Tomato Soup

Experimenting with light and textures in Photoshop. 

 My husband says, "What are you doing? Taking pictures of things you're never going to make?"

 I hate it when he's right...the can opener's in the drawer.

Peaceful Snow

Today it snowed. Perfect for some peaceful artistic photos. I'll set up a cover for myself, dress warm, make a thermos full of tea and wait for some darling little chickadees to perch on the side of my snowy tea cup. 

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Freezing, freezing, gotta pee. 

Ten minutes later and all hell breaks loose. The Bluejays have stomped all over my teacup.

Adorable squirrel has wiped out my umbrella, knocked over my chair,

and thrown my tripod out of whack. 

At least there's still the porch. 

A Wrinkle in Time

I've become very interested in Kim Klassen's artwork. She creates beautiful still life textured photographs that are all soft and dreamy. 

Here's my attempt at a few textured photos of my own. 

Not a very soft and dreamy still life, I'm afraid. I seem to be drawn to the darker side of things. I think it needs more blur.

Here are two unaltered versions of a pretty place near my house. 

And how lucky, it started to snow. I was hoping it would, and voila, there it was! It was mostly slush but, whatever. 

As you can see, the place has been boarded up for some time.  My husband enjoys the haunted feel of it. I prefer a more lived in look. Maybe curtains and a dash of chimney smoke?

First, I cut and pasted the only window left on the building and stuck it on top of the boards. Then I did the same with a section of grass over the watering equipment in the front yard. After retouching it using a paintbrush in Photoshop, it didn't look half bad.  Next I overlayed the photo with a few of Kim Klassen's textures, which made the colours really vibrant. And I like that, but as I mentioned I'm trying to go all dreamy, the way Kim does. Time for a redo.

Here, I exchanged the dark textures with a pinky one. Then refitted the bottom window from three panes to four, and cropped the whole photo. So much for all that fiddling around I did getting the equipment out of the shot. Truthfully though, I think I prefer the dark one. I'm going to try printing it on some fancy photo paper. I'm hoping I'll be more impressed. 

It's supposed to snow here in the Valley tonight. I mean, really snow! Yay, where's my mitts.

Happy New Year!

Merry Little Christmas!

 I love these little cars. I saw the same thing, cars with trees and packages on them on Pinterest and thought it would be adorable to try out on my new coffee table cart that my husband fixed up for me. 

 He found this wonderful old cart, cut the big bar handle off, then sanded the heck out of the wood. But making sure to leave lots of gouges and paint splotches that were already there.  Next he buffed and bees waxed the wood top with three coats of wax. 

It's my favourite thing in the whole house. Though I can't forget my lovely Reindeer Feed pillows either.

Magical Supper For Flying Caribou, it says. How cute. They're also my favourite thing. 

But I really can't get enough of my gorgeous newly painted hutch. This was one ugly lookin' white oak monstrosity with 80's brass coloured hardware. Ugh! My husband painted it with Annie Sloan Chalk paint in Emperor Red, then used stained wax over top. To tell you the truth I was nearly sick when I came home from work and saw it with the wax stain, but I didn't have the heart to tell him how much I hated it. I think he kind of knew because I didn't talk much that evening. I wasn't mad I was just very sad. It had looked so pretty when it was red.

The instructions on the website say you're supposed use clear wax first and then the dark wax which he didn't do. The colour turned out super dark like Mahogany and looked like plain old brown. I wanted it red like the cabinet I saw in the Crate&Barrel magazine in the picture below.

Crate&Barrel advertisement. 

The reason for not doing it that way he did was the stain would permanently change the paint colour and then you're screwed. Though after scrutinizing the website I came across a saving bit of information that said you could remove dark wax with clear wax but only while it was still wet.

It definitely wasn't still wet but I was willing to try anything. The next day we used bees wax and clear wax. And it started coming off beautifully while leaving just enough dark wax in the crevices, exactly the way I wanted it to look. That ending part was very exciting. We tried to find some antique knobs but they cost a fortune. So we settled on some pleasing little bronze/black, heavy metal knobs from Home Hardware at $3.00 a piece. What a deal!

Home Sweet Home

StrawBunny Tea Cozy!

I haven't had a lot of time for knitting or blogging or anything since starting a new job this year.

And I've been slowly realizing that with working full time I probably wasn't going to be able to make my bunnies anymore. 

 Then surprisingly a wonderful thing happened. When I showed my boss a couple of bunnies, she loved them and wanted to sell them in her market! 

 I can't tell you how happy I felt, how uplifting it's been knowing there's is still hope for my little knitted bunnies. 

So here I go, back in the saddle with this darling StrawBunny Tea Cozy. An original pattern created by me that sits proudly on the market shelf at Krause Berry Farms and Estate Winery. Watching the goings on and just waiting for a new home and a lovely teapot to warm. 

( Knitted Strawberry pattern by PezDiva) 

 It's funny how a little ray of sunshine changes everything. Here's a peek at PoinsettiaBunny Cozy almost finished and in a few days will be ready to keep StrawBunny company for a while. 

Just call me, Ol' lightning fingers.

A Pillowy Pouf

I've been home for a few days working my way through a sore throat and sinus infection. Not fun, but it did give me time to finish the pouf I'd started quite a while ago. 

 I can't find my notes but to make it I used two strands of Wool-Ease Thick & Quick and 15 mm circular knitting needles without joining it in a round. It was just much easier using circulars because it was so bulky and could hang in the middle while I was knitting. 

With a few changes to suit myself,

 I mostly followed the directions from the CSI Project site, http://thecsiproject.com/2012/02/05/knitted-poufsthe-pinterest-project/#axzz3D3h7Duc1

 The yarn was nice. It had all kinds of speckly bits in it. Other patterns on the web say you're supposed to stuff the pouf with two king sized duvets but I used what I had, which was two queen sized quilts, one single bed knitted blanket and one king sized sheet. You'd probably get a smoother finish with duvets, mine looks a little bumpy. 

 Here's the top view. 

Clare thought the whole thing was very interesting. Pretty girl.