New Year, New Month, New Day

 

Well well well...another year has arrived, and it's time for a new monthly marker. For this year, I've gone back to combining two of my photos, one from my quilt/art making and one from elsewhere in the app, SnapSeed.

I combined the picture of the gate that my DH made for us last year. (oh my goodness, last year).

It's combined with this photo of four of the Hourglass blocks from the Lupine Mystery quilt. I really liked how the lines on the gate line up with the lines on the block, and the lines on the fabric.

My chosen word of the year is: Alignment. I will be doing my best to work on making sure my inner world is matching up with my outer expression. There's a lot going on inside of everyone (including me), sometimes some or all of it gets stuck inside, pushed down, pushed away, ignored, de-prioritized, etc. The occasional successful expression of my own interior world shines so much more brightly to me among all the other less personal work that I've made OR am in the process of making OR am meaning to make at some point. All of it is useful and necessary as it adds up to skill-acquiring, facility (but not yet mastery) of processes and materials, training the hands and the brain to work together and so forth. But I'm finding I need to put more of my focus on making sure I'm prioritizing or working on my own projects that I've come up with all on my own.

I'm starting off the year doing a month of Drawing Every Day This is my illustrated More/Less list for the year. It relates to what I was talking about Alignment.

Here's to a year where all  your More actually happens and as much of your Less gets lost or worked out.

Happy New Year and Month

Happy New Year! Can you believe it's now been 25 years since we survived Y2K?

The above monthly marker picture is made in a new way for a new year with KaleidaCam and Snapseed photo editing apps.

It's from a picture I took of an American Coot (a chicken-like bird that acts like a duck) in Lake Tahoe on New Year's Eve just a couple days ago.

The word of the year that I've picked for myself is: THRIVE

The world may be seeming like it is bending all around us in new and unexpected ways (like in the edited photo up above), but the theme or goal for the year is to thrive in spite of, because of, assisted by or all of the above that transpires this year. It seems like it could be a hinge of history sort of year, but maybe it will be somewhat less dramatic. Thriving in chaos vs. thriving in relative calm are of course two very different things, but the overall goal for the year is to thrive no matter what.

I'll do summing up last year and looking forward to this year posts sometime in the next week. But for now, I'm just enjoying putting up my new calendars, starting off writing in my new daily desk journal/planner and so on. 

Wandering Wednesday on a Friday: Alum Rock Park

For our usual New Year's Day hike we went a few days early (yesterday that is) to Alum Rock Park in East San Jose. It was rather muddy due to the recent rains and we braved a "closed" trail. Thankfully no one fell in the river.

We managed to time it just right and go in-between rainstorms and had blue skies most of the way.
There were a lot of old bridge pilings from the former steam train that went over the river that were quite interesting.

 I liked the big wreath with sparkly ornaments hung on the overpass.

Interesting cave spots on the crumbly rock face.

An old falling apart cabin from 1915. I believe that it's made out of redwood given the peeling bark on the logs.

Plenty of Red-Hot Poker aka Torch Lily (kniphofia)

These are really interesting plants and I really should grow some in my own garden.

There was an interesting structure with this interior roof.

It was set over a non-functioning water fountain. Reminded me of the Las Pulgas Water Temple

We got a little elevation and got this lovely view.

Up at the summit of the trail we were on, looking back out into the South Bay, the view was blocked by clouds unfortunately.

The underside bark of one of the oaks was so striking.

All in all, about 4.5 miles were hiked with my SIL's family and then we had wonderful ramen at Hinodeya and got to light the menorah with them for the 3rd night of Hannukkah.

Assemble the Dragon

 I've gotten all the pieces of my paper-pieced dragon done, that took a whole lot of sewing time today.

I didn't use all of the fabrics I selected, but I used most of them. I'm not sure about some of the choices I made, but I'm not doing any un-sewing at this point. Calling it good enough.  The gold circles on the teeth are a particular triumph, it took some doing to get those exactly in place.

Now to sew the pieces together.

Happy Lunar New Year!

About this image
Dragon paper-cut
From Paper-cuts of Yangzhou, China 中國揚州剪紙. Gift of Ann Tompkins and Lincoln Cushing to the C.V.Starr East Asian Library & Chang-Lin Teen Center for East Asian Studies at U.C. Berkeley This is the Year of the Wood Dragon, that's me, I'm a wood dragon. And if you were born in a year ending in 4 or 5 then you are too. That means it's really our year!

Happy Lunar New Year! It's the year of the dragon, the wood dragon in particular. And I just happen to be one. You are also a wood dragon if you were born in 1964 or early 1965. 

Since it seems to line up with "being My Year", I decided to commemorate it with making myself a dragon from a paper pieced pattern from Happy Sew Lucky. I really love her patterns, they always turn out so well.

 

I picked out a selection of fabrics 

and mapped them out to all of the many many pieces on the helpful chart provided with the pattern. 

I got out my paper piecing set of tools, my small cutting mat that can fit right next to my machine, a smaller rotary cutter than I usually use, a shortl add-a-quarter ruler, a regular square ruler and a seam roller. And the first section (the eye!)  is done, just like that.

Am I turning into someone who likes paper piecing now? Maybe...it could be turning out that way after sewing all those paper pieced blocks (and minis) for the Trinket quilt. But ask me when I'm done with this project.

Happy New Year and New Month

Wow, it's a New Year! Happy 2024 to you and yours. I hope we all have a productive, creative, healthy year ahead. That's the plan, right?

This month's monthly marker picture was made in a new way, instead of combining two photos in SnapSeed. I first manipulated this photo of part of my Temperature Quilt 

in the app, Percolator. Then I brought that result over into SnapSeed to crop, add a frame and text.

Very different, but I think I like the combination.

Here's the One Second Every Day video for December, which is a whole 31 seconds of course.

Monthly I-Did-It List for December

1. I put up the month of July for the Temperature Quilt and cut out more pieces.

2. I made more Pantone Project blocks.

3. I made a top with the Make It Work bag.

4. I made a back and binding for the Made It Work quilt.

5. I quilt sandwiched the Made It Work quilt and the Trinket quilt.

6. I designed a quilt in EQ8.

7. I repaired and two of my Christmas pillow covers.

8. I made a pincushion for the BAM swap.

9. I reviewed my new Oliso project iron and the Bulky Seam Jumper.

10. I made binding and bound a community giving quilt for BAM

11. I sketched out a new quilt for SAT24 and made the background.

I again did a whole lot of family visiting stuff, and went on one hike with DH.

I attended a BAM Sew Day/Meeting, blogged here 20/31 days, I tweeted 0 times, instagrammed 6 times,  threaded 4 times and I spouted 1 time, facebooked 0 times and Blue-sky-ed 5 times. Continuing on with being barely semi-social in probably a fewToo many places at once!

I See January

Hey, hi there Happy New Year! Our New Year's Eve was a wild one with the big storm keeping us stuck in town for a day because of slides and trees down, etc. We ventured out on New Year's Day for the traditional hike with my SIL's family. It was a very muddy trail, but very clear and blue skies and fairly warm. Even though we weren't house-bound for too long, it was still really nice to get out in the world and move around.

January's monthly marker photo is a mixture of two photos edited in SnapSeed.

The first is a picture of one of the printed/quilted pieces I made in December:

And the second is of the San Francisco Bay as seen from the shores of Alviso on our New Year's Day hike.

Here's my One Second Everyday video for December:

And my compilation video of all 365 seconds for 2022, it's more than 6 minutes, which is a very good reminder that all of those seconds add up!

My monthly look back at what the heck I did in December is as follows:

Monthly I-Did List for December

I kept making more blocks for the Pantone Project 

I updated my  spreadsheet/database for the Pantone Project.

I made another block for the first month of the Color Collective.

I made 20 blocks for my 5x5 quilt top.

I printed on my hand-dyes with several techniques.

I made three small quilts in a triptych with my hand-printed and hand-dyed fabrics.

I kept going on the Secret Lives of Color quilt-a-long (but still haven't posted it here yet). At some point I will share it, once I catch up.

I very very occasionally added to my Visual Journal aka Ephemera Journal.

I blogged here 18/31 days and Instagrammed 7 times and tweeted 10 times.

I traveled by air for the second time in years to participate in a medical trial.

For a December where I was recovering from being ill all November, and traveling, and doing all the holiday things, not as bad as I would have thought.  ie not zero! Ready to go in January...

Another New Start

 

And once again, the year has turned anew. Another monthly marker made of combining two photos from the previous month and edited in SnapSeed.

My mini quilt quilt for Energized.

The last picture I ever took of Spike.

My One Second Everyday for December is here:

And then there's my entire 2021, which is super fun for me to see all in one place. More on that once I get YouTube to post a 6 minute video! I'm definitely keeping up with the 1SE app this year:

I'm sending you all the good thoughts and wishes for a great new year. I'm trying to remain hopeful that 2022 will be better than 2021.

Happy 2019!

Looking forward to 2019! Don't these teen years sound so futuristic, or is that just me?
This is not my picture, but this is the sort of energy I want to bring to experiencing the year ahead. Surround myself with light, get comfortable, observe and enjoy.

Happy 2018!

Starting out the new year with a very full scrap basket. 

Tomorrow I will use it (or most of it) to make a Personal Word of the Year quilt. 

That's the plan.

The word that I randomly chose from a list of 150 was: COURAGE.

Sharing a selfie with my new haircut for the new year. Definitely takes some courage. 

Scraps of The New Year

 Happy 2015.

 It's been a year away from blogging here at High Fiber Content. 

A year away from normal life at home. 

A few months spent trying to get back to where I left off. And it's all still a pretty tangled mess.

This was in my Christmas stocking, a skein of sari scraps. 

Colorful strips of silk, sewn or knotted together end to end. 

All colors, all patterns, all a wrinkled, beautiful mess. 

An apt metaphor for where I feel like I'm beginning the year.

Happy New Year

Back in the land of unlimited internet access for a bit. Just popping in and saying hi, and

  Happy New Year

, and I was so happy to see my sewing machine after five weeks away from it, you have no idea.

I hope you have a peaceful, success-filled, adventurous new year ahead.