Dappled Air

I can't remember for how long I have been interested in numerology, but it is over 30 years. I find astrology interesting, but I am more drawn to numerology. I am always amazed what 9 numbers can tell us about ourselves. Before the Internet, I used to put together printed readings for people giving them information about themselves based on numerology and just to round out the picture I added astrology and biorhythms . I still update my monthly numerology forecast on a regular basis. July 2008 has the universal number influence of 8 (2008+7=17=1+7=8). The number 8 always talks about achievements and rewards and when it occurs in a 1 year, we are asked to make a major decision regarding either money, a promotion, responsibility or authority. Judgment also comes to the forefront, either we are judging someone or we are the ones being judged. Yes, it is July, but that does not mean that we won't be working hard and long hours. Just to be forewarned that the head will rule our he...

When I saw the Lifhacker post about making a pen holder from 3.5" floppy disks , I remembered that ages ago I had also made a box from floppy disks. I haven't quite put it to use yet and it is just sitting pretty on my bookshelf. I read the instructions on how I did it here . I love to recycle, my hubby calls me a packrat, but you would be surprised by what I have made from items most people throw out without a thought. Want to see some of them? Masks from garbage can lids. This is the first one I made and it looks very masculine . The second one turned out to be femine looking . An almost 4 foot high 'Inukshuk' from video tapes

I love to walk around our little Oat Hill Lake every day. Recently I have started to take my camera along every time, as in the past there would have been a cool picture, but no camera and no picture. So here are my best pictures from the month of June.

On Wednesday I came across this cool crop circle from Switzerland . In the evening I set out to color the diagram. First I thought it was a flower but then as I was coloring it, it almost felt like a feathery starfish. It made me feel light and airy. Then yesterday I was drawn to use this design to work with my new big eye bead embroidery needle . Oh what a pleasure it was to use this needle. No more problems threading a tiny eye and using it was very easy. I am so pleased that I finally bought these needles. This is the first time that I have done something different than just coloring with a crop circle diagram. I printed the design on card stock and then used the printed design on the back to guide my embroidery on the front of it. I pierced small holes from the back and then connected them with the beads. Looking at the picture, I just realized that I did not print it reversed, so the finished design is no going into the opposite direction. I asked my husband what he thought of th...

Yesterday I talked about my new beading needles, there is only one problem with them, how to store them as they are 4.5 inches long? I did not want to go out and buy a special case or box. Then I decided I could make a case myself with materials I already had in the house. I used some large popsicle sticks (they are probably tongue depressors), wooden thin coffee stir sticks, old magnet business cards, some fun foam, wood glue, wire cutters, small saw and fabric markers. The length of the box was limited by the length of the tongue depressors after I sawed off the round ends. So my finished box is 5.25 inches long and 2.25 inches wide. The width is 3 tongue depressors wide. I glued 3 tongue depressors together and then glued 4 small pieces of the thin coffee stir sticks across to stablize them. The stir sticks are easy to cut with the wire cutters. Next I cut the tongue depressors to make the side pieces and glued everything together, again using the stir sticks as stabilizers. I glued...

Over the last year I have been drawn more and more to work with beads. I love to make necklaces and also bead embroidery, but at my age threading that very fine needle is getting to be a pain in the you know what. Then I heard about a needle where the whole needle is the eye, wow that sounded great. So on my last shopping trip I stopped by at Michaels Arts & Craft store and bought a set of 4 'big eye beading needles. The picture to the right is off the internet, the needles I bought are from www.beadalon.com. I haven't gotten around to try them out yet, as I first have to come up with a design to work on. I did a quick test to see if I could use it for bead embroidery and the needle went through the fabric very nicely. Now what design shall I use? The pendant to the left is made over ¼" metal washer. Check out my other washer pendants . Always on the lookout for more different beads, I found that hair scrunchies at the dollar store often had beads on them. The price w...

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. -- Arthur Schopenhauer I love to collect quotes and every so often, or as my favorite combined expression is: every so once in a while, I come across exactly the one I need for that particular day. I find them all over the place. When reading an article suddenly a sentence seems to jump out an I will write it down. The same goes for books. Then I have one website where there is a daily quote that I look at regularly. What do I do with all those quotes? I have a whole section on my website called ' Inspirational Quotes ' where I write them down for myself as reference material and for others. So far I have about 14 pages of 50 quotes each and I need to add a whole bunch of quotes I haven't gotten around to yet. Inspiration appears where you least expect it when you are open to it. So let's have an inspiring day!

Another crop circle that depicts the coming solar eclipse of August 1/2008 this time from Italy . I am still wondering what the crop circle of June 13/08 at Uffington , Oxfordshire, England is all about. Unfortunately, they never gave a diagram that I could color. I am so drawn to color those crop circle diagrams, it isn't funny. I am really wondering what this is all about. So I did some quick research and found the following information. First of all this is going to be a total polar solar eclipse as very visually shown in this Wikipedia article . On another note it will effect China during the Olympics, interesting. On to Astrology and the eclipse. I found this article quite interesting about how it will affect the different houses and signs. Then I found this site and here is the part about the eclipse that really caught my attention as there is also going to be a lunar eclipse in the middle of August. August Eclipses “In August of 2008” says the Dragon, “I send you two more...

About a month ago I purchased a computer die cutting machine, but haven't quite gotten the hang of it. So this weekend I am trying to figure out how to use it properly. So what is this machine anyway? Scrapbooking has come a long way. First came the manual die cutting machines, then electric one and now the latest ones are attached to the computer where any graphics file can be used as a template. Originally these computer driven machines for scrapbooking very derived from commercial vinyl cutting machines and now I realize that the machine I got is basically one of those smaller commercial machines. There are many different models, some smaller and some bigger with more functions. When I was doing my research, I was considering the following brands: Klick'n'Kut , Craft Robo and Pazzles . What I ended up buying is the SignMax machine in Canada . My 15" model was half the cost of the Klick'n'Kut model and looks just about the same. The first thing I learned is...

As of today my daughter-in-law is 3 months pregnant and we will be grandparents. The due date is January 1/2009. I know it is still early, but I am so excited. Unofficially, they told us when they visited us a week after mother's day. They gave me a gift of a 'grandmother kachina' doll they had bought in Utah the previous month. Now how was I going to display it, it is gorgeous. Then I remembered that I had bought a couple of shadow boxes at the dollar store. This turned out to be the perfect way to display this special gift and announcement. I took a picture of the happy couple from their Utah trip and the text that came with the kachina doll and created a background and then I made a little box to sit the kachina in and painted the frame. It has been now almost 30 years since I was pregnant with my son and his twin sister and I have fond memories of that time. Also I haven't written poetry for at least 20 years, but one day after the announcement this poem just kind o...

When I was cleaning out my closet I came across an old knitted tie from my husband. It had a stain on it and is totally out of style. I just could not throw it away, but what to do with it? So it lay on my dryer for a number of months until I came across a tutorial on how to make pin cushions from old sweaters. Now I knew just what to do. I had been looking for a new pin cushion for a long time as my current one is made from felt and I can't stick my wool darning needles into it as it is too dense. Knit material would be perfect to make a new pin cushion. It didn't take very long and I had 2 new yellow pin cushions and then one thing lead to another and I found a single white acrylic sock lying around in the laundry room and I turned the cuff of that one into 2 other pin cushions. For instructions on how I made them check out my tutorial on my Marlies' Creative Universe website .

My daily one hour gardening exercise was canceled today due to rainy weather. This is not such a bad thing as I really needed a break. Over the past 5 years I have been transforming my garden over the summer (May - October) every day during the week for one hour around 9 am. At that time it isn't hot yet and the bugs are not too bad. It is great exercise and very satisfying as you can always see the progress you have made. I have figured out that I can work the area of about 1 square yard in an hour. The picture above was taken on June 15/2007 and shows the wild jungle I am in the process of taming. In the meantime I had a dying beech tree cut down in May 2008 and kept the pieces. I used them to create a border by putting them upright in the earth and then transplanted hostas and veronica groundcover in the newly created bed. I am still not all the way done, but am very pleased wit the progress so far. The picture below was taken yesterday, June 17/2008.

I love synchronicities. Yesterday when I was looking for a name for my blog, after a lot of searching and going rats a few times, because the name I wanted was already taken, I ended up with 'Dappled Air'. I had wanted to use 'dappled light', but of course, that was long gone. I wanted to us the word dappled, after I remembered my favorite Hebrew word: ravgoni. It means multi-colored. On my daily walks around our little Oat Hill Lake, hubby and I often walk through dappled light on the forested side. I love the way the light shines through the trees and paints everything with different hues and shades. So while searching for a word that would go with dappled and a name that was not already taken, I decided to go with something that one would not usually associate with dappled and therefore, chose 'air'. Then today, while looking through my RSS feeds, I came across this article about the ' colors of the wind' at the ColorLovers website. Well, I was not c...

I don't own an Ipod or Mp3 player, never felt the need for one, but I do listen to the radio, Internet radio that is, while I am working. For the last 10 years I have been listening to Hawaiian music online. It started one November day when the local radio stations started to play their Christmas music way to early for my liking. So I went on a search to find music that would be calming and not distracting while working on the computer. One thing lead to another and I discovered Hawaiian radio stations . As I didn't understand a word of Hawaiian I didn't pay attention to the lyrics of the songs and the English songs just kind of where background music. I started with Hawaiian Hits Live, the Voice of Hawaii Unfortunately, the station shut down on January 1/2008 due to the changes with broadcasting music and payments. They just could not afford it any longer. The other station I often listen to, even now, is Hawaiian Rainbow . But my main station that I listen to for the las...

After 10 years with a website, I have taken the leap to becoming a blogger. My Marlies' Creative Universe website is a hodgepodge of all my interests and I regularly post new information on it, but I never really used it as a blog. Today, I decided that I could also benefit from having a blog, so that I can write about my interests and not just add a note when I have updated my site. Today my attention is drawn to the new crop circles that are showing up world wide. In England it was a slow start, but by June the pace has considerably picked up. World wide there have been a number of really cool crop circles and now the British one are following the same trend. I use the Crop Circle Connector Website to see when there are new crop circles. Looking through my harddrive I see that I have been drawn to crop circles for a long, long time and over the years have occasionally colored the black and white crop circle diagrams. Then last year it turned into a compulsion and this year is ...