Something for Nuthin'

It goes without saying that I love a bargain, and can spend hours on the internet looking for something to buy. I have had pretty good luck, but the other day I really hit paydirt. I was searching on Amazon for a few particular titles (knitting books) and found that the ones I wanted were out of print but available used for three or four times their original price! This is the opposite of a good deal. Wow. $137 for a $40 book?
So I switched sites to my local library's catalog page. I found all the books that I wanted were available, not locally, but in the state system. I placed a hold on about 20 titles and knew that in a few days I would get an email saying several were ready for pickup.
Woowoo! I picked up the books and the unabridged DaVinci Code on tape and waddled out of there feeling really rich. I did pay a 50 cent fine for the books left at home and overdue. I need to pause and think before I leave the house.

Now, true, these books are only mine for 3 weeks, but I didn't have to travel hither and yon to get them and I can always renew. I got a real surge of adrenalin just carrying them to the car. Plus as I browsed through them I was very happy that I did not pop for the $137 for one of the titles. Not worth it.

My days this week will be spent dyeing fabric for Pacific International Quilt Show next week, and life can become very boring during this production time. As a treat after my dye sequences were finished, I reeled off two 450 yard skeins of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool into longer skeins to space dye.
Busman's holiday? You bet.
The lable purports to have the natural oils still in the wool, o lovely, so first I had to wash that stuff out. This wool is also not very white and I had hopes that the washout would bring it closer to white. I wanted to dye sweet pastels, but the wool took the sweetness down a notch.

The lavender color looks a little sickly gray. However the Lemongrass green, my newest fave color, is pretty good, and the peach and pink are perfect. I have some spots undyed but they will not matter that much as the rest of the shades are so light that it will all look planned. ha!

On a completely different note: A comment from Cindra referring to my Getaway nature visit:
What a lovely paradise. Can't wait to see what you create... you will share with us won't you?

I am not the kind of artist that gets inspired (to make quilts) by nature, or my experiences. I don't do quilts about my adventures, or things that happen in my daily life. There seems to be a major disconnect in the brain for me there.
When I see a great design however, I may want to play with that idea and build on it (or rip it off completely) and sometimes I am lucky and can cut it out of a magazine or take a picture of the inspiration. But more than likely I will lose that scrap and never get around to it. To prove I am lying, refer to my Matchstick Moons Series, in which Andy Goldsworthy's work made me want to play around with tiny bits of fabric, arranged in circles.

So when it comes to getting ideas for quilts, it happens totally differently each time. In the studio, in the act of clearing off the worksurface, or while driving around doing errands, Bing! something will appear in the mind's eye and off I go towards bringing it to life.
I want it to be that thing that I haven't seen anywhere. The desire for originality hinders me so much that it can totally prevent creation. Add to that the time element and distractions like knitting and dyeing wool and what do you have? No new quilts.

Never say die. I will be back. Hasta la vista baby. And other assorted trite-isms.