Stash Enhancement

While I was working in Roanoke, VA this week, I managed to make time to spend almost an hour at a wonderful yarn store: Yarn Explosion. (http://www.yarnexplosion.com/). A very friendly lady -- one of the three owners -- greeted me and showed me the layout of the store and we chatted a bit as I looked at all the fabulous yarns. They have lots of knitting yarn, a good amount of needlepoint supplies, and some smocking supplies, too. They only opened in October 2008. They had more Noro silk garden sock yarn than I had ever seen in one place, so I picked up two skeins either to knit another clapotis or something similar -- maybe a Sunday Market Shawl. I also picked up two skeins of Ella Rae laceweight merino in a beautiful colorway mingling turquoise blues and browns that reminded me of the southwest. This is a yarn that I don't remember seeing before. And I picked up two skeins of local hand-dyed yarn from a place called Unplanned Peacock Studio (http://www.unplannedpeacock.com/) -- one laceweight silk and merino in a pink colorway called hummingbird and the other some fingering weight superwash merino and nylon (sock yarn . . . but I am thinking it also might be good for something else) in a mostly pink with some blue colorway called lobelia. Even the bag was great: a translucent plastic shopping bag with colorful stripes and circles. Who could fail to be happy after this shopping experience? I would highly recommend this shop.

Family Photos

I have so much stuff and I am trying to get my house in some kind of order. Today I cleaned off the top of a cabinet in the dining room and arranged some family photos on it. I printed the four larger ones, backed them with cardboard and paper, and embellished them a bit. The small one of Chris & Steve was already framed. I had two empty frames that I filled with a picture of Matt when he was visiting DC and a picture of Mom on her 80th birthday.

4 cards

Sunday afternoon I played around with making some cards and got on a roll with some Victorian stickers. It was fun to try to find a paper that would play up the colors in each sticker. I enjoyed painting some of the papers to make them blend better. I ended up happy with the cards.

Inspiration

Ever since I watched the Claudine Hellmuth video about beeswax collage at Mom's earlier this summer, I have been thinking about trying a beeswax collage using Claudine's techniques. I have been looking without success for a photograph to use as the basis for the collage until yesterday, when I found one on Nina Bagley's blog. A picture of her hand holding a morning glory flower & leaf. Simple enough to try, I thought. So I did. A pretty amaturish result, but OK.

Niagra

I just visited Niagra Falls for the first time. Rode the Maid of the Mist -- what an adventure! Not only was there mist, there was a downright rainstorm coming off of Horseshoe Falls. Sometimes the simple things are the best.

Just ignore the commercialism that has grown up around the falls, and thrill to the beauty and power of nature.