Under a Blue Moon

Goose girl

I hit up a little antique store yesterday and found a collection of paper goods. I love paper second only to shiny, sparkly things. I can’t resist.

This particular vendor had a number of postcards, promotional pictures/advertisements, prints taken out of old books, etc. There were a number that caught my eye and except for one all were just a little, well, weird.

Take the picture above – I’ve cropped it but it had a number on the bottom, 70, so I assume it is an illustration from a children’s book. Page 70 to be exact. Only what kind of children’s story has a small child dancing around wearing the pelt of a skinned rabbit while surrounded by other rabbits? Are they enthralled? Planning to overpower the dancing rabbit impostor? And what happened to the kid’s shoe?

This next scrap was originally included with a loaf of bread. I gather from the back of the picture that one could collect the series and even send away for a scrap book to store them in. I’m hoping that this wasn’t intended for children because if I saw this when I was little I think I would be terrified.

Actually it reminds me of a story – when I was about nine years old my family was traveling through Europe. I forget where we were but we were staying at an inn that had a little working farm. There was a young girl about my younger sister Trish and my age. While she was showing us around her grandmother sent her on an errand. She looked at us and said "Whatever you do – do NOT go into the goose pen. They will get out." So of course we went into the goose pen and the geese all escaped. Trish and I ran all over the place, fruitlessly trying to round them up. The girl was very cross with us when she got back and the next day I woke up with my eyes swollen shut because unbeknownst to me I was chasing them through a nettle patch.

So I can actually kind of identify with the little girl in the picture.

I’m not sure where this next picture came from. There is something vaguely sinister about the whole scene. A cat playing the harp for giant rats? And are the rats dancing or just steadying each other? And what is with the little cranky cat sitting on top of the harp?

I thought at first it was a prayer card because of the back:

But then I thought maybe these are testimonials from people that were cured of their ailments by some product rather than prayer. What exactly is dyspepsia anyway?

Here’s the not weird one:

It’s smaller than shown here. I bought a Mod Podge product that you brush onto prints that gives them a brush stroke appearance. I think I’ll find a little frame for it and it will look like a teeny oil painting.

Embroidery

1. small embroidery book, 2. Untitled, 3. Bunny Onesie, 4. Cherry Tree, 5. Embroidery lesson 3, 6. CupcakeGuru detail, 7. growing close up, 8. Tea Towel Swap, 9. cupcake embroidery, 10. little dear and ghost birds, 11. japanese embroidery book, 12. Embroidery lesson 2, 13. Bundt Cake embroidery, 14. sweet bird!, 15. embroidered bird onesie wip, 16. Girl With Bird Embroidered Pouch

I haven’t made much (any) progress on my runner so far this week. Probably because I’ve been so busy hanging out at flickr looking at embroidery examples. I’m feeling the urge to get out my embroidery hoop again.

I seem to be drawn to the simple, sweet designs. I saw several pictures that were from a Japanese embroidery book. After a bit of sleuthing (okay not so much – other bloggers are very intrepid and quicker than I am to find these things) I see I can buy it from Superbuzzy.

While searching I went down a rabbit hole of Japanese crafting and I now I NEED some Japanese craft magazines. So cute. I’m going to head over to our local Asian shopping center and see what I can find.

600 buttons

My button envy has been well documented on this blog. So it was with some excitement that I won three 200 button lots on eBay. 600 beautiful mother of pearl buttons to be used in all kinds of decorating and craft projects.

I was, however, a bit underwhelmed when I received them. 600 buttons doesn’t take up as much room as you think it would. I was envisioning a coffee can’s worth.

More like a cup’s worth. They smell kind of funky too. I’m thinking my button lust isn’t going to be one of those instant gratification things – more like a long, ongoing acquisition.

I felt the same kind of disappointment when my sister ordered and received one of those Sea Monkey kits when we were little. The advert in the back of the comic book depicted frolicking little sea creatures all dressed up in various outfits and looking adorable. The reality was brine shrimp which you cannot dress up no matter how hard you try.

I didn’t get much progress done on my runner yesterday. I did finish cutting out the leaves and I’m now whip stitching the vine in place. Once I do that getting the flowers attached will go very quickly. I hope to work on it this evening and have some progress to show tomorrow.

I also signed up for a blogging challenge. My first! It involves using a wedding image and incorporating it into some sort of artwork. I already know what I am going to do and the results will be posted here on January 29th.

If anyone else wants to join go over to Beachy’s Cape Cod Cupboard for the details.

My poor bench

We’ve been having a bit of weather here in Northern California the past few days. I was sitting in my nice, cozy kitchen cutting out felt flowers when I noticed a movement and light out of the corner of my eye. I turned and looked out the window and a big oak tree was laying across our driveway.

It spared my car (by about a foot and a half) but it took out my green garden bench. At first it looked like the bench might be saved but when Rick was cutting the branches the trunk resting on the bench shifted and there it went.

We have a lot of big trees on our property and usually lose one each winter to a storm. This was closer to the house than I like. Why couldn’t it be one of the ugly, scrubby pine trees?

Since I was essentially trapped at home (car was blocked) I spent the day cheerfully cutting out felt flowers for my runner. I do love a project with a lot of hand work.

I don’t know what genius discovered that you could use freezer paper for tracing and cutting out but I would like to meet you and give you a big hug. You just trace out your design on the matte side and iron it to your fabric. The shiny side sticks to your fabric and you just cut out the design and then peel off the paper. And I discovered you can use the template more than once. After about the third time you iron it the paper loses it’s stick.

My flowers are all cut out and I need to go run over to Jo-Anns to see if they have light green wool felt and also pick up some embroidery floss. I need to cut out the leaves and then I can start assembling. I’m hoping to finish today or tomorrow.

Public Service Announcement

I’m going to spend the next hour or so doing some clean up on my blog (mostly by assigning categories to posts) so if you get some sort of email notication each time I update then you are going to get slammed with emails. Sorry about that.

Going backwards…

Say hello to my new Christmas tree. The one I was walking down Main Street in Pleasanton with yesterday – while two of my sisters pretended like they didn’t know me.

They thought I was a bit bonkers but I prefer to think of myself as a visionary. This is for next year, obviously. I also bought that shiny silver thing (I realize the irony of that statement since everything in the picture is silver and shiny…) in lower part of the picture. It’s kind of tree shaped too. And a pretty, glittery star ornament. Everything was 40% off and bought at various establishments in Pleasanton. My favorite being American Harvest which is just the best store ever.

But let’s back up a bit because the whole day was pretty amazing. Nicki and I have been trying to get to Livermore and Pleasanton for a day of shopping and lunch for MONTHS now. It finally came together yesterday and as luck would have it our sister Kate was available too. The first stop was Livermore with the sole destination of In Between Stitches. It is a quilt shop owned by two sisters, Leslie and Melissa and where the adorable Pam of Pamkittymorning – yes that Pam! – works.

And I got to meet her! She’s kind of a blogging rockstar, wouldn’t you say? The store is beyond fabulous, as are the people that work there. They have exactly the kind of fabrics I would stock in a quilt shop if I owned one – huge selection of 30’s repo type fabrics, lots of shabby pinks, creams and greens. Tons of embroidery patterns. I think I like the embroidery and applique aspect of quilting more than anything so it was just my kind of store.

I ended up picking up an embroidery pattern (future post) and a pattern for a felt runner. They had an example in the store and I made a beeline to it. It combines felt applique and embroidery and is the type of project that is small enough that even I can finish it with my short attention span.

The store is full of different types of projects so if you aren’t into quilting it is still absolutely worth the trip. While we were there a number of quilting designers and bloggers just happened to show up. We all lined up for picture taking and I’m sure Nicki will post her pictures (my camera wasn’t there) and will identify the other quilters.

Here is a picture of the runner pattern. I decided to go with a more muted palette of pinks, apricots and creams. In Between Stitches has one of the best selections of felted wool I have ever seen. The picture above doesn’t quite get the green right – its more sagey looking in real life. I’m hoping to start on it tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have some shots of my progress later on this weekend.

After Livermore and a hair raising drive to Pleasanton we had lunch at Fontina’s and then just wandered up and down Main Street, picking up after Christmas bargains.

Wheeeee! I know I wasn’t going to buy any more supplies for projects but honestly, can you blame me?

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