actual fact it started in 2013.  Imagine my surprise.

Here is a re-post of my Just Monkeying Around post about "Cheeko" the monkey.  I finally got around to finishing Cheeko, this past spring.  His owner picked him up over the summer and was delighted with how he turned out....

Read on.....from the original post in 2013...

 
The friend that brought me Baby Dear to fix, also brought her monkey to restore.  She had told me about him in emails, and I really don't know what I was expecting, but certainly it was not quite what I got.

I guess I thought it would be an old sock monkey to something... Nada -

I must admit, I am a little bit out of my element  here!

But I said I would fix him so...I sat him on my work table and looked at him every now and again, but it took me awhile to get up the nerve to touch him.

The problem with this monkey was not really the condition he was in, but the fact that he looked nothing like the monkey my friend remembered from her childhood.  She described him as having a blue and white striped shirt, bright yellow overalls with big red buttons - and that's the way she wanted him to look again.

He was in pretty good shape, aside from a dirty face, there were no rips or tears in his body, so I wasn't sure what I should do.  She said he felt too solid, she also wanted him softer, so I decided in order to soften him up I would open a part of his side seam up and take out some of his stuffing... then maybe I'd just make him a blue and white striped shirt and a pair of yellow overalls with big red buttons - not so hard??

After a pretty stressful day at work, one evening last week I decided to take the plunge.  With seam ripper in hand I started to open him up...

And there the trouble began:

Are you seeing what I am seeing?  All of a sudden I knew this project was going to become more than I was expecting!

Each section of the new fur that was used to cover the obviously older body was put on individually, so very carefully I started pulling and snipping the really nice fur away, being careful not to tear any of the fragile material under the fur.  It took quite awhile to get it off. but once I had it off, I found the original monkey kind of sort of intact below the new fur..

He had  large open area on the chest of his body and the whole area across his chest was worn thin, and the top of one arm was completely gone.

At this point I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I still needed to remove the stuffing, so I continued on.

 

The poor guy was pretty crushed by then... but I must admit he was starting to intrigue me -  just a little bit.  We then had a little photo shoot  while I tried to think of how I was ever going to restore this cheeky fellow.

I put him away, and actually kind of forgot about the little guy until early last summer his owner contacted me and said they would be in town in the summer, and could they stop over and pick up the Baby Dear doll, and Cheeko.

So I pulled him back out of his box and got busy.  Here is the restored Cheeko.  His owner was so happy to see him exactly as she remembered him, and I was more than pleased with the way he turned out after all my stressing over this project.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Well here is is, another New Year... Happy New Year everyone!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

I am afraid I was in bed with a miserable flu for a lot of the holidays.  Started with a headache, then a stomach flu, and then the over all and everything aches, for days on end.  I am feeling better now, but kind of wondering what happened to a few days last week!

I am happy to report that aside from her blindness, Molly seems to be fully recovered.  She is quite bossy, and demanding at the moment, guess she figures she should be treated so wonderfully special all the time - and she is, but we try not to spoil her too over much.  That was my wish for Christmas, to have my beautiful companion well again, and so I did receive my very special Christmas wish... and I am so Thankful.

Now it's back to reality.  The weather has turned very Winnipeg-like.  We are in the deep freeze at the moment and expected to stay this way for a week or so.  We had some snow over the weekend, so now we are looking a bit more normal for this time of the year.  I got my boots out of the closet on Friday for the first time this winter, so up to now we have done very well, indeed.

I have been working in my "studio".  I have been designing sweater charts for doll sweaters, and have knitted 1 so far.   But the needles and hooks have been busy getting a jump on some other projects for dolls that I want to get up for sale.

Here is a bit of my creative mess on my desk - a wide angle lens wouldn't catch it all, I'm afraid!

You can see to the right, some of the things I am working on at the moment.  The graph on the desk is for a doll- sized Valentine's Day skating sweater, it is in the style of the Mary Maxim - type sweaters.  

My Mom made so many of those heavy wool sweaters over the years - we all had one.  They were made from a bulky yarn called Buffalo Wool... and they were worn from February until spring pretty much.  I wish I still had mine.

I have used and made graphs for crochet many times but I have never knit from a graph before.  Carrying different colours across the back of the piece is a new challenge for me.  The designing is the easiest part, I am afraid I am not entirely happy with my first attempt at knitting from a graph, but I will keep at it.  Practice makes it much better - I hope.

Over the next couple of weeks I hope to catch you up on some of my finished projects of 2014.  Even though it was a rotten year in a lot of ways, my fingers stayed busy.  That is my way of getting through things... working my hands in creating, and my mind in writing.

Tomorrow I will show you the finished results of my Monkey Business post from last year!

Till then....