Auditions with Oprah

I woke up this morning to the sound of a saxophone playing in the distance and remembered that today is the day Oprah is having auditions at her studio for a new show called The Big Give, a pay it forward challenge. This is what I see when I look off my balcony, I live next to Harpo studios. There is a man playing some mellow jazz tunes and someone else handing out T-shirts.

Yesterday a crew from Harpo studios come over to look off my balcony to see if they wanted to have a camera man shooting from there. But they decided to go with someone on the other corner of our building.
The street behind the building has been closed for two days to allow for lots of people.

It is cold outside too. It is snowing and the wind is blowing 30-40 mph gusts. You know these people are serious, to stand outside all day in this.


Oprah has even arranged for a temporary coffee stand in the lot across the street.

Thread Heaven

There is nothing like having organized thread at your finger tips when you are sewing. For years I kept my thread in plastic containers used for storing matchbox cars that I bought at Target. But Target stopped selling them a few years back and I soon ran out of places to put my thread. My solution was to buy this taboret from Dick Blick. I divided up the space in the drawers with easy to cut and stick drawer dividers from the Container Store. I also like to keep my thread wrapped with Hugos amazing vinyl tape to keep it from unraveling.

Another break for pottery

I had to take a break from quilting, my upper back turned into a big cramp, So i have backed way off on the hours at the machine and have been knitting and going to the Illinois Homeschool Conference with the kids.



So I will show some of my pottery to keep things somewhat intersting.

The first pot is a large hand coiled vase, and the second picture is a hand painted triangular bowl.





The house is slab built with a drawer that pulls out and a recessed niche. the designs are made from clay stamps that I carved and pressed into the clay. It is painted with iron oxide.
























The vase with the hands is a hand built coiled pot that has a carved design painted with iron oxide. I made a mold of my own hands to create the hands that hold up the pot.

A curtain to hide the clutter

I made this curtain yesterday to block the view of flat files and shelving as you enter our loft.

The curtain is a long strip cut from a bolt of buckram that my mother in law gave me a few years ago. The cloth is fairly sheer, so I drew the design on two layers with Sharpie markers. (I see this as a temporary solution to hopefully a temporary problem.) I drew flower designs on the back layer and a tree and bird on the front layer. You can faintly see the flowers from the front, although not too well in the photo. I draped the cloth over the water pipe close to the ceiling eliminating the need for any hanging apparatus.

Happy Valentines Day!

Quilting So Far

I have outline quilted all the animals, tree, leaves and pomegranates. Now I am beginning to quilt the black background. The black on black quilting is very easy to see on the quilt but unfortunately it does not photograph well. So I am posting a small picture of how the quilt looks in reality and then a big picture that shows the quilting.

Knit Arm Warmers

Yesterday my baby turned 17! And I gave her the goth insprired arm warmers I made. Perfect considerering it is 2°F right now and she is wearing a short sleeve t-shirt.

I refuse to leave the house for the next several days, not until the temperature gets up to at least 10°F! I have never lived some place that had wind chills of -35 before. I expect to see penguins with these kind of temps. Thank goodness Abby is trained to use a litter box, it is supposed to be -10° tonight!