Our Cruise Ship, the MS Ryndam and the Explorer's Cafe - Post # 5

The MS Ryndam is one of Holland America's smaller ships suitable for
cruising the Sea of Cortez.







I spent many pleasant hours in the Exploration Cafe sitting in comfortable leather sofas, drinking lattes, listening to my iPod, and knitting. Oh, and also using the computer.




We had a luxurious Deluxe Verandah Suite. More about this later.

Macyn and Nancy in the Lido pool Post #4

Grandma Nancy teaching Macyn to love the water.

More coming soon! Post #3

I will keep posting photos and information. Please notice that the posts are in reverse chronilogical order. Go to the first post and work your way up.

Lifeboat Drill Post #2

As you can see, Macyn refused to put on her life jacket. I'm the only one who wasn't pissed at having to go through the drill.

Mexico Cruise Aboard the MS Ryndam Post #1

We began our cruise in San Diego. I brought my daughter, my granddaughter, and my great granddaughter along on the cruise. We started out with the airlines losing Macyn's stroller. They gave us a loaner to take with us on the cruise. Because of my arthritic knee, I had a wheelchair at the airports in Oakland and in San Diego. We all got to go through security ahead of the waiting line. We also pre-boarded the plane because of my being in a wheelchair.

Flickr Flash

www.flickr.com Go to freeflyinglady's photostream

Colors for April TIF Challenge

I found this image of an Aboriginal painting that has a brighter version of the April colors. I think I will go with this palette instead of the dark and gloomy palette Sharon posted for the April TIF Challenge

March Tif Challenge

I needed to do something fast so I made my piece for March on the Embellisher. There's a bit of magenta fabric paint on the yellow pieces (to tone them down a little), but otherwise the whole thing was put together using my Embellisher. I may still attach it to a larger piece of black felt with running stitches around the edge.

Original (altered) Image

This is the original image I started with after squaring it up with Photoshop. The background will remain the color of the felt (green), the heavy black lines will be black embroidery, and the rest of the spaces will be embroidered with colored silk thread. (See former post)

Colors for the Primitive Embroidery Piece

Vero, in answer to your question, these are the colors of silk thread that I've chosen to use on my Primitive piece. I will leave the green background as is and fill in the design spaces with the colors. I may do a "mock up" on paper, first, to see which way I want to go. The lines will be heavily embroidered over with black silk thread. As you can see, the thread is Splendor's 12 ply silk. The thread easily separates into 4 ply strands which is how I use the silk. I love the feel of pulling silk thread through wool felt - very satisfying.

Primitive without Embroidery Paper

I tore off the embroidery paper, and because I hadn't knotted the thread, some of the treads pulled out. If I were to do this again, I would use a thinner paper such as tissue paper. I would also use only one strand of thread instead of three as I intend to embroider over the outlines.

New Project

My new project is an embroidery on light green felt. The design is from a book on primitive art. I attached a piece of embroidery paper to freezer paper and ran it through my printer to come up with a design I could outline on my piece of felt. Now, I'll tear away the embroidery paper and begin the actual embroidery.

February TIF Challenge Finished

I've finished the stitching on my TIF February Challenge piece. I hand stitched the running stitch around all the pieces. I'm not happy with the way it looks -it needs something more, but I don't know what. I might try images printed on organza to add on. I'll see how it goes.

February TIF Challenge Ready for Stitching

I've pinned my fabric together and it's ready for stitching. This little quilt is for the Take It Further Challenge for February. The concept is "What am I old enough to remember." I chose metal roller skates. The piece measures about ten inches square. I will use batting and another fabric to make this a "real" quilt. I will also leave raw edges on all the pieces. Scroll down to see my "Thoughts on Roller Skating" post.

Quilting Arts Magazine "Go Green" Challenge

The challenge was to recycle materials to make a mini-quilt five inches square. I use a piece of raw canvas for the drying cloth to place just-painted Lutradur monoprints on. The paint is usually quite thick and a lot soaks through to the canvas. I cut out a 5" piece of this canvas, embellished it with beads, silk floss, and other threads leftover from finished projects. I used a scrap of white wool felt instead of regular batting and backed the quilt with a scrap piece of gold lame'. If the editor of the magazine likes my quilt, it might end up in the magazine (with others, of course)!

Fabrics for February TIFC

I'm going to make a mini-art quilt for the February Challenge. These are the fabrics/colors I will start out with. From top to bottom the blue stripes are upholstery fabric, the next two are batiks, the next red is cotton, the dark blue on left is a Japanese cotton, and the bottom light blue is Japanese rayon chirimen crepe. I still have to figure out how to create the roller skate. I'm thinking appliqué.

Thoughts on Roller Skating

I wonder how many pairs of shoes I ruined with my roller skates. The skates had these clamps that tightened onto the sole of the shoe. We used our skate key (which we carried on a ribbon around our necks) to tighten the clamps. The sidewalks where I grew up (the Mission District of San Francisco) were rough concrete; the asphalt streets were smoother, so we skated out in the street. A few blocks from my house was a small industrial area with train tracks, trains, and large buildings for businesses selling all kinds of large equipment. The brand new sidewalks in front of the buildings were smooth - almost as smooth as glass. This area was our favorite place to skate. We didn't have need pads or wear helmets then, so I had many scrapes on my knees and elbows. I still have a skate key in with my mementos. I like to think it is the same one I had as a youngster growing up on the streets and sidewalks of San Francisco.

TIF Challenge for February

Sharon has posted a wonderful challenge for February. The concept is "What are we old enough to remember." There are so many things I remember: Shirley Temple dolls and paper dolls, my Schwinn bicycle, coloring books and Crayola crayons, my grandmother's summer cottage on the Pacific coast just south of San Francisco, driving there in my grandfather's Buick - passing the pig farms while holding our noses, reading fairy tales and the Book of Knowledge, street cars, and finally, the item I've chosen to work with: roller skates.

Photos are the Challenge colors.

Fourth Piece for Take It Further Challenge

Finally, I have finished my fourth piece for the Challenge. The challenge was to pick someone we admire to inspire our piece. I chose Jean Littlejohn and her piece in which she uses the Embellisher. I did the first piece so quickly, I felt guilty and made a second piece. Then Sharon posted a link to some vintage samplers. I saw one I wanted to copy and ended up doing two more. Now I think I can make a wall hanging of the four pieces. Not sure how yet, but I'm thinking of a large piece of black felt for the background. I hope to get to that before the February challenge starts.

Well, here's the finished quilt. I just have to add another layer of black felt, embroider the edges together, and hang it. I'm going to miss working on this piece.

TIF Challenge 3rd Piece Finished

I finished my third piece with the Kantha stitch background in two colors. The stitches should have been more random, but I didn't start out that way and had to finish the whole piece in nice neat lines. I'm not sure I'll use the Kantha stitch again. Now to do the fourth piece. I'm going to use the periwinkle felt but don't know yet how I will approach it.

Working on the Background with the Kantha Stitch

I switched to Firefox browser and am now able to upload my latest in-progress TIF challenge image. See my Flickr site for more description.

(I couldn't upload an image this morning so I put all the description on my Flickr page.)

What To Do Now?????

I've reached a crossroads.  What to do?  I'm almost down to doing the background stitching.  At this point I don't feel very creative.  Following the piece of vintage embroidery I found on the Internet has been interesting; trying to stick to the colors and design has been challenging.  However,  doing the Kantha running stitch on the background will result in a piece not like the other two I've completed.  I'm considering embellishing yarn onto the background.  I started out emulating one of Jean Littlejohn's embellishment pieces for my "inspiration" in the TIF Challenge. With this piece I totally took off on a tangent not inspired by Jean at all.  What it comes down to I think is that I don't feel I'm being creative.  I'm choosing colors not by intuition but by solving the puzzle of which colors go where.  I'll need to take off these handcuffs for my fourth piece.

A Little More Progress

Please click on the link for my Flickr site for a description of my process.  

Third Piece in Progress

After doing two pieces on the Embellisher, I was craving some hand embroidery. Ahhhhhh! So satisfying. I'm keeping to the same colors and the spiral.

Sharon, in her blog, showed this museum sample which I also noticed on the website she gave us. (This kind of running-stitch embroidery is called "kantha." I looked it up on the web.) The piece inspired me to use this technique for my third creation in the First Challenge. I will end up with four felt pieces and then have to decide how to join them together in a wall hanging.

These are photos of my second piece for the first TIF Challenge. I've used silk ties, as you see in the top photo, to embellish felt circles.

The bottom photo is a detail of one of the silk-tie-embellished circles. The rambling yarn is also embellished to the felt background. Some circles are completely covered with silk and some are covered only in the center. The fuzzy circles are felt that has been embellished from the back side.

My third piece in this series will use the same felt colors and circles, but I haven't decided how to "embellish" them. I may try hand embroidery.

First Week Progress

I'm amazed!  I finished this piece in less than two hours.  Now what do I do for the rest of the month?  I don't feel the piece needs anything more done to it.  Perhaps I should do a series of these.  Hmmmmm?  That sounds like a challenge.

The entire piece, except for the wandering yarn, is made from 100% wool felt.  The circles have been attached to the background felt using my Embellisher.  The yarn also was embellished to the felt background.  The photo on the top right shows the piece from an angle to show the way the circles stand out from the background felt.

Felt Colors for the Take It Further Challenge

These are the colors of wool felt I have chosen to use for my embellishment.  I haven't decided yet which color to use for the background.  The Littlejohn piece I am using for inspiration is monotone.  I plan to make a design using six colors.  I don't usually make a sketch of a design; I let the creative process work out the design.

Take It Further Design Challenge

Jean Littlejohn is a fiber artist I admire.  I am going to use this embellishment piece of Jean's for inspiration.  I have a lot of 100% wool felt that I plan to use.  I will do embellishment with my Baby Lock Embellisher, plus some thread embellishment and hand embroidery.  The colors I have in the felt stash will determine my color scheme. The two photos are of the piece by Jane Littlejohn that I took on Quilting Arts Magazine Alaska Cruise in July 2007.