woolythyme

getting ready...to get ready

We're weeks away, but for some reason, I'm ready....to get ready. (very unlike me)

Before any trip, first things first.  What knitting to pack?  I was planning to take the Abide Shawl.

oops.  That came off the needles yesterday.  It would have been the perfect travel project....big enough to last a whole week in spite of some serious flying time, but portable and easily memorized.  I might have to make another one.

So, while mulling over the knitting problem, I started gathering stuff for the travel journal.  I've been doing these for years and years.

I started just using generic journals, then moved to some really beautiful (take that to also mean...expensive) leather ones.  

The pretty leather ones are all used and I didn't want to invest in another when I had a little stash (ha! and you thought only yarn was stashed?!?) of blank ones.

They are all ugly (compared to the leather ones...the bar has now been set higher).  But the insides are perfectly fine.  Only solution is obviously to cover the cover.

I've read that the newest issue of MAKE is going to have a little tutorial on just this thing, but my copy hasn't arrived yet, and patience is not one of my virtues, so I had a little self-directed DIY day and did my own.

Back 'in the day'....the olden days according to the grands... we had to cover our textbooks.  I LOVED to cover my books; loved it so much that I covered all my friends books, too.  And we decorated the covers with doodles, 'art', notes, so-and-so-loves-so-and-so...you get the idea.  So, I've had quite a bit of book-covering-experience.  

I grabbed some linen, grabbed the blank journal, and got to work....where I would have taped, I stitched.  Simple.  And the cover fit perfectly the first time.  Experience, even if it's OLD experience, matters!  And, because the cover slips on, it creates little pockets for stuff in both the front and the back.  Brilliant, right? I had forgotten about that little perk.

We're going on a river cruise on the Danube, visiting Christmas markets in Austria and Germany.  A little doodle-stitching was in order. By this point in the process, though, I was pretty done---it's that gnat's attention span I have---so I cut short the embroidery by a gazillion ornaments that I had originally planned to stitch on the tree, and just went with the flags of Austria and Germany.  (Wouldn't Sheldon Cooper be proud of me?  Maybe I'll get invited to be a guest on Dr. Sheldon Cooper's Fun with Flags.) I added a woven strip of bias tape I got from Kate Davies' shop a couple years ago to serve as a bookmark, and TA-DAH!

Journal...check.  

Journal pouch restocked and packed.....check.

Books?  BLAH.  The Hapsburg book is a real yawner, and while Danubia promises (on the cover) to be a chuckle, I haven't found anything the least bit entertaining yet.  I still need a good read.

And a good knitting project.

.....THEN (and only then) can I think about packing!

 

It's probably a good thing I'm getting ready to get ready early.

 

 

Doodling....

I took a little class a couple weeks ago called Bible journaling, although we didn't use a journal Bible.  It was basically a lettering class that I thought would help spice up the travel journals I've done for years. I found another use for washi tape and scrapbooking papers.  And I learned that you can never ever ever have too many colored pens and pencils and markers. (Of course, I already knew this....it's nice to be enabled, though.)  Journaling has taken on a whole new dimension. But it also reminded me how much I like to doodle.  

Pinterest was an unending source of inspiration, and after the class, I doodled, doodled, and doodled some more.  Letters, borders, letters and borders...

I doodled and then embroidered the doodling.

Anything you want doodled on?

You know where this is leading, right?

Yep.  I'm the proud owner of a journaling Bible and am now ready to put in practice what the class was all about.  Basically, this is just a Bible (just a Bible??  Mine is 'leather' tooled with embossed leaves---I love it!, with columns on each page for.....doodling, what else?) I may love it too much...

   (I did this one for my friend who makes prayer flags for her garden...I think she might join me in Bible doodling....)

And this one because it's my FAVORITE Bible verse.

(Do I love it for the verse itself, or do I love Pete Seeger's late 50s song that the Byrds recorded in the mid 60s and turned into that international hit, Turn, Turn, Turn?  I am a child of the 60s....I still believe 'there's a time for peace, I swear it's not too late.')

I've now moved on to the Beatitudes.  

Sadly, each and every one of these designs I've copycat-ed off of Pinterest.  I can't seem to loosen up.  I'm afraid of messing up my pretty Bible.  I know the first few lines/drawings/entries in a brand new journal are always the hardest for me.  

Does anyone else have trouble 'beginning'?  

 

 

(hmmmmmmm.....in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.....I just might have an idea!!!   off to doodle.)