Lone Robin

This morning as I was eating my oatmeal up here in my office with a *bird's eye view* I got to view the little birds eating their breakfast. This whole flock of black birds (I don't know if they ARE blackbirds just that they are birds and they are black!)  and one little fat robin were flitting back and forth between this flowering pear and the smaller flowering pear that took the place of my dearly departed beautiful willow.  I like how this one fat robin is the only bright spot on this foggy winter day.

I grabbed my camera and tried to carefully shoot through the blinds. They would always catch me and swoop away as soon as they saw me move... but I'm trickier than a bird (thank goodness) and went into my sewing room- the light off of that window camouflaged me and I could sneak some photos.

Then movement on the ground caught my eye...  more of those fat little flappers picking up what the ones up top dropped in their haste. (One word of caution fat-flappers... there have been swine-deer in my front yard!)

Maybe next time I will get on my super zoom lens and get some close ups. But I'm pleased that I can see these little birdies with berries in their beaks!

January Bumblebee

So are you wondering where I found a bumblebee in January? In my photos... where else!

January always finds me working on photos and/or person history. This January I'm editing my blog book.** When I ran across this photo from last June I thought, "I need to try that new watercolor technique I just learned."

Bumblebee watercolor 2013

When I wrote that blog I'd been playing with watercolor filters, but as I've said recently, I wasn't happy with my previous attempts.

Bumblebee filters 2012

I'm still learning and hope that next year I will be further along the digital-photo watercolor painting trail.

** So what are these about?

I got my iPhone in mid-November 2011 so I didn't have many i-photos for that year's blog book. But 2012 is totally different story! Holy cow! I've got Facebook mobile uploads, Instagram uploads, and then UN-loaded photo represented by a plethora of iPhone and Rebel photos that got taken, saved, indexed and that was the end of it!

What's up with that?

Addendum... this is post 1111!

Pixie Dust

When I opened the blinds this morning I saw that the world was covered in hoar frost! It is always so magical when this happens; everything sparkles. It is so cold that there is pixie dust floating in the air glinting, just like glitter, in the weak January sun and I am sad that my camera cannot capture that beautiful sight.

I quickly pull on my shearling boots and coat, grab my camera and go on an 8° explore. I stay close to the house so as not to leave any footprints in the pristine snow.

All the trees, bushes, and even flat surfaces like the fence and deck are covered in pixie dust.

As it warms during the day this pixie dust will float to the ground, shimmering as it goes.

Perhaps it's because I was so obsessed with snowflakes this winter that the designs jumped off the computer screen at me.

There they are: perfect six-sided wonderful creations of our Loving Heavenly Father that I can only poorly imitate with my scissors and paper.

A Purse for DeLoris

I recently posted about a purse I made from wool given to me by my friend DeLoris. I knew that as soon as I showed it too her that she would love it and want one too.

I didn't want to make an exact copy of my purse; mine was actually too large for DeLoris. So I went digging for inspiration to make a different purse. I found my idea in an old quilting magazine. I reduced the size of the original pattern to 75%.

Once I got all of the felted wool machine stitched on I started doing the handwork. Yeah, I got carried away! I ended up doing an outline stitch over the machine stitching, as well as the rest of the stitching. It's a sickness.

Elsie's Handiwork

My mom, Elsie, did beautiful, meticulous handiwork. She used to say that the back of her embroidery needed to look as good as the front. I never understood that at the time but now as I look back I realize that much of her handwork was on things like dish towels where one can clearly see the front and back on a daily basis.

When my mom passed away 35 years ago I inherited her embroidery thread roll. I love all the memories attached to it. Mom would cut up pieces of cardboard in a bobbin shape to roll the embroidery thread around. I still have many of them. I love the rainbow colored bias tape that mark each pocket for color sorting.

Sady, in 1999, just after Buddi adopted us she decided to chew on this precious heirloom. Stupid little dog! It has remained in that damaged state ever since then (but I'm not sure why!)

I've done quite a bit of embroidery lately on my wool purse and on a wool purse for DeLoris (more to come on that). Lasterday it hit me! Why don't you repair the damage made by stupid-little-dog? (let's not get hasty!)

I think part of the reason I couldn't repair it before is that I didn't want to lose any of my mom's handiwork... not even the tiniest bit. I agonized over how to repair it so that I kept as much of it intact as possible. There was a 1 inch piece of bias tape that I removed (and it killed me! I said right out loud, "Mama I'm sorry to take out your beautiful, tiny little stitches!) Her stitches are so tiny and invisible AND strong- a talent that I didn't inherit from her.

Rather than cut off any thing Mom had done I decided to just patch it. I looked in my Sterilite tub of white and off-white fabric and found a piece that nearly matched this 60-70 year old fabric. I dumped all of the thread in to a smaller box and hand washed the roll (definitely the first time I've ever washed it). And, believe it or not, a quick search in my tub of ribbon and bias tape turned up a near match for the old bias tape!

I decided to add a little tie to close it up. I've been using a straight pin and noticed that it was starting to wear the old fabric.

I'm so pleased with my newly repaired heirloom.

Watercolor Sunset

I've been following the blog Bailey Road for several months and have watched Pat do some wonderful digital watercolor photo conversions. Check her out here... you will be amazed! I'm awed by her talents.

I have previously played around with some watercolor filters (I'll see if I can dig them out of the digital filing cabinet of my blog and tag them with the watercolor tag.) But I've not been as happy with them as I want to be.

What to do? What to do? Ah! Contact my talented-artist-niece! She always knows... and if she doesn't do it herself she will ferret out some online helps for me. She found a great video tutorial which I've been playing with for the last few days (and staying up WAY too late!).

I needed something with a bit more contrast than my currently available landscape of ice and snow. I went looking and found this beautiful sunset photo that I took a couple of years ago and thought it had lots of potential.

This is actually my final attempt... but I'm happiest with this one.

This is the culmination of the first attempt. I added a watercolor filter to this one and lowered the opacity on that layer. The thing that is funny to me is that I followed the same steps with the same photo and ended up with two different looks!

Here is the original photo SOOC.

If you've looked at Bailey Road she has a much more realistic watercolor paper texture which I'd love to find.

Chime in here if you have any helpful hint for me.

Harley- Bane of Swine Deer Everywhere!

Now that we have copious amounts of snow on the ground here in our little corner of heaven it means that the *swine-deer* will be making frequent visits to my neighborhood to forage for easy pickin's!

Harley's favorite perch 365 day a year (366 last year) is right by the front window. Right now the couch is pushed up to his window so he it in full *puppy-hog-heaven*!

Earlier today I heard him barking at something outside so I glanced out of my sewing room window to see what his problem was... the culprits! Swine deer have invaded his domain! Yeah, but Harley-boy... they are across the street.

This is what my ivy bed looks like many winter days- (but not this day... there is a foot and a half of snow covering all but the stragglers on the sidewalk. This photo taken a couple of weeks ago). Apparently the swine-deer and I have an agreement: I grow the ivy. They eat the ivy! This ivy bed is just outside Harley's window.

So a few hours later I hear Harley go nuts lunging at the blinds like the UPS man is here (sorry UPS man!) I hollered, "Harley! No!" (There are already bite marks on one of the slats!) and then went to investigate.

This is what I found this time! I burst out laughing! Some poor mama-swine-deer got the scare of her little-girl-life! In three huge bounds she was across the lawn snow and *outta here*!

Maybe this is why the snow hasn't been methodically moved from the ivy bed to the sidewalk every morning... word's gotten 'round that there is one MEAN dog guarding the ivy!