bee creative

time flies...

 

"Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness lady were no crime."  Written by Andrew Marvell who lived from 1621-1678 ("To His Coy Mistress"). 

At dawn I was sitting on the porch knitting and enjoying the coolness.  I was just about to take a picture of a crow sitting on the wire in front of me when it flew off.  I've been thinking a lot today about the preoccupation that humanity has with time.

This would be time that I've held in my hands.  Time captured. 

Thinking of the time that it takes for something to grow, to come to fruition.  Picked a large basket of apples today. 

"The golden apples of the sun."  W.B. Yeats (The Song of the Wandering Aengus)

is it in the details

that we fall in love with something?  This is a corner of a pillow I made a couple years ago.  The fabric I used was already a bit worn and used.  I sewed this block of velvet down on top without finishing the edges and just let it fray.  Two years later I love not just the original texture and color (I over-dyed the velvet), but also the way it has aged. 

color combinations from the vegetable patch

I'm growing purple pod peas, cabbage, and nasturtiums in the front garden.  Once upon a time I didn't like the color combination of yellow and purple.  It's sort of grown on me in the last couple years and now I love certain combinations of these colors.  The cabbage is for a dye experiment.  Hoping to salvage some from the snails and the slugs for me to eat too.

Also love this color combination.  It's a begonia with pinkish white flowers and red-green leaves. 

more from the dye pot and sun spiders

After some rinsing I decided the blue pod peas didn't do much, the raspberry is very faint but nice (second from the right side), and the lady's mantle (bottom piece on right side of screen) is quite nice.  The top little square is the fabric before dyeing.  They really seem to be tints of color. I used some of the lady's mantle for the moon on my button wood square.  The tree is wool dyed with the apple leaves. 

Marigold is another story.  Where the petals fell created a very strong yellow.  The darker patch is where the stem was I think. 

I started doodling on this piece with a pen.  I was sort of thinking what a sun spider would look like if such a thing lived on the sun.  And then it became a rocket shooting through the galaxy, and then a flower, and then a sun spider again...

Amazingly enough, there is such a thing as a sun spider. 

buttonwood

"Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.  He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest..."  Wallace Stevens

it all started with a walk...

to the farmer's market,

where I bought more than I  should have so I had to come home and be creative about how to use it up.  Vegetable Upside down cake seemed like a good solution (from The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen).  Replaced broccoli with zucchini. 

Along the way I passed one of the local thrift stores where they had a sale table.  All the buttons you could put in a bag for a dollar.  I already had too many buttons...what's a few more?  At least it was a small shopping bag. 

A little more being creative seemed in order:

(This will get larger if you click on the photo.)  I stopped at the art store and bought some pens too....

Took a little detour on my walk home.  Unfortunately I didn't make it all the way to the Brewery (that red building). 

thinking light

Quiet light.  Dreaming light. 

What does a filter, a mask add?  Take away?  Does it tell a different story?  What eye do we see with?  A creative eye?  An objective eye? 

"Now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever."  Mary Oliver

in July blue is my favorite color

or maybe raspberry pink

Or maybe

Lady's mantle green.  Or maybe

Purple-pink?   All pieces of fabric were soaked in alum and water first. 

a bit of this, a bit of that

Putting the garden to work:  I harvested my shelling/soup peas yesterday (A.k.a Blauwschokkers).  I have about a cup and a half from what I picked.   Still have some on the vine drying out more.  This is one of the crops that I want to save seed from for  The Growing Challenge.  Unfortunately, about half of the peas had worms/caterpillars in them.  Not a complete waste, the chooks enjoyed those.  As I was shelling the peas I noticed my fingers were turning purple.  Seemed to make sense to toss some of the pods into the water and see what kind of dye they would make.  The water is a purple-gray right now. 

 

Cooking:  Made a batch of strawberry-balsamic vinegar jam.  It's very yummy on top of vanilla ice cream. 

Knitting:  Decided to take a little break from socks for my bus projects.  The green will be a square for one of the wool blankets that is in progress.  The pink was going to be for that too, but I think it will make a nice pot holder.  I might felt/full it before I start using it. 

season of abundance

Went to the farmer's market yesterday.  So many choices now.  I'm also starting to harvest more and more from my garden too.  Today it was the first of the potatoes.  It was so hard to choose what to make for dinner tonight.  It ended up being a bread salad with the first of the local tomatoes. 

There is also an abundance of things to choose from for dyeing.  I'm trying some lady's mantle and marigold.  I have them soaking in water right now.  I'm also soaking some cotton in alum dissolved in water.  It should grow some mold eventually.... 

I did find a little time to play with fabric too.

I've been playing with this off and on all day.  It started with "What if I draw some daisies on white fabric with a marker?  What if I fill the circles with fabric?"  And then it went to "What if I put fabric in the petals?"  Didn't like that.  I kept thinking of possible ways that I could embellish.  "What if I cut the daisies out and stitch them to another background?  What if I fill in the petals with fabric paint?  With french knots or some other kind of stitching?  What if I add stems?  What if I stitch the background? "  I'd look at it and then walk away and do something else for awhile.  Then I'd come back and look at it and then walk away again. 

I keep coming back to the idea that I liked the simplicity of the flowers on a white background.  I sewed a strip of squares to edge the white and then sewed it down to some flannel to give it some weight.  I'm still thinking about doing some very simple stitching in the background, but I think simple is right here.  It's probably going to end up as a pillow for the porch.  The brownish fabric in the strips is some of the fabric I dyed with the hazelnut leaves.