ATC, Gifts, Fruit, & A Corner Hint of Living Green

This week Chris of Shady Grove blog and Around The World In 20 Quilts group sent me this wonderful "Summer" ATC for our Season's Swap. She calls it "Ginkgo" and incorporated "hand dyed fabric, leaf design cut from freezer paper, Shiva Paint Stik to highlight background, Leaf Veins hand stitched with w/40 w. rayon thread. Can you imagine that much work going into a piece the size of a business card? Thank you Chris, it's beautiful and so extremely well done.

In the past weeks I have been the happy reciprocate of thank yous from a few friends...Patti sent this beautiful hand painted book mark with my name on it...So personal and so pretty, thank you Patti... Elspeth and Jasper gifted me with these beautiful photo post cards that are too pretty to use (yet)...thank you Elspeth.

I wanted to show you the huge orange we bought last weekend at the organic food store in Pt. Reyes Station at Toby's Feed Barn...it was huge, juicy and delicious...

And this is the inside of the Chirimoya fruit I had conveted for forty years. Well I waited for them to ripen, eating one a day for three days.

The first one was a little sour. The second one a bit less sour. But the third did not sweeten up either, so either this is NOT the same fruit I ate 40 years ago in Spain or the Mexican variety is not as good, OR my memory deceives me. Needless to say, I was a tad disappointed.

Here I offer a hint of some top stitching done on my Living Green art quilt, which is coming along.

I'll sew on it more today. The leaves with birds and beads are all hand sewn into place now using green metallic thread. Here they are not yet beaded or birded and are simply pinned not necessarily in their final positions.

And I hear it is Six Word Saturday:

Grateful For Friends Every Single Day!

Illustration Friday/Tongue in Cheek or Breeze; A Short Spring Walk

Teri C. tells me that today is Illustration Friday and the theme is "Breeze"...I admire Teri C.'s art and do my best to follow in her footsteps as closely as possible hoping to learn and not trip and fall on my face too much...LOL... Today I took a short walk down the street where I live and found these beautiful blossoms... spreading their pollen

and I breathed it in and came home to a runny nose from breathing Spring!

My next door neighbor had put this little bird house in his tree

and I imagine his children had some help in the painting of it.

Sweet.

Tweet.

I will keep my eyes out for new residents.

Happy Friday

Shabat Shalom

The Birds Have Landed; Spring Has Sprung; and My Sky

These little birds landed tonight on each of my dryer sheet leaves...They like pecking away at the beads thinking they are food I think...

And in my garden Spring is getting underway.

And All is Well In My Sky!

Happy Friday to you all.

;-)

Soulbrushes' Art In My Office; Handmade Dolls on My Office Shelves (not by me); and Beaded Leaves

I complimented Soul Brush on her stressed zebra painting, said my clients would love it, asked to copy it, and she sent me the original! My clients do love it! They see it on my office wall near the door when they leave their session. The cat below shows Zebra how to relax...I think he is listening to my Relaxation CD...click on all photos to enlarge for details These next dolls I have had since starting my private practice in 1991. They were made by hand with handmade papers. I wish I still knew who the artist was but sadly I do not. Aren't they wonderful?

And now for my beaded dyer sheet paint dyed leaves. I sit and bead on the already top sewn leaves and it is very relaxing. The beads I got off a broken necklace I picked up at a funky flea market some time ago. I bring these things home never knowing when I will use them, and then luckily I remember them and go hunting for them in all my stashes when needed. I am embroidering the veins with gold and copper metallic threads by hand as my machine balks at metallic threads and frays and breaks them.

More hints of Living Green art quilt.

Creative Cat Wednesday: Henry V Paper Bag Art

Henry was very busy creating last night...he really dives into his art work...he likes putting his whole self into his creations, as you can see here, as he busily tears paper with his teeth, (no scissors for Henry)...no, he likes the raw edged unfinished look using recycled brown paper grocery bags. He is not at all bothered by the mess left on the floor, in fact he is rather oblivious to it so absorbed is he with his paper bag art! But you can believe me when I say those scraps will eventually make it into a next art work. Henry is very much into living GREEN. And then he's batting around thread spools taming them for his artful ideas...can't you just see the creative juices flowing in his Right Brain!

Teri Tells Me It's Bloomin' Tuesday!

Happy Blooming Tuesday from my garden

Keep scrolling down there is more for today, you aren't done yet! ;-)

Natayla's Art Lesson = Dryer Sheet Leaves!

Natalya at http://artbynatalya.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-make-leaf.html taught me how to make leaves using used dryer sheets and I did it this past weekend! See how well I followed directions and the end results! Thank you Natalya it is a great tutorial and great fun as well!

Okay, here I am looking at Natalya's wonderful directions (on the left) and have put my used dryer sheets into a pan of water and acrylic paints! I soaked them all day long...while doing other things as instructed...until the sheets absorbed the color. Then I put them into the dish rack to dry...Oh I also experimented in dying some squares of batting as well...I am nothing if not inventive... lol

And over night the sheets all dried and looked like this...

Again, according to Natalya's directions I layered five sheets together...

and free motioned sewed leaves on the sheets. Natalya made one large leaf per five sheets, but I wanted more smaller leaves for my latest art quilt project...and got ten to twelve leaves out of five sheets.

Here are the leaves top stitched by machine and cut out laying on the art quilt for now...

Last night I added some hand embroidered stitching around the veins and outer stitches around with gold and green and bronze metallic threads...These are the leaves you see on the top of this post!

Again, thank you Natalya and I encourage you all to go to her blog and get the directions for making your own leaves or whatever from used dryer sheets.

I can now say I hand dyed material!

;-) and if you scroll down to the previous post

you will see I found the name for that odd fruit.

Cactus Monday Beginner And UPDATE ON ODD FRUIT

I googled this fruit and found it's name. It is Cherimoya and is found in Mexico, Peru, Spain...

you can see more about it at http://spanishfood.about.com/od/seasonalspanishfoods/a/chirimoyas.htm

Teri C. invited me, (and everyone) to join Cactus Monday. She said it could be a photo or a drawing...so I took a photo of the fruit I write about below this post and turned it into a cactus! Clever me!!!!

Do you know this fruit? First Taste 40 Years Ago in Spain!

This weekend when we were in Point Reye's Station we went into a little organic grocery store and I saw this fruit. Now I need to take you back forty years ago to when I was spending ten days in Spain. I had the luxury of staying at a friend's sisters Villa in Torremolinos. My friend was someone I knew in high school, we had met on a bus in Berkeley one day both going home to Vallejo. She a college student, me a file clerk at an insurance company. I had just quit my job and was getting ready to travel. She told me about her wanting to go to Spain and said her mother wouldn't let her travel alone. I was headed to Mexico at the time and said if she could wait until I returned I would go with her to Spain. I was obviously into making hasty decisions in those days of very grandiose proportions. I had saved $1600 at my file clerks job over the past year and a half and was ready to see the world!

I did spend time in Mexico and I did return and Kathy and I took a drive-away car to Washington DC, then a ship to Gibraltar where her sister met us and we drove to Torremolinos to the villa over looking the Mediterranean sea. Here is Kathy and some guys we met on board. This was in 1961. I was just turning 20.

(Saying goodbye to the wonderful ship that brought us to Spain)

Which brings me to breakfast there. Each day we were served this beautiful fruit...the inside soft custard like pulp with big black shiny seeds. It was a dessert from heaven. I could not get enough of it and I will admit I ate it until I actually became ill. But I never found it again but have looked for it off and on for years.

Kathy and her sister Betty and Betty's two children in the garden

that we looked at each morning while eating breakfast outside on a terrace.

Me in Spain wearing a sweater I bought in a market in Mexico the month before.

And this weekend I saw this fruit, I asked the woman behind the counter what it looked like inside and she described the soft custard like pulp and big black seeds I knew I had finally found my heavenly treat. I bought three of them at $6+ a pound! Pricey yes, but ohmygod worth it.

They are not yet quite ripe enough to eat so I was told to put them in a brown paper bag and wait for them to turn dark and soft and then cut into them. I cheated last night and got a sour taste. Now I will wait for the rest to ripen...it's hard to wait after waiting forty years to taste something you remember as being the best tasting thing you'd ever eaten before! But I will.

The woman in the store told me this grows in Mexico as well and she told me the name but I forgot it in my excitement. Perhaps you can tell me.

Come with us on a wonderful Saturday Adventure to San Francisco, Pt. Reyes Station and Bodega Bay

Settle back and follow us through our day yesterday and I will show you the sights in our area. First we are crossing the Bay Bridge into San Francisco on a beautiful sunny day in February...click on photos to enlarge details... See Coit Tower in the middle of this overview of the City... I love the stunning glass buildings mixed with the old bricks... more new than old in this shot... a street car from Milan, Italy runs on this street...

another way to get around to see sights of the City...

Saturday Market is always full of locals and tourists...

hustle bussle of the people among the bright fruits for sale....

This designer's fabric depo caught my eye as we drove by...

and now we are walking to the historic ships docked

on Hyde Street Pier, my DH's favorite haunt...

This is the CH Thayer being restored. Years ago we'd come to sit in her hull

and sing Shanty Songs on a Saturday night...

and yes, that is the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

There is the chocolate store in the distance...

The pier is kept so well...sailors knots, fresh paint...

This was a special day as DH was finally old enough to buy his own

"OLD AGE PASS" for getting into National Parks for FREE!

He no longer has to use mine!

;-)

Guess who I was thinking of when I saw these daisies?

And now we are driving the long winding road past the Golden Gate Bridge on our way...

to Olema and Stinson Beach, and finally Pt. Reyes Station...

I love the tall redwood trees...

finally the ocean comes into view...

We took a walk down to overlook a small beach where many, many elephant seals

had come to birth their babies...

Those are not logs on the beach they are elephant seals.

Driving on we saw a lot of cows...

and crows (for you know who)...

and at days end we were treated to the most beautiful sunset...

At Bodega Bay we buy fresh clam chowder, SF Sour Dough bread and drive to the headlands

overlooking the ocean and sunset to eat and repair

for the long drive home.

I hope you enjoyed taking the trip with us.

It was a beautiful day.