Royal Wedding

I love the pomp and ceremony of a royal event, though it took me a while to really wake up and take it all in.  By my second cup of tea, I was in fine form, enjoying the choral music (particularly) and the organ and small orchestra and brass.  Sitting here waiting for "The Kiss," I am so impressed by the affection of the English people for the Royals.  They must be the only people in the world whose royal family is non-political enough to be so loved.

Grandma Bragging Again

I had to.  The Adorables are just so . . .  well, adorable!

Note from Wednesday, 5/4:  Remember the pink-and-white-striped sketchbook I made Bethy several weeks ago?  Yesterday afternoon she and I sat together in the studio at one of the work tables, elbow-to-elbow, working in our respective sketchbooks.  In an hour she had filled her sketchbook with drawings, using my colored pencils.  When she was done, she showed me the last page, with a sun shining brightly.  "Would you like to hear the song?"  she asked me, and she turned to the first page and sang me through the entire book!  This is a wonderful example of the creator having an entirely different concept of the use of an item than the recipient of the gift.  And, what a use!

Disoluble Fabric Results

Finally!!!  I thought I would never find the time to finish this, but today the weather was threatening and the first sprinkles sent us in out of the back yard early on, so today became a day to finish projects.  I had four house projects on my list, and finishing this was the third.  One more to go . . .

My original piece was blocks of color for sky, tree, and meadow.  I laid a piece of sheer silk chiffon underneath the Aqua Bond sandwich and stitched a tiny bit on the machine (enough to hold the silk in place), but did the majority of stitching by hand-- 98.99%, actually.  It was obsessively stitched, covered almost without letting the ground show through!  When I had exhausted the stitch possibilities and felt that every tiny bit of fabric and thread/yarn/soy silk was thoroughly attached, I added beads to the meadow grass.  So there are straight stitches for grass and sky, and french knots for the little meadow flowers and the tree.  The tree trunk was a series of closely-spaced outline stitches in differing shades of grey.

The tree was quite a dilemma.  The foliage began life as a lot of random straight stitches over the darker green scrim and yarn, then I made the straight stitches into seed stitches.  It was still awful.  Next I added more straight stitches to fill in the spaces between the fat seed seed stitches, but the more I stitched the more I saw it was simply  a mess that could not be salvaged!  So, as a last-ditch effort to pull something from all the time I'd spent on this project, I put french knots on top of everything.  I also used rayon thread for the tree foliage, which is a bear to sew.  I remember saying "Dear me!" several times as the thread tangled and twisted back on itself.  But when it was finished, I really, really liked it.

In this photo the piece is lying in the bottom of my kitchen sink.  I couldn't wait for it to dry to photograph it.  When I rinsed it out, there was no discoloration in the water, so nothing faded.  And not one little piece of scrim or gibblet of thread floated free, either.  Whew!  I poured the water from the first rinse, when the Aqua Bond was strongest, over the strawberry plants.  Don't gag-- I read that algae and kelp are used as fertilizer in European countries!

It may not be completely Aqua-Bond free, and if it is a bit stiff when it dries, I'll just rinse it again until it has a soft hand.

Now, how much fun is that?

Spring Gardening Season

We are almost ready to hang up our garden gloves.  Not that things are finished, but the temperature is in the mid-80s, and that makes the labor difficult in this humidity.  There are still some mornings left, however, and those we fill with the last bit of planting on the upper terrace.  Charles has been an angel of a garden worker.

Just some shots of the present state of things on the lower terrace (more about the upper terrace in a few days, the before and after shots):

Charles loves to grow strawberries, so we're trying a strawberry pot dedicated to this.  What a novel idea it is to grow strawberries in a strawberry pot!

This is one of my grandmother pots-- painted and peeling, now.  Daddy painted a pair of them to match the painted cottage his mother lived in until her death at 98 years of age.  Some trailing miniature petunias should spruce this up later in the season:

In between all of this I have been stitching on my soluble fabric design and cleaning out closets and drawers.  Good Will has been the recipient of a lot of "stuff" lately, with even more to go!  How good it feels to pack away suits I will never wear again, wall hangings/pictures I have used and can now surrender.  Moving into a smaller place has its yeas and nays.  On the yea side, there is always the clearing out.  I am prompted to this action because I cringe to think of what Jordan and Julie will say to one another as they do the final clearing out one day!

A Mermaid Visitor

She came home with us from Savannah, and she watches over the fountain and the flowers, such as the poppies

and the dogwood.

And the agapanthus, though they aren't planted just yet.

Sketchbook: Out On A Limb

This is my response to the April theme in the Sketchbook Challenge.  Charles just bought a new birdbath, and this is my bit of thinking on the back yard and the coddling nature of his relationship with the greedy little birds there.  Not that I object, but the birds do have a nice go of it back in their "spa" territory.

We are hoping to have cardinals nest in the trees in back, and there are worms in the compost pile for the robins.  A feeder that is meant only for little birdies (no fat squirrels) hangs over a slate-floored dining room for the bigger birds and the squirrels and chipmunks.  Now, the birdbath.  What decent-minded bird could look the management in the eye and ask for more?

Color in the back yard

Well, the neighborhood has turned up a bit of bright laundry hanging here and there over my fence.  I wonder if anyone will notice?  There was just enough breeze to dry everything in the sun, bright and beautiful, in a half hour!

This scrim was dyed with Acrylic inks.  I used my favorite roll-it-into-a-ball-in-rubber-gloved-hands technique. The inks are permanent and waterproof, so they shouldn't interfere with the washing process of the soluble film.  They will be good for the soluble fabric program at Marcia's house on Wednesday.

Hunter-Gathering: Garden Containers

Since I can no longer get down and play in the dirt, I must bring the dirt up to me if I am to glory in dirty fingernails and ruined socks, badges of the true gardener.  I am in full swing, now, looking for containers so I may garden on a raised level.  And there is no shortage of interesting containers to be found.

I have an idea of planting sage, an edible salvia, in a tower of stacked pots.  I saw something similar to this idea in a book recently, so I am dragging poor Charles out to take photos of and make notes about pots, and to possibly ferry them to the truck and into the patio and garden area.  What a jewel of a husband!

Pictures to follow!  Wish us luck!

p.m.:  Well, pictures in a book can be very tempting.  Deceiving might be more apt a description.  Finding the pots was not so easy.  This may be a project for another time.