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This was in my mailbox yesterday morning.



And this was lunch with my good friend Tricia whose birthday was the day before.



And this is the tree we had our picnic lunch underneath...do YOU see anyhting?

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How about this close-up? Wood sprites? Tree spirits? A nose?



The only bad part was the flat tire my daughter and I had on the way to breakfast, which meant no breakfast. C'est la vie.

New Work

For those of you who are just sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for a peek at my new hanging...the one with the picture I posted last week....



...just a small slice from the top...in the style of Fraas and Slade. Notice pins and basting. This is still in the design phase so things can be changed quickly if need be...

I've been making these little postcards out of some scraps of Kaffe Fassett fabric I had left over. I tried to put them in my stash, but they just wouldn't stay there...they begged to be made into something useful. And since I like to send something homemade when I send snail mail, I now have a good stash to pick from at a moments notice. How organized am I!!

Shrooms

anyone know what these orange beauties are called? I think I have a bumper crop growing on an old stump. they do look prettier than these pictures make them out to be and imagine them against a blue blue sky...a little piece of art for the day.

Carpe Diem

Joie de vivre and all that other good stuff....look how easy it could be...just hide behind the curtains and while you're there look for the child in you!

Done!!!

Two socks, one a little smaller than the other, not on purpose, but I'll get the hang of it sooner or later! This is something I can do with my hands when I don't need to concentrate as I do when I embellish a quilt. So these are my made during vacation/driving in the car socks...and no photoshop doctoring on these...they'll see my feet coming a mile away!

New Project

Inspiratonal photograph and 'centerpiece' for new piece. Printed on my new fabric sheets from Color Textiles, silk chiffon. You can see right through it to the background fabric. Very pretty, but still in the planning stages.

Small and Simple

My mind cannot handle thethought of a large project right now, so today I worked on little..





done by hand, these are little charms from the book Omiyage by Kumiko Sudo. They are no bigger than an inch or so, and what you can't see is that the backing is fabric around a sea shell, of which I have many.



A friend of mine had received one as a gift from a Japanese exchange student and she used it as a cellphone charm. It had tiny bells attached to the cords. Easy, and about as challenging as I want to get today.

A quick hello from the wireless cafe. Vacation is great, especially when you're spending it with family. There are 3-4 of my 7 siblings sharing two cottages side by side...along with all the spouses and various aged children that go along with siblings. My sister Tricia had the best idea as far as cooking goes because we all have been eating dinner together and there could be as may as 15 or so people at the table...her idea was to put all the adult names in a hat and draw couples (making sure husband/wife were not together. Division of labor. It's worked out well and tonight Tim (brother-in-law) and I are cooking crab cakes (Tim) and mango salad with grilled shrimp (me). Last night we had basil, sausage and mozzerella panini's along with delicious gazpacho...yummy!! We've had grilled chicken with some kind of rub under the skin, grilled sirloin tips, pork tenderloin, salads, desserts, cocktail hour every night, swimming, fishing, kayaking, sunning....So. Nice.

I've been keeping my hands busy too, trying something new. A while back I had posted a picture and little thing about my daughter Sarah and her knitting experience, and several of you had posted that she was now ready to move onto SOCKS. Well, she hasn't, YET, but wait till she sees THESE!!!



I'll have the first one done by the time we leave on sunday, and soon I'll have my first pair! Disclaimer: meeting with friend Sarah and seeing the sock project she was taking on her Disney cruise had NOTHING to do with me starting these....

The Great Wall in China (Maine)

I think the heat is zapping any energy I may have had and I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way. I love it, but I don't plan to accomplish a lot in the next few days. So even though I have lots of ideas in my head for new projects, that's where they'll stay till the cool refreshing winds return.

In the meanwhile I can show you our latest piece of art. Some may think it's just a stone patio, but it is truly incredible. The stone wall alone was done with the thoughtfulness and precision of a true artisan even though he's only 28.




Nate would take the longest time to find the right stone to fit with the one beside and below. And tight it is.



While Nate was doing the wall, ryan was doing the grunt work...carrying stone in, hauling soil out, then hauling gravel out, and laying the paving stones for the floor of the patio.



View from the back side.



And Nate and Ryan, standing on the near-complete stairs. To be young again, and in the prime of youth. Invincible...able to move tons of granite. The heat is really getting to me...