Scarf girl

When Hayden saw me making this purple scarf she immediately claimed it as her own.  She had great fun posing with it.  

I grew up in Michigan and I miss the beautiful fall colors.  This is our first fall in our new house and I'm enjoying the view from our living room to the wooded area behind our house.   We had a cold snap last week which helped bring out the colors of the trees. 

Scarves

When I was at the Asheville, NC quilt show a while back there were a couple of vendors selling the yarn necessary to make these frilly scarves. (click photos for larger view)

I found these fun to make because they're fast.  I can usually do one in the span of a couple of hours.  I don't even wear scarves so haven't figured out exactly what to do with these.  I'm considering sending them to my mother, who lives in a retirement home, letting her pick whatever she wants out of them and then sharing the excess with her friends there. 

I still have several more to make - one is in green and then the others are duplicates of the colors you see here. 

The art group I belong to met Saturday and as an activity we made silk scarves dyed with men's silk ties.

You lay a silk scarf blank on top of a piece of muslin and then lay out pieces of silk ties on top of half the scarf.  You then fold the half of the scarf without the ties (with its muslin backing) over on top of the part with the ties laid out.  

Roll the entire package up like a sausage and tightly tie closed.   

Place the sausage package in a pot of boiling water to which a bit of vinegar has been added.  Boil for 20 minutes.

Remove from the water, untie, and voila!   Iron the scarf to set the dyes.

Apparently the ties can be used 2 or 3 times each.

 

 

 

Government Bureaucracy?

Jerry and I moved several months ago to a new house - about 10 miles from our old home but in a new county- and we have been negligent in taking care of changing records with the county.

One of the things we needed to do was transfer our Voter's Registration.   We had to be in the County Seat for other business so we stopped by the registration office.  When they asked Jerry if he'd ever been registered in this county before he initially said no, but I reminded him that we had lived in this county years ago.  They found us on the computer and then the woman stepped to a file cabinet and pulled out our original registration forms from 1980!   We were amazed that they still had hard copies from over 30 years ago, and that they were able to find them in the matter of seconds.    Our new address was noted on the forms and probably refiled in the drawer for another 30 years!

Our trip that day also included a stop at the DMV, the County Assessor and the County Treasurer.  Not my favorite way to spend a day!