knit hat

A piece a Week – A Warm Hat for a Bubba and lots of cooking with Meyer Lemons

| poppypeach
This is the last post for the year – 52 weeks of being creative and making something every week has been a challenging though worthwhile experience…

A very happy new year to you!

Finally some time to relax and catch up on spring cleaning the house in time for the New Year. That has been one heck of a job with bags of recycling and a trip to Goodwill and boxes and boxes of kids books! Finally working through my last room today – the sewing room has been a good thing with getting everything organised for the New Year. New Year and new projects! Even our garden is cleaned up after the rain and the storms of the weeks past. Amazing what you can do when free time presents itself and you are on a cleaning mission!

This week I made a hat for our friend’s little bubba – who is now 2 months old. We had a sweet time yesterday hanging out with her. This is a little wolf modeling it before we packed it in a care package of a bag with books and Recipe Sacks super easy meal kits for busy families.

A bulky knit hat for a little bubba

Time to cook fun stuff has been wonderful with the free time and a bushel of Meyer lemons a friend gave me from her tree. I made Meyer Limoncello – with the help of this super easy recipe! There will be no Limoncello until the end of January though it will be fun to see the lemons and vodka mix together in our dungeon under the stairs. And I made Meyer Lemon Sables – one of my favorite recipes for cookies! Super easy and once they are rolled they make over 80 tasty little morsels.

Limoncello – I cannot wait to taste you!

Meyer Lemon Sables in their cookie jar

Today as part of our get out of the house and away from the cleaning mode we went hiking up to Los Trancos Open Space Preserve – it was freezing and windy and super cold up there on the mountain but we persisted and warmed up (once we were out of the wind!) We did 3.8 miles over 6 km with the kiddos over terrain with elevation at the end – which can be a bit of a struggle with the kiddos complaining! The mission was to find a power stone and make it back to the car for snacks and a drink – yay!! Initially we were on a .7 mile Fault Trail running parallel with the San Andreas fault line – which made it interesting for the kiddos. We powered up for a snack and wandered down to the Franciscan trail after the Fault Trail and then visited the Lost Creek way down low. Then came the climb up – according to my phone we climbed 26 floors today!

The kids love to climb and we found this lovely little rock collection to climb at the edge of the trail and of course they climbed to the top and what did they find? A buddha hiding in amongst the rocks! What a serendipitous little find with my readings on buddha this year and life as a vegetarian practicing Qi Gong. Qi’s to you all and may 2015 be filled with peace, happiness and harmony.

Here is the buddha surrounded by rocks and moss

Mama there is a buddha in the rock… 

On the end of a frosty trail with Pinky

Again taking my iPhone camera on a mission and seeing what the pics are like – I love the camera on this phone, check out this mushroom!

Do not eat this mushroom 😦 signs were posted at the trailhead, do not take any mushrooms

A piece a week – A couple of totes, teacher gifts, silk scarves and some ceramics

| poppypeach
This week was very fruitful considering with the extra holiday events that happened this week. The plan to get the teacher gifts ready in time every year in time never seems to happen!! So in between prepping for a show in San Francisco this weekend I helped the kids with completing the teachers xmas gifts!
Missy wanted to make a stuffed peacock as her teacher loves peacocks, so I left her in my sewing room with spare fabric and she came up with this peacock that I helped to appliqué on a pillow. I was so impressed the way the peacock was laid out on the carpet that it had to be created with design tweaks by my 6 year old as I was laying it out on the background. 
A beautiful purple peacock with its FabMo fabric tail – the purple is hand dyed, such a brilliant colour!
For my sons teacher he has been investigating her favorite animal so I could knit up an animal hat! I overheard on a field trip from our teacher that she collects animal hats. I found this cool looking doggie hat in a knitting book at the library called ‘Animal Hats‘. I have really enjoyed knitting this and I ended up making the eyes and nose out of felt and sewing them on. Hope she likes it! 
Puppy hat with felt detail
Now for a picture from my favorite BFF Siri and the incredible camera on that beautifully designed iPhone 6…
Here is Ms Bella 

I had to increase inventory for a holiday show at the Dogpatch Cafe and Gallery at San Francisco this weekend. So there was some fabric waiting in line to be made into totes and scarves. I had some lovely silk and velvet that was crying out to be made into something useful 🙂
Magnolia tote
Silk patch scarf

Silk patch scarf with paisley details

Such beautiful velvet

This velvet is stunning – a fancy lunch tote

Leaf tote made from linen

I have been taking ceramics class this year and I have thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of clay and creating directly with my hands – no need for my computer or a sewing machine to create. Work created directly through from your imagination to your hands transform clay into such an amazing art medium. I really have enjoyed making succulent pots, fruit bowls, ice cream bowls and now these leaves. I had an idea to make spoon rests from these so I am in the process of testing one out on my stovetop. The first one had yellow underglaze with melted glass beads in the center. After having a chat to my teacher about the glass beads I opted for different underglazes of color tones and rubbed back the glaze before a applying a super gloss – I was so happy with the result. The time this has taken me from the initial idea when the leaves started to fall at the end of October to now the end of December finally coming out of the kiln. One thing ceramics has taught me about art is that it is all about patience… What a beautiful lesson to learn!
Take one – a yellow underglaze with melted glass beads
Take two – a set of autumn leaves ready for some tea lights!