Time Bandit

I got up Monday morning with every intention of finishing the front of my Calypso dress skirt today. After just inches of one row of machine embroidery (with about 20 rows left to go), I remembered why I had set this project aside what seems like a million years ago. I DON'T HAVE TIME!!!

Machine embroidery is SO slow and so finnicky. Makes me wish I hadn't chosen to do fancy embroidery on every jelly roll seam. I may do the skirt back with just straight seams. By bedtime Monday, I did finish four seams, but it's going to take more than a week at that rate to finish just the skirt front.

I can't help but wonder if hand embroidery would be any faster...

Tweet

Better Late Than Never

It's been so long, my nieces probably forgot they asked me to crochet a sunflower and a "snail" car air freshener cozy for them. But I didn't forget. I did have to look up the typical size of air freshener refills, which is 2.25 to 2.75 inches in diameter.

I'm making up my own pattern as I go because I'm making the gifts with thread instead of yarn. Because I have the requested colors in thread, but not in yarn. I wanted to have the first one (the sunflower) finished in time to share with you today, and I was hoping to get them both in the mail tomorrow. But I can't keep my eyes open any longer as I write this at 10:45 Wednesday night. Fingers crossed I can mail them Friday...

Tweet

Night Lights

10 October 2024

I've longed for clear skies when aurora borealis has been forecasted for my area since May of 2024, when I caught my first glimpse of very pale pink in the night sky. We finally enjoyed full-fledged northern lights in October of last year. Best night of my life!

1 June 2025

We've had many chances during this solar maximum for the last 13 months. On the best viewing nights, however, we're either overcast (of which I can't complain because we need the rain) and/or Lizard isn't up for a road trip to break free from cloud cover.

1 June 2025

Areas outside Denver's obnoxious light pollution got amazing views Sunday night. Some areas enjoyed dancing colors in the sky Saturday night, too. I couldn't see even faint color, thanks to Denver city lights.

31 May 2025

On a whim, I decided to see if my cell phone could pick up the Milky Way. I'd tried back in 2018 with a real camera, and light pollution pretty much killed that attempt. It was fun to reminisce that night with Lizard. That was a week before his Parkinson's diagnosis. We knew something was wrong, but we didn't know yet what. We were trying to make the best of it, just in case the diagnosis turned out to be ALS.

11 August 2018

I'd forgotten to take a real camera with me this time. All I had was my cell phone. I tried a couple of shots, then came home to heavily edit them. I couldn't believe how awesome the shot turned out, even though it needed a ton of manipulation and isn't the clearest or best Milky Way shot. It turned my night of disappointment into the most giddy feeling I've had since the October northern lights!

1 June 2025

Tweet

No Flake Monday

We spent last week with Lizard's mom, and this resulted in me not finishing a flake pattern for today. Sadly, I haven't composed anything for my blog this week, so there may be just a bunch of old archived snowflake photos each day... Nothing like snow in May, right? :)

Tweet

Fiber Fun

I am SO far behind! I feel like I'll never catch up!

Little Miss Unicorn's birthday is next week, and she informed me last weekend she'd changed her mind and wants an arctic fox instead of a unicorn. I don't mind at all, but the fox still isn't done yet, and oh, my goodness, the weekend is coming up way too fast! (I am planning to give it to her on Sunday...)

The newest WIP is no longer a WIP! Except it is... I finished it... YAY!!!!!!!!!! But the triangular shawwl is about six inches too short in the shoulders. I'm trying to figure out if I want to add one row on each side to give it a tad more wrapping power or if I should extend two columns on the top with a sort of V-neck because the back is already plenty long enough. Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. I didn't want it to be a WIP, but WIP it will be until I can figure out what to do next.

I also need to finish a new snowflake (and pattern) for next Monday. I really need to do one for the following Monday, too, because I doubt I will have time next week. I need to finish a western-themed baby quilt for the bundle of joy who will be arriving across the street in about six weeks. And I need to finish my mother-in-law's quilt because I don't know how much longer she will be able to appreciate it. I cut out two dresses so I'd have something different to wear to church; I already had one in progress I haven't touched since the last update. Now I have three unfinished dresses screaming to be finished so they can be worn. The garden is beginning to call. The laundry never stops calling.

I want to make more homemade bread. I made my first dough in years, and it wound up as fry bread because the yeast didn't rise. (Great Navajo tacos!!!) I made sure my second attempt had good yeast by proofing it first, and we had two loaves of the most delicious fresh homemade bread. I think we finished the bread in less time than it took to make it. I didn't use eggs, as I did decades ago when I made bread all the time, because all the YouTube videos say you need just flour, salt, sugar (I use honey) and water. (I watched YouTube videos because it has been so long since I'd made bread, I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing.) My homemade bread had much better structure when I used eggs. So next batch will include eggs. But where on earth will I find four more hours???

Oh, and I want to shoot the eclipse tonight, but we're expecting a blizzard. Of course. Maybe I can shoot snowflakes instead...

lunar eclipses from 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2019

Tweet

Flaky

Until this year, I typically would shoot two or three shots of each snowflake, hoping at least one shot of each flake might turn out.

When you're shooting with a long lens (I use extension tubes on my macro lens to enable closer focus), the tiniest motion can blur the shot, or wind can move the flake!

I typically would try to get about 200-300 shots during a storm, and I'd typically be happy with 50-75 of the pictures after editing. (Oh, and the best flakes generally are at 15-17 degrees, so it needs to be chilly.) I'd shoot for an hour (or as long as my fingers could tolerate the cold) (plenty of peppermint hot chocolate might be consumed!!!), and editing would take a day or two.

With image stacking, the idea is to intentionally move while shooting as many shots as possible of each flake, hopefully capturing all aspects of the flake in perfect focus. I'm still new at this new method, so I'm trying to get 20-30 shots of each flake. Some of the masters say they shoot 200-300 shots of each flake. My 2006 camera isn't that fast, and my ring flash can't recycle that fast. :) (No complaints!!! I LOVE my camera and my cheap ring flash!)

All similar images are then stacked into one photo, then aligned, then blended, using only the sharpest aspects of each image.

During last month's storm, I shot for about an hour four times, resulting in a total of 1,867 total shots. I finished editing snowflakes from the second batch nearly two weeks later, resulting in 48 surprisingly clear photos from 657 shots. The first outing, which was about 24 degrees, featured a lot of frozen water droplets on each of the 16 snowflakes I shot via 277 images.

A lot of math, I know. A lot more time spent shooting. Also a LOT more card and external hard drive memory! Oh, and more frequent battery recharges. And a lot more time!!! The final two sessions of photos took another two weeks to edit! I think the photos speak for themselves, though. Worth all the extra effort, don't you think?

Once I finished editing the final two batches (62 out of 624 from the 3rd session and 28 out of 309 from the 4th) (which I must say resulted in 154 total snowflakes from 1,867 shots, 73 of which are acceptable and only about 20 I really love), I decided to create a montage of the tiniest flakes I hadn't aimed for. These babies are microscopic. I think I'll continue adding the tiny little flakes to this image as I continue to attempt to perfect my technique, but for right now, I thought this was pretty cool!

Tweet

No Flake Monday

I had a very special snowflake motif project completion I planned to share today; I thought for sure I'd finish it over the weekend.

The snowflake pattern and join-as-you-go motif pattern are both done, the snowflake photography is done, and the snowflake actually got donated to typhoon survivors in Guam, but my matching motif project is still on the hook.

I'm hoping I will be able to share the completed project next week.

Until then, please enjoy photos of some of my favorite motif projects over the years.

Click on the photos to be taken to the patterns.

Tweet

Wordless Wednesday

Tweet

Pinktober

(affiliate links to my designs)

One of my little neighbors has a new baby sister. I knew she was coming; I saw mama walking in the neighborhood a couple of months ago, and it was pretty obvious. But I didn't know it would be this soon. Time to get quilting yet again. Late, as usual, these days!

Big sister got a quilt from one of my digital Spoonflower panels, and her mother absolutely loved it. She always compliments my garden when she walks by. I thought it would be fitting for baby sister to receive a quilt from one of my own floral cheater panel designs.

Except I didn't have any pink or floral cheater panels left in my Spoonflower stash!!! How could that possibly be?!? Especially in October!

I did find some butterfly fabric of my own design, but I'm planning to make a dress for me from that.

I know, I know, last thing I need is yet one more new quilt project. But I couldn't resist. I created a new panel, and I'm hoping to have it in hand one day next week so I can begin sewing. I think this one will be SO much fun!

On my phone, I had created a really fun cosmos collage with flowers in my garden the second (I think) year of the pandemic. I thought I'd created a cheater quilt panel from that image, but I guess not. The original image was too small, and I had not played with the idea to create a proper-size image. I certainly meant to. I guess this is just another case of proving how tangled life got during the last few years.

All it took was the motivation of finding out the new little one has arrived. I have so many other things I need to do, including mending a coat for a very elderly neighbor who will need the coat before the weather cools off, assuming it might one day...

Yes, I made a card, too. How could I not???

I probably could have finished the coat in the time it took me to design a new Spoonflower cheater panel for the new baby quilt, but one more day on the coat won't matter, right?!? I promise, that's my next project!!!

In the meantime, I created a few more pink floral Spoonflower panels, and I ordered a few of them, too. Now I'll be ready next time I need to quilt pink!

Tweet