mellicious: blinky holiday lights (holiday lights gif)
I meant to write about the "color of the year" a week or two ago - Pantone always announces one in December, and it's something I kind of pay attention to, usually. This year's is "mocha mousse" - it's a neutral but not the terribly boring kind of neutral. I can't say it's something I see myself wearing, because I'm a bright colors person, but it's not a bad choice. I know I've seen lots of brown and burgundy outfits this year so this goes well with that kind of thing. But I can't say I have a whole lot to say about it!

Mocha Mousse

mellicious: pink manicure (pink manicure)
Does everybody still get a few paper magazines, or is that just me? I always seem to have at least one that shows up every month. Right now it's Vogue. Last year it was Wired, the year before that Texas Monthly. It annoys Rob because I'm a pack-rat and he always just wants to throw it all away.

Well, anyway, there's an article in the December Vogue (which is currently lurking around in my bathroom) about how the idea that you can define your personal colors by "season" has rolled back around again. I remember years ago when Color Me Beautiful was the big thing, and apparently this new version that is gained popularity on TikTok is something similar. My mother had a copy of
Color Me Beautiful - I guess in the early 80s? - and I went through it trying to figure out what season I was, and as usually seems to happen with things like this, apparently I was a freak who didn't fit into the seasons neatly. (I'm either a winter or a summer, by CMB's reckoning. Definitely not a spring or a fall.) I eventually read up on this from other sources and came to the conclusion that I'm a cool-colors person, and whether it's "summer" or "winter" is not particularly important. I was in high school in the late 70s when warm, fall-ish colors were all the rage - gold and orange and brown - and those just looked terrible on me for the most part. I look great in bright red, but bright red is really a neutral, anyway. I look terrible in lime-green but great in blue-green. Cool colors all the way around.

(I put the nail picture up as an icon, and I started to say that's a warm pink, but I'm not sure. Really it's borderline. Pink is like red, it can go either way. I think I'd just call that one neutral.)



A meme!

Jan. 15th, 2022 10:33 pm
mellicious: Happy New Year! (new year gif)

My friend [personal profile] nonelvis posted this on Tumblr, and hey, I can never resist these things. Plus it's nice and short!


favorite color palette
: cool colors - blue/green/purple

last song: Ophelia, The Lumineers (I was listening to some of the new album yesterday, and then I drifted to the old stuff)

currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and taking notes. I've been in sort of a reading slump - I can't seem to settle on one thing - and apparently reading an old favorite and taking notes on it is my way out of that. (This time last year I did Lord of the Rings, so at least this isn't quite as long as that one!) -- I think one of the reasons this works is because I get to the point eventually where reading anything else starts to look incredibly good!!

last movie: on TV: Infinity War In a theater: Spiderman: NWH (yeah, I know, I'm all about the Marvel)

sweet/savory/spicy: savory I guess?

currently working on: the above note-taking project, mostly (and trying to be organized, generally, which is a really long-term project for me!)
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (quilt - zipper)
I was reading today about how the Color of the Year is Greenery. (I wrote a nail blog post for this earlier with a lot more information - look for that tomorrow night, but I can't link to it directly til then.) "Greenery" is sort of a spring green, not-quite-lime color - it's not a color that I would wear, really, because I don't think it would be flattering on me - but it's a color I like. And then that made me think of this quilt.
Faceted Amethysts
Some of y'all who have known me for years have seen this quilt before, probably many times, but honestly I hadn't taken a good look at it in ages, it seems like. It's physically in my dining room right now but it's kind of shoved back in the corner and I tend to forget it's there!

I put this quilt together using blocks from a swap. I love the colors in this, but if I had made all the blocks for it back then - it was more than 10 years ago - I would never have used these colors. And it's the greens I'm talking about, not the purples. Apparently I was afraid of lime greens back them. If you look you can see that a couple of the blocks are quite bright, and I remember getting these back and wondering what I was going to do with them. I finally came up with a layout that went from palest at the top left and worked down and to the right to the brighter and then a few in the bottom corner that were a bit darker. Purple and green used to be a fairly unusual color combination but I don't think that's as true as it used to be. On a color-wheel, they're two-thirds of a triad, meaning they're one-third of the wheel apart from each other. I think maybe it makes more sense to say that what they have in common is blue, because purple is blue + red and green is blue + yellow, right? Anyway, I wasn't looking at a color wheel or any of this when I came up with this combination, I just decided they looked pretty together. This quilt was finished before I ever looked at a color wheel and figured out why that was.

For those interested in the pattern, this was a commercial pattern called "Faceted Jewels" and if you google that name you'll come up with a bunch of multicolored versions of this pattern (plus a really nice red & white version that I've never seen before) - the multi version was the way it was done in the original pattern. I called mine "Faceted Amethysts" since I used purples for the "gem" sections. It's basically a variation on some standard blocks, though. It's two very standard quilt blocks that alternate. It doesn't have any curves in it although it gives an illusion of curves. One of the blocks is usually called "54-40 or Fight" but the way the colors are arranged in that block is not the standard way, so it looks different. And the other block is just a combination of a square in a square and flying geese (the triangles are the geese, see). I can't remember offhand if that block has a particular name.

(Oh, wow, look at the very tiny version of this pattern in this post.)
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Xmas - pink aluminum)
There's a picture on the front page of Pantone's website that I assume is the honeysuckle blossom in question. ("Honeysuckle" is the 2011 Color of the Year, according to Pantone, as I mentioned the other day.) And it really is that color. However, since there seem to be a large number of people - including me, of course, and apparently several people on my friendslist - who've never seen the pink kind. So I'm still not sure but what they could've come up with a better name for that color.

That is all.

Points

Dec. 14th, 2010 02:44 am
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Mel - snow)
I'm not doing all that well with Holidailies - I think that little number on the front page was what usually kept me going, and that's not there this year to prod me. Still, I haven't given up yet.

I've been watching Doctor Who season 2, most of which I haven't seen but once or twice - and I've finally hit an episode I haven't seen ("The Idiot's Lantern"). Rob and I were watching "Love and Monsters" which I had seen but he hadn't, and then we watched the rest of the disk ("The Impossible Planet" - which I might not have seen before either, come to think of it, but I had seen "The Satan Pit"). Rob was not really a Doctor Who fan until recently, but he seems to be getting more interested now. I knew he'd like "Love and Monsters" because of all the ELO, if nothing else. Rob loves him some ELO.

I'm trying to do Weight Watchers again. If you follow these things (hey, it was in the New York Times), you know that WW has changed their program lately, and that it's somewhat controversial. Well, not really controversial unless you're part of the Cult of Points (aka the old system). I didn't realize how freakishly attached some people were to the whole point system until this happened, even though I've been going to meetings off and on for years. There's still a point system, it's just changed some. They're making an attempt to keep up with all the latest in food science. The old system calculated points by the calories/fat/fiber in a food. The new system throws calories out the window and goes by fat/carbs/protein/fiber. It seems to make a good bit of difference - some carb-heavy foods, in particular, seem to have gone up a lot. Still, it seems workable. You can now eat all the fruit you want, and I like fruit, so that makes a big difference to me. We'll see how it goes. My history has been that I can stay on WW in the short term but not the long term, so I don't know if unlimited fruit is enough to make a difference.


The color of the year for 2011 is "honeysuckle", according to Pantone. Which is a dark pink - not the color that the honeysuckle around here is (as the WSJ article notes - ours is the yellowish kind) so I'm kind of thrown by the name. But I really like that color, whatever it's called. I'm a fan of pink, in general - I've been threatening for ages to make an all-pink quilt - but I particularly like that dark almost-red pink. I've been seeing it around the last few years and I didn't know what to call it. Now I guess I know!


Anybody make icons? I really feel the need for an icon that says, "You're an elf. You go Keeble!" (from here) - I do have Elements so I suppose I could figure out how to do it myself if I tried, though.


mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Default)
Well, I just posted a Q& A in the Quilters forum so I'll put it here too, just so my journal won't be completely blank!

1. How long have you been quilting?
about 5 years
2. What methods of quilting do you prefer to use?
I mostly machine-piece and machine-quilt, although I have been experimenting some with crazy quilting and I am doing the embellishments on that by hand. I have done hand embellishments and even some decorative hand-quilting (big stitches!) on some of my quilts.
3. What kinds of things do you like to quilt? (i.e. bedding, wall quilts, etc.)
I've finished up 2 bed-size quilts in the last couple of years. I live in a one-bedroom apartment, and I don't have a use for any more than two, so I'm going to be doing wall or lap quilts for the foreseeable future.
4. What projects are you working on now?
Fall leaf blocks from small-expressions.com; Jan Mullen teacup blocks
5. What kind of sewing machine do you use?
I just got a Gem Gold; I sew on that or on my mom's regular Janome on weekends.
6. Have you been to any good quilting websites lately?
I am a fabric-holic, so anyplace I can buy fabric is good. I've been buying fabric on eBay lately; I also like Hancock's of Paducah's website and borntoquilt.com and fabric.com.
7. What kind of fabrics do you like? (i.e. 40's repo, civil war, brights, solids, Debbie Mumm)
Like I said, I'm a fabric-holic, so I like practically everything. I don't use solids much - I prefer the additional texture a print gives, even if it's very subtle. I tend to like bright colors, although I have developed a taste for reproduction fabric the last couple of years. I love batiks.
8. Who taught you to quilt, or did you teach yourself?
My mom.
9. Do you quilt mostly for yourself or for gifts?
Both. Percentage-wise, I guess more for gifts, because how many quilts can you have in one house?
10. Do you buy fabric as you see it, or for projects?
Both. I buy things just because I like them, but I also tend to pick a color scheme that appeals to me at the moment (a couple of years ago it was green and purple, then later it was red and black and white) and buy things in that range, figuring that it will become a future project. Then when I'm getting ready to do a project, I dig out all the fabric that seems to work for what I've got in mind, and see what else I need.

I have pictures in my journal (http://mel771.diary-x.com/) and even more in a Webshots album at http://community.webshots.com/user/mel77c. [Note: neither of those links work any more but try here.]

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mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Default)
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