Penny's Birthday Party

here's the invitation to Penny's....
The delicious giant cupcake birthday cake and Penny making a wish. Hi Maren~!
One of Penny's wonderful gifts...a special handmade crown by Susan B.
And these are the sock dolls we made from Syd's great directions...
One of Penny's baby dolls...she lets me snoop around and take as many pictures as I want. I always find new things to share with you.
these two mannequins are cooling off in the bedroom.
Syd's sock doll samples...she brought socks and stuffing for us all. Love the faces!
More of Penny's cool stuff...
Most of these dolls belonged to Penny's mother.....I just love looking at all of her treasures...
More sewing trinkets from Penny's mother...see the tiny spools of thread for arms on the left? And the center piece has a hidden thimble underneath.
A cool art piece on the living room wall....

We all had such fun at Penny's Birthday party. We all agreed that we are so lucky to have such a great group of art friends to celebrate and make stuff with. It's always fun to be at Penny's very fun art filled home. I could easily fill up my camera in one afternoon just poking around every nook and corner!
We had a delightful lunch of curried chicken salad with cranberries on panini or turkey on whole wheat bread accompanied by a colorful assortment of fruit flavored fizzling drinks. Barbara made the most delicious cupcake birthday cake..lemony and light and just perfect on a hot summer day. We all made crazy sock dolls and Penny opened her presents..lots of cool fat quarters from everyone and other neat stuff. We shared what was going on in each of our lives at the moment and other items of interest like new books, art shows, grandchildren and the teenagers in our lives...before we knew it, it was 5 pm and time to get back to those families of ours. Thanks to everyone for making such a fun day for us all.

Party at Penny's Playhouse...

Non-edible cupcakes at Penny's....the Queen of Cupcakes...we had a wonderful birthday party yesterday at her art filled house complete with sock doll making led by Syd. More to come...I'm off to do errands right now..back soon...

Party cat and Ancient symbols

this is the fiber exchange post card with some stitching...I think it's done...but might do a little more work on it tonight....
and this is my Party Cat softie that I made on Sunday....taking a flying lesson...

Lemon tart...

I love to bake....and this Lemon Tart from the new Joy of Cooking is delicious and fairly easy to make. If I have plenty of time I make the shortbread crust and if not I will use one of those refrigerated pastry crusts...both taste yummy! I made this for a graduation celebration for the boys at his friends' Barbeque last night. And for Father's Day I think we will have fresh organic strawberry shortcake for dessert....the boys can do the barbequeing tonight....and maybe some fresh corn...one of my favorites. Hope you all have a great Sunday.....I hope to get in a walk, do a little gardening, work on one of my many art projects...watch the Lakers with the boys and do some hooking in the evening....

Off to Australia...

Little heart and Party Bird flew off to Australia in a fiber swap with the incredible felt artist, Elizabeth Armstrong. Sometime next week my package will arrive. I got a sneak peek on her flickr site and I can't wait to see it in person. She dyes her wool in the most beautiful colors and teaches workshops to kids and adults. She has a blog, website and etsy store.... I will add a link when I can get some help from my son...

Graduation day times two....

Travis, Kevin and Jason at San Marcos High School Graduation...
We have many Jacaranda trees here in Santa Barbara that always bloom this time of year. This one is in the Palm Court at the Jr. High where we gathered with hundreds of other parents and family members for the 8th grade graduation. All went well...Justin reluctantly goes on to high school next year. After the ceremony Justin requested a pizza lunch at Giovanni's...then back up the mountain for a quick nap and then to help Jason get ready for his High School Graduation at 5pm. Another large group, like 600 students walked by with their red and blue robes on while family members hooted, cheered and tooted those air horns. Speeches by the Board of Education, the principal who is retiring, class president and of course the school band played for us. Then the reading of 600 names. Afterwards we all went onto the football field to find our offspring, give them a hug and take photos. Above, the "Three Amigos"..Travis, Kevin, and our Jason, who immediately took off his robe..."too uncomfortable..." A few hours later and they were off on buses to Disneyland for Grad night. He will come home sometime this morning and most likely sleep all day...and in two weeks the three pals will be off to Germany for 5 weeks!
Justin and mom.
Oh...and here is the price of gas in Santa Barbara...for some reason we almost always pay the highest prices in the nation...why? I have no idea!

Mosaic mirrors..

Back when I was making my mosaic path to my studio I thought it would be fun to do a few mirrors as well. I have these all hanging in our white bathroom for a little color. Mostly made with broken pottery from thrift stores and the little hearts and moons from the craft store.

old quilt!

I love the fabrics in this old quilt that I found at the local thrift store. I just washed it and have it outside drying in the sun and thought I'd show you some of the odd fabric designs. I also love that the back side is PINK! I have it on my bed in the winter in case I need 2 quilts up here in the mountains.
And below ...the doll bodies that I am currently working on...

Yay! Justin!

Hope you don't mind a tiny bit of motherly bragging...but...Justin, 14, got honored yesterday for being one of the top 10 artists in his class and also for perfect attendance! He graduates from Jr. High on Thursday morning and my other son, Jason graduates from High School later the same day. Proud of my boys! Justin is the fourth from the left...
And here he is the third from the left...they posed for a photo op...

playing with felt...

This is the felt vessel that I made and didn't want to show you....so last night I needle felted it and it looks better. I think I may still do some more embellishing...either stitching or more needle felting. It won't fit into my new Embellisher...I was thinking of trying the machine out on it..but I think it works best on a flat surface. I did use it on the following piece. First I needle felted the Chumash Indian designs from a cave that is in walking distance from our house...and then I put it under the Embellisher to see what would happen. It really felted it...but I lost a little of the detail of the designs. So now I think I may want to do a little hand embroidery to bring back the detail of the cave paintings. This is for Tricia's fiber exchange (4 "x 6 ") that I found online. The theme is ancient symbols so I went with something close to home. I have always been fascinated by symbols...ancient and otherwise...so this was a fun challenge. We have until the end of June...so I have a little time to make it a bit more interesting.

And here is our first artichoke! We have a container garden on our deck filled with various vegetables and a few sunflowers. It's always fun when things begin to show up...like this little artichoke and the green tomatoes and baby lettuce.

Felt vessel

Two sides of the funny little felted vessel that I made a week ago...now with a little needle felting and stitching with some cool Japanese thread from Habu Textiles.

Cambria Rug Camp Show

My friend, Maren and I drove up to Cambria to see the Rug Show where 4 of our friends were taking classes all this week. A wide variety of rugs were in the show which filled up a large room at the Cambria Pines Lodge. Both teachers and students had their rugs on display. These are just a few..... Enjoy!

Cats!

This little cat has been waiting for a face for awhile...

And these are our 2 new kitties....very playful and fun to watch. Look at that sweet face! Tiger is not too happy to share his territory but I am hoping he will warm up to having some playmates...

Felt experiment...

I decided to try to make some felt vessels and these odd little creations showed up! I'm sure that if I had tried to make something with two openings and a handle it wouldn't have looked like the one on top!....but I sort of like it anyway...and I think it will be fun to do some stitching on. The smaller one is about the size of a tennis ball and it also needs some embellishing. I also made a third one that is too weird to show...I may have to dye the whole thing to make it presentable...
I can see that once I get the right kind of wool for this type of felting that I will make a bunch more. For the shape I used a balloon and layered wool roving around it and then covered it with the cut off top of a panty hose. Then felted with olive oil soap and water and lots of rubbing and rinsing and put out in the sun to dry. For the small one I felted around a squishy ball of my son's and then had to cut an opening to get the ball out. I still have a ways to go before they look anything like the one that Barbara made!