Art for My Bare Walls

I had wanted one of these Vibrant series of jigsaw puzzles when I saw them in the store.  So many lovely designs, but Mt Shasta was my favorite.  No money for that sort of thing. Then I was walking by a garage sale and picked this one up for 50c!





Starts off easy enough, but later bogs down in a purple slough of confusion.



I had this puzzle to this state once before, then gave up because "I don't have time to do jigsaw puzzles" and scooped it back into the box and donated it to the church garage sale. 
Then I volunteered at the church garage sale and brought Mt Shasta home again. 

With a dedicated place in the living room for a puzzle to be spread out, you'd be surprised how much puzzling gets done while listening to kids or talking on the phone. 

Here it is glued to poster board and up on my wall, about as close to fine art as I'm gonna get.

 

Then a magnificent idea struck for how to get some more!

In fact, the famous A READING FROM HOMER. 



I snagged the huge "original" size jpg from Wikimedia here,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Lawrence_Alma-Tadema,_English_(born_Netherlands)_-_A_Reading_from_Homer_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

A little judicious trimming plus a white border in Photoshop make it a suitable rectangle, and I printed it out 12 x 18" at Costco on matte paper for a cost of four bucks.

I just picked that up tonight and I'm delighted with the results.  It's close enough to ART to hang above my cozy little bed. 

Curvy Barbie Progress!

That Curvy Barbie pattern that I'm "famous" for-- well, only a year and a half late, here it is!  


There, isn't that cute??
 http://www.janelwashere.com/crafts/BarbieCurvy.html

Check out Miss Blue's hairstyle!  I had to do something, couldn't fit dresses on her with all that hair down her back.
I tried to hold her between my knees and wrestle with her hair, tried a dozen and some times, could not get the hair and the bit of lace to cooperate, started to get frustrated...  finally I ran upstairs to get somebody to help me, then held the doll between my knees and wrapped the hair around to demonstrate what I wanted to happen, and it went just right! 
The hair ended up where it was supposed to go and I stuck the pins in it, and it was elegant and secure, while my would-be helper stood there watching.  
Well-- "Thank you!!"

28" Barbie Best Fashion Friend

Meanwhile I fell in love with something new.  I spotted this big lady at Walmart and, at a moment of weakness, paid real money for her... well, twenty some bucks  :-)

She's 28" tall!  Not quite a My Size Barbie but close.





I recouped the price of her by selling clothes, and I'm gonna make more, and I'll get the pattern up SOON. 

Here's what I made for her! 

Not Mountains, but Not Little Hills

Every now and again I get to do something fun. 
Every now and again I organize my photos folder.  Here we go! 

Soooo... I drove down to Cali and here's the photos of my sorta vacay.
On the way I stopped at Riverside Park in Grants Pass, where I've been before.  It's so pretty! 

The sign says you have to be under twelve.  Bummer. 
But luckily I came at the playground from a different angle and didn't see the sign until I was already all played out, and nobody yelled at me. 

Don't I look under twelve?

That sort of thing right there is why everybody yells "Smile!" at me.
Maybe I should.
I'll make a note.

I did some wandering around in Yreka. 

 

The playground is my favorite place in any town. 

Went to Greenhorn Park!

And climbed, if you want to call it that, those hills, which are a challenge for me at this point, esp in 98 degrees which I'm not exactly used to any more. 

But there's a lovely view from the top, down at the valley with I-5 and Mt Shasta in the distance.

Look at those two pictures. They're basically the same composition, but in one the crowning blob of white is just a little cloud, and in the other it's Mt Shasta.

The next day's bathroom selfie at church, because I still had mountaintop glow on me, or at least it was still in my head and I liked myself for once. 

See, I'm smiling now, because mountain!
The mountain is where we need to live, and why should we ever come down?

Then I went to Medford and went up Table Rock. 

Here's a couple from Wikimedia because none of mine are this cool.  And wowwww, the view from the air! 

Here are the ones I took.

Heading up there. 
Looking at where we're going.

The prettiness on the way

Almost there!

The top and the view from the top.

Very aware of rattlesnakes and poison oak-- which I'm not aware of usually-- I'd just had my consciousness raised.  This horrible-sounding stuff was pointed out to me, and I took a photo of it for reference!

It sounds nasty.  In fact I did not enjoy the trip back down at all because I had to GO and I'm a girl, and that poison stuff was everywhere I looked, so I basically ran all the way back down to the reassuring concrete restroom.

Oh well, fun was had!

It was a journey of a thousand miles, or almost. 

Homemade Shoes, by Janel Shoemaker

I thought if this worked out, I would change my name to "Shoemaker" in pride!  But that's as far as I'll take the idea-- that subject line right up there  :-)

My daughter has really hard-to-fit feet.  Her little toes stick out farther than expected.  In regular shoes her little toenail gets rubbed against the side, or if we order much larger or wider shoes, then the footbed is thrown off and the whole tread is wrong.
She used to be more willing to endure ill-fitting shoes, but she's gotten more sensitive about it over the years.  We've tried various specialty shoes without any luck, and we don't have enough money or live anywhere near a place that makes real custom shoes.

This summer it's come to the point she refuses to wear painful shoes any more, so she's been going around in flip-flops or some soft leather slippers that are dark enough in color to be "moccasins".

I decided to give it a try.

There's lots of ideas on Pinterest but of course I can't use any pattern, that's the whole point  :-)

I just traced around her foot, made a rough pattern and started making tests.

What shall we use for sole material?  I think that doormat was a bit too cheerful, anyway.

It can still be our doormat, I only needed to trim off one side.

The first prototype shoes, made out of tapestry material...

With soles cemented on!

Kept on finding one design flaw after another.  Her heels would pop out of the shoes when she tried to walk, so I added elastic around the top.

But they're on her feet!
They FIT RIGHT and are comfortable.

Just don't look too closely at the patch job on the left toe... I had to make a design adjustment at the last minute before she left for summer camp! No time to make another pair from scratch.  Hand stitching in panic. I really do rise to the occasion WHEN NECESSARY!

"If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done"  :-)

I'll make more, and the next pair will look even better! 

Oatmeal Blob Bars

Pretty basic and don't look like much, but they were exactly what I was going for when I threw things into a bowl-- yet in a way, very surprising! They're heavy and dense with nutrition, as I had planned, but not gooey at all.  The consistency of a chewy oat bar contrasted with the texture of a crispy one.  My mouth was pleasantly confused.
They're only barely sweetened.  Exactly what we'd want to bring along on a hike!

My secondary goal was to use the cheapest ingredients possible-- cheapest as in "least expensive", it's still raw honey, nested eggs, organic flour etc.  I was going for the most nutrition for the least cost. 

Ingredients: 

4 eggs
5 cups oats
1 cup wheat flour
1 cup honey
1/2 cup oil
2 tsp baking soda
2 TBSP vanilla
2 cups raisins

Instructions?
I usually don't, but okay.  "Mix and bake"  :-)