Travel Day and Fiber Fusion Fun

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Yesterday was a looooooong day of traveling, unloading luggage, taking Dad out to dinner, running errands for Mom, so instead of blogging, I must admit, I chose bed!

Here is a shot of a pond down the road a piece from my house. I left early in the morning when the sun was just coming up and the steam or fog was rising off the water of the ponds. I just love how that looks so I stopped and took a quick pic. Below is about 45 minutes later heading into Houston (I had to get from one side to the other) and as you can see here it is not an easy task. In the pic, I am about 10 miles outside of Houston and the traffic is already bumper to bumper. You just have to be patient. Being courteous is also helpful :-) Once I got to the other side of Houston, things improved and I was able to buzz. The trip took me the nine hours I expected, but the day was a nice one - the only downside is that my butt got really really numb and I know I used every setting those seven-way electric seats I have!
I am glad to report that things are moving right along. We took Dad to his diabetic doctor today. As you can see in the following pic, Dad has braces on his legs for diabetic neuropathy. His diabetes has gotten very brittle in the last couple of years, but I have to say that he has managed his diabetes incredibly well over the past 40 plus years. He is now 82 and unfortunately, it is getting rougher. He must take insulin four times a day and now that he has dementia, that has become quite difficult. That is one of the reasons I am here....lots of difficult, loving decisions to be made. I thought the pic below was so precious. After seeing his doctor today we went shopping for scooters, motorized chairs, and lift chairs. Dad had the most fun on the motorized chair and I think that is probably what we will be getting him. It has a smaller foot print for use in the house and it can turn on a dime compared to the scooters. He didn't like the lift chair at all so we nixed that idea for now. The minute we got home, he made it to his favorite chair, plopped down and fell instantly asleep. We really wore him out bless his heart...I couldn't even get his jacket off.
I put some pics on a cd to bring with me so I could continue on while here. So here are a couple of pics of some fiber fusion sheets I made recently. For most of the sheets I did, I used Jo Sonja's Textile Medium for fabric painting with pre-dyed soy silk fibers. I purchased these items from Joggles for an online class with Sue Bleiweiss. It is so much fun and I plan to make some journal covers and fiber beads with these sheets.












Pic on the left is a group of all the fiber fusion sheets I made....lots of fun colors. They are each about two feet wide by about a foot and half tall. The pic in the middle shows examples of pre-dyed soy silk fibers fused together with the textile medium, water, a tiny bit of dish washing detergent, in between netting and allowed to dry. They have a light airy feel, but are solid and opaque, not lacey. The pic on the right, on the other hand is a thicker fiber fusion which I made with white soy silk fibers and added paint while wet, some metallic Lumiere and PearlX powder. It is interesting to note that when the piece dried, the gold PearlX I put in the paint and applied, actually looks silver instead of gold and the paints also dry to different values than expected. It was quite an adventure. I really enjoyed the classes I took through Joggles online with Sue - she is quite an accomplished fiber artist and has excellent directions. She has lots of ideas for using the fiber fused sheets. She also has an online magazine she has started called Fibre and Stitch which has lots of great ideas and projects. I will share with you what I make with these fusion sheets in the next few months.

Hope to be here tomorrow evening. Mom goes to the hospital for some tests and I will take Dad along with me. If everyone is up to it, we will eat out afterwards. I will try to get some pics of the local area - it is quite beautiful, even with all the leaves mostly off the trees. The sun hasn't been out much though with the temperature hanging in the upper 30's and 40's. Today was a good day, the Lord was definitely driving :-)

1 comments:

allie aller said...

Julie, you were born to blog. This post was such pleasure to read...thanks!
Your mission is a big one...what a loving daughter you are.

And the fusion fabric is amazing. I love that pearly one especially. It would look great pieced into a crazy quilt! The silk just shimmers.

 
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