This Happened

I was supposed to be cleaning off my work table in the studio....and I got distracted by precious little snippets......and this happened.

I can see now that I want to add a row of stitching around the outside of the mount....that will be a nice finish.

Photographs help me see things that I miss in person.  

Cleaning my table...and my studio for that matter...are usually hopeless tasks.  I'm so easily distracted...and this time it was the little watercolor scraps from my three piece collage play.

I placed some skinny two sided tape along a piece of scrap card stock and randomly arranged the scraps. When I was done I trimmed up the ends a bit.

How can this not be a good thing....a happy thing!

Still distracted.

And my table is still just how I found it...I'll try again tomorrow. Full disclosure....I had to work on a board in my lap because there wasn't room on the table.  But that's OK....because something fun happened.

Jumping Around

I love the color transformation blueberries go through as they ripen....white to pink to purple to blue. We saw these on our morning walk.

I think I've shared this before....but I'm going to share it again....and probably again after this.

"I do believe that luck exists...but people choosing to share, support, connect, promote, and raise others up is how most things are actually accomplished."  Adam J. Kurtz

Another little scrap project from a while back when I was trying out my stitch stamps.  As you can see there appears to have been a struggle.  I not only had bad ink....I hadn't mounted the long skinny stamps yet so they were awkward to use. 

Margie finished this 500 piece bug puzzle recently....and the minute it came back into the house I got started.  She did it in just a few days....but you know me I'm stretching it out.  It's loads of fun!

I decided the best strategy for this one is to just jump around from one bug to another. That fits in pretty well with my life right now....I seem to be doing a lot of jumping around....from one thing to another.

Mixing It Up

Janice's grandson Collin loves working with her in the kitchen....and he loves mixers. Any kitchen appliance actually.....but he is especially fond of mixers...and he knows all the parts and blades.  If he can't be mixing actual things he pretends to....and it's adorable.

Collin is generally at Janice's on Wednesdays....and I try and pop in to visit them both as often as I can. And they are usually in the kitchen mixing, grinding, rolling, chopping...or in this case squeezing.

Janice is making Colin a mixer quilt for his bed....of course she is!

The multicolored mixers are fused.....edged....and fabulously fun!  The sashing is multicolored sprinkle fabric....just perfect!

Janice has been auditioning what to use as the little square insets....finally deciding on a rainbow of simple tone on tone fabrics.

That's where I come in.....I just happen to have a variety of tone on tone colors.  I love when I have what my friends need....and I even cut them for her. I'll report back when it's done.  

Patience...and Inspriation

"Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes."  Frederick Buechner  

Thanks for sending me this quote Marian.....so well said...and so true!

Last evening I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with a cable guy....we've all been there done that! At several points during the call I got frustrated and impatient as I tried to explain my situation. But in the end we worked things out and I thanked him for being patient and sticking with me.  He could have ended the call at that point and just been done with me....but he went on to tell me that he learned patience from his grandparents.  Neither one spoke English very well and it was always a challenge to communicate with them.  The more excited they became about something...the harder they were to understand. He said it was a challenge...but always worth it.....and it taught him the virtue of patience.

After his story I told him it was just like talking to me....and he laughed out loud for what seemed like a full minute. We both ended the conversation feeling good about the whole thing.  Yes.....joy is mysterious....it can happen anytime.....even with the cable guy.

I haven't had much time in the studio....that's just the way summers seem to go....so many things drawing my attention.  But I have kept up with my 4 x 6 exchange cards and am now playing around with little 3 piece collages from old paintings. Simple....quick...and fun.

They were inspired by a Andrea Deane Thompson who I've been following on Instagram for quite some time.  

https://www.instagram.com/andreadeanethompson/

Andrea's watercolor quilts and sweet drawings and paintings make me smile.  Recently she's been posting these little three piece quilt type squares made her from old art.  She challenged people to do the same....and I got hooked. 

There's something very rewarding about cutting old projects up and mixing the patterns and colors.

And inspired by another artist, Autum Moon, I played around with covering the seams with a zig-zag stamp. I wrote about Autumn before in this "Scrap Quilts" post: https://joyfulputtering.blogspot.com/2021/05/scrap-quilts.html  

Yes...I do like to do actual zig-zag stitching like on this card....but sometimes something simple like a stamp is the way to go. I can still stitch around the edges of these others depending on what I do with them.

Aren't they fun!

The stamps came in a collection of different stitches...and they were hard to use because they were long and floppy.  

So I glued them onto thin pieces of balsa wood and now they're much more manageable.

A Little Bit of Color

The working title of this post was "A Bit More Creepy".....but you'll see a little later why I had to change it.  My titles generally present themselves after I write the post.....and for me...that is part of the fun.

I have to post these two photos because they follow up so well on my "creepy or cool" post from yesterday.  Sometimes nature gives us things that are just so odd....and so interesting.  At some point I promise to get back to some color.

This mushroom is at the edge of the woods behind my next door neighbor.  What in the world is it covered with?  I'm not even sure "cool" is possible here...it's just plain creepy.

Is it a web?  Is it a fungus on the fungus? Is it a mushroom dressed up as a ghost?

And here's another set of ghost plants in my woods.  I could go with "cool" on these....but still kind of "creepy."

But I picked one....looked closely and inside this white, corpse like plant and found little bit of sunshine.  There you have it....a little bit of color in this post after all!

Concrete Answers

There are so many questions in life that have no answers and we all just do the best we can with the information we have.  So when we actually get a concrete answer to a question it's quite rewarding. 

Margaret, a blog reader, contacted me with an answer to my question about the "little gem" I posted about yesterday. I told her I wasn't sure if the answer was kind of creepy....or just plain cool. I'll let you decide.

Turns out what I thought was a seed pod is actually an Oak Gall....sometimes called an Oak Apple. They develop on an oak leaf when a gall wasp lays an egg on a developing leaf bud. The larvae feeds off the tree and secretes stuff that facilitates the tree to form the gall around the larvae.  The gall protects the tree and the larvae until they morph into adults.  

So what do you think?  Creepy or cool?

And of course there's a youtube video for any of you nature nerds out there. Full disclosure....I watched several of them.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnHNGHSsVAA

But my favorite part of this story is I found out I met Margaret when we took a workshop together from my dear friend Muffy....and she's been a blog follower ever since.  That connection, along with her answer to my question made my day.

Another follow up on yesterday's second gem:

The first photo was about 7:30 this morning.....

....and the second was about 11:00.

This beautiful white rain lily bloom also made my day.....hopefully there will be more to come for this nature nerd.  These bulbs came from my dear friend Becky!

Little Gems

As I was cleaning up the debris from the storm a few days ago I found this little gem in the backyard.  

I've found them before....but never in my own yard.  It's a delicate little seed pod....and if anyone knows what it's from please let me know.

It was really hard to photograph....but there is an amazing little seed pod within the seed pod.  It kind of looks like a hairy eyeball inside.  

Then Paul came home with this little gem that must have fallen out of a tree during the storm.

I put up a shelf in my hallway a while back where I placing some of my nature collections.  I've not really spent much time arranging it....but the contents are growing.  Some day I'll give it a little more attention....but the nest and the seed pod have been added to the collection.

And speaking of little gems....could I be more excited that I have ONE white rain lily bud!  It's been peeking out for a few days now....and I worried about it in the storm. A few of the slender leaves were broken off...the bud is in tact and changing by the day.  Stay tuned!

Kids In The House

I had kids in the house today....and it was awesome!  My neighbor's grandchildren come to visit quite often and I've gotten to know them while riding their bikes up and down the street.  So this time...I invited them over to play.  

I hid 20 of my found objects in the rock wall....and we took turns finding and re-hiding them.

Could I have been more excited that someone took an interest in my bug puzzle?

The fact that his sister spent a long time sorting all my found objects got me just as excited. Two kids after my own heart.

They were here just an hour and 1/2....and we also played hide and seek, flew airplanes, and played with my top collection and wind up toys.  God bless all you grandparents who do this on a regular basis!  I loved it....but I'll have to build up my stamina! 😉

Don't you just love the color wheel that got sorted? My favorite line as she picked up a teal colored object...."this one is both blue and green."  Indeed it was!  

Kids in the house = JOY!

BTW.....I did get permission from grandma to post photos. 

They're Back!

I've been taking a short walk after dinner every day that I can....all part of my new "I'm trying to take care of myself" routine.  

Today I had to move right along because a storm was brewing and I didn't want to miss my window of opportunity.  

The stormy sky did not disappoint.

There were breaks in the clouds like this....I didn't know where to look.

I stayed close to home the last part of the walk....ready to take shelter as soon as I needed to.  First we had a crazy downpour....and then hail.  It was wild! A good reminder that Mother Nature is going to do what she's going to do.

Now...for the post that I was going to write:

The ghost plants are back in the woods....and they're as creepy as ever.  I discovered them for the first time last year....so if you're interested in more inforatmion you can read this post from almost exactly a year ago.   https://joyfulputtering.blogspot.com/2020/07/ghost-plant.html

Sometime soon I'm going to write about all the mushrooms!  You know how I love the mushrooms! And with all the rain we've had...they're popping up everywhere!  

After the storm I went out to check on things...and there's not much damage...just some holes in some hosta leaves. But it was strange seeing hail in the garden.  Also kind of cool....literally.

Beautiful Images

Just some beautiful images from the farmers' market yesterday in Deering Oaks Park....such a perfect setting.

And....colorful lobster for dinner tonight.