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.

Soluble Fabrics: Garden Frame

Because we are exploring soluble fabrics, I have posted two items at Free The Stitches.  Please check there if you are interested in the techniques related to Solubles.

Thanks!

Soluble Fabrics: Butterfly

If you are interested in using soluble fabrics, check out my posting on Free The Stitches, the group blog set up for sharing projects amongst our stitching group.

Acrylic Inks and Rainy Days

The rain came in the night, falling blindly into the dark and waking me with its music.  My dreams were of sunlight, though.  I was visiting solitary places and talking to someone I could not see, just behind my shoulder.  When I woke, I realized it must have been the rain I had been chatting to . . .

Rain focuses me, makes me see details, where the sun can distract me.  Today's weather seemed the perfect time to try something new.  From reading an article in Quilting Arts Magazine, I was inspired to try the Daler-Rowney FW Acrylic Artists Inks that Judy Coates Perez used for her experiments.  I have been fascinated by the idea of inks on fabric, and have tried several manufacturers' inks over the years, but these sounded more promising than those I had previously used.

The inks responded beautifully to fabrics in both wet and dry states.  These are some of the results I obtained with the six-bottle "primary color" set (though I don't remember sepia or green being primaries . . . ?).

This first little piece began life as a scrap of ivory linen from an old summer dress.  I used Sepia, Magenta, and Red in a lot of sweeping strokes and dots:

This second scrap was a white-on-white cotton print, which is a fabric I love to play with because the printed design acts as a resist.  This fabric will make a lovely small spot of interest in a piece that might otherwise use plain silks and linen.  I like to make my own marks with stitch and interesting thread, so too much competition from printed fabric can be an overload of lines to be deciphered:

While in Savannah I found cotton organza at Fabrika.  It began calling my name as I moved toward the back room, so I absolutely and positively HAD to take  some home with me.  I laid a thick, rough piece of linen under it as I painted the organza, and got a pale result— the sort of thing that will be most interesting when laid over other pieces of fabric.  I will photograph it when it is used; it does not show well by itself, it is so pale and transparent.

I have a small bag of bits and pieces that I occasionally delve in to for color experiments.  Some of these are ridiculously small, but they serve a purpose when I want to try out a paint color or when I need some small piece of contrasting texture.  I painted a handful of these scraps by altering the dye recipe in small increments.  The colors all blend well, with this common base.

None of these techniques are what the inks are really meant for.  Inks can write and draw on fabric, can be laid down on fabrics already printed, painted, or dyed, and stand out.  This is something I will do when I am sure of the colors and the point of thinning that causes the inks to bloom.  Right now, it is enough to see how different fabrics take the acrylic ink.

This is a piece I used for ink drawing just a few weeks ago.  I used a permanent ink and some brightly-colored but non-permanent inks in this experiment.  After the ink had dried, I ironed it on the linen setting, then sprayed the surface with a light misting of water to check for colorfastness.  It is obvious which of the inks was the permanent one.  Unfortunately, the manufacturer does not carry a large selection of colors in this permanent product, so I did not pursue the idea.  Limited color range always stops me cold.

And along with the inks used for drawing and writing, I have some hand-carved stamps that might be interesting if . . . .

To be continued . . .

Savannah!

I no longer wait for the spring.  In touseled-headed splendor, mid to late spring waited for me in Savannah— azaleas, vines, especially wisteria, sagging with lavender bundles of blooms and going wild, dogwoods, pear trees past blooming and now in darkening leaf . . . From starting as a beautiful old city, Savannah has gone to being knock-out gorgeous!  The best sketchbook would be one filled with page after page of color splashes, very little drawn imagery.

On Tuesday, my most musical friend Sharon and I drove around and about the city while our husbands judged a district choral festival.  We had lunch at Clary's, then drove to Bay Street and took the precarious stairs and cobblestones down to River Street, where we sought ice cream.  Sitting by the river was a slow-you-down experience, and it put me in the Savannah State  Of Mind, which is several notches slower than Atlanta.  Much nicer.

Wednesday was the end of Charles' working at the choral festival, as a judge, and we drove out to Tybee to the Mermaid's Tale Cottage, our home until Monday morning.  My sister, Michelle, and her friend, Billy, met us there.  The next day, her daughter, Nahum and friend, George, arrived.  And Friday night, Julie, Jordan, and the Adorables drove up, so that, on Saturday morning, we were a big group around the breakfast table.

The Mermaid's Tale is a cottage decorated for families with children.  There are mermaids in every room, up in the chandelier, in a screen in front of the fireplace, swimming across the walls, guiding sea horses above the kitchen sink . . .  And finding them became the focus of Bethy's morning.  There were squeals of happiness when another mermaid was discovered, and even Ethan got into the action.

But on Sunday morning, Ethan and Bethy came creeping out of their room.  Ethan looked at my sister and me and said he was looking for someone who was fixing breakfast!  Being three years old and thinking of your stomach before anything else must be a wonderfully uncluttered way to live!

At the beach with the children, there were so many interesting things to look at, so many patterns and subtle colors . . .

If you click on the photo of the wave breaking, you can see the stop-action capture of the droplets.  Waves can be endlessly fascinating!

After the Adorables left, the cottage was too quiet, and Michelle and I drove to Bonaventure Cemetery.  These pictures show how beautiful and peaceful the cemetery was.

I have a soft spot for picket fence gardens, remembering my grandmother's yard.  This one is from Bluffton, just a bit up the coast from Savannah, where friends live:

It could have been a perfect visit, but a storm came to the island in the evening and continued into the night.  I woke up at 2:30 a.m., and for a moment I thought my eyes were gummed together, the darkness was so thick and deep.  I felt my face and discovered my eyes were, indeed, opened, and this darkness so intense you could almost feel it came from the entire island being without power!  The next morning was wet and cold— down to 45˚F from the 84˚F of the day before!  Everything was penetratingly cold and damp, and we turned on the heat in the car to make the five-hour trip back upstate.

Home was a welcomed sight, but cold— it had stormed here for two days.  The heat has been running for four and a half hours and is not up to more than bearable temperature yet.  Brrrr!  I should not have dismissed the winter so casually last week.

A "Gift" Garden

Charles and I finished, yesterday, with the day lily bed for Julie and Jordan.  It is long, twelve or fifteen feet, and about three feet deep.  Without the wide-angle lens, this is the best I could do for a picture:

If you double this, you'll have a feeling for the scope of the project.  When the blooming starts, it will be lovely because the lilies are in the perfect place, now.  They have space to grow (they are planted in four rows) and they have a backdrop— the wood timber wall.  Most importantly, they are not encroaching on any thing and can spread out and be happy campers.  No sword of Damocles hangs over their head here as in my garden.

And while we were there, the Princess was receiving petitioners for a hug:

And Ethan was (as usual) in motion:

Such is life here at the edge of the meglopolis.

Life in Flux

After the visit to my hip surgeon on Tuesday, life has set off on a slightly different current for me.  I did not realize that I must not kneel down on all fours.  That is injurious to the new joint, I was told.  I must never again think about kneeling, squatting, or running.  Well, the running is a non-issue with me.  But kneeling in the dirt or to clean up spills and floor messes, and squatting to see to a child or to take a photo?  It seems a little cruel.  I now have these truly adorable grandchildren to love and a steeply sloping yard for gardening, and rather than plunging into it with arms thrown wide, I must re-think how I do any of it.

Solutions:  I will have a chair nearby for any meltdowns from the children, and I will turn my energies to container potting— right after Charles and I get the perennials in.  I have found that I can dig left-footedly, so if I dig, perhaps he will be kind enough to get close to the ground and set the plants in place.  And I do have a start on an outstanding collection of pots (in Knoxville the ground was too rough, and I put pots on the deck and gardened there for the most part), which I will expand.  With the large pots, I can still break soil between my fingers and sit in a chair and plant things. . .

And when all the hard work is done, I can look out the windows of the studio and stitch the shapes and colors that are the result of our labors.  Soon Charles will open the fountain, all the little ground creepers will be put between the stones of the patio, and life will settle into late spring and early summer routines.  Not being able to kneel in the dirt is certainly a more than fair trade-off for having no pain and needing to be careful of where and how I walk.

Meanwhile, I have taken a book down from the shelf and am immersed in studying Stitch Dissolve Distort with machine embroidery by Valerie Campbell-Harding and Maggie Grey.  I wrote about it on Free the Stitches this morning, so pop over and take a peek, if you have a moment.

Rain Today

I suppose this means that Charles won the day:  rain, beginning in the night, and going on and on and on . . .

Georgia Gardening Explained

This is Georgia.  Even though we are north of Atlanta, it is still Georgia, which means we have until the end of May or maybe first of June (if we have a cool, long Spring) to get everything done, or we'll die of heat exhaustion by procrastinating.  So any hopes of a beautiful Summer garden start and end here, in the Spring months..

We dug Day Lilies today and took two and a half wheelbarrows full of the little green darlings to Julie and Jordan.  We showed up at their front door in old clothes and garden gloves and explained that we had arrived to put in Day Lilies for them.  Jordan looked from Charles to me and back and then called to Julie (smart guy; I raised him juuuuust right!).  They both offered to help, but we had not meant to interrupt their lunch and change their day's plans.  We could have just dropped of the plants, but that would have been to give them another job they don't have the time to finish.  We, on the other hand, have the time and some smattering of interest in planting.

In another three wheelbarrows, I will have the Day Lilies out of the upper terrace, or at least the part where the lavender will be planted, and the bed that we've begun to fill at son's house will be done.  I caught Charles on his knees this afternoon praying for rain tomorrow, so we may be delayed a bit.

When the perennials are in the ground, I can start on the containers.  Charles doesn't moan so much about my container garden habit.

Next is to finish my list for a long and serious trip to the nursery.  We have kept my Ford pick-up truck expressly for moments like this!

Garden Weekend I, 2011

Well, I know now how the Thyme and Scotch Moss will make its way from container to spaces between stones of the patio:  Charles.  I got started with him, but he outlasted me.  After dragging me up from the ground once, I found ways to do "upright" jobs while he dug out and set the plugs of thyme.  We got about a third of the way through the process with a dozen 3" pots, so we're searching for more (we cleared the shelf at Autumn Hill yesterday).  It is to rain tomorrow, so we'll do our hunter-gathering in preparation for the next dry day.

Our birdbath crashed last year, and our bird visitors have given us accusatory looks, so a new bird spa is on the list, along with the Thyme and Scotch Moss.

We have buckets and buckets of orange day lilies to spread amongst friends and family.  They obscure the azaleas, and are on the fast track to Never-Never-Again Land.  Drop me a line and let me know how many you would like (free delivery on orders of 50 or more).

In the Garden

Yesterday Charles and I spent time at Autumn Hill Nursery.  What a wonderful place to find plants and planting advice!  The nicest surprise was that I found old-fashioned Hollyhocks, in pinks and peach, to plant along the bedroom side of the house.  There are three beds there between the steps to the lower front of the house and the upper, where the studio and main garden areas are.  I had Hollyhocks one year in Knoxville, but the next year someone went out to weed for me and pulled up the alleged intruders . . . .  I have embarked upon a strong plan of education since that time.

I found these photos of Hollyhocks on line:

The bonus is this:  I have moved my much-loved drafting table so that I have light falling over my left shoulder.  This turning of the table means I have a perfect view of the Hollyhock plantings!  Bethy and I will have the benefit of Azaleas, Lantana, the tiny daffodils and tall tulips, and now the Hollyhocks for drawing during the spring and summer.  If the roses on the fence survive Warren's energetic pruning, we will even having climbing roses for a short month in the summer.

Charles and I also began planting the border lining the walk between the house and studio.  I've started with pink salvia.  Getting down to dig and plant is a monumental effort.  Somehow I thought the new hip would make things easier, but not for this ground-level effort.  I don't know how I'll get the little Thyme and Scotch Moss between the slates of the patio, now.  Poor Charles— I never meant for this to be his job.  I love the smell of earth and the feel of composted soil between my fingers.  Theodore Roethke, quite naturally, is one of my favorite poets.  His poetry is peppered with images drawn from the greenhouses of his childhood.  In two lines (from "Root Cellar") he gives meaning to my love of gardens and gardening:

Nothing would give up life:

Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

This year, I imagine my sketchbooks of seed pods and flowers will begin to bulge.  Hope so, anyway.

Playing (at my age!!!)

No more cleaning, sorting, or organizing in the studio!  I've gone waaaaaay beyond spring cleaning, here, and except for the occasional floor sweeping when the outside mat and inside rug let little bits of leaves cross the Rubicon of the door sill, housework in Studio 508 has come to an end for the foreseeable future.

Today's assignment is to gather a collection of examples of water soluble fabrics to share with the Freestylers on Wednesday.  Turning the pages of books with exciting and inspiring photographs of fiber and fabric is always a good ride, and I end up doodling ideas in sketchbooks for future experimentation.  I really wish I could do the same idea over and over again in twelve colorways, but I am not wired to be a production person.  Once, with many permutations is the best I can do— which is why my one experience at working with a shop was a failure.  I simply could not re-produce something in a client's colors, it always had to be something I was really interested in, and it had to be a different approach each time.

Which is why I have so much work in boxes tucked in different places of the studio.

Today, however, is play day.  Let the games begin!

Little Pink Book For Bethy

This started as an experiment, a new way of making small books that I dreamed up.  After removing it from my paper press and sewing the three signatures in place, I wrapped the front and back covers in pink and white striped cotton so it would appeal to Bethy.  Her drawing skills have skyrocketed the last several months, and with all the bulbs coming up, she is excited about flowers.  What a great combination this could be!

Giving her a book of her own in which she may draw at will would encourage not only her drawing skills but the idea of putting ideas down on paper.  If she has several of these sketchbooks on her shelf by the time she begins Kindergarden next fall, she is on her way to the sketchbook/journal-keeping habit.  She may wander into the field of art, of music, of literature and poetry— or engineering and higher mathematics.  All are candidates for keeping notes for future reference.

This one was made from Mediovalis cards so I didn't have to worry about tearing the paper to be uniform and neat.  Uniform and Neat is not something I learned at an early enough age for it to "stick."  I love hot-press paper, have several large sheets of it to play with.  I may  pull them out and start the next book, as it is a rainy day without promise of sun.  I have numbers of sketchbooks I have made and used over the years, and maybe it's time to add another to my collection!

Another idea is to use a box for journal/sketchbook pages.  I'm still thinking through the pros and cons of that— how would someone as scattered as I keep up with them?  Taken out to work on an idea, I have a feeling the pages would simply be subducted in the general earthquake environment of the studio when I'm really in the zone.  The idea of a box is simplicity itself . . . maybe too simple?