Fave 5 Friday

Well this is week 3 of my Fave 5 Friday linky party & I'm trying to get it posted in time for more people to participate this week. What a novel idea, huh!?! :P

If you'd like to play along just create a blog post with your 5 favorite pictures from the last week (or so). If they are pictures you've found online please be sure to credit them accordingly. I now have a button (See? On the right), so go ahead and grab it, add it to your post to link back up to my blog. Then come back and link up your post. It's as easy as that!

Here are my favorite from the week...

I love sunrises on the prairie!

I love how the early morning light turns everything a beautiful fire-y orange.

The sunsets are pretty amazing too! Jake got this picture when he was checking water & the windmills the other day. Pretty nice office, huh?

On Sunday we went up to Devils Tower for a cowboy music/poetry gathering. We met up with friends we hadn't seen in a year & met even more Facebook friends this year. It was such a beautiful relaxing day, we took the dogs & I brought some hand sewing to work on.

Today, Jake had a dentist appointment so I went with him down to Torrington, which is about an hour drive. While he was in the dentist chair I went downtown and found some more fabric-y goodness. I'm going to use these to make more sketchbooks. These books will be going with me to Sewing Summit (for sale or swap)! :)

I also visited a used book store in town and found these.

I'd have to say it's been a pretty good week. Can't wait to see what you all have been up to!

Books

I love books! Novels, journals, sketchbooks, old books, new books, you name it. I read every night before I fall asleep, I used to write my own picture books when I was younger, I'm addicted to used book stores (sadly, there are none within 100+ miles of where we live). I love books!

When I saw this picture on Quilt Dad's blog I decided that I wanted a graph paper sketchbook. As I said, I love sketchbooks, but the blank pages scare me. When I see all that white my mind goes blank. I like the lined books, but the lines often draw my eyes, and mind, off the page. Graph paper is great! It keeps me on the page and I can see shapes form within those little squares. And I can keep everything in its proper proportion, which is important to me.

After checking out the few stores in the area that might carry a graph paper sketchbook/composition book I realized that I was probably going to have to make my own.

So that's what I did. I picked up a couple of packs of graph paper and got started. I should have taken pictures of the process, but I didn't. What started as a 20 sheet booklet of 8.5" x 11" graph paper turned into this...

The Opal Owl one is mine and the bandanna one is Jake's.

Lays flat when open, which is nice.

I've never bound a book before, but I had a lot of fun designing and making these. I think I will be picking up more graph paper packs the next time I'm in town.

I Won!

Yesterday I showed you the gorgeous fabric that I bought for Christmas gifts, but I forgot to show you what I received from FedEx the day before.

By Weeks Ringle & Bill Kerr

I won this book from Sew, Mama, Sew! and their Handmade Holidays giveaways. Every day in November Sew, Mama, Sew! put together a large list of handmade gift ideas (with tutorials) for the various people in our lives. Here is the link to the master list for 2010 and links to previous years lists as well.

Every day they also gave away tons of fabulous prizes, and I was lucky enough to win Quilts Made Modern by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr. I've only briefly looked through it so far, but the little I have read I've enjoyed. I love the section on selecting colors/patterns and I like that they mention not only their successes, but their failures as well. I do wish that there were more pictures, but I know that there is lots of valuable information within this book and I look forward to sitting down and reading through it once the holidays are over.