So many hobbies!

Sorry for the silence

Things have been rather busy here in SE Michigan.  Blueberries have been picked, and frozen, and turned into jam.  My birthday was this week which was a great day spent with my sister.  We ate yummy Indian food, I got a birthday cupcake and we watched The Wolverine at the theater.  I've become obsessed with tie-dyeing again which, so far, has lead to this:

and this:

I've got another shirt in the dye bath right now.  I find the process very exciting since you never know how each shirt is going to turn out until you take off the rubber bands/ties.  Such potential!

My garden is plugging along slowly.  I have tomatoes, green ones, but nothing ready to eat.  I've harvested one zuchini and a handful of beans.  The peppers are loaded but none are ready for eating yet... and we're running out of summer:

 These are the red peppers.  And these are the purple peppers:

I have no idea when the darn things are ripe because they start off purple.  At least with the red ones it's obvious when they're ripe because they turn red.  The big purple pepper has been there for weeks and is hard as a rock.  I have to assume that means it's still "green."  Can anyone give me some clarification on pepper ripeness?  'Cause I'm at a loss here.  The Sweet Chocolate Peppers are finally blooming but I doubt there will be any ripe peppers this summer.  I have no idea why they've been so slow to prosper.  It's not just my gardening skills.  I gave one to my BIL in Pennsylvania, who lives in one gardening zone warmer than here, and his didn't thrive either.  Maybe a bad batch of seeds?

Next week is the Michigan Fiber Festival.  I can't believe it's here already.  As usual, I'm not ready.  I still need to figure out lunches, prepare the fabric I'm bringing for the batik classes I'm taking and move all my camping stuff up from the basement.  The vacation will be appreciated.

Oh, and for anyone in my age bracket, I had my annual mammogram today.  If you haven't had your's yet this year, please talk to your doctor about scheduling one.  We girls need to stick together.  (Yeah, okay, that was sappy but the sentiment is sincere.)

Cafepress store

I opened a new Cafepress store for my t-shirt designs:  Middle Kingdom T's.  There should be four designs but I can't tell if all four are appearing.  Their store set-up is kind of confusing.  I'll try a bit more but I'm tired and I may have to bail for the night and try again tomorrow.

Shirts and book stuff

My second bookbinding class was this weekend:  Tools and Tricks of the Bookbinding Trade.  We learned things that will make bookbinding easier and made tools that are easily portable.

 

The contraption on the right is a collapsible punching cradle for punching holes to sew a book together.  We also made a sleeve to carry the cradle when not in use.  The punching cradle I have at home is made of wood and is not something I can take with me if I need to travel for whatever reason.  On the far left, I made a brush rest out of polymer clay - very handy when you have a gluey brush and don't want glue all over your work surface.  From the middle top down:  a soft weight, two polymer clay punches, a solid weight and lastly, a bamboo paper knife.  With the exception of the bamboo paper knife, I'll use all of these tools.  I'd use the bamboo knife if I could get it sharp enough but my sanding just seemed to dull it.  I've got a metal paper knife so I'm not very motivated to spend more time sanding.

 

We put together this little 3-section book during the course of the two days.  The last two sections are blank but the first section holds all of the nice tips and tricks that the instructor had come up with since she started bookbinding.  She taught us four ways to miter corners on paper covers.  I know the paper is dark, but I think you can still see how the corners in the picture are mitered.  The corners were lots of fun.  Apparently, I'm good at what we were learning because I was always the first one done.  It was kind of nice.

Saturday night I created some t-shirt designs to sell on Cafepress.  They're not up yet - I'll do it tomorrow - but I've ordered shirts for myself.  I've got ideas for a couple more but they're still in the idea stage.  Here's the first one:

 

And the second one:

 

These have meaning for me and I hope they'll have meaning for others.