bee creative

m followed by n

From my journal this morning...

September 3rd, 6:05 AM

M…migrate, moment, map, meditation

The alphabet might be a map.
Migrate, movement…animals, plants and people.

N…nest, night, nurture. Narrow. Some of the strips on Good Enough have to be very narrow to fit.

I like the narrow crooked ones the best.

Night...it is getting longer and the days shorter.  Moving towards a balance, at least for a little while.

Yesterday's moon, fabric dry.  Barely visible. I am not sure where that really golden color went.

On Jude's post today I wrote... "Some letters are hard to leave, they are little gifts…the words." 

M feels that way.  There was one other word that I thought of this morning but then forgot.  Should have written it down right away... memory, sometimes it's not as good as it could be. Maybe melody? No I don't think so but that's a good one too. 

 

moments

Gibson in a box...I looked up and saw him there, framed.

Filter added to adjust the color.

At Mom and Dad's. 

They have a small pond in their front garden with a few gold fish. I love the lilies and also love the color contrast of lily with the yellow greens. 

And isn't this magnificent? 

In my garden I am celebrating celery (along with every berry that I find!).  Some of the celery is planted in my mini-hoop house with an olla and some in a raised bed without the olla.  This is in the hoop house and is doing very well.  The olla's in the planters are working wonderfully and I am going to use more of them next year.

And...

A dot.

Last month's flower moon ink and the ink made from black/deep purple pansies.  I think I added a bit too much clove oil to the flower moon ink (as a preservative) and it made the ink separate some. 

Always learning...

June arrives

While standing on the porch one minute before a sunrise that was too cloudy to see, I notice that the paths around and in and out of my garden form a nine patch as they intersect.

It makes me think of Jude.

Still playing with the pansy ink.  The purple on the left is where I squished the flowers into the paper. 

The ink is dry; I think the color is different because of the paper.  It also gave me purple fingers for a day.

This morning's mark making.  Flower moon and charcoal ink along with the pansy ink.

And then digital layers, more charcoal.

June is when everything grows so fast here; along with the typical rain, it is warm and the days are long. 

It's also when the roses bloom...

heart's ease

Yesterday it rained and rained and rained some more. 

By late afternoon the sun came out.

I wandered the garden pulling bindweed (which is determined to strangle everything).

And then I picked the darkest of pansies,  which I am guessing, because of it's tiny size, is probably related to the Johnny Jump up version of pansy; also known as Viola tricolor or Heart's ease. 

The marks on the lower right were made by pounding one of the dark pansies.  The pansies above are another type.  There are a few lobelia too, broken off as I was untangling the bindweed. 

And then I made two kinds of ink, one with water and a bit of vinegar (there is a sample too of just the water and pansy) and the other with vinegar and salt.

 

This morning both had changed...

The pansy + water + vinegar is a greenish gray and the vinegar based ink is blue!

The purple/pink dot is what the ink looks like this morning.  I am guessing by afternoon it will be blue too.

This ink isn't supposed to last long.

Like wandering in the garden, it sure eases the heart.

For anyone who is interested, Jason Logan's Substack newsletter is a wonderful exploration of color. I've followed some of his advice making these inks.

how it might be

A pink moon?

I think this might work.  I am knitting a collar as a separate piece.  I don't have enough of this color though so I am starting stripes with the pink above. 

If it doesn't work, the strip will make a great scarf and I will try something else for the neckline.

Garden time today included a lot of looking and dreaming.

This is Kerria, a shrub that is related to the rose family.  Along with a dog rose, it fills a whole corner in my garden.  

And this is the rose that has, in the past, filled the other corner.  It had become very tangled in the blackberry vines and unfortunately most of the canes were cut off while I was cleaning up the corner.   I am so happy to see it coming back from the base!  Mom started it as a cutting from a rose in her garden, so I know it's not root stock. 

Now all I have to do is keep the blackberries from coming back...

maybe we need a new word

There were a few things I hoped to find as I was sorting.

This was one of them.

It's a strip of squares pieced together.

It will eventually be a fabric basket, cube shaped.

One panel is a sleepy baby dragon made during one of Jude's classes.

I am hoping to work on it for about 10 minutes each day until I can call it done enough to assemble. 

I've been thinking about what it means to finish something since I wrote this as a comment on one of Jude's posts,

I think for me, when I think of unfinished…it’s the stage between started and useful for something other than the process of making (which is a useful thing for mental health!). Once it’s reached functional… I guess I think of it as in a process of change, and maybe just that? Maybe this is why I gravitate towards blankets/pillows/containers/clothing…. I’ve got to think about this more.

This continues to feel true to me.  Once something reaches a point of telling a story or being useful, it feels finished to me. 

But this doesn't mean that there might not be more to do.  There will be.

The story might change; the purpose might as well.  There may be mending to do. Everything is up for revision.  Everything is always transforming as it ages, always becoming.

The garden is always growing.

Perhaps it is only finished when it is consumed? I have finished the last of the peanut butter...it is consumed.

Can an idea be consumed? 

 

looking

 

Found this week while working in the garden...glad it was empty. 

Noticed today, peach blossoms so close to opening.

While participating in 6 hours of online training for work today, I wound balls of yarn and then crocheted the edges of this sweater together.  

The plan was to pick up stitches along the neck and make more of a yoke but I don't like it and plan on tearing the pink out. 

Next thing to try...crocheting the edges together with the brown and then looking again at what would work around the neckline.   

 

March

We've had high winds, snow (nothing really sticking), sun breaks, rain and a lot of clouds.  This is the strangest snow, found on Tuesday morning.

Short walk today on my lunch break...
Windfall collected from the ground.  I've been soaking the stringy lichen collected last week and it is making a beautiful soft yellow dye bath. Tomorrow I will heat it and add some fabric or yarn.

There are a lot of trees around where I work.  When it is really windy the wind whistles.

A few Other things that I noticed.

looking

This morning...

The colors on or of the rocks caught my eye.

And then the shapes; the way they were stacked and the way they have been formed.

On the other end of the park; the color of the water, the reflection of the light and the piers, where the light is absorbed.  

The table is cleared off again, ready to quilt again.

But still, just looking today. 

revise

Yesterday's project:

Once this was a shirt-jacket kind of thing, made about 20 years ago.  One of the sleeves tore. I cut deeper arm holes and added pockets.  Now it's a vest kind of thing. The fabric is hemp and has soften through the years.  It's also shrunk and become a tighter weave.

The assistant:

Timber had his own ideas about arrangement.

The window:

I was intrigued by the window while looking at the photos.  This is unaltered, I just cropped this section of the photo from the one with Timber.

The altered version:

Grateful this morning for shelter and running water (which I don't have but will again sooner or later).