Challenging Week

This week has been crazy busy around here. I was gone two weekends ago for an unexpected visit to family  and so fell behind in pretty much everything. Then spent the week trying to catch up and get ready for camping the next weekend. After being gone all weekend again (camping) I have spent the week cleaning up from camping, having an elderly house guest for a few days who needed a ride to a doctors appointment, getting the kids from school two hours early everyday because of early release week, doing teacher conferences for two and dentist and eye appointments and the regular martial arts and dance routine. Plus, making Halloween costumes, running errands, cooking, attending a Pack meeting in costume... it has been a finely choreographed ballet of meetings, appointments, pick up times and fitting everything else in the middle.

I have managed only a few hexagons worth of sewing on my small hexie project. Other sewing has been sidelined unless you include the shimmery under-skirt for a princess costume, alterations to a black cloak for Charon (ferry man over the river Styx) , two Greek tunics with sashing and laurel wreath headpieces, a viking/scandian vest and the Frankenstien'ed three headed Cerberus dog made from three stuffed animals. I guess that is sewing too, just not quilting related sewing.

I have been doodling a lot, mostly on whatever paper there is at hand, trying to figure out the new tangle for the weekly challenge over at I Am The Diva. It is called Punzel and it is a kind of hard one. I start out OK and then it can go south pretty fast. I have a few I am happy with on scraps of paper, but the rest of the composition did not work out as planned. Every time I try to do it "for real" I am not happy with the Punzel part. It does not come smoothly for me and the results can diverge pretty rapidly from pretty similar beginnings. So, here it is Friday afternoon. Half the family is gone for the weekend on another scouting activity, the remainder is tired from the week and from being outside since 1pm carving pumpkins and playing. They are vegging out watching Magic School Bus episodes from the library and I took the opportunity to sit down and pull the trigger on this challenge. Here it is.

Health Awareness

Is it me, or do the first two S's at the beginning of each one look a lot like one of the 'cause ribbons'? I have been thinking a lot about women's health recently since I know a couple of women (and one man) who are in the process of battling various serious illnesses. So, I colored one of the ribbons pink for breast cancer, and one red for women's heart health. I also like the way I ended the Punzel motifs. It is hard to deal with an 'endless' pattern like that when it is all braided and twisted together and you want to bring it to an end.  This is a good way to end it and open to some variation as well. Practicing and playing with this this week has allowed me, for a few moments at a time to slow down the frenetic pace. It would have been even better if I had had results that were more satisfying, but growth is good too. Obviously the challenge pattern was... well, a challenge and this is the first time I have used Swarm and I have no idea what you call the scaly pattern on the left. I am not yet comfortable enough with this pattern to make it anything other than the focal point of the piece. I can't seem to make it bend and curve to my liking without distorting it too much. It is also difficult to overlap them without losing the rhythm. I guess I need to practice this one more!