Here comes the sun

January 29, 2021January 29, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 30 Comments

Some months back, I read an intriguing article, took a screen shot, and filed it away in memory to use “someday” …

Then it showed up again last week …

followed in short order by Acey’s prompt to listen to George Harrison’s Here comes the sun “until you’re ready to articulate the way your own ice is slowly melting.”

Have I mentioned how much I love Acey’s prompts? Not to mention George Harrison.

Anyway, it was a short leap from prompt to sky disk … and thence to my cloth stash where I found a bronze-y cotton sateen by Tierney Barden and a richly dyed green cotton by Deb Lacativa.

The green was appliquéd to the sateen to form the sky disk, then itself became the frame for the reverse appliquéd sun. Deb’s wild threads were perfect for the details of sun barge, crescent moon, and Pleiades.

Sitting with the Texas sun warming my shoulders, I worked Jude’s split backstitch around the edges and tacked down the disk with a few French knots until it was all too quickly done …

No ice here.

Tempus fidgets

January 23, 2021January 25, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 12 Comments

January 22, 2021 – Time flies when you’re having fun

Griffin’s school has gone back to virtual learning, so most days we get to listen in on his morning lessons. This Friday his class was working on personification, after which he had an independent assignment (called asynchronous learning in these Covid times) in which he was to choose a phrase and illustrate it.

This is what he came up with, which I immediately said I wanted to copy …

My mind filled with associations as I stitched. How G’s illustration reminded me of the animated clock in Beauty and the Beast, of Coconut the owl currently living in Austin Kleon’s palm tree, and of the messenger owls in Harry Potter…

I think I first heard the phrase “time flies …” in high school, where my chemistry teacher, Mel Rosenstein, said it virtually every day in his never-ending quest to keep a roomful of antsy sophomores from zoning out. He also taught us how to use slide rules, but beyond that I don’t remember much.

Nonetheless, the phrase stuck, enough so that I asked someone to translate it into the Latin “tempus fugit cum se oblectat” so I could stitch it not once, but twice into samplers …

Coming soon: I want to figure out how to use some of J’s artwork, too …

Process notes: that rich gold floss is Deb Lacativa’s and the variegated green dyed cloth is from Fiber on a Whim.

Primary-ly

January 17, 2021January 17, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 14 Comments

January 14, 2021 – Winter primary colors

Some of our local parks require reservations, partly because of Covid, but in the case of the Gay Ruby Dahlstrom Nature Preserve I believe it’s also to control the number of people for the sake of the land. Accordingly, there was also a charge of $6 for two seniors, which surely paid but a fraction of the Park Ranger’s salary and so was well worth every penny to us.

We had the entire place to ourselves when we went on Thursday afternoon. The weather was a seasonable sunny-in-the-60s with a brisk breeze. Best of all, it was like walking on the back of our one-time Hill Country property. Which is to say, it felt like home …

The bright yellow nightshade berries caught my eye first, followed by the deep blue Ashe juniper berries. That put me on a primary color search, but it took a while to find red. I finally settled on a cochineal red prickly pear cactus tuna and considered it done …

Then I tried something a bit different, using this gallery view of the three pictures on the blog as the inspiration for the patch.

The cloth came via an Instagram account from Ruth Hase Gutierrez, which she has since deleted so unfortunately I can’t tell you much except that I miss her posts and am glad I got some of her hand-dyed cloth before she left …