paper market bag

This is the first and LAST market bag that I am going to make out of paper. I thought it would be a fun experiment to try....NOT. This was not fun. First of all I had to cut the pattern out of butcher - easy part - had to decorate the paper so it was not all just white - tedious - cover the decorated paper with clear contact paper - getting more tendios and pissy - cutting out newspaper for padding between the front and the inside - getting to be more of a pain - Assembling the front, padding (newspaper) and lining together and sewing them up - a royal pain in my ass. While fabric will fold and move through a sewing machine easily, paper covered with clear contact paper is stiff and does not move smoothly. If I hadn't already spend two days working on this thing I would have just thrown it away. It measures 16" x 18" and.....damnit I am going to use it. I thought it would be good for cold food or frozen food from the market.

I have started a drawing class through the community education dept. This is something that I have always wanted to do because........I can't draw. On the first class she gave us a piece of cardboard, like 6x6" and a piece of silk that is a bit larger. We were to squish up the silk and pin it to the cardboard with three pins and draw that. She did a demo in the front of the room and then just told us to draw it. I was scared shitless. Draw that? You must be kidding me. I thought we would go to the first class, get a supply list, here her talk for a bit and then leave. Draw? You want me to draw on the first class. So I take my silk and cardboard and squish it up and pin it in place and prop it up against my water bottle. And draw. I drew it. Now since I can never figure out how these stupid pictures come up in what order the drawing of the silk is the third picture. This one is of a bunch of bananas I had just picked up. I started it on one afternoon and finished it the next morning. It was amazing how much the ripening had changed just over night. Now you have to realize that this is something new to me so please be kind. My goal is to draw something, anything each day. It is very interesting, when I am drawing time stands still. I am only paying attention to what I am drawing. Yesterday while drawing the gargoyle I looked up at teh clock and was shocked what time it was. I had to stop and get dinner started. It is very zen like. I like zen............................................

Looking around the house yesterday for something to draw and found the little gargoyle on top of a shelf.

Silk squished up on a piece of cardboard and pinned in place

California in January!!!

Jerry's birthday was the 16th and we spent the night at the Sea Venture in Pismo Beach. This is a wonderful place. Our room had a balcony with a hot tub and this was the view from the balcony. Sunset was stunning. The hotel also had a very delish restaurant. Jerry had filet with a bleu cheese topping and I had the mustard crusted sea bass. We had a window over looking the ocean but we had already enjoyed the sunset on the balcony. Breakfast at the hotel is fun too. The night before you choose from the menu on your bed and at the chosen time they deliver it to your door in a basket. Breakfast in bed.......aaaaahhhhh. And a walk on the beach in the morning to walk off breakfast. A wonderful way to start the day.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

morning walk on the beach

A perfect birthday!!!!!!!!!!!

Froggy

Over the weekend I took a styrofoam/concrete class. We were all given a block of styrofoam, had to grid the block and looking at a frog form draw the front, side and top of the frog on the block. They had a hot wire set up to cut the styrofoam. Cutting with a hot wire is very slick.

The pictures loaded backwards so if you go to the bottom up you will see the process.


The frog was left over night and the next day we made more of the concrete mixture and formed the hands, lips and rounded it by adding the mixture to the front and sides. He is home now and I have to spray him with water every day for the curing process. In a month I can mosaic him!!

Over the mesh went a slurry of watered down cement and then a mixture of cement, sand and admix. It was pushed into the mesh and smoothed with our hands and the slurry paint brush.

It was then wrapped with sticky mesh. Where the mesh wouldn't stick we pushed in roofing nails.

Form cut out of the styrofoam with the hot wire. From here it was shaped with hand held hot wire tools and rasps.

Market Bags

You know those market bags that the grocery stores are selling so we stop using the plastic/paper bags? You've seen them and they are all UGLY. And now I hear that they are going to start charging us for the plastic/paper bags. My answer was to make my own market bags. Ok the first one, the blue one, I put the handles on wrong but only realized this when I had completely finished it and was not going to tear it all apart to fix it. Besides it is for me and I can live with it. I searched through my stash and came up with fabric that was heavy weight cotton. These can be used over and over again and thrown in the washing machine when they get dirty. I have three more on the sewing table and will take pictures of those when I'm finished

Happy New Year

We had a wonderful holiday. Kyle was able to be with us for 2 weeks. He is back at Ft. Carson now and will be in Ft. Polk Lousiana for training soon. We miss him and wish him well. Scott and Angela have moved into their house. They are just up the road from us and it is so nice to have them close by. But the bad news is......through the entire holiday season there wasn't one picture taken. I cannot believe that I completely forgot about the camera. So no pictures for this post.