bee creative

this journey needs a....

lighthouse

moving through the day

4:44 AM  I can hear the rain hitting the chimney.  Often I wonder what it would be like to live under a tin roof.

6:01  Having my second cup of coffee.  Wondering about wardrobe choices.  Layers are very necessary where I live.  I wonder if the lighter layers for winter could be made to stand alone for summer?

6:56  Just came back in from the letting the chickens out.  The code for the sky scarf for the last three days would be G-G-G.

8:04  This morning I'm being more deliberate about cheese making then I usually am.  I'm following these directions for making Paneer.

9:00 Been working on a Jelly for the last hour. There's a break in the rain so I'm off to the grocery store to get potting soil.

9:55  On my way to the grocery store I saw two cars go by with snow on them.  Talked to one of my brothers and he said he had an inch of snow this morning.  No April Fools joke, that is unless you thought it was spring...

11:23  Just finished planting up the tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, and broccoli.  The indigo isn't up yet.  Maybe I need to reseed?  Nope, need to be patient, I just looked up the germination time and it can take over 32 days!

(I'm particularly pleased with these tomatoes.  They grew from seed that I saved two years ago.  I'll thin these to just one plant in a couple days.) 

2:34  Spent an hour or so outside, some beautiful sun breaks off and on this afternoon.  Made an indigo vat (chemical) to dye a sweater that could use a pick-me-up. 

4:00 Cleared the table.  I'm finding that I need to have an open space available to work if I want to keep working on things during the week.  But I constantly fight a desire to stack things...like books.

6:23  Time to think about what I need for work tomorrow. 

gone fishin'

I recently realized I still draw fish about the way I did when I was a child.  That's me, at about age four or five.  A salmon in one hand and a red snapper in the other. 

unwrapping "connect"

I always come back to connections.  How do things connect in a sustainable way?  Sustainable for me to maintain, for the environment...to sustain who I want to be. 

I stitched my fish down.  The fabric for this project was reclaimed from two shirts that had seen better days.  The fish is made with fabric dyed with leaves from the garden, onion skins, and pomegranate. 

I want to make more fish to be used on the other side of my Following Sea blanket...

My thought is to leave this side pretty much as it is now.  I am going to stitch a few jellyfish on the top, moon jellyfish.  I'm pretty sure these are the jellyfish I remember from my childhood. 

The other side, that's where most of the creatures of the sea will be, under the water.   A community...

the second ring

I played with the color...

 because I can.

I've cut the fish for my "Following Sea" blanket out of white wool.  It's a nice tight weave that I believe will wear well. 

 

I've been remembering a summer day.

We were out on the boat, surrounded by fog.  I remember such stillness.  This is the part I'm not sure I remember directly, or if I just remember my parents telling the story.  My dad was talking on the CB radio telling someone we were going home.  

The story, as my dad tells it, was of someone on another boat wanting to know how we were going to make it happen.  Dad used the fathometer (which measures the depth of water), the compass, nautical charts, and a call to one of the logging camps he could hear running in the distance.  The call was to find out which camp it was so that he had a location to work from. 

Thinking about how we decide where we are...and how we are going to get where we want to go. 

 

 

working on following sea

I was able to get the cat to move off the blanket so I could work on it some today...

Looking down

Looking across.  Trying some things I've learned in Jude's (Spirit Cloth) classes...

This morning as I stitched I remembered childhood friends.  Good memories...

snow day

Today I was able to come home early from work.

I took a walk through the park.

Tried to work on one of my blankets but had a little too much help.

And took the chickens a treat. 

I've had three eggs this week, despite the cold weather.  Barred rocks (the striped chickens) will lay through the winter their first year (edited:  and sometimes other years too).  I was lucky enough to get a piece of plastic over their run so they've had a nice cozy shelter during our snow storm. 

While I was out I noticed one of the last branches of lunaria in the garden.  They are becoming even more transparent as they age. 

I've been thinking about how snow is rain transformed.  The ordinary (for us) made unusual (again, for us).  The snow has caused a lot of frustration for people I know, but as it melts away, I still think it is magical... 

Now it's time to spin white yarn. 

next direction for Following Sea

This morning I looked up from the computer

and found the next direction for Following Sea.

Little fishies.

Remembering: 

Sometime in my childhood I used to sit on the boat and sing to the fish.  I was inviting them to come be caught...

 

 

working with roses, a bit about a blanket and rose hip syrup

Following Sea

The compass rose on my "Following Sea" blanket shifted a bit as I stitched it down.  Not really a surprise to me as I'm working on a velvet base.   And really, this adds truth to what I am doing.  Water is fluid...things will move. 

For the last week I've had it on the table, looking and thinking about what I wanted to do next. Wondering how much I wanted stitching to show and where.

This morning I decided to stitch with heavier thread  around the outside of the compass, as a filler in the center of the rose and along the outsides of the triangles.  I'll use quilting thread to fill in the rest. 

I love how the center now looks like a partial moon. 

I've also been contemplating what will be next.  I think a ring of fish around the compass rose.  Halibut, salmon, and bull heads.  Some of what my family fished for commercially while I was a child and what my brothers and I would catch as we fished from the dock. Maybe some Dungeness crab, to represent my teenage years. 

Or maybe boats...

The other project of the day, rose hip syrup:

 

I have a lot of rose hips in the garden (and a few raspberries  that were eaten before they left the garden), so  it seemed like a good time to try rose hip syrup again.  This time I added fresh ginger from the farmer's market and a stick of cinnamon.  The directions I used are here.  The next project with rose hips will be to make Schnapps. 

I also want to say that I am sorry for any frustration the comment section may cause.  I really value what everyone shares and regret that it is a bit more difficult.  Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to change it to a different setting.  I'm going to stick with this format for a month or so and then I'll decide whether to switch back. 

postcard: the color of water

 

 

Part of making for me is research.  Part of the layers.

What does determine the color of the ocean?