Eiffel Tower

We now have internet and tv again. Two workmen arrived at 8am on the dot and rewired all our phone connections. We are once again connected to the world.

The first day I was so miserable without the internet I went for a long walk to see the Eiffel Tower. It was a grey cloudy day so these are hardly good pics, but they fit my mood. I couldn't see much of the structure other than the top as I drew nearer. I walked through a park area and came out practically underneath the tower. I didn't wait in the long long lines to get to the top.


I walked home a different route. The sun finally peaked out just a bit.

Where Was My Honeymoon?

Hey ya'all. Our DSL line is down and after my husband spent a heroic, but ultimately futile amount of time trying to resolve the issue (mainly in French), France Telecomm is sending someone around on Tuesday. I will spare you my sobbing and woe about being cut off from the world and unable to communicate with anyone who could fix it. I am not a happy camper, but dining out last night at a local cafe did help. Duck ala Orange and a side of Macaroni and Cheese (not the bright orange American stuff out of a box, but some kind of crunchy parmesan like topping) followed by Chocolate Mousse.

I spent yesterday being mad at Paris. Made me realize I never had a honeymoon. Let me explain. There are supposedly four emotional stages that you go through when you move to a new country. The first is the honeymoon where everything is marvelous and you love the new country. The next one is misery where homesickness takes over and everything is better/easier back at home. I never got a honeymoon. Usually we move to a new spot and have time to explore and adapt before my husband has settled into the new job and the household goods have arrived and none of our cookware is here so might as well eat out a whole lot... Nope I got here and the husband was already working lots of hours and there was an overwhelming amount of sorting to do. Sigh.

Other than that, things are going fine. The little girl cats actually groomed each other and slept in a kitty puddle on Tuesday. That does my heart good, although I've just seen whacking and hissing since...

Don't worry if you don't hear from me for awhile. Doing fine, just no computer. Sigh again.

Thready

Here's what Color Thready II looks like as of this morning. I'm now using a greater range of colors than what I was limited to in Florida.

I've been asked about how I make threadies. First let me show you were I got the idea. I have the great book Celebrating the Stitch by Barbara Lee Smith. It's marvelous and has all kinds of textiles including quilts. (There are used copies available at low prices - go get one. This book is loaded with inspiration.)

Anyway, Dana Romalo Andrews is one of the artists featured in the book. She makes free form embroideries that are wondrous little creations just covered with woven stitches. Look at how dense this 11" x 9" piece is:

And this is the front and back side of another piece:

Aren't they incredible? I love them. She starts by couching down leftover bits of fiber onto a cloth. She works both the front and back sides until the whole piece is entirely covered. If you want to know more buy the book or borrow it from the library. [Libraries will get the book for you if they don't have it on their shelves - interlibrary loan is a great tool.]

My works aren't nearly that elaborate. I sometimes couch, but not recently. I usually start with a small bit of muslin and make running stitches with embroidery floss. It can be as basic as that. Sometimes I use yarns, rayons, and metallic threads. Sometimes I throw in some french knots. I've been known to get more elaborate with beads. Whatever I'm in the mood for.

On both the Color Threadies I've basted some colored bits of fabric onto the muslin before I started with the embroidery floss. That way I don't have to cover every single bit of the base fabric with a stitch - the batiks show through in beautiful color. But previously I was covering every bit of the base fabric. I stick to running stitch and then stab stitches in random spots that need covering - no weaving like Ms Andrews does.

Anyway, that's the basic idea behind a thready. Stitch, stitch, stitch. If you want to try this yourself I highly recommend that you use a lightweight fabric for your base - it gets very hard to stitch through towards the end. Don't fuse (again too hard to stitch through). Don't make knots (ditto). I just do a backstitchy kind of thing to anchor my beginning and at the end I run my needle through previous stitches on the underside.

Initially I just hung these creations on the wall as is, but after someone said they looked like the world's most expensive pot holders I realized I'd better make them look more like art.

The blue vases aren't pottery. They're carved out of alabaster - a rock. The shopkeeper in Egypt told me that this was a special kind of blue onyx, but it's not. The vases are all dyed - I know it for a fact since I was cleaning one of my final purchases with a damp cloth and ended up with a clump of blue dye. I didn't see much dyed alabaster when I initially arrived in Egypt but by the time I left it was available in all sorts of colors including lime green and orange.

A close up of the modern phrenology head for Kathie. I hope you can see some of the words on here: aliens, coffee, playground trauma, evil, good, email password...

I actually cleaned bathrooms today. Bleck, but at least it's out of the way. I'm still disorganized, but no longer worrying about it. It was gray and rainy this morning, but now the sun is out. I'm going to go work on my thready and find a dvd to watch.

p.s. I should have said that the Harry Potter HARDBACKS are my husband's. I'm cheap enough that I'd have continued to wait until the books came out in paperback, but there was no way my sweetie was going to wait to read the books. He didn't start reading them until the movie came out so I had to go back and replace the first couple of paperbacks with hardbacks so that he'd have a matching set. Did that make sense?

A Bit of Order in this Chaos

I started another thready before leaving Florida, very similar to the first one although this time I covered almost every bit of the foundation. And I did cheat- I had to use some real scraps and not just bits bound for the trash (actually the bag of stuffing I'll use for making Santas and things like that). This is roughly 8.5" square.

And this is what it looked like before we departed. I've worked on it quite a bit more, but have been very neglectful at taking photos.

My bookshelves are in order. My husband's bookshelves are completely and totally off limits to all my decorations (that little problem of letting him get here first and get settled) so I've had to put what I can here. The framed pieces are threadies, the metalwork and alabaster is all Egyptian, and a wee bit of Britain has snuck in (the phrenology head and most of the printers' stamps).

These are my husband's Harry Potter books. He's a huge fan and rereads the books and rewatches the films seemingly constantly. July is going to be a big month at our house with the new book and new movie coming out.

And a tiny bit of America: a switchplate featuring a girl riding a cat. I haven't had a switch that fits ever since I bought it, but love it anyway.

The cats are doing reasonably well. It's heartbreaking, but the girls are still hissing and swatting at each other. The boys are still jumpy and have a tendency to slink off quick if they think they being rounded up - calling them to come get treats has the opposite effect.

On Saturday I rode the metro for the first time. We went to the big mall at La Defense (pronounced something like la dee fonce) to get supplies to hang my quilts and pictures. Of course we were idiots and forgot the dictionary. Does this mean plaster? This probably means brick...

Yesterday we got quite a few quilts hung up on the walls. I've run out of hanging rods - so couldn't get them all up. I haven't yet tried your suggestions for getting the crumples out of the quilts, so they don't look fabulous up on the walls, but they will. I also want to hang my framed Egyptian embroideries, but I'm a bit intimidated about arranging them. It was easy in our last place - they went up on the walls as I bought them one at a time. I'm going to lay them out on the floor and arrange them that way.

It still doesn't feel like home yet. Making progress though. The things I'm finding hardest to adjust to: lack of tv programming in the English language (there's loads of American and UK tv on, but they're all dubbed into French and only the rare show has the option of listening to it in the original) and food stores closed on Sundays as well as holidays. I'll get better at thinking ahead. In fact, tomorrow is a holiday and I already have our yummy baguette and salad items purchased. I did have two "pain au chocolate" (croissants with chocolate) for tomorrow but I was very very bad and ate them both for lunch.

Lily managed to wipe me out today - classic kitty manuever of crossing over right in front of my feet. She squealed horrifically when I stepped down on her but is okay now. My knee (the bad one with arthritis) hurts but I've been icing and elevating and wrapping... At least it's a good excuse for not cleaning the bathrooms. My husband will of course be all sympathy for the baby and blame me - "you have to watch where you're going." harrumph.

Crumb Lost Love Quilted

I finished quilting Crumby Lost Love and sent it off in the mail to Bonnie the day before leaving Florida. Unfortunately for her, I decided that her part of the collaboration included the binding.

I finished the Color Thready as well, just couldn't remember if I ever showed you the final pic.

I'm very slowly sorting through the catastrophe that is my belongings. I'm feeling overwhelmed and taking tea/Sudoku breaks to de-stress. I often end up with a cat in my lap, so I figure it's good for them if I take breaks as well. Yes, that's my excuse.

I have been out of the house, but not with the camera. Running errands and my husband's boss' wife invited me out for a drive while she ran an errand of her own. She drove through the massive 12-point traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, which I didn't see because I was paying so much attention to the traffic. Definitely reaffirmed my decision that we are never getting a car here.

A view of the guest bedroom/Tonya storage area. The downside to my husband doing all the unpacking himself is that he laid claim to all the closet space in our bedroom, so this is the room where my clothes live, along with all the fabric, art supplies, holiday decorations...

All the pillowcases are crammed with quilts. Aren't those zebra striped cases awful? No wonder I got them on sale. I've since gone through the bags and pulled out the quilts that I want for the walls and rolled up the rest. Sweetie and I are supposed to be going to a store where we can buy the appropriate quilt hanging hardware today but he is currently napping with Pokey.

This is the fireplace in the living room. Definitely the focal point of the room and everything has to be fit in around it.

I wasn't about to waste any space. I've shelved all my quilt books in here. Those are Egyptian flag standards in the front.

Unfortunately (or perhaps not) all of my quilts didn't make it here, nor did all my quilt books. They should still be in storage back in the states - not lost.

A few links for you:

Dordogne Quilter Clare has finished a quilt top for her aunt, featuring free-pieced family names. She did a great job making a meaningful quilt and I can't wait to see the quilting.

Joyce finished her marvelous chickens quilt and is now going whole-hog free-piecing farm animals.

In the fairly new-to-me blog Taniwa, Tanya posts about living in Japan. I loved the entry about the toilets and the wisteria blooms are gorgeous. I am so impressed by her wonky word quilt top. Not only did she free-piece English words, she also went for it and did Japanese words as well. I thought they would be too hard, but she did it and very well.

And a quilt related question: the only way I can think of to get the creases out of my quilts is by washing them. Any other solutions?