croque-choux

Emballée (all wrapped up)

The weather is getting cooler and naturally my thoughts turn to... yarn? (but I'm a quilter!) Well, I actually dug out my crochet and knitting needles the minute Fall hit, and I've had warm scarf on the brain ever since (more on that later). If only I could make something like this though! Isn't this little shawl beautiful?!! I'm SO in love with this shoulder accessory thingy. After seeing this, I promised myself that I would improve my rusty knowledge of crochet this Winter in front of the tv, with a warm quilt on my lap of course.

Scary

Halloween is almost here, but you still have time to learn a little extreme pumpkin carving. Yeah, break out the power tools- awesome stuff!!

Fabric postcard finds new home in New Zealand

It's safe to post photos of this fabric card now because Fiona just received it :o) I'm so happy she liked it! It's made from a piece of handpainted silk (a recycled scarf), some cotton that I marbled during a class, and 2 or 3 little rectangles of that beautiful irise film that Sandy sent me. I was playing around with that lovely irridescent stuff one day and decided to stitch it to a piece of Tyvek® and then heat it up to see what would happen. This would be best done with a heat gun, but I don't have one so I just ironed over it. Anyway, the suface got all bubbly and the Tyvek melted away in places, so I was really happy with the effect. Maybe you can see this in the close up. Thanks to Fiona for swapping with me- now I'm off to come up with something for Kim...!

Online radio and other craft soundtracks

In an effort to unstress myself lately, I've been listening to more music on my computer, and that's when I discovered radioblogclub. Now if I could only figure out how to add this feature to my blog, that would be very cool... Anyway go to their site, type the name of a song or artist you like in the search box, click on a song and listen! How cool is that? Otherwise I sometimes listen to DroneZone, or (and I love this station's name!) Secret Agent: The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life- (yeah, I wish! Okay, but not the "dangerous" part...) -both brought to you by the folks at Soma FM. I still have yet to try out Paris's first all English radio station parislive.fm, geared to ex-pats and anglophiles. And lastly, something more exotic: Iceland gave us Björk (who my friend Isabelle swears is an elf), and now there's Sigur Rós, also from Iceland. I'm intrigued by their atmospheric music right now, which you can explore on iTunes or even download here.

Of links and of fairy stories

oday

perhaps you would like to:

*Visit the world's tallest virtual building
*Find out where time goes
*Marvel over this awesome jewelry
*Play this mildly irritating puzzle
*Find out about the town I live in

Or maybe you'd rather forget all that and click on the new fairytale link I just added to my sidebar. I love this site! You can read fairy tales online and admire beautiful vintage illustrations. This was my favorite story as a kid, and to this day I fantasize about elves coming to whip my house into shape and take care of all of my unfinished projects during the night. I would gladly make tiny elf clothes in exchange (that would be fun too!)

Stress be gone (please).

Right now, I think that reading Harry Potter & the Half-blood Prince in a nice hot bath spiked with Occitane bubblebath will help me forget that:

I'm beyond tired -I have Samsonite bags under my eyes (family size)
I have a job interview in the morning for a job I'm not sure I want
I have half a headache (please do not let this turn into a migraine)
I didn't do a single creative thing today, not one. Waaahhhhhhhh!!!

Japanese craft book Wishlist

I have been fiddling around my sidebars, adding some things and taking away others. It's a little busy and still isn't the way I'd like it to be, but I'll fix it later. I have been meaning to add a wishlist of all the Japanese craft and sewing books that I have been fixating on, and I finally did this. I'd really like to have a peek in this book on embroidered bags... I have a feeling the list is going to be pretty long! I'll post the ISBN numbers too, as soon as I can. I've also added 2 or 3 blogs to my list of daily reads, so have a look. And while we're on the subject of Japanese books and blogs, Crafting Japanese is a must-read!

A little art nouveau, s'il vous plait

I scored this Art Nouveau quilt book at a discount book store near my house about 2 weeks ago. It was sealed with shrinkwrap so I couldn't peak in and see if it was worth buying, but I figured it was such a deal that it didn't matter. Less than 4€! While it does have quite a few nice projects, it's the kind of book where you wish the author would have taken the idea a little further. It's still a good book though. Art nouveau/deco inspired quilts... so many unexplored possibilities, but I think that maybe people prefer 70's style or Japanese style quilts at the moment.
I have been thinking about silhouettes a lot lately anyway, so when I saw the cover of this book I had an "aha!" moment, and a few of days later I made this fabric postcard. The background was a lot of fun to make because it gave me a chance to use all those snippets of hand dyed fabric, various fibers, and metallic threads floating around my sewing area. My mother used to call this making something out of nothing :o) The background was a little busy, so that's when I thought I'd try appliqué-ing on top of it in black. Oh, before I forget: here is a sample page from the aforementioned quilt book. This makes me think that I should not be stupid and remember to take my camera with me next time I drive into Paris because a lot of times you do see lovely architechtural details in unexpected places like balconies and windows. Well, at least I always carry a little drawing pad in my purse. Even if I don't use it to record a a design idea or a brain mouvment, at least it keeps my little boy busy when we go to a restaurant!

Mail (Fiona rocks!)

I got this awesome fabric postcard in the mail from Fiona yesterday! We did a mini swap and this is the card she made for me. It's hand painted, and I love it. I'll post a picture of the one I sent later, as I don't want to spoil the surprise before it arrives. Be sure to check out Fiona's blog leap-of-faith to see more of her work. I'm in love with her ATCs!

Eraser Carvings

I made these by enlarging some nice fonts, reversing them (mirror image), transfering them to the erasers, and then carefully carving them with an Xacto knife. Some day I'd like to do the whole alphabet, using a different font for each letter. 3 down and 23 to go!