Yesterday morning I had a meeting in town, followed by limited errands, and a cautious drive home with brake troubles. I took my camera with me, as I always do. I’m always on the lookout for “stuff” to take pictures of. Landscapes, elements of landscapes, trees, birds, nature. I’m not so much into buildings as I am looking for inspiration in nature.
Here are a few of the things I found yesterday as I left my meeting:
Hopefully I’ll be back to posting quilting pictures soon, but for now, it’s “paperwork season”….. what is paperwork season? Why, year-end of course, that dreaded time when winter is at it’s coldest and paperwork surrounds a person demanding attention. But soon, so very soon, I’ll be back to full-time quilting and creating. I promise!
Of course, I could post pictures of my birdhouse in progress, but as I’ve mentioned to a few people, I’m it’s having “structural” issues and I need to shore up the walls a bit. And of course I need to felt a few wool eggs (surgical gloves in place to protect the hands) which is a new technique to me. But a technique I look forward to learning.
And all these thoughts of birdhouses and nests, combined with the colder than usual January temps and above average snowfalls here, have spurred thoughts of a new quilt. Drawings done, colors planned, one step at a time; until the dreaded paperwork is completely finished and then it’s full steam ahead to quilting and creating. I promise!
I’m currently working on a piece for the Iredell Arts Council “Roots & Wings Gala”. As per usual with the pieces I make, I start with an idea and it takes on a life of it’s own. This piece has some 3D components to it, including the birdhouse and nest.
Today’s project was to construct the base of the nest which will fit into the bird house itself. This started in my mind as a woven piece, and evolved into a “thread nest”. As a longarm quilter, the term “thread nest” has very negative connotations, but as an artist it’s full of possibilities.
Here’s the progress so far, currently drying to shape inside the lid to my cough drop jar:
Now that I know the size of the nest, I can start the structure of the birdhouse itself. We can’t have a nest bigger than the inner dimensions of the birdhouse, now can we?
It’s a rainy day here today, and one of the things I love on a rainy day is fresh baked bread hot out of the oven. Not that I bake very often, and usually I cheat with a frozen, ready to thaw loaf of bread. But it’s hard to get bread to rise here, we keep the house cool, and on rainy days it’s damp feeling…..just not conducive to rising bread.
Of course this is when I regret not getting the gas stove and keeping an electric. That pilot light in the gas oven would be just perfect for getting bread to rise. My neighbor uses a heating pad underneath her bread pans to get them to rise, but I don’t have a heating pad either.
This morning, as I was lamenting the difficulties of being able to get bread to rise, my dear husband came up with an idea, which I’m trying out today. Something you would think I could have come up with on my own, but alas, I didn’t. My only excuse is that I didn’t grow up with a fireplace like he did as a child in England. I’m not trained to think about using the “fire” as a prep area. He on the other hand thought this was extremely logical to do:
The jury is still out, if it doesn’t rise much more than that pretty soon, I’m going to bake the bread anyways and call it an attempt. At least I’ll still have the smell of fresh baked bread and I’ve got a warm living room out of the procedure!!!
