Latest News – Page 3

Happy 4th of July!!!

July 4, 2017August 8, 2021Art Projects, Celebrating, Latest News, Needle Felting1 Comment

Wow! Here we are again another July 4th celebration. For me this holiday has always been about family and fireworks.

This year is a big family reunion for my husband’s family on the Michigan shore of Lake Huron. We have lucked out on the weather and it is much cooler than they are accustomed to this time of year. Being mountain dwelling folks from Colorado we are loving the cooler temperatures.

His cousin arranged for the group to rent a lovely Victorian house right on the water and 2 campsites at the nearby State Park. We have all been riding bikes and hiking back and forth. Yesterday I spent some quality time with my kiddos playing in the water at the park beach

and collecting beautiful sand smoothed stones.

This pile of pebbles are very small and I am planning on doing some wire wrapping on them to turn them into jewelry.

The house has a lovely dining room area that has 3 walls that are full of big glass windows with screened sections. It’s become my place to sit and do some crafting work each day. I try to stay completely out of the sun between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., fortunately the view from this room are lovely, so I don’t feel left out.

I’ve been working on this needle felted sculpture piece. Pretty awesome to sit here with birds singing, the sound of surf and a cool breeze. I’ve also packed along wire wrapping supplies, some beads, 4 crochet projects, 1 knitting project and my new Chameleon Art marker set. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to write a review on those while we are enjoying the time here.

Now I’m going to go do some more needle-felting and head to the beach for some toes in the sand time.

TNNA Goodies

June 24, 2017September 16, 2017Celebrating, Creativity, Crochet, Latest News, Sheep, TNNA, YarnLeave a Comment

I’m back from my little break and I have so much news for you. It’s likely going to take a few blog posts.

This summer has been moving fast and it seems every weekend has been full of excitement. First June weekend was sheep adventures, second was TNNA, and the third was playing with my dear niece and her adorable family.

I’ve shared quite a bit about the sheep adventures, though there will be more to tell on that front. For the moment though let’s roll the clock back to the second weekend and talk about the TNNA Summer Trade Show in Columbus, Ohio. For those of you that are new to my blog, or have never heard of TNNA, it is The National Needlearts Association and is a trade organization for folks that sell all sorts of fiber, yarn, needle crafting tools and supplies. It also includes needlearts teachers, designers and bloggers. You can learn more about TNNA at their website.

I had a little shorter visit at TNNA this time than I usually do, but it was still super productive. I flew out of Denver late Saturday morning. Had one of the most relaxing and enjoyable flights ever because of my seat mates. The woman at the window was traveling with her King Charles Cavalier Spaniel and he cuddled with me for most of the flight. Might not have been ideal for folks that don’t love dogs or critters, but it was perfect for me. The woman on the aisle was also a dog lover, so we had a great time.

Saturday evening was the Business & Creative Services dinner. Lots of interesting conversations with colleagues and show vendors. There was a great goodie bag. I made sure to go to each of the vendors during the rest of the show to thank them for their sponsorship.

Sunday morning I had an inspiring class with Zontee Hou called “Become a Video Whiz”. Just Wow! I feel like my brain was so full after that class that I needed to sit somewhere quietly for a couple of hours and think. Unfortunately that wasn’t an option that day, fortunately Zontee always provides detailed slides and hand-outs that let me re-live the class now I am home.

I needed to spend my Sunday after the class on the showroom floor to meet with a number of yarn companies and to talk tools with some of the other companies (like the lively folks at Clover).

It’s always exciting to see what products Clover has, both the old and new. I’ve got a few to experiment with over the next couple of months, so be sure to check back for those reviews.

It was also a blast to see my friend Eloise. She and I have known each other for ages, long before she began working with Clover. We had a good chuckle when she started working with them and I told her they were one of my very favorite crafting tool companies. We were laughing at this show because she lives in Denver, yet the last 2 times we have seen each other have been at shows that we had to fly to. Life just gets too busy and crazy at times.

I also found some other booths I needed to check out. Like the “Knitting Abacus”, “Glowving” from Kreinik and “Brittany Knitting Needles & Crochet Hooks”.

It’s not a real TNNA show without a stop by Daven’s “Love & Leche” booth for beautifully scented lotion bars for keeping my hands from drying out up here on the mountain.

One of the most wonderful things about being at TNNA is the yarn. A rainbow of colors and so many beautiful soft fibers. I can get very lost seeing all the yarn. That joke about being overwhelmed by yarn fumes? It could really happen at TNNA. There are so many new yarns to see.

The pile of yarn above is what I came home with, there will also be some more coming to my house soon. I’ve been sketching and making design notes on each of these in preparation for creating gorgeous new crochet designs. Some of these yarns are brand new to me, so I will also be posting reviews of those yarns as I get to work with them.

Sunday evening I got together with a bunch of my designer friends and we went out to dinner at Bare Burger. I loved this restaurant. Local sourced and organic food, cooks and wait staff that actually know what Gluten Free really means plus fun, quirky décor like the awesome decoupaged bear heads hanging all over the restaurant walls.

One stop that was at the top of my list for TNNA was the Unicorn Wash booth. I met Melanie, the owner, at my first TNNA show. You might recall I mentioned her when talking about my marvelous book about sheep? It was her drawing that I won it from. I wanted to make sure to check in with her and discuss her products because I have another big piece of news. I am now a part owner with my neighbor Margie of a sheep flock.

I bet most of you aren’t that surprised, after all the sheep adventures of the last couple of years. It’s been my dream for a long time and Margie gave me the push I needed to do it. Life is going to be even more interesting and busy now, but I figure it will off-set the gap that is opening in my life as my sons are becoming ever more independent. I know one thing after only one week of working with the sheep regularly, I’m going to be getting in great shape.

Hang onto your hooks and needles my dear readers, it’s going to be a wild time on the mountain.

Taking a Little Break

June 14, 2017August 8, 2021Latest News2 Comments

Hey there dear readers. This summer is speeding up on me big time. I just got back yesterday evening from the TNNA Summer Trade Show, that was the view out the plane window during one of my flights. Tomorrow my niece and her family are coming out to spend a long weekend with us.

I’m busily kid-proofing my house, since my niece is the amazing mom to 3 adorable little people 6 years old and younger. That’s me above with the newest one during our Spring Break trip. They are good kids, but it has been quite awhile since I had to think about what is down low that little hands should probably be kept away from. Currently I am really grateful that I haven’t removed all the childlocks that are on a number of our cabinets.

In a few short weeks I’ll be getting ready for my trip in July going to the CGOA Chain Link Conference in Chicago. For those of you thinking about going I really hope you join us, it’s going to be a blast. There are also going to be some big family trips for us this summer. The Graves clan is getting together for a week on the shores of Lake Huron. Then later in the summer Himself and I are planning to take our kids to Mesa Verde for a few days.

I’ll be sharing lots of fun news from TNNA with you soon, but I’m taking a little break from the blog and YouTube while I enjoy some special family time. I’ll be back with a new blog post late next week. Be sure to check back, as I’ll be telling you the story behind the wild decoupaged bear pictured above.

I hope you are all having an awesome summer, for those in the northern hemisphere. For those of you in the southern hemisphere that are going into the winter season I hope you are staying warm.

Visiting a new Mill.

June 2, 2017Creativity, Crochet, Latest News2 Comments

The mutant To-Do list got pushed around a lot this week. I had plans, I had good plans, but then I got distracted by sheep things.

You may recall that my next door neighbor, Margie, has a small herd of CVM sheep. Yesterday morning she called me to let me know her sheep were being sheared. Unfortunately I was sleeping in because I had stayed up late the night before working on a project. As soon as I got her message though I headed on over to help her skirt the fleeces in preparation for sending them to a mill to be processed.

Neither of us had ever really skirted a fleece before, we had both see it done many times and had an idea of what to do, so we jumped right in. All the rejected fleece bits we gathered up for me to take home. I’ll be cleaning and carding them to use for the interiors of some of my needle felting creations. Some of the better bits may be used for color work on my needle felting creations since Margie’s sheep are a wonderful mixture of colors; blacks, browns, beiges, grays and creams,

Margie didn’t have a mill lined up for her fleeces, so she spent the afternoon researching online. Later that evening she called me and told me she had found a new mill in Estes Park that could process her fleeces. She had set up an appointment to take her fleeces there as well as getting a tour of the mill. She asked if I wanted to go along. Of course I said, “Yes!”

I had a number of things on my list to do this morning, but who can pass up a tour of a new fiber mill? I made sure to wind a hank of yarn into a ball to take with me to crochet on during the drive.

Margie picked me up at 8 a.m. and we had a fun time talking about sheep, fiber and yarn on the 45 minute drive to the mill.

It is a gorgeous drive to Estes Park from our neighborhood. Margie stopped for me to get a photo of the clouds on the mountain tops over Peaceful Valley.

We saw some Elk with velvet on their antlers only a few miles before the turn off to the mill. I took this photo thru the truck window and the sunlight was working against me a bit.

Finally we were at the Willow Creek Fiber Mill and were greeted by Daniel and Kat. Daniel helped us unload the bags of fleece and brought them into the mill building.

This is the area where it all begins. You can see there were already a number of fleeces on the drying shelves. In the far left corner is the big washing machine that the fleeces are cleaned in. The hook hanging in front of the window is where the fleeces were weighted. Margie’s fleeces had a total weight of 35 pounds. A lot of that will be lost once all the processing is finished. A big part of the weight is the “grease” in the wool.

Daniel pulled out one of Margie’s fleeces to see how we had done on our skirting work and to give us some pointers for next year. He told us we had actually done a pretty good job and showed us some of the stuff to watch out for next time. Margie and I had been talking about next year that we should skirt the fleeces as the shearers finished them. That way the messy stuff doesn’t get bundled into the good part of the fleece.

We talked about putting covers on Margie’s herd this coming year to keep the fleeces cleaner. Daniel said they had used covers on their herd in the past, but were considering leaving them off this year. We were all laughing that after processing Margie’s fleeces that they might be running to put covers on their herd.

I was curious about the other machines for processing the fiber. Behind Margie is the room where the cleaned fleeces are picked, carded, drafted and spun. On the Willow Creek website they had photos of each of the machines. I understood what “picking” and “carding” were about, but didn’t recognize the term “pin drafting”. Daniel showed me some fiber that had been thru the pin-drafter and the combs in the machine that get all the fibers lined up in preparation for being spun. I was so fascinated that I forgot to take any photos of this part of our tour.

They asked us if we would like to meet their herd. There were 9 sheep total, 3 were lambs. They had sold their other lambs. I was having lots of fun with petting the lambs and some of the older sheep thru the fence. Their sheep were very friendly. They have 5 children so the sheep get lots of time interacting with humans. I told Margie I’d be happy to come over and help socialize her herd.

This little lady was just too adorable. I got some nibbles on my fingers from her.

Then it was time to head back home and get back to my mutant To-Do List. Margie wanted to make one more stop at the stables in our neighborhood so I could meet her newest horse. I was having a bit of operator error with my camera, so this was the best photo I got of him. His name is Woody and he is a Gypsy Vanner. Such a handsome and sweet fellow. He was enjoying noshing on some fresh grass from Margie’s hand.

Learning Lettering

May 28, 2017August 8, 2021Art Projects, Creativity, Inspiration, Latest News2 Comments

This weekend I’m running a bit behind. Our Friday was super busy, it was the last day of school for both the kiddos and there were ceremonies and socializing that kept us on the go all day. I was carrying around my crochet project, but only caught a few minutes here and there to work on it.

Saturday was our first “official” day of summer break, though you still couldn’t tell it by the weather. It was cold and damp all day. We even had a bit of hail, making me very glad I hadn’t purchased a hanging planter of petunias that I was looking at the other day.

Instead, we all hung out as a family watching movies on the television. Not the most exciting first day of summer break, but pretty awesome to not have to worry about the school schedule next week. I did spend some of my day inputting next Fall’s school calendar in my calendar app. I figured I would get it out of the way while I’m still in the “school” mind-set. Hopefully this means that the start of school in the Fall won’t sneak up on me.

I have my dreams (some might call them fantasies, but let’s not split hairs). It could happen, I even put in a reminder about getting school supplies before the shops are all sold out. For now I’m ready to be in summer mode with the kids.

One of my goals this summer is to practice handwriting exercises with the kids. Cursive writing and penmanship are not really taught in school these days, so I’m hoping to fill that gap with a little home education. This is also inline with my New Year’s resolution to learn how to do Calligraphy.

I’ve been working on that resolution. My first step when wanting to tackle something like this is to read all about. Being I’m a bit old fashioned that usually means books. I did update my way of reading the books this time. I purchased my first book as a Kindle book off Amazon, “The First Steps Series: Calligraphy” by Don Marsh; 1996, North Light Books.

This is a good “nuts and bolts” kind of book. Honestly I found it a bit of a slog initially, so I am treating it more as a reference book. When I feel the need to add to my knowledge base I go back to it. There is an amazing amount of jargon that goes along with this new art. I suppose there is also a lot of jargon in crochet and knitting, but they have been so much a part of my life for so long that it seems much more familiar.

I decided to focus more on the art of Hand Lettering, rather than the formality of Calligraphy. I was intrigued by the reviews on Amazon for the book “The Art of Whimsical Lettering” by Joanne Sharpe; 2014, Interweave Press. This is a really fun and inspiring book. Lots of samples in the book of Joanne’s work with suggestions and guidance on making your own hand-lettered work.

My favorite thing about this book is the encouraging tone of the book. Joanne starts the book off with a quote from “The Wizard of Oz” by Glinda the Good Witch, “You’ve always had the power”. A big aspect of the book is Joanne encouraging readers, that no matter how much you might hate your hand writing, it can be the basis of beautiful and artistic lettering. The book has loads of beautiful and inspiring examples of Joanne’s work. My head was buzzing with ideas once I had read thru it.

It was in this book that I read about the Pilot Parallel Pen. I purchased one and liked it so much that I purchased a set of them in 4 different sizes. They come with black and red ink cartridges and I purchased a set of 12 different colored cartridges as well. Currently 3 of the pens are filled with black ink, but I’ll be trying out the colors soon.

I had also purchased another book in print form. “Hand Lettering: An Interactive Guide to the Art of Drawing Letters”, written and illustrated by Megan Wells; 2016, Peter Pauper Press. The reviews I had read of this book made it sound like one that I should have a physical copy of. It is sort of a workbook/journal style and has lots of pages that you can use for practicing your lettering. I am still reading thru it and trying the various exercises for practicing my lettering.

My favorite bit so far has been the author’s advice to not think of hand-lettering as writing, to instead approach it as drawing your letters. Now that might sound quite simple, but it really rang a bell for me. Suddenly I didn’t feel like I was struggling so much with what I was doing. I could relax and depend upon all those years of drawing to help me create lettering that I would like.

I’m still really in love with calligraphy and it will play a big part in any lettering art I create. I’ve been practicing with the parallel pens drawing various letters and words. Getting the hang of holding the pen properly is a big part of the process. I finally was ready to try to create my first real serious lettering project.

I used a pencil to create light lines on the paper to be guides for my letters. I also roughly followed the illustrations for writing italic style lettering. I picked one of my very favorite words.

I got really fancy with my letter “B”. But it still was a bit rough looking, the rest of the word needed a little cleaning up too.

I got out my new Staedler pigment pens to do the “drawing” part of my lettering to re-shape and refine the letters.

After all the tidying I was much happier with my work. I pulled the page out of my sketch book and copied it onto some heavy stock Vellum Bristol printer paper I purchased a few months back. I’m planning on playing with drawing and coloring on each of the pages to create different looks.

I also scanned my finished word into my computer, so I can play with it in my digital drawing program.

Like this.

I’ll hopefully have some other fun versions and more lettering to show you all soon. I’m excited about incorporating words and quotes in future art projects.

A fun exercise for you all in the meantime. Count how many words you can come up with that have “ea” in the middle and end with “e”. I’ll start you off with one of my other favorites: “Peace”.

Is Summer Coming?

May 24, 2017Crochet, Latest NewsLeave a Comment

This week has been the last week of school for both my sons. It’s been a wild one, not only is it the last week of school, it is the last week for each of them in their current schools. My youngest is making the transition from Elementary school to Middle school, and my oldest is graduating from Middle school to High school.

I’m a bit in shock that we are basically parenting 2 teenagers for all intents and purposes. Yikes!

Here in Colorado on my mountain it hasn’t felt much like summer is so near. Especially with the freakish snow storm we had this past weekend. We ended up with 4.5 feet of snow in our backyard. For those of you on the metric system that is approximately 1.37 meters.

This was the view off my deck on Tuesday, May 16th.

This was the same view 2 days later on Thursday, May 18th.

My poor pooch couldn’t even jump thru the snow like she usually does because it got so high. Instead Himself was very kind and shoveled out a path for her thru the deepest snow right in front of our backdoor.

She appreciated it, though the cold temperatures meant she wasn’t in a hurry to stay out there.

Snow up here on the mountain in the springtime is pretty typical for us. But freezing temperatures and that much accumulation, especially this late in May, is very unusual. Having said that, we seem to be having more springtime weather like this every year, so maybe this is our new normal.

This snow storm brought with it lots of power outages. We were without power for 24 hours combined, though fortunately not all in one stretch. It did make me revise what I could work on those days. It also meant a great deal of time was used up cooking on the wood-stove, hauling fire-wood and keeping the wood-stove burning so that our house didn’t get too cold.

I don’t mind “roughing it” when we go camping, but I’m definitely not cut out for living in the 1800s.

I did finish a sample for my new design, “Nimbus Poncho”. I’m hoping to have the pattern published and available to purchase thru my Ravelry shop before June 10th. It was lovely to work on. The yarn is Berroco’s “North Star” an incredible soft, fluffy, elastic, superfine alpaca blend.

I also worked a few more rounds on my caution tape plarn “Dart Bucket”. I don’t know how people spend hours crocheting with plarn. I really had to take frequent breaks. My progress on this project may have to be more of the tortoise than the hare. Slow and Steady.

Fortunately, it has warmed up quite a bit this week so far. My youngest was having fun spotting all the trickles and torrents of water coming down the canyon sides as we were driving home today. We stopped for this one to take photos and video. It was amazing and loud.

The stream running away from it was more the burbling brook sound that I love. Hopefully we are finished with freezing temperatures and snow for the next couple of months. Though I have been enjoying the nice high 50s and low 60s of this week so far.

I’ll be doing some traveling this summer to places that have “real” summer temperatures and high humidity. I’m going to keep the photos of the heavy snow on my phone to hopefully cool me off. Or at least they will remind me I wanted a break from the cold.

Well, That was Quick

May 15, 2017Latest News3 Comments

Some of you may recall that one of my goals for 2017 was to open an Etsy Shop. I did do that in mid-January. Unfortunately it turned out that it wasn’t currently the best place to put my focus, so I closed my shop today.

There may come a time in the future that I will look into doing an online shop for selling my art and craft creations, but right now I want to focus my energy more on developing new designs and classes in crochet and needle-felting. That will include expanding my videos on YouTube.

Just wanted to let you all know what was going on in case you couldn’t find me on Etsy and wondered what had happened.

Sometimes Life Just Isn’t Pretty

May 6, 2017Latest News, Needle Felting6 Comments

I try to keep it real here on the blog, but not be too much of a downer. This week has been filled with things going sideways pretty much everyday. Basically its been one of those weeks that makes you want to build a blanket fort and check out of adult life for a week…maybe longer.

I was planning on doing an awesome post about all my adventures turning my crocheted pencil roving circle into a felted fabric for my weekend post.

Instead this week got especially interesting with my oldest son having a really bad day at school mid-week. Such a bad day that he didn’t go to school the next day. He wasn’t suspended, but things were tense. I guess this is some of the excitement of parenting a teen-age boy in today’s world. There were some important conversations about what had happened and lots of teachable moments in managing this.

Together he and I created a “medicine bag” necklace for him to wear. It’s amazing how much it has already helped him. We also worked on him taking some space each morning to center himself and breathe. Something that the daily rush often doesn’t give us.

Then there was also the crummy snowy wet weather, husband out of town for work, and the looming deadline for a large crochet design sample. It hasn’t been the best week. In a word, exhausting.

But there are always a few bright moments. Like….

I made this tiny little “pocket” angel using needle-felting. I was pleased that I managed to make this small project without once jabbing myself with the very sharp needle. It is the danger with working tiny in needle felting, the needle can go right thru the object and into your supporting hand if you aren’t very careful.

I also made a fun felted toy for my youngest son. He has named it “Kitty Rock”. It was good practice for working out the shaping for a cat face.

He didn’t want me to add anything to the body, so it ended up being a palm sized oval with a large cat face. He loves it, and with the way this week was going, I’ll take the mom win.

My order from the Woolery came with some new tools for working with fiber. These are little carding brushes for preparing fiber for felting or to return yarn into loose fiber (I’ll be utilizing that a lot). I actually put them to use when I made my little pocket angel.

The other tool from that order is a big sheet of ArtFelt Paper from Skacel. Not real exciting looking, but I’ll hoping to have a lot of fun with it once I have a chance to experiment with it.

I also got 2 packages of commercial felt sheets. One of the packages contained felt sheets that were 30% Wool and 70% Polyester. The other package the sheets were 100% wool.

I’ve played a bit with the sheets from the first package. They are very difficult to pierce with the felting needles, so I’ll be sewing with those instead. The colors are gorgeous and the quality of the fabric is really nice.

These are the sheets from the second package. They are a bit thicker than the other sheets and only 5 x 5 inches. Other than taking this photo I haven’t had time to experiment with them yet. Depending on how my experiments go, I may be getting some more colors in this felt. I’m hoping to be able to incorporate commercially available felt sheets into my needle felting creations.

For the moment, I need to buckle down and get a lot of crocheting underway to finish the sample and be ready for shipping my samples off by Wednesday at the latest. How did May get here so fast?

Hopefully I’ll have some pretty crochet to show you next week, as well as my felting adventures with the crocheted pencil roving.

Another Bunny, Another Easter

April 15, 2017August 8, 2021Celebrating, Crochet, Latest News, Needle Felting5 Comments

As you can tell, I’ve been having way too much fun with needle-felting lately. Since tomorrow is Easter I thought it very appropriate to create a sweet little bunny this week.

I didn’t take photos of each step during his creation because I wanted to see how quickly I could make him. I started him about 7:30 in the evening and he was finished by 11. I had a number of interruptions from the family while I was working on him, so my estimate is that he took me about 2.5 to 3 hours to make.

I wanted to create him using the natural colored wool fiber with just a few touches of added color. I used some dark brown yarn for his eyes, and a little bit of pink roving for the color inside his ears and for his nose.

Don’t despair though, I’ve not abandoned crochet entirely for the sharp needles. In fact, I’ve been crocheting on a bunch of samples. Unfortunately they are all freelance pieces I’m doing for magazines, so they are still in the super secret stage.

This past week was Casual Crochet at Longmont Yarn Shoppe. My friend Karen was busily crocheting goodies for her grand-kids’ Easter celebrations. Aren’t they cute? I loved the little baskets she made, the “grass” in the baskets is even crocheted out of bright green fun fur. She had heavily modified a pattern she found to make the baskets.

I think the little bunnies are the “Easter Marshmallow Bunnies” free pattern on Ravelry. They are super quick to work up and Karen was having a blast making them during the meet-up. I decided to try my hand at making some when I got home. I’m going to put one in each of the kids’ Easter baskets.

I modified mine. I only crocheted 2 layers of the head and body, making ears on the front layer only. It made the ears curl a bit, which I liked. I also didn’t stuff the bodies, I liked the flat squishy of them just 2 layers sewn together.

Now I’d better get on the ball with getting the baskets ready for my family. At least I’m not doing the wild trip to the shops to get chocolate bunnies this year. I actually purchased these 3 before we left on our Spring Break trip. Since I didn’t procrastinate I found the dark chocolate bunnies without any trouble.

I even got some bags of dark chocolate Dove eggs.

I hope everyone has a “Hoppy” Easter.

Getting into the Swing of Things Again

April 6, 2017April 6, 2017Celebrating, CGOA, Chain Link, Chocolate, Creativity, Crochet, Inspiration, Latest News, Yarnie FriendsLeave a Comment

Well, it’s been a bit of a hectic re-entry to life in our “normal” routine. We have had lots of snow and some very cold temperatures since our return, not what one would think of for Spring weather, though fairly typical for our springtime. I had quite a few things scheduled for this week, which would have been fine if I hadn’t had the wild 4 weeks preceding this one. I’m slowly chipping away at the mutant To-Do list though.

One of the best things about coming home from Spring Break was picking up our mail. This nifty little box was waiting for me from my dear friend Bonnie Pierce.

I met Bonnie and her husband Bill at the first ever CGOA conference I went too. She was wearing one of her gorgeous Free Form crochet capes and I practically attacked her to look at it closer. I was completely on my own at that show, but Bonnie and Bill took me under their wing and included me in many of the group events they were involved in.

They even rescued my hook case that I had left laying on the table one afternoon. Bonnie and I chuckle about it every time we get together. But it has been far too long since I last got to spend some in-person time with Bonnie. Fortunately we stay in touch online thru social media and messaging.

Recently Bonnie and I decided we needed to have a piece of each other’s work. These 2 drop-dead gorgeous scrumbles are what Bonnie sent me. I’m so inspired by her work, though a little chagrined at how clunky and chunky my own Free Form efforts look. Bonnie is truly a talent with her Free Form artistry.

She is well known for her bullion stitches. Which she had tried to teach me numerous times with limited success.

This flower with the sparkly embellishment is currently my favorite bit on this scrumble. But every time I look at them I see something that delights me.

When Bonnie and I met in Portland in 2008, one of the things we bonded over was Chocolate. We both have a love of wonderful dark chocolate. She told me about a Portland chocolate company called “Moonstruck” and shared some that she had with her. It is marvelous stuff and whenever I find the brand I purchase a few bars, but it is rather scarce in Colorado.

So it is very fitting that Bonnie included some delicious chocolate in the package too. I’ve got to get my piece finished to send to Bonnie now and will have to hunt down some special Colorado chocolates to include. This might require me attending the Chocolate Festival again, sigh, the sacrifices I make for my friends.

I’ve been busy with working on developing classes since our return from our big trip. This cute little needle-felted sheep is one of them. I’m finding the needle-felting quite addictive, I think the total attention that is required is a great form of meditation. That’s been very good for me as I process everything the last 4 weeks has thrown at me and my family.

I hope you are all having a beautiful springtime. April is looking to be another fast-moving and busy month. I’ll try to keep up with the blog and (fingers crossed) to have some more videos for you very soon.