a bad rabbit habit

I ordered an embroidery stand this week and am loving it!  The paddle bottom slides under your leg and you can adjust the height of the arm as needed.  The clamp holds most size frames.  I'm able to work much more quickly this way.  

I'm going to keep making Yumiko Higuchi embroideries, but I'm also interested in trying other kinds, from Tudor-era tapestry work to more contemporary styles, like this embroidery journal.  This particular one was created by Amy Deacon, and the idea is pretty self-evident:  take an event or object from each day and embroider it into your frame. 

photo courtesy of Amy Deacon

It's not quite my style, but an intriguing idea and one that I might try next year.  I like the idea of doing something creative every day, even if it's small.  It's not an uncommon idea in textile circles.  For example, textile artist Ann Wood makes a fabric book every year, with one page added daily, sewn with random scraps and in a random pattern. It's unrefined, of course, but keeps you in a creative mindset.

photo courtesy of Ann Wood Handmade

There is a version of this for painting, of course.  You can paint a suggested theme each day:

photo courtesy of foxandhazel.com

Or, like the embroidery journal, just paint something from your daily life.  I've long been attracted to this idea.  Two books that I've owned and loved for years are Island by Garth and Vicky Waite and The Diary of an Edwardian Lady.  Great examples of older and more contemporary styles of nature journaling in a chronological style.

A selection from Diary of an Edwardian Lady

A selection from Island

I struggle with the focus and the skills needed to commit to a project like this, but I love the idea of daily creativity and am throwing around some simple 5 minutes a day ideas for a future challenge!

More inspiration all around.  We survived the awful storms last week...

...and the rain and warming temperatures have brought out the flowers!  Of course, I'm making as many bouquets as possible...

...and I've been tramping around in the woods behind our fields, looking for spring ephemerals.  Plenty of early growers, like a whole slope of Cut-Leaf Toothwort:

...and some Spring Beauties, too!

Mayapples are up...it must be spring!

I was hoping to get some Columbines in the garden this year.  I had so many at our Indianapolis house, sprouting up from sidewalk cracks and crowding out of multiple garden beds.  But although I've planted many different types, I haven't had too much luck with repeat blooms.  One of the problem is rabbits, especially this year.  I think it's going to be a bad year for them, and I can see where they've nibbled the growing Columbine flower stalks:

As fast as the flowers shoot up, the rabbits mow them down.  Deer, too, might be a problem this year.  I've seen plenty of evidence that they're around, much earlier than normal and closer to the house, too:

deer scat

I know that deer eat daylilies, but I planted clumps of them all around the yard and they've never been bothered by deer...until this year.  They've been eating down the foliage pretty regularly.  It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that we're going to have to fence in the flower beds, and put some kind of strong-smelling deterrent around the hostas and daylilies.  

Meanwhile, the little spring chores continue.  Pruning the roses...

...checking my mini greenhouses regularly...

...and keeping track of all the new green growth outside!

I love it!  Meanwhile, the cats are mostly appreciating our extra hour of daylight:

They're feline fine.  :)  Have a great week!

a fine Alpine

 Just a bare dusting of snow...but plenty to see.

I love photographing snowflakes.  Some are filled out with flat ridges of ice...

...and some are all prickly shards.

You can see in the first picture how different each snowflake looks.  We are supposed to get between 3 - 8 inches of snow this week - a white Christmas!! - so I'll have more chances to find new shapes.

It's been dry, cold, and quiet here.  The front pond is frozen...

...and even sunny mornings are foggy and atmospheric.

The kittens seem to know that it's a sleepy season.  I put a small wooden bench by our front windows, for the kittens' viewing pleasure.  I decided to go one further and added a cat bed.  It seems to be a success...

...even more than our bed!

Busy busy, but I'm making time for some creative pursuits.  I'm slowly picking away at my Vintage Christmas quilt, having finished all 15-square side pieces (see left section) and the wide patchwork alternating sections (see right section).  I'm working on the middle section, blue stars made up of different styles of fabric. It's very colorful and cheerful, so I'm excited to see the finished product!

I've also picked up my knitting again.  I'm knitting this cardigan:

Deco, photo courtesy of Kate Davies

The dress is Alpine from Lindy Bop...must buy!!

I put it away for a while, because I had Christmas knitting and other time-sensitive projects.  It's knitted in an unusual (to me) way.  You make a basic vest, and then pick up the stitches around the armpit hole.  You knit in a back-and-forth fashion (short rows), picking up an extra stitch each time, until you've worked the entire circle.  This creates an excess of fabric at the top, where you need it.

Then you can knit in the round, making a tube.

After both arms are finished, you have to pick up stitches for the hem, neck, and front button bands. It's a bit confusing, and I'd chosen this cardigan as an easy knit.  But I love a challenge and look forward to conquering these techniques!

Colder weather is coming, Christmas is coming, and it's wonderful to have so many fun projects to work on in my free time...the aforementioned, as well as working hard to beat my personal post-college best for the most books read in a year.  Bring on the snow!!

Have a great week!  

twice as ice

Cold outside and warm inside, but these kittens cuddle like they're warding off hypothermia.  I love it!

even with the dog!

It's so delightful to wake up from a lazy couch nap to find a kitten curled up, too!

I don't need snuggly kittens to tell me that it's winter.  It's cold outside - really cold, which means that it's a great time to make ice bowls.   I've made and posted about these before, and they're so easy to make.

Take two bowls and nestle with a layer of water in between, then freeze.  Put a candle inside and they look so pretty and atmospheric on a porch.  I have a lamentable lack of freezer space here, so I made two shallow bowls to stack.

I think it would look really pretty with the top layer inverted, or even a really tall stack of shallow ice bowls.  We're warming up today and they will melt...but it's easy enough to make more once the temperatures drop again!

I also took advantage of the cold temperatures to make some delicious bread.  I'd ordered some 6" cake pans and Sally's Raspberry Twist Bread recipe, halved, fit into one perfectly!  I cut the cooking time to 35 minutes and it was perfect.  

Flaky layers of brioche bread with of thick jam and puddles of cooked fruit...so good.  Kind of perfect on a cold winter morning.  

Since it's only a 6" loaf, it's perfectly fine if it disappears in a day!  Next time...cream cheese glaze.  Swoon!  

I've been sewing, and working on some secret knitting projects...

...and it's full steam ahead on my quilt!  I combined my 2 1/2" squares to create 17 larger blocks.  The Vintage Christmas fabric is perfect for this time of year!

Now I'll work on the star blocks, which will be solid color and interspersed with these mini-blocks.  It's shaping up nicely!  A really pleasant winter project.

When it's cold like this, I can't sleep in a sunbeam like the kittens...

...but I can still find little ways to make it more pleasurable.  That's a key to happiness, I think!

It's been a pretty great season so far. 

Have a great week!  

double double toil and trouble...

 One minute I'm outside, enjoying the changing season...

...spending a lot of time in the pumpkin patch, picking the ripe ones and photographing insects... 

...and then...tragedy.  Within a day of my last pumpkin patch foray, I broke out in hundreds of bites.  They covered my feet and legs, and were also sprinkled liberally on my arms, stomach, and back.  They looked like mosquito bites...

...but the burning, intense itch was something that I'd never experienced before.  It didn't take much research to find the culprit:  chiggers.  Chiggers are microscopic mites that, in their larval stage, seek out human hosts for food.  They're found in grassy areas, like my pumpkin patch.  I had learned in childhood that chiggers burrow into your skin and must be smothered, somehow...but this isn't true.  Although some mites (like scabies) do burrow, chiggers do not.  They don't drink your blood, either.  They inject their saliva into your body and your immune response is to harden the cells around the saliva.  This makes a handy straw for the chiggers to slurp your liquified cells through.  They feed for a few days and then drop off.  By the time you notice the bites, they're probably gone.  

The experience of having over 500 chigger bites has been...something else.  I went to Reddit for some itch relief advice and found the following comments to be fairly accurate.

In my experience, not much to do but wait.  It's miserable.  --Watts300

I've only had them once, and it was the most miserable experience of my life --partialcremation

I almost needed handcuffs to keep from scratching. --saltporksuit

[You need a] medically-induced coma...or an amputation. --mutt1223

It was a week of absolute hell. --taelor

It's the worst...you feel like your body is on fire for days. --believemeiwould

The itch...unbearable. --bjeffords74

The itch was so bad that I wanted to cut off my feet.  --dupinderpaul

I had to get a steroid shot to make it through. --tater120

It's weeks of abject torture. --misterblister

So painful that I couldn't even have a sheet on.  --mamassauruscat

As a native Floridian used to mosquitoes and fire ants, chiggers are on a whole other level.  Excruciating itching and burning for days.  --cookiethump

Ditto.  I couldn't wear pants or shoes, or sleep for more than a few hours at a time, for 5 days.  The cats winding innocently around my ankles set off the intense itching, and so did a brush of clothing or even a strong breeze.  I'm coming out on the other end, thankfully, but this was a bit of a lost week.

I spent nearly all of it indoors, to the delight of the cats.  There's nothing a cat loves more than a warm bed and a snuggle.

Or maybe a disruptive wrestling match?

Since I couldn't get outside much (the whole no pants thing is a real deterrent), I baked some fall-themed cookies...

Maple Sugar Cookies from Sally's Baking Addiction

...and knitted furiously on my cardigan.  Front panels are done, now just knitting up the back and will then start of the sleeves.

I also worked on my most recent quilt, where I've made a big mistake.  I didn't know that when you are strip-cutting fabric (sewing strips of fabric together, which you then sub-cut into smaller pieces)...

...a seam allowance is NOT factored in.  Normally, when you have blocks of fabric, excess is figured in  as a safety margin and you can tidily cut them down to an identical size before sewing the blocks together.  But when I started cutting my squares down...

...I saw that the inner squares and the outer squares were basically the same size.  This means that when I sew these blocks together, the outer squares will be 1/4" smaller than the inner squares.  It also means that when I cut the blocks down, they are not going to line up perfectly, because there's no excess fabric to play with.  A real disappointment, because I like to be precise.  I sewed several blocks together and it looks very amateurish, with corners off-kilter everywhere.

I'm torn between my thrift nature ("Fabric is expensive, just finish it!!") and my perfectionism ("It's a mess, with different-sized squares that don't line up like they're supposed to.  Toss it!").  I'm not sure which will win out in the end!

At least I was able to get out for a while yesterday.  Still plenty of flowers around for some nice fall bouquets.

Meanwhile, the windows are open (and frequently occupied)...

...and everyone is excited about the cooler weather.  Three cheers for fall (and the coming frost, which will kill every pest in the garden)!