Self Portrait and Enabling

Sorry - no pretty colors today - we're totally black and white and grayscale.

After seeing so many fabulous self portraits over at Deb R.'s blog, I decided to try and use the timer function on my camera and get a self portrait. Of course, I was in a hurry, and didn't get the focus dead on. (Note that I was also playing with using the black and white function, since I hadn't used it before.)I liked the pose, so decided to see if I might salvage it with some Photoshop filters. The one below used "smudge" (I believe I used filter->artistic->smudge stick.)
Here I used filter->sketch->stamp. The bonus is, it makes you look 10 years younger!
Since it's been super hot I've dyed a small amount of fabric on, of all places, the guest room balcony (we're sleeping in the guest room and have handed over the master bedroom to our guest). The railings are at a good height to hang some PVC and do a little drip dyeing. The fabric is in the washer right now, so the jury's still out on how it turned out.

My biggest fiber accomplishment this week is that I taught someone to knit! I was doing a little knitting at swim lessons, and at the same time became reacquainted with a nice gal who's son used to go to preschool with my oldest son. (Confused yet?) It turns out that her daughter, also there, who is about 11 (or 12?), wanted to learn to knit. So yesterday I taught her! I've never taught anyone to knit before, and she was a very quick study, so it was quite fun. More fascinating facts: they have a few sheep (including Romneys and a Corriedale), and are having some of the fleece made into rovings. But they don't know how to spin - yet. At least they are now knitters!

Oh, I almost forgot. Good news from the Mancuso's - "Grotto" will be at the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza.