Thread-painting

Yesterday was a pretty good day.

I took a thread-painting class from Monika Kinner-Whalen at My Sweet Prairie.  Monika does these amazing thread-painted artworks and was generous enough to share her talents and process with us.  I've wanted to take it for ages and finally just booked a morning off and went for it. It was so much fun!

Tentative first stitches

She started us off with "cheater" fabrics, getting us to see the colours and shapes and get used to the feeling.  It's a lot like free-motion quilting.

Adding more dimension

When we were comfortable, we switched to our projects.  Monika gave us copies of chickadee photos taken by Edith Maracle (with permission, of course!) and let us choose a background fabric.  We used a lightbox to trace the main spots, used the photographs for reference and went to town!

I'm not finished yet but here's where I left off when class ended:

I grabbed some shiny black thread for his eye. Can't wait to work on it more!

I learned so much in such a short span, met some lovely quilters, and gained a new appreciation for rayon thread. If you are in the Saskatoon area and have a chance to take one of Monika's classes, I highly recommend it.  She's lovely and a wonderful teacher - so supportive!



Oh, and the Blades won their 18th game straight.  And it was a great game.  I love them even when they're losing but it's so much more fun when they're not.  GO, Blades, GO!

Ceremonial puck drop.  Nicholls (20) is the Children's Wish Foundation Point Man this year.  For every point he gets in the regular season, Acklands-Grainger donates $50 bucks to Children's Wish.  He cost them $100 last night. ;-)  yay!

Up and Running (Stitch)

Well, I'm excited.

We have the website for the Saskatoon Modern Quilt Guild up and running, we have a Flickr group, internet buttons, a mailing list, real live members, and, let's face it, a lot of fun!

My lovely co-chair, Jaclyn of JaclynQuilts, (the Statler to my Waldorf, the macaroni to my cheese) and I are hoping to blog regularly to keep members and potential members informed about what we're up to and have some general quilty goodness, so from time to time, I'll be over there. We're also hoping to get our membership involved in blogging on the site as well.

Basically, we're official and that feels really good.

Like 'bite of cheesecake', good.

Visit Your LQS Day: Periwinkle Quilting

(I know.  Three posts in the same week - I'm as stunned as you are!  But today is important...) 

I can't go to my local quilt shop today.

So I went yesterday. :-)

It's no secret that I love it there. They know me by name and I get a chorus of "Hi, Carly"s when I walk in; it feels a little like my Cheers.

When Periwinkle Quilting opened, years ago, I was drawn like a moth to wool, or a quilter to cotton.  I hadn't even made many quilts in my life.  I didn't know yet that I was a quilter.  But I was driving down the street, saw the sign and made a bee-line for the store. (Moths, bees, I'm mixing my insect metaphors here...)  A shop just for quilting?  Here?  It was exactly what I never knew I'd always dreamed about...

Once through the doors, I was exposed to a whole new world.  It was the first time I'd seen non-traditional patterns, and fabrics specifically made for quilting.  And en masse, in beautiful colour-sorted sections and entire fabric lines designed to work together.  Overwhelmed? Indeed! But pleasantly so.  I think it's fair to say that without Periwinkle, I might not have discovered the wealth of the quilting community.  (Not to mention that it was Michelle at Periwinkle who started the ball rolling on the Saskatoon Modern Quilt Guild...!)

The staff is incredible there - always ready to help you pick a project or find the right fabric.  They love Show&Tell and have smiled through my many chatty ramblings as I meander.  Everyone is so friendly and it's fun to exchange tips and ideas; I consider the shop a place to recharge my creative batteries and my positive energy.

However, I don't think I've ever gotten out of there with less than a fat quarter...


Periwinkle Quilting
105-2105 8th Street
Saskatoon, SK
(306) 933-3072

Our Basement: Not for the over-actively imaginative...

It's spring. It's melty. Water invades alleyways and old buildings. And someone has to venture down to the basements and plug in the sump pump.

Even if it's a basement that gives you the heebie-jeebies.

I use the word "creepy" a lot in the video. I couldn't help it. It sprang to mind. Actually, it crawled into my mind and wouldn't leave. Much like the smell of damp. But it's definitely interesting.... in a dimly-lit, "did you hear something", "where's Buffy when you need her" sort of way.

A Date with my Camera

Silver birch - how grasslands become forests.....

Step One: Dress in layers.

Step Two: Stuff a few things - sketch pad, water bottle, wallet, and camera - into tiny little day pack. Look outside and realize that you've picked the windiest day of the year and grab iPod to give your ears a little protection from the blowing wind and to see how nature looks with a soundtrack.

Step Three: Leave a note.

Mine reads: I have gone to Beaver Creek for the afternoon. If I am not back by the time you read this, I've likely been kidnapped by badgers as retaliation for that thing that time. Send help! Love, C

Step Four: Snap with impunity.

I hadn't been out to Beaver Creek in a long time. But when the leaves start turning colours, I get this sense of wanderlust that drives me out amongst the trees.

(Last October, I was able to take a relaxed stroll down by the river at Fort Edmonton Park - it was very orange - and beautiful. And I don't have a single shot because I didn't back them up and my hard drive suffered a massive failure from which nothing was retrievable.)

So I went walking, weaving around groups of school children, taking photos when I wasn't being blown over and some even when I was. It's always refreshing to just breathe...

I am not much of a wildlife photographer. I photograph wildlife much like I garden - terribly. It's sad. I managed to frighten almost everything before I got a good shot or was so far away, by the time you zoom in, it's pixel-ated beyond all hope of recognition.

I did manage to say hi to the chickadee...

Catch a chipmunk before he dashed off....

And see what I thought was a stick in the path before it moved and I had the presence of mind to reach for the camera before the full body panic set in over a harmless little thing?

SEE????Probably not - but it's in there..... Did I mention that I'm lousy at wildlife photography? It is just a garter snake. Less than two feet long. But one of the things I adore about autumn is that reptiles like snakes are supposed to be hibernating. Sleeping. Dreaming of fields full of mice and affected British accents for when they are cast in the latest Disney cartoon. Anything but creeping me out. (Yeah, yeah - get over it City Girl. )

I did spot one particular tree....

Alone and defiant. Standing tall against the prairie, laughing into the wind. And not likely jumpy around harmless garter snakes...

It never ceases to amaze me how the prairie can go from thick brush and forest to plains in less time than it takes to aim a camera.

Anyone who says there is nothing on the prairies, or that they're a boring flatland, just isn't looking hard enough.

And anyone who thinks I'm afraid of snakes just hasn't seen me around spiders. :-) I'm not afraid - I respect. And respect requires a healthy distance.

PS. The quilt has been basted. However, its state of un-finish does not prevent its usefulness. To some, anyway.....

Sunday - Game Day

Today the Riders are playing. So that means we all bleed green.

Anyone not from the Canadian prairies might not know about the tense rivalry between Alberta and Saskatchewan, but the unusual thing isn't the rivalry but the geography of it.

Saskatchewan (the province) has just over a million people in it. (That's one in about 34 Canadians.....) Edmonton alone has 800, 000-ish. Calgary has well-over a million. But when the Riders play in one of these cities in Alberta, the stands never look too lopsided.

I lived in Edmonton (Home of the Edmonton Eskimos) for a while, working in the world's largest shopping mall/entertainment centre (so many stories for another time....). On game weekend, the mall was always full of jerseys. Jerseys for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. And it wasn't just people who'd driven the three, five, eight hours to watch the game in Edmonton (and there were many). It was people who lived in Edmonton, maybe for years, but bravely wore the homeland green anyway - even when the Riders were playing in Hamilton or Montreal. It's what we do. Those of us from Saskatchewan may roam and travel, full of wanderlust, but more often than not, our hearts never really leave. I've always joked that there are four million people from Saskatchewan - only one million live locally. :-)

There's an interesting sense of loyalty and making the best of things as they sit. I remember, in that same mall, running to grab a snack on a break, and passing a bunch of green ladies with big S's on their cheeks sitting at the caricature artist's stand. They were giggling away and having a great time, joking about where they'd get their husbands to take them for dinner. I stopped to ask them the score and expected good news from their joviality.

"Oh, we got murdered," one of them said, with a smile and a wave.

Her friend piped up, "But it never stops us from cheering." And I walked away and off to my snack with a grin on my face, not sad that our team lost, but glad to be a part of our little fan-dom.

More remarkable than the sea of green on game day and the attitudes of those who watch and cheer, is the sea of green the day AFTER the game day we didn't win. We still send up the flag.

In his backyard, my father has a flagpole and you had better believe that today, the big green one is flying just under the maple leaf.

Because it's game day.

Finger Mustache - always a good time

So the Saskatoon Soaps have our upcoming improv comedy season opener on Friday. As is customary for us, we pose for a newspaper picture. It involved mustaches. And as mine was still on my finger when I got back from said photo op, I decided to fool around with the ol' web cam. (Picture made more authentically masculine by a complete lack of makeup and the accidental position of my scarf mimicking an ascot....) ( and being A Scot is evidenced by my complete lack of tan and or pigmentation... oh, the word play...... but seriously, could I be a paler person???)

Apparently, according to Sister, there are three or four gentlemen in town here who've taken the finger mustache to a whole new level. They've gotten them tattooed. What started as a joke, a way to say 'hi' to your best bud from across a crowded party, became a life-long commitment to the bit. And, I guess, to each other. Long live the friendship!! Vive le mustache!

Sister and Sister's Friend were out one night, having drinks, and at some point in the evening decided finger mustaches were very necessary. No sooner had they applied them and started modeling than their server told them of the Mustachioed Caballeros mentioned above. A little later, they found themselves outside keeping a smoker company, when someone else they knew pointed to a random man in another cluster of smokers. Sister caught his eye from across the way and without a word, raised her finger mustache in miniature salute. Random Man, in kind, raised his eyebrow and a tattooed index finger to his lip. Each of them nodded solemnly before returning to their respective friends.

One of the band of brothers is rumoured to have committed both of his index fingers to the cause. Each one forms half of the infamous fumanchu!!

Sometimes something silly is just what we need to connect us to something bigger than ourselves. Or to each other.

And sometimes something silly is just something to do on Friday night. (Broadway Theatre, Saskatoon, Fri Sep18 9:30pm, $10) Very very silly.

La la la la - la llama!

Sometimes, acting like an idiot leads to wonderful things...

I've been a member of an improv comedy troupe (The Saskatoon Soaps) for about eleven years now. As part of a gig we were doing for a season sponsor, a large bunch of people from various different places were split into groups and sent on a scavenger hunt through a few businesses in downtown Saskatoon. We acted as the location judges in charge of clues and signing each team's guess forms. In character. Good times.

It took awhile for the first group to get to my post and, naturally, I took advantage to thoroughly browse the shop's inventory, which includes a number of fair-trade items and organic clothing. (YAY! I will be going back when I'm on my own time.) HOWEVER, as I was in goof-mode, I was very attracted to these wonderful little knit finger puppets made by Ecuadorian children. There were tigers, elephants, alligators and llamas! These gems kept me marvellously entertained between scavengers.

When my goof-time had come to an end and I returned to plain clothes, the lovely shopkeepers gave me a llama as a thank you for being their store's oddball.

So THANK YOU to Kim and Tammy at Amos&Andes Imports. You made my day! And inspired many rounds of singing "LaBamba" as LaLlama" - great fun!

And so I leave you today with the reassuring fact that finger puppets are entertaining no matter how old you are...

AND a poem...

A one-l lama, that's a priest.

A two-l llama, that's a beast.

But I will bet a silk pyjama,

that there is no three-l lllama!

--Ogden Nash

Have a great one!