Not quite

~ Liz A ~ 16 Comments

I finished the stitching on the JMU pillow and put a 20” x 20” pillow form in … not good as the covering of the form was too stiff. So I made my own pillow form with harem cloth and Perfect Loft, which I like much better than regular fiber fill …

Unfortunately, I didn’t have quite enough, so the pillow is buckling along the sides. Ah well, I’ve placed an order for more filling with Amazon and will truly finish the pillow once that arrives.

Speaking of JMU and Amazon, the alumni fundraiser for Abby Zwerner that I mentioned a couple of posts ago has resulted in a fair bit of delivery activity …

So much so that the postal service hasn’t been able to deliver my contribution … too many packages to fit in the mail box?!

Coincidentally, Don has been working in purple and gold, too. He found a photo that he liked of Bodie Island Light (on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, pronounced “body” if you were wondering) …

and came up with this acrylic rendering …

which has found a home in the dining room … for now at least …

I’ll end with this funny story … Griffin recently asked what PopPop’s largest painting was. We said it was the one currently living at Melissa’s house, which is 20” x 40” …

Wrong! We were informed that PopPop’s largest artwork is in fact the back porch, which continues to be blessed most days with leftover paint water …

And yes, it was warm enough to sit outside with bare feet yesterday … a record-setting 82 degrees. I think I’ll head out there now to what it’s like today … pollen be damned 😉

Mending my ways

~ Liz A ~ 12 Comments

I should have known better, but last October when we were on an art tour of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch …

I made the mistake of trying to text and walk at the same time. My foot went off the shoulder to the right of the road and skidded out from under me. A split second later I was scrambling back to my feet whilst surveying the damage.

I ended up with my dignity wounded, my cell phone screen cracked, and the left knee of my jeans torn. At that point there was no visible bleeding, but later I discovered that my knee was barked and bruised. I counted myself lucky it wasn’t worse.

Today I finally got around to mending the holes in my jeans (and no, darn it, I didn’t take a before picture) using a couple of Instagram videos as starting points (this and that) …

I stitched the repairs with variegated Valdani #12 perle cotton and yes, I should have practiced first, but was pleased enough with the results that I’ll probably try using these techniques again. For now, though, I’ll just keep an eye on how they how they stand up to normal wear and laundering (no more road testing … ha!)

I can’t even begin to describe how incredible Ghost Ranch was (and is) … which probably explains why I’ve put off trying to write about it. So I’ll just load some of the many pictures I took and let them tell their own story …

ending with this video of a crow that called out to us after we had just heard about Georgia’s painting A Black Bird with Snow Covered Red Hills, which I later described for Mo on her blog …

And now I’m off to read a book that Don and I gifted to each other at Christmas … Georgia O’Keeffe and her houses: Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu …