Birthday Coupon

For Judy's 70th birthday, Ann and I gave her a coupon for 10 hours of our labor. Yard work, cleaning, moving furniture, cooking, hauling stuff, transplanting, washing windows, whatever she wanted us to do. The coupon was worth $1000! but not good with any other offer and not redeemable for cash. Ann and I showed up last Monday with our grubby clothes, pruners, clippers, a shovel, wine, food, and lots of energy. The deal was she had to put us up for the night (slumber party!) so we didn't have to cram all the work into one day. We got to work digging up hostas and transplanting them in the front bed. Then hauling split rails to form a fence, moving an air conditioner, mulching, then lots of sitting on the porch drinking wine.




I love this fish and convinced Judy that it needed a better place than leaning against a tree in the woods.




Judy's son is 'storing' his old car behind her cabin.


I call this one, "Seen Better Days."


This very old bird house was lovingly built long ago. It even has copper gutters!


The wee top of it.


It sits on the edge of the woods with a couple other hand made bird houses. Judy said the birds even use them!


Judy made this parcheesi board.


Her father is an accomplished artist and she inherited most of his brushes.


This is pretty fuzzy but it's such a cool metal lobster above her sink.


The following day we woke up to a thunderstorm. She has a metal roof and the rain sounded so soothing, I just wanted to stay in bed, wrapped in my bedding. But there was work to be done! I got to do my favorite thing, a room makeover. We rearranged furniture, and Judy has some great pieces to work with. This is a new addition so she wasn't totally moved into it. It's now comfy cozy with a nice conversation area.


Her father's paintings hang on most of the walls and it was fun coordinating furniture and other pieces to go with them.


Judy is an artist herself and carved this figure when her boys were young.


Didn't do anything to this arrangement as it was perfect. It's in her kitchen. She uses antique chests for storage.


After taming some wild cables to the TV and computer, pulling out a window frame (Judy did most of the swinging of the maul), a bit of painting, and some final tweaking of the living room, and eating an amazing veggie tart that Judy made for us, it was time to say good bye. That's Judy on the left. Can you believe she's 70?!!!!! She is totally awesome. She bought this cabin way out in the country a little over a year ago and along with her son, does a lot of the work on it. It was basically a hunting cabin, very primitive. It's now a lovely home, worthy of an artist.


On the way home, we pass this falley downey barn. See how close it is to the road?! I love the look of it.

I Haven't Done a Thing!

Someone asked me the other day what I'd been doing this summer and I told them that I've traveled a bunch and it doesn't seem like I've gotten much done. So I gathered up most of what I was working on or completed, and now I don't feel so bad. I'm a lucky girl as I can craft most any day of the week. I sometimes have to get an order out or get ready for an upcoming show (dye, dye, dye, skein, dye), but usually I have a choice of making jewelry, spinning, felting, beading, knitting, fusing, or painting.


more autumn colored jewelry


"Fairy Batts", hand carded fibers that include wool, mohair, angelina glitz, bits of yarn, cotton, and anything else that might be close at hand.


I have some new, luscious kid mohair in and have dyed it in all my colorways. This is a new color arrangement, "Summer Fun", bright fuscia and orange.


and now that fall is approaching (Come on!), I'm dying more autumn colors.


I ordered scads of swirly cotton and I'm making washcloths out of all the awesome colors. I also fired up the kiln last week when it wasn't so blasted hot and made some fall-colored brooches and a dish.


Love these colors!


I haven't been doing that much felting, except for lots and lots of felt balls that I use in jewelry or on purses.




Annie (Kiparoo Farm) and I hosted a one-day retreat in late June, "ChicKnit". We showed crocheted and felt embellishments on felt purses. I had fun coming up with ideas. This purse will be a kit for the fall tour.


Slubby Nubby yarn in Briar Patch with a needle felted flower.


Wet felted purse with a cuff of a sweater I didn't finish, made into a flower.


knitted (my Waltz yarn) and felted purse with commercial wool felt embellishments that I hand dyed.


This little green purse was made from a sleeve from a wool jacket that my friend gave me. The flower is from a Noni pattern.




I finished this Slubby Nubby blanket before it got too beastly hot. It takes 4 skeins of Slubby and one skein of my Ballet nylon yarn as fringe.


I got one sock done out of my Waltz yarn. It's an alpaca, wool blend and is oh so soft. I'm only doing one sock these days as the foot-a-quin I got is like a size 10 and it stretches out the yarn so much I could never wear it anyway.


I got a lot of this organic cotton yarn (Swing) in this beautiful creamy color so needed to make something with it. I found this cute baby sweater pattern free on-line and am loving it!


Finished the little vest out of my favorite book this summer, "Mini Knits". I used Waltz yarn again.


and finished the hiking/hunting socks for this fall. They're knit with my Bee Bop superwash yarn in the colorway, "Woodsey". These will also be available as a kit for the autumn tour.



I've wanted to do something besides socks out of my "Sock Hop" yarn and thought a lace shawl would be just the thing. But I don't do lace, so I had to search and search for an extremely easy 'lace' pattern. This is pretty easy but I haven't gotten very far. This yarn and pattern went on all my vacations this summer and this is as far as I've gotten. Nope, don't like lace knitting.


This color is "Sweet Grass".


I do like the way this shrug turned out though. It looks blue in this photo, but it's really very deep, rich purple, knit out of Loopy mohair. another FREE pattern, yeah!


Being inspired by my travels this summer, I came up with a couple new colorways. This one reminds me of the Maine coastline. It's named, "Going Coastal".


Blues, teals with a hint of white.


and this one is "Out West", a blend of light umber, sky blue and grassy lime green.




I brought up a bin of broken pottery to Cumberland and Seal and I made mosaic mirrors. I have about 25 more pounds of pottery to use up, unless I break more, oops!

A Day at the Beach

Our friend, Emily, has a house on Chincoteague Island, Va. It's cute and charming, like Chincoteague itself. I am not a 'beachy' person but I do like this tiny island on the Chesapeake Bay. We can ride our bikes to the beach, through the wildlife preserve on Assateague Island, seeing an array of beautiful shore birds and of course, the wild ponies of Chincoteague. I did make it to the beach for a couple hours, laying in the sand for a bit and watching people in the surf. I like looking for beach glass, but there was none to be found.
Emily used to live on a boat (for 6 years!), docked in various slips around D.C. It's a great way to have cheap rent (saving for a beach house). She bought this little island cottage a few years ago and has now sold the house boat and bought another house near Annapolis. But she still has boat urges so for her vacation this year year, she spent the week in Chincoteague building herself a kayak. From scratch. From a book at the library. Emily really is amazing. She does most of the plumbing, carpentry and electricity in her homes. She figures things out and does them. Well, she does work at Goddard Space Center and she might be a rocket scientist, so there you go. Anyway, when we got to her place, she was about to have the maiden launch of her new boat, which she has dubbed, "Lumpy" because she thinks it is a bit. I think it's smooth and sleek, and pretty damn nice for being made out of regular plywood.


She bought a little wheeled 'trailer' for it, loaded it on, strapped it in, and then walked it 1 1/2 miles to the water.


Yeah! It floats! She even made the paddles. Total cost: about $150, including the trailer and comfy seat. Go Emily!

Mr. Whippy's is a favorite spot for gathering and tasting the fine elements of soft serve. Mr. Whippy has been around a long time, although I don't know how long. Forrest is enjoying his twist cone after having spent 7 hours on the beach.



This is the view down the lane from Emily's little house. It's on a quiet street, down a crushed shell road.


We were given a delightfully colorful sunset to end our stay.

Coffee Achiever

I LOVE coffee. I probably drink way too much of it, I know, but if my hands aren't shaking, I'm fine, right? I drink it hot in the morning then I put the rest in this awesome little retro coffee pitcher. I picked the two pitchers up at a vintage store recently. I don't know why, but it just makes me feel so good to pour from this cute thing. I pour it into this 1950's glass and delight in just sipping away. (dork!) I'm beginning to like all things from the 50's. I used to hate that look but it seems to be around a lot lately and I'm warming up to it. (It might have something to do with me being from the '50's) Now it's "mid-century modern", all clean lines and sharp angles, a little bit cosmic and somewhat cartoony . I like things a bit more contemporary now, (yep, went through the "country" phase, uggggg!) and now I really do like the uncluttered, crisper look. Anyway, back to coffee. Having a glass of iced coffee at 4:00 in the afternoon is just the pick-me-up I need. My friend, Tina, was complaining of being tired lately and I suggested she have coffee in the afternoon to keep her going. Well, she did and it kept her going till 3:00 a.m.! Sorry, Tina. Guess it's only for the hard core.


I posted this last year but it really is so appropriate. Now, I gotta go get me that coffee.

Ahhhhh! Summer

I planted about a dozen packets of zinnia seeds in the spring. These are my favorite summer flowers. We call them 'clown flowers' because they make you laugh and are way colorful. My boys still love the zinnias and last year were disappointed that we didn't have any. We had gotten back from England in late July and it was too late to plant. But we do have an abundance this year. I pick fresh bouquets daily as these zinnias are 'cut and come again', the more you cut, the more they grow. How cool!






I also planted heaps of beets, red, yellow and white. This was an early one but now they are HUGE!


I love the colors, so deep and rich. I snack on them all day.


Can't beat the inside of beets!