Molly Bee's Attic

The more I pare down, the more stuff   I have coming out of the woodwork! How does this happen?!?! Part of it is hobbies...I knit, spin, weave, draw, make baskets, 'play' music, etc. etc. etc. Each of these hobbies comes with it's own little cache of goodies that needs to be at the ready for when the mood strikes. Plastic bins here, plastic bins there! Here a spinning wheel, there a guitar, everywhere a flute, flute♫. Because 99% of my hobbies involve 'making things', I  have a bunch of knit goods, baskets, jewelry, etc. laying around. I give most of the stuff I've made away, but now that I'm trying to get my Etsy store going  the 'homemade stuff I had laying around' now turns into 'official inventory' and needs a place to live. Because of my Etsy shop and the fact that I work from home some, I have an 'office'.  OK so it's a corner of my bedroom, but still...it involves papers, writing utensils etc. and we all know how those ...

This week's Diva Challenge was to close your eyes and draw a 'blind string' and then deal with the beastly thing. I drew my outside boarder (traced a coaster), closed my eyes and drew the string. When I opened my eyes, about 1/2 -3/4 of an inch of graphite was actually inside the boarder, so I did something I never do on a challenge...  I started over. This time the majority of the lines landed inside the box so I just ignored what was outside and set off. Here is how it turned out: My scanner decided to cough up a fur ball this morning and it's really grainy, but you get the general idea. Once I finally got the string down, I had fun and used some patterns that I had never used or hadn't used in a long time. Thanks for another great challenge Diva!

I am so excited , you guys! As you all know, I never go anywhere, I never do anything and I never have any fun.  (*cough*)  Poor me! (*cough*) So this afternoon, I booked myself a birthday blowout weekend !  There is going to be a t wo day Zentangle retreat in Mineral Point,Wisconsin on October 13th and 14th taught by Diane Knauff from Stone Angels Studio !!  I even sucked it up and got a hotel room so I don't have to drive the hour and ten minutes home on Saturday night only to turn around and be back on Sunday at 8:30 AM! I love the Zentangle art form but have never taken any classes. It's my dream to take the teachers' certification class in Baltimore next year so this will be a good baby step in that direction. I only hope that all the large-scale-doodle-pa-looza-ing I've already been doing doesn't make it too difficult to stick the the true 3'x3'  format of the art.  But it wouldn't be me if I didn't have something to obsessively worry abo...

Went to Irish Fest in Milwaukee on Saturday. I had an opportunity to take a bus tour from one of the local travel agencies so I did. I was the only one on the bus that didn't have a cane or walker slowing me down but it was still fun. The bus let us off at noon and didn't come to pick us up until 6PM. The weather was gorgeous; about 75° with a breeze coming off Lake Michigan. This picture was taken down my Meehan's boat dock.  Beautiful view of the Art museum and you can see a currach in the foreground.  I watched the races for quite a while. They should consider putting fins on their paddles. They row with what looks like a big,  long, straight stick. Maybe someone just hasn't mentioned the proper paddles yet. I bet they'd make me a saint in Ireland if I blessed them with a big-finned dory paddle!  Off the pier is a nice bike path that goes around the other side of the bay.  Someday I'm going to go over and take a walk on it. Wonderful views of the b...

I didn't think I was going to participate in this week's Diva Challenge since I have a lot of other things on my plate. But after seeing that it was a DuoTangle (using two tangles only- Assunta and Mooka ) an idea kept niggling at me until I finally took 10 minutes and threw it down on paper last night. It's not fancy. It's not elaborate. It's probably 'cheating' on a lot of different levels but I just had to get it out of my head, so I thought I'd post it anyway. Heck, I posted a picture of my grubby barn-self holding a turkey a couple of posts ago. Can't get any worse than that can it? Thanks for a 'niggle-y challenge, Diva!

My weekend started off with a pic of this little cutie Patootie.  This is Noelle and Ella the Elephant that I knit to celebrate her first birthday.  I can't believe she is a year old already. What a little sweetheart! She and her big brother William are quite a pair! On Saturday I went down to Paoli. It's a town about 10-15 minutes and is little more than a wide spot in the road, but almost all of the buildings in town have been turned into art galleries. It's so neat to poke around down there. This weekend in addition to all of the galleries, there was an outdoor art fair on the banks of the Sugar River that runs through town.  The scenery was spectacular. This little bridge is behind the Paoli cheese shop and crosses the river to a beautiful little grove. The fair was set up just beyond the bridge. The weather couldn't have been more beautiful. It was such a serene setting to view the beautiful art.   Beyond the fair was the river again, windin...

This week's Diva Challenge was to use Zentangle Master,  Shelly Beauch's pattern' Brayd'.  My piece isn't a traditional Zentangle in size or form-only three patterns and not abstract, but I  had fun with this one! Thanks Shelly and Diva for a fun challenge! See if you can tell which pattern is  'Brayd?' :-)

As the world's most unphotogenic person, I hate to have my picture taken, let along have anyone else see it.  So why would I post this picture of my disheveled, dirty, sweaty self at the barn last Sunday?  So you can meet my buddy, Esme of course.  Esme seems to like to have me hold her. She lays her head on my arm or my shoulder and the rest of her body goes to Jell-o.  I have to hold her on my lap if she's not balanced just right or she would flop right off. I whisper sweet nothings in her ear and she closes her eyes.  She is such a sweet girl.  This Sunday's session lasted about 20 minutes until I finally convinced her that she had to get down and I had to go home. That's Kristin sitting next to me with Sonny the Rooster. He snuggles Kristin like Meme snuggles me. She was walking all around the barn with him under her arm on Sunday and his head was hanging and dangling over her arm like he was sound asleep. She can even interpret the different wei...

I thought I had a volunteer gig down at the library last night. I rushed home from work, made treats (Nilla Wafers, Nutella and banana sandwiches), packed up the car and went to the library only to find that I was the only one there. Seems the volunteer thing is NEXT week. Sigh. So I took the treats over to The Sow's Ear and off-loaded them on the knitting ladies. There is no way that I wanted a plateful of those little lovelies in my house!  Then I came home and realized that I had an entire evening to do with as I wish. I had previously thought that I wouldn't have time to do the Diva's Challenge this week. I didn't last week's and I hated to miss two in a row so I decided to print out the mandala for this week's challenge and attempt it. I haven't done them before and it was pretty interesting. Here is the mandala template that you were supposed to tangle. And here is mine. I didn't have time to shade it with graphite but I got it finished before...