lysa flower: : Page 13

A Blog Hop Around the World in the nick of time!

Lysa November 12, 2014 1

Ahhh… a long weekend. Perfect, last week was way too busy, busier than most. Add on daylight savings – that just messed with my head. Hello 3 am! 4 nights in a row. It’s so nice to finally get caught up. Do0-tee-do, let’s see… laundry is getting all caught up. Check! It’s been beautiful out, I’ve done a little bit of yard work. We aren’t going to get many days like this, I better not put that off. Ahhh, it feels so great to get that done. Check! Okie dokie, I’m a teeny bit behind in my emails, I better get caught up on those too. Oh hey, there’s a blog post from Cathy from Blue Berry Patch – click…

~All air gets sucked out of the room.~

This is like a bad dream… I especially hate these moments. I’ve just realized I dropped the ball. Cathy had sent me an email last week asking if I’d be interested in being tagged for an “Around the World Blog Hop.” Of course I answered, “You bet, sounds like fun!” I’m late to the party but I’m very excited to have been invited. So here it goes!

What are you currently working on?
I’m picking up on a project I started back in May. I’m part of a Sewing Society for Warp & Weft Exquisite Textiles . Back in March we were given a Lotta Jansdotter challenge. I made these Match Needle Books and they went over really well! I had some requests for a pattern, which I wrote up promptly. I had the pattern tested but I wasn’t thrilled with my layout. On December 8th, Sew Mama Sew is having their Giveaway Day again. I thought that would be a good date to work towards having the pattern done by. I’ll giveaway the pattern, plus a kit and some fabric. After that I’ll get it listed on Esty.

How does my work differ from others?

I like to sew 3-dimensionally. Well… I know it’s all 3-dimensional but I’ve fallen in love with sewing things you might see everyday but I like adding a twist of practicality to them. Like the “Match Needle Books” or more recently my “Cassette Zippy Pouches”

and my “Envelope Sewing Kit.”

I’ve done other things like a quillow that looks like a piece of paper,

… hot and cold packs that look like fortunes from fortune cookies.

And I made fortune cookies too, as baby quilts.

It tickles my funny bone, what can I say?

VOMMPH!!! POWER OUTAGE What the…?! Awe, C’MON! This is like a bad dream…

15 Hours later…Well, that was fun. As I was saying… Also, I don’t only sew fabric but I have a tendency to draw it. I’m particularly interested in people’s stashes, what they collect and why. This is a detail of a drawing I did from Krista Hennebury’s Stash.

detail C H Lysa Mair-3395

Why do you create what you do?
I L-O-V-E making things. I can’t help it! If I’m not sewing, I’m drawing or plotting what my next project will be. It’s been that way since I was little. I love the challenge of figuring out the small problems along the way and I love how every project teaches you something new. It never gets old… maybe it’s a habit but I don’t think it’s a bad habit to have! Could be worse right – hookers and blow?

How does your creative process work?
It’s different for every project. I have noticed I get a lot of my ideas while I drive though. After that it’s just git- r- done, not very romantic. I find the creative process is not quite as magical as one might think. Sometimes I play with glitter but that’s about as romantic as it gets. Aw and it’s a bitch to clean up.

Okay my turn to tag people. Since it’s an “Around the World Blog Hop” I thought I’d call out two bloggers that live the farthest away from me:

Joanne from Don’t Drink and Sew (You Might Spill Your Wine on the Fabric and that would be a waste of good wine and good fabric) Jo’s from the UK

and

Lizzie from Swedish Scrapper Can you guess where she’s from?

November 2014 – A Warp and Weft Calendar

Lysa November 1, 2014 2

Let me start by saying, Happy Birthday Mom! Everyone sing it with me, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Lysa’s Mooooom, Happy Birthday to you! Today isn’t her birthday but it is her birthday month. My Mom is the hardest person in the world to buy gifts for. This is the conversation we’ve been having since I was little:

“Mom, what do you want for your <insert occasion>?”

“Hmmm, I don’t know. Oh you know me, anything is fine.”

That’s all of not helpful. Like not even a hint or a crumb. This year she changed it up a bit and was a little more cryptic, I sent her a text, it went like this:

“Hey you (see I’m getting more direct now, Ha! Lovingly direct however <3) What do you want for your Birthday?”

Her reply, “Hey you! (appropriate directness, I thought) I don’t know same as last year only a differert type.” Ended with two emoji hearts and a blushing smiley face.

Problem is I can’t remember what I got her last year. What do I do with that?

I do toy with just getting her things I like. And I LOVE these folding rulers. Well, I love rulers (and measuring tapes) in general but a folding one, c’mon! A Merchant and Mills folding ruler. You know I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff. And now you can have a picture of one too by downloading it here.

I wanted to send out a big thank you as well to Esmari for displaying my calendars in her booth at the Creativ Festival this past weekend. It’s always a treat to show your work. I do believe my work enjoys sitting in my closet but still it was a real treat for them to leave the house, travel and go to a show in the big city of Toronto. Even better, some of them are getting settled in their new homes. I have Cathy from Steam Trunk Craft Works to thank for transporting them.

Happy November! And if you see my Mom tell her I said Happy Birthday!

To Creativ Festival we go!

Lysa October 23, 2014 5

A years worth of work. All stacked up. I played with the stack as I tried to let it soak in. I feel pretty proud of it. It started out as an idea, then a phone call to Esmari, owner of Warp & Weft Exquisite Textiles. A package arrived with loads of goodies, fabric, pins, sewing accessories… January 1st was the first calendar drawing, next came February… you get the picture. They’ve been free to download each month this year. Did you collect them all? I was quite tickled when I found out people actually had. Well, I guess we still have 2 months left to go don’t we.

Recently I finished up my November and December calendars (you get a sneak peek today!). It was important to get them done now since they were put on a skid and shipped to Toronto the Tuesday after Thanksgiving (graciously by Cathy of Steam Trunk Craft Works). Toronto? Yup, Toronto!

The original drawings have been converted into 2015 calendars. They are going to be on display and for sale at Esmari’s Warp & Weft’s booth at Creativ Festival! Drawn with coloured pencils, these wood canvases measure 11 by 14 inches and are 2 inches deep. The paper calendars are held on by magnets. The whole calendar is hung by a ribbon. You’ll also notice there are only 11 calendars here. The calendar that was done for October is already in Toronto. It was sent out last month for the Wildwood Challenge.

There was a time when I had a hard time letting go of my work. I’m glad to say I’m quite fine with doing it now.

I often compare selling work as giving away kittens. You want them to go to a good home, a home where they will be appreciated and loved.

A friend of mine noted that she always has calendar’s she can write on. I thought about this. I realized I have two kinds of calendars in my home. One contains all my appointments, family stuff etc. I keep this one out of the way, where it’s not in plain view. Quite frankly this calendar has a tendency to stress me out. It’s close enough that I can quickly write down information in a rush, especially if I’m on the phone. My other calendar I keep in plain site, it’s the one I love to look at!

I glance at it through-out the day, every time it makes me smile on the inside (awww, sappy, I know!) I love lifting my head and looking at it when I’m working in the kitchen. Like I said sometimes it’s just a glance, but it’s pretty, it isn’t crammed with do this, do that. It’s peaceful and it feels like *sigh*, there is enough time, everything and anything is possible. And I hope one feels the same way about these calendars too.

WARNING: Parents Blatantly Beaming With Pride!

Lysa October 21, 2014 10

I am so proud I feel like my heart could burst! My son accomplished something I never could in highschool… and there was a time people believed he wouldn’t be able to either. Today I sat with my husband and we watched our son get up out of his chair, walk over and receive a certificate for being on the Principle’s List! It’s higher than being on the honour roll and would equate to being on a Dean’s List.

By grade two our son could barely read. Writing was a painful task. The kicker was that by age three he knew every name of every dinosaur. I’m not talking the obvious ones like the T-Rex, Triceratops, yada, yada, yada. I’m talking dinosaurs like Segnosaurus , Hypsilophodon , um ya quite the mouth full. By four years old he had moved onto prehistoric mammals – try saying Leptictidium five times fast! Then try being a parent of a kid that wanted bedtime stories filled with those names! Thank god for the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs series, so we could figure out how to pronounce all those names! He knew what they were but we didn’t.

So here we had this kid who we knew was smart, but he couldn’t read and could barely write. Weekly (timed, I might add) spelling tests were nightmares. A few teachers were good but some thought he was just being obstinate or lazy. 2007-2008 was like our lost year. We scrambled throughout the year to figure out what the heck was going on. We weren’t getting anywhere with his teacher. We did have a great support teacher though, Joe. She worked hard and pushed the school to test him for a possible learning disability. You should have seen those dots on his test score sheet, some were at the very top and some were at the very bottom. Now we knew he probably did have a learning disability and we also suspected he might be gifted.

The school’s response: “Let’s put him on a wait-list to test him and get a definitive answer.”

Us: “Great! How long is the wait-list?”

The school: “Four years… if he doesn’t get bumped by more severe cases, which he probably will. He’s quite smart you know.”

Us: “S*** M***** F*****”

Waiting until grade six was not an option. Our son who had a thirst for knowledge was starting to believe he was stupid. We held our breath and decided to have him tested privately. The result, we discovered he was dyslexia with written output challenges. And he was gifted. What? How does that work? It’s quite common actually. By this point we had suspicions that the regular school system wasn’t going to be sufficient for him. Especially since we lost our wonderful support worker, Joe, due to downsizing. We thought about home schooling, for like a second. It works great for some people but we all knew that wasn’t going to work for us. Somehow, online I found James Cameron School. JCS is a school that specializes in teaching kids with disabilities and it was in our area! We went to the open house and , batta-bing, batta-boom, we enrolled him. At first we were going to enroll him just for two years but we soon realized we didn’t want to risk it and we kept him in JCS until grade seven. It’s a private school and it was a significant investment. However when our son was asked by a family friend (who was looking into enrolling their son into JCS) they asked what was the best thing about JCS, he replied, ” I don’t think I’m stupid anymore.” With that answer, I felt like our money was more than well spent. He worked extremely hard at JCS and it wasn’t easy but they helped him understand how to work with his disability. He left JCS confident, empowered and more than happy to talk about his dyslexia. He’s not ashamed of it in anyway shape or form.

Last year was his first year at Thomas Haney Secondary School. We once again held our breath, remembering what a disaster the public system had been before. Today I let that breath out with a WOO HOO!!!! It’s been a long uphill road BUT what an amazing path he has in front him. Nothing needs to hold him back.

2014 Maceo's Principal's List

Elizabeth Olwen’s Wildwood for Cloud 9: A Warp & Weft Challenge/Blog Hop~My Turn!

Lysa September 28, 2014 11

Wildwood is inspired by long walks through the forest, searching the forest floor for rare flowers and interesting leaves and forms and revelling in how timeless it feels. One of the themes that inspires me throughout my work is that of the fairytale — the fields and forests of a British landscape, the places that wild-at-heart maidens run away to when they’re going to be married off to someone they don’t love, the sound of fallen leaves crunching as a horse gallops through. A ‘wild at heart’ spirit. A sense of romance. The wild forest. ‘Wildwood’ speaks to these foresty areas and their uncultivated nature ~Elizabeth Olwen

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit Above was the description we received when we took on this Warp & Weft Challenge. British? Romance? Fairy tales? Perfect! I love anything British, especially anything from the BBC, hence recently watching “Call the Midwife“. The more I looked at Elizabeth Olwen’s Wildwood fabric I felt like it came from the same period as the show. The WW2 era I think we all have romanticize about at one time or another. In the show I loved seeing them handwriting letters, licking stamps and sending them off hopefully to arrive in time. You might already know but I have a thing for envelopes and stationary. When working on this project I cracked open my record player, broke out my Grandfather’s albums from the post WW2 era and scattered my vintage button collection about.

I thought about the story of Little Red Riding Hood – which I think the Wildwood in Crimson just screams. PS. The blue fabric is called Deco Petal Navy. I thought about Little Red Riding Hood travelling to visit her grandmother. Which led me to thinking about when I was a kid visiting my grandparents. Both sets lived about an hour from us. We’d ritually fill up at the gas station, dad would buy us each a bag of Old Dutch potato chips and a Pepsi. It was very comforting. Maybe not the healthiest but to this day I just love eating in cars, a habit I’ve had a difficult time breaking. I’ve always loved a good road trip (the right soundtrack is key) and "To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit I’ve always brought a project with me to work on, whether we’re driving or we’re flying.

So, for this challenge I wanted to make something that would be the ultimate travel sewing kit. Something to keep me organized, something to hold on my lap and something that’s better than throwing everything into a large pouch, which usually results in getting all my threads tangled, my scissors lost in my seat and having to reach around on the floor (ew!) looking for buttons I’ve dropped.

This is what I’ve come up with. I call it, “ To Grandmother’s House We Go!”

Inspired from some vintage buttons my friend Trudy gave me for my birthday last year, I attached two buttons with elastic to clasp the sewing kit together. That way the kit has plenty of room to grow!

The top flap opens and doubles for a thread catcher.

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit

I always find I never have anywhere to put my teeny bits of thread. I either have to put them in to my pouch, then they mix with all my other supplies or I have to… shhh, don’t tell anyone, drop them on the floor.

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit

The bottom flap I’ve sewn in some of my vintage buttons to hold my thread.

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit

It’ll require some pre-planning and pre-loading of the thread but I think well worth it. I’ve developed a big pet peeve of thread unravelling in my project bags. This will keep everything nice and neat!

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit

The flap on the right holds scissors and a seam ripper (perhaps a point turner depending on the project.)

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve lost my scissors in my seat while travelling. So annoying! This little button strap is to prevent that from ever happening again!

"To grandmothers house we go" Travel sewing kit

And the last flap is a needle book.

A needle book with three layers of felt.

The travel kit includes two pockets (three if you include the thread catcher) and one zippy pouch.

The Essex linen holds most fabric-y things in place but I thought I might need pouch with a zipper, for those slippery things like buttons or do-dads. (I love the word do-dads!)

… and really, I just wanted an excuse to make a 3 dimensional cassette tape zippy pouch.

I worked in the salvage on the cassette tape. On one side I used Elizabeth Olwen’s signature. On the other side I pieced it to say, “Wildwood”, ” For Cloud 9″. I can’t believe how well it worked out!

And of course, I had to do the bottom true to form.

TA DA! My Warp & Weft Challenge with Elizabeth Olwen’s fabric for Cloud 9!

Be sure to stop by the other blogs from the Sewing Society. Carla’s clutches and Cynthia’s table runner are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve seen a sneak preview of a few of the other projects. You’re gonna love them! I know I do. Thanks so much for popping by!

Blog hop schedule:
September 26- Carla from “My 1/2 Dozen Daily”
September 27-Cynthia from “Cynthiaf”
September 28- Me
September 29-Cathy from “Blueberry Patch”
September 30-Esmari from “Warp and Weft”
October 1- Shannon from “The Finished Garment”
October 2-Hedi from “Elegance & Elephants”
October 3- Sherri from “Thread Riding Hood”