30-Day Challenge:: Noticing

It's short and, hopefully, sweet today folks because, sometimes, when you stop talking, writing, and thinking and start doing, you might just see something quite beautiful.
I was doing something as mundane as pulling fabric out of a discharge bath when I noticed how amazing it looked doubled up so that the pattern from the other half seemed to form a ghost image and the light from outside filtered through the fabric. I'm not going to pretend that I have my camera ever-present to record these kinds of images, but it was certainly nearby and knew grabbing it and shooting a few frames was worth the effort.

I Heart Snow

Before you start grumbling about how it's easy for me to love snow when I don't have to live with it for months on end, I want to reassure you that I have difficult weather to endure. Come visit in August and you'll encounter the real definition to sizzling. But, right now, allow me to give you my naive, fresh perspective on snow.
We don't get snow here very often and, truth be told, it doesn't stick around either, but when it comes we are so grateful to see it.
I was awakened this morning by a phone call. It was a recorded message from the school district letting me know that school was canceled because of the snow. Stop giggling. This is Austin, we do not have the resources to deal with even this amount of snow. I'm not saying this as a criticism. We don't get snow very often, so why would the city have a team of trucks to spread salt? Actually, being the environmentally-friendly town we are, we spread sand instead. It's completely useless, but we feel really good about it.
Anyway, as I staggered over to the phone, I glanced out the window.

This is what I saw.
Like I predicted in Wednesday's post, the town has shut down including the mighty University of Texas which is officially closed today. What that yields is a lot of people in their homes, but not necessarily in their cars and that means the streets are wonderfully silent. Even better, all of us snow novices including the neighborhood children for whom this might be their first encounter with snow are out and about and marveling at the beauty of it all.
Today's high temperature is predicted to be 36 degrees, so it will probably all be gone by this afternoon. No matter. It's fleeting nature only makes me appreciate it all the more.
Now...don't you love snow too?

Knits in the City

Seeing as this is knitting related, and today's post deals with knitting, I'll include this little bit of knowledge I've gained lately. I've begun knitting the bicycle basket and in general the knitting is going quickly. The only thing that slows the process, other than the guilt of knowing that I should be doing other things, is working with the Jute twine called for in the instructions. A couple of you wrote to me warning that knitting with this "yarn" can be hard on your hands. I'm here to confirm that. I can't work on this project for more than two hours in a row without needing to take a break. I even considered abandoning the twine(it was only $2.50 a skein) and switching to a bulky cotton yarn. I decided against that because I think it would lose that rustic charm that the original basket has. Anyway, the moral here is "knit in short bursts, knot(cute,huh?) long stretches.
OK. On to what this post is really about.
This:



Are you wondering what that is? It's an urban art knitted cozie, of course. Several years ago artist Carl Trominski installed a series of "paintings" along both sides of an underpass. At the time of their unveiling, I didn't think very much of them and I still don't. Underneath the knitted cozies, they're just blue fields painted with reflective paint. At first I honestly thought they were installed as a safety measure. They didn't read as visually interesting at all. Sorry, Carl.
Now, I love them.



Local artist, Magda Sayeg, was commissioned to knit cozies for the paintings/traffic signs.



I'm especially appreciative of the fact that the designs she selected for the cozies are very identifiable as traditional knitting patterns. There's a variety of ripple patterns, stripes and granny squares. She's not using knitting as an expedient way to encase these paintings, but using the paintings as a canvas to celebrate knitting.
I think it's inspired and inspiring.
I rode my bike, sans soon-to-be-finished knitting basket, down to the site of the underpass to take these pictures. When I got there, I couldn't help but feel happy that I lived in a place where textiles would be so publicly and proudly displayed.

Of Bikes and Baskets

Happy Earth Day, everyone! That is the called for greeting, right?
Anyway I wanted to share a few Earth Day appropriate images with you and tell you about something fun and planet-friendly,thus the inclusion in the "Earth Day" post, that I'll be participating in during May and the item I'm going to have to craft in order to participate in aforementioned Earth-friendly activity.
First, the pretty pictures.






Tell me you can't see pictures of poppies without hearing the voice of the Wicked Witch of the West shrieking, "Poppies!" Of course you can't.

Aren't those pictures just like time lapse photography? I've documented all the stages of a flowering poppy and I only had to run around to every poppy in my yard to do it.

I should conserve some of my energy because during the entire month of May I'm going to be participating in The Commuter Challenge. The focus of the Commuter Challenge is to encourage folks to get out of their cars and on to their bikes. My husband and several friends from work are already committed bicycle commuters and they formed a team and participated last year. This year he's added me to the team and I am pretty psyched. The goal in the Commuter Challenge is to rack up as many trips as possible by bike. A "trip" is defined as any place that you would have driven to that you're riding your bike to instead. The only "trips" that don't count are ones made strictly for exercise. Yesterday I rode to the bank, then to the Post Office, and finally to the Farmer's Market. With the ride home that's considered 4 trips. It's not May yet, but I thought I'd get a feel for the route. I may be jumping the gun here a bit, but I'm deeply competitive and I want to do well in the Commuter Challenge, despite the fact that there really isn't any specific reward for the first place team.
I rode to the Farmer's Market to buy eggs which is all I could fit in my backpack. Once there I wished I'd had a way to bring other goodies home because there was a lot of good stuff to be had. Eureka! A new craft project is in order.
I need to knit this:



It's from this new book.



The really cool thing about this bike basket is that it's knitted out of twine you buy at a craft or hardware store. Thankfully the sample is lined with some Echino oilcloth, so it's not that rustic. But, I always like a project that sends me to an unexpected place for the essential ingredients.
My husband is a wee bit horrified by the thought of this basket. Not because he doesn't want me to bring home veggies from the market, but because of the odd vision that having a knitted basket on my fancy bike, complete with clip-less pedals, might be. To that I respond with a familiar refrain, " This is Austin, after all."

Color My World Daily

That's the name of a flickr group I belong to. Except I never get to add any images to the group. It's not because the group is moderated by some overbearing ogre that just doesn't want to see the likes of me and my images in the group pool. Rather it's because the featured color changes everyday and I seem to be totally out of sync with that day's hue. All that changed today. Guess what today's color is?



Yep, it's orange.
And, through some miracle of happenstance I live in just the kind of neighborhood where folks not only own an orange couch, but find it acceptable to deposit that couch on the curb once they're done with it. Add to that I'm the kind of neighbor who's ready and willing to screech to a halt and pull her car over just to catch said couch on film(or rather as a whole bunch of pixelated dots).

Austin is truly my kind of town!

Late Breaking News

This just in: The extreme Texas heat resulting in seemingly endless days of 100 degree plus temperatures has resulted in what can only be described as a freak of nature.


A once vigorous though non-producing Peach tree has apparently sprouted a crop of hand dyed and patterned pillow covers.


Stat tuned for further details as they become available.

A Week of Finishing :: Hexagon Quilt

The quilt measures about 36"x 45". I don't know the dimensions of the train depot or the cow.

A Week of Finishing :: Big Nate Quilt

I finished this quilt on Monday, binding it while sitting in my car waiting for my daughter at swim team. There's really nothing like having a warm quilt on your lap in your car in the summer heat. I didn't go inside the swim center as there's no air conditioning in there anyway, so not sweating wasn't really an option. Despite the perspiration, I am very happy with the finished product and decided to celebrate by taking pictures of it at a favorite park.


The quilt measures about 60"x 80" and is a combination of concentric squares and circles of varying sizes. Most of the squares and all the circles have been made using the shibori technique I used to make this quilt. Like that quilt I rented time on a long arm quilting machine to do the quilting. It's amazing how quickly a top of this size can be quilted on one of those babies. If I had an extra $10,000 laying around, I'd definitely consider investing in one.
Oh well...more tomorrow.

Question

If a tree falls in the forest but there's no one there to wrap it in yarn, does it make a sound?
Before you scratch your head in befuddlement take a gander a these pictures.


We happened upon this tree/sculpture as we were riding the Town Lake Trail the other day. The tree had apparently been felled recently in a storm and someone/ones had come along and wrapped its branches in lots of cheap, bright, acrylic yarn. It's really quite amazing. I love it on so many levels. Obviously the fiber connection speaks to me, but I like the public art/anonymous aspect of this project, and the fact that something like this is so quintessentially Austin.
If you live here and would like to see this for yourself, it's on the part of the trail that's just north of the Mopac foot bridge. And, if you go see it and post pictures, let me know. I'd love to see them.

When the city is still sleeping...

...it is so beautiful.

Stars

In my garden...


and on my bed.


I worked on this pillow sham off and on for a while. The stars were pieced using a paper piecing technique and then appliqued onto some white linen. I decided to stipple quilt the bulk of the background because I wanted texture but without an organized pattern. I think that the second sham, in keeping with the celestial theme need to be something like planets or moons.
I'm so enjoying having this bit of handmade goodness on my bed. So often I make things like this to give or sell. It's nice to have some of it close by to enjoy.

It's All the Little Things

...that make me smile.
I shot a bunch of pictures today and I was initially really stumped as to how they worked together. They didn't seem overtly related to each other as a whole. As I processed them though I realized that each of these images brought out a unique kind of smile.


These images of my silly and adorable nieces brought the kind of grin that only comes from watching kids ham it up.


Capturing these pictures tickled me too. The smile was probably just as wide, but it came from another place. A place of awe and appreciation for the bounty that I pass by everyday in my own backyard and don't take enough time to notice.


This smile was followed by a question, " Has there always been so much orange in my world or am I just seeing it today?"


And this smile is definitely the product of loving the beautiful design possibilities inherent in the simplest of tools.