Far Far Away

I was flying off into the distance (and yes that is a propeller!) this past week to a place I hold dear sitting deep in the mountains of Pennsylvania.  Family business called and so I went for the first time in over a decade to join with all my cousins.  I had never seen the new lodge that has replaced the family cabin that burned down.  It was a fast and furious weekend filled with the weight and pressures of many issues, one of which was wondering how adjustments from passing years would have changed us all.  Well, we all have gotten older, so that was a gentle impression all around. 

Old lady aches and pains paid me a visit and so I was not up to rambling to places I wanted to visit, but I did manage to take some small walks and do just a little foraging, and I took lots of photos to share.  As I walked the creek, I was hoping to find a small piece of driftwood.  For years I had one that I used as a shawl pin.  It slipped out on a trip to the grocery store about a year ago, and I do miss it.  Sorry to say I did not find one.

There are always flowers for filling vases, whether they be day lilies, Queen Anne's lace, bee-balm, daisies, forget-me-nots, yarrow, and many others.  I did not have time this visit to forage for wild herbs, but on other visits I always did.  The woods and fields are abundant with natural remedies, but they didn't help a young girl named Mary who died of rheumatic fever nearly one hundred years ago.  This sad "ghost" story never ceases to intrigue the generations and there is always someone who wants to see her grave.  Rest in peace Mary.

So many memories of so many good and nurturing times.  Some things are just so simple, like waking down the old road and feeling the powdered dust of the clay ooze between my toes.  Now however, the road is covered by a layer of small gravel and bare-footing there would be just a little too uncomfortable.  Such is life, enjoying what we have when it is within our reach and then letting go once it is gone.  Changes are inevitable and we must make adjustments continually.

Just like this new "old" stove which has its place next to a modern electric one and the microwave heating my cup of tea, above it, transitions ought to be subtle.  I loved the real old stove we had there and used it whenever I visited.  There is absolutely nothing like "cabin toast" made from homemade bread and toasted over the dieing coals, spread with real butter and homemade jellies.  Add to that crispy fried scrapple, sunny-side up eggs, sausage and bacon, and sometimes flapjacks if Uncle Jim was cooking.  In the Fall, night temps went down to the forties, and I would wake at four something in the morning and rush downstairs to start a fire in the stove.  Getting back up at seven, the cabin was warm and cozy with the stove hot to cook on.  Oh, those really were the good old days!

BedSack Frock

Yay!  I am making progress on the BedSack painter's style frock that I started a few weeks ago.  I was in a holding pattern for a while due to decisions regarding design.  I was really trying to keep in the neutral color range and colors just kept intruding into my plans.  Here are some photos and a few things I have done so far....




This is the frock with sewing done except for buttonholes.  You can see a little discoloration but this will not be an issue after I do some over-dying.


In this second photo, I show a close-up of the tall skinny pocket I added just for my reading glasses.  I have patched in some fragments of lace trim and leftover quilt scraps to make it a little more fun.

 

 

If you iron the shiny side of freezer paper to the back side of the fabric it will adhere and stabilize  so that you can paint of draw or write verse as I have done.  This happens to be a poetic sort of thought I had years back as I gazed out over a small mountain meadow as dusk was settling over the valley.  I thought I had enough room but got too expressive toward the end of the last of it and so it is not so perfect..

"Like bubbles in a glass of champagne, fireflies arose from the tall grasses of the meadow and twinkled away into the dusky twilight."

To complete the thought, I added machine and hand embroidered grass, and some rhinestone sparkles to simulate fireflies.  Here is the hoop I used for both the machine and hand work.  It is essential to keep the fabric taut so the stitches will not pucker the fabric.  There will be more updates as I move along with this garment, but I do not expect to be in a hurry with it.  I think it will be a work in progress for a long time to come.

Semi-Circles

Just a quick update for those of you readers who may by some remote reason be interested, here is an evolution of what the Bloom knitting is doing...

These semi-circles will be for the hem edge and I think that I will be using strips sewn together for the body.  So, I will knit these upward in straight rows until I get to the length I want, and then they will be pieced together.  I am planning the body to be all green, but one never knows until it happens!

I just came from the fabric store a little while ago.  A touch of cool weather reminded me that my loved too much quilted silk jacket is going threadbare in oh so many places.  I picked up some fabric to trim over those bare spots and keep that jacket going for maybe another 11 years.

Out of the Fog

What can I say about blocks to creativity that has not already been said?  I have been in a funk for a few months now.  ...Too many cares, too many others to see to.  That is often the way of it for caregivers.  ...Issues of change, ...getting older, ...not enough rest or "ME" time.  Well, slowly I have been pushing up and out of the fog of oblivion and grabbing back some of myself, and what better way than to make something fun to wear?  I love clothing and adornments.  It's not so much about how many clothes I can squish into my closet and drawers, because I certainly have plenty, but it is about a love of color and texture and how I express myself.  I guess you could say that I am like a chameleon (except that I am certainly better looking), feeling it's necessary to change with my moods ad surroundings.  Anyone that knows me well can see at a glance how I am feeling at the moment just through a look at what I am wearing.  Years ago, when my first marriage ended, I spent colorless months in browns and gray and black.  Ugh!  Now I am much more fond of whimsy and bright colors.

Jane Thornley's Bloom

Getting back to knitting!  Last week I started a new shrug (I think).  ...Never quite sure of what something will turn into!  The pattern I am using is Jane Thornley's Bloom.  Jane's last few patterns have all been based on those wonderful free-range semi-circles that seem to shout out happiness and whimsy to me.  I do better with shrugs than wraps however, so shrug it will be.  I am feeling very limey and have almost nothing to wear in lime and greens.  That's a good excuse to make something don't you agree?

  

Sewing too!  I have had a "too much thought" period and I had to burst out of that too.  Too much mentalizing over a project can kill it deader than a doornail.  The project in question is the tunic top with the embroidered fabric.  Anyone who has done serious sewing knows that there is often a fear of cutting into a precious piece of fabric, and this has had its grip on me since I conceived the idea.  I have to keep reminding myself that if I don't go through with this project, the fabric will be back in storage and who knows what will happen to it?  Anyway, to get up my scrapping/patching courage, I have begun on a less invested piece of work.  I had an old bed-sack of still good muslin, and for some time I have bee wanting a painterly kind of frock.  Going through old patterns, I found just the thing for a Lagenlook style frock.  I am sure that I will be making all versions before I am done with this pattern!  I have combined the bottom middle one with the top right.  Mine will be center front opening but with closed ruffles in the skirt.  ...Or maybe it will open all the way.  We will see.  All the pieces are cut, and I plan to add applied design that will have a theme of some kind.  I am currently in the mood to keep the colors in the close natural hue of the muslin, but that can change.  Really, nothing says "paint on me!" like an empty canvas!

Next time be prepared for a mantel surprise!

 

 

Oh My Achy Back!

Well, it has been a long while since I spent much time crawling around on the floor, but I have been
doing plenty of that lately.  Back to the bathroom that I began to paint after we had to put in a new shower and added a new floor too.  It was a gorgeous remodel all thanks to a shower pan leak, and I was gung-ho to get a whole new bathroom.  However, I ran into painting problems right away.  It was too humid (even with air-conditioning) and was not drying properly and the process upset me so that I gave up once the walls were finally done and behaving themselves.  It has taken me 2 years to get back to it.  Funny how that happened:  I was cleaning the bathroom, and those funky cabinets stared at me reminding me that they were still waiting their makeover, when the doorbell rang.  There stood a young man trying to sell me gutters, and asked if there were any other repairs he could do.  I smiled sweetly and said "no," knowing all the while that I had PLENTY of repair chores needing attention!  When I returned to the bathroom cleaning, I suddenly and impulsively grabbed a screwdriver and my drill and promptly removed the doors from the cabinet.  Now there was no going back, I had committed!

My plan was to add black gel stain and just significantly darken the boringly average fruit-wood stain that had had over 30 years of wear and spruce it up.  Well, more paint problems!  ...The curse of the un-drying paint struck again!  So after gagging on fumes for a few days waiting for it to dry, I wiped it all off and started over.  This time I painted with oil base black paint that gloriously dried to the touch in just one hour.  I was in DIY heaven!  After the second coat was good and dry, I sanded off the high parts for a distressed look and then coated with polyurethane.  Yesterday, I took a deep breath and tackled installing the new hardware.  Before, one of the knobs had been uneven and so  I was determined to use handles and avoid the previous holes which I had filled.  The results of my labor are so worth the aches and pains and inconvenience of the past week.  I love my new cabinet!  Next bathroom project?  ...Framing the mirror!

Why Am I Going So Slow When Life Goes So Fast?

 I have been in a slow mode for several weeks now.  It's not my style pr preferred pace, but about two months ago life got more complicated and so I have been meeting those time eating demands with "have to-do's" rather than the things I would rather be doing.  I even got behind on the Mantel-a-Month challenge I had posed for myself.  Oh well, I kind of liked the birds and birdhouse.  Still, I couldn't shake that guilty feeling and so I did update the mantel for July.  I kept the birds and added an old cage.  There is a mason jar inside for water and the real flowers were simply inserted through the top of the cage.

I did just finish a new necklace.  I was inspired by some artwork my sister did many years ago, a simply beautiful bouquet of pink poppies.  I came up with a short phrase that was meaningful to me:  "Like the flowers of the field, I am Wild, Free, and Beautiful."  I long for a life with more simplicity and nature has always been what I need to restore my spirit.  Sometimes a small bouquet of flowers gives me a lift in my day.  Wild and free allows me to be who I am with no permissions or apologies: and Beautiful is how I always want to feel the Inner Me is.  Knowing that what I hold inside myself, (without guilt, shame, fear) is positive and goodness, a sense of virtue, is very important to me.  I painted the phrase and added it to the back of the pendant.  I also machine embroidered it along the ribbon ties.  It becomes a wearable reminder and affirmation of purpose and my philosophy for living.

Slacking here...

Yes, I have to admit I have been a slacker lately.  June is nearly done and the mantel is still left-over from May.  Ah well, sometimes life gets in the way and takes many courses.  The hubby and I were suddenly blessed with a respite vacation by hospice.  They placed my mother in a local nursing home and off my Sweetie and I went heading for the hills.  We spent the next few days in the Asheville/Black Mountain area of North Carolina.  It was food for our souls as well as our bodies.   The DH caught me here at Cat Alley in the old part of Asheville.  We were a little early for the shops to open and were out to enjoy the beautiful weather.  I must have been smiling in anticipation of hitting the bead store in a few minutes. 

There is so much that is whimsical in Asheville, and it is a wonderful place for artisans and entrepreneurs of all sorts.  I have always felt it is like being plopped down in one of the small towns surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area of California.  The cat isn't real by the way, but forever frozen in metal to the lamp post.  He has a few pals hanging out over near the railing just out of sight.   There is even a gigantinormous iron for gigantinormous laundry.  It would take a King Arthur to snatch it up out of the pavement as the city fathers bolted it to the ground.  No doubt some daring person would have tried to carry it off if they hadn't.  Our local Jeep dealership lost a life sized cast metal moose a few months back.  Who knows, maybe one day it will end up in Asheville, visiting the cats of Cat Alley.

 We took a momnet to time out in a little city park frequented by street musicians and hot dog vendors.  Real New York style and so mouth watering good, smothered in onion relish and washed down with fresh squeezed and chilled lemonade.  The hot dog man told us he had come down from New York for a 9 to 5 job and after diligently working there for several months the boss offered him a 10 cent raise.  He declined and became his own boss and has been enjoying himself ever since. ,,,That's Asheville for ya!

And as always, there is never enough time to enjoy all the sights when we head for the hills.  That Mountain Dragon energy is alive and well in North Carolina.  I hope that our next visit is not so long off as this one had been.  Love you Asheville!