Off the Clock

After my father passed away his wood lathe came to live at my house.  A couple of years ago I took a pen-making seminar and really enjoyed it.  I was a little reluctant to make more on my own because, like all hobbies, it needs new equipment and a financial outlay.  Even though I have the lathe I would still need to buy a mandrel, bushings, finishing products, etc. on top of the actual materials for each pen.  The cheap b@stard in me was reluctant to do so.  It's like buying pins and tape measures and seam rippers and scissors and everything else just to make a set of napkins.  You are reluctant to make that initial investment.  Just before this past Christmas I started talking about biting the bullet and getting into it anyway.  Life is too short.  I went ahead and ordered a starter kit and J took that as a signal to stock up on blanks for me as a wonderful Christmas gift.  And for the last week I have been having so much fun playing out in the garage. I made the first pe

I started this quilt about a year and a half ago to use in the sunroom.  It was just going to be a cheapie quilt to learn some new techniques on.  I used cottons I found at Lens Mills in Woodstock and I used cheap polyester batting.  I have a metal dragonfly on the wall and one of my fabrics has dragonflies in it, hence the name.  I found a dragonfly template that you pat with chalk to give you an outline to follow.  Sounds great in theory but it brushes off as you are sewing so it is hard to follow.       So some of the quilt was quilted with dragonflies and the rest was a sampler for learning free-motion quilting. The quilt began as a lap blanket but I added another row and then I added a border and then I added another border... you see where this is going.  It now fits over my queen bed.  The blues are for the pool and one of the blue fabrics has fish on it.  The oranges and yellows are for sunny days which matches the sunroom theme perfectly.  And of course I can&