Halloween Puppies

The Rusty pups are three today...so here are some cute pics of their puppyhood....

Venturing outside for the first time........

Learning to share.....

Natural born swimmers, not quite sharing yet....

 

Looking deceptively sedate.....not!...

Party Time at the Bird Bath

Let's try again! These little guys seem to be having a whale of a time in the bird bath! Looks like my tennis ball is causing no inhibitions. I leave it there for when the water becomes ice.

Heart Strength

Made this small piece recently when I felt I needed a fierce heart; but it ended up looking too gentle. Don't seem to have fierce in me!

Feathery

A few fragile feathers on tentative stitches.

Birds on a Wire

Pigeons waiting for breakfast to be served down below.  We call them The Squadron.

Cedar Waxwings checking the land to see if there are any berries about.

A wise little owl sitting on a branch expecting no handouts.

A Textured Landscape

The standing stones of Dartmoor stitched a while back above a messy bracken.  Val kindly included it in her latest landscape book.

It is cold here today... no surprise that I was drawn to photograph another warm piece.

Not that Dartmoor is ever warm. Standing stones always look so solid and isolated; but not in this interpretation.

They look like they're having a party...artistic liscence.

A Gift from my Friend Diane

This week Diane gifted me this marvelous crazy patch throw. Wonder what stories it can tell.

Wonder when it was created. It has one or two sets of embroidered initials.

Some of the patches are threadbare....

and some of them are crunchy and crumbling. The question is how do I care for it? It has an old smell to it that would be nice to get rid of. Replacing the disintegrating patches would be interesting but finding the right replacement fabrics would be difficult.

Red Things

Red is not a colour I use a lot.  However, I am enjoying stitching up all the reds in my mother's 50's and 60's stash using her favourite way of working...English paper piecing.

Also from my mother a single foundation pieced long cabin block.

One of my treasures is this lovely mola gift from a generous student.

And I love my red African cows purchased from my friend Val at African Threads

A Walk up the Quary Road

We often walk up the quary road....

well, we walk, the rusty pups run. It's hard work getting to the top!

I find this rock face and the treeline above fascinating. It's bound to be stitched one day.

Sometimes we meet deer munching on berries and often wonder who else might be watching or listening. Then we all go back down and home again for a cup of tea.

Dancing Trees

My time for blogging starts before the sun comes up. I sit looking west through windows where crystals dangle to warn the birds.

As the sun rises in the East, trees start dancing in the skies above the mountain ridge.

As the sun travels higher in the sky a soft glow, or perhaps reflexion off a band of clouds, always appears just behind the mountain ridge. That's where the Bay of Fundy is.

Needle weaving from my Dark and Distant Past

Reckon I was nine or ten when I stitched this Jacobean embroidery with needleweave filling at school.  Gosh that was a loooooong time ago.  It was so long ago that the curriculum included 'needlwork'.

Tree Stitching

Today the tree looks like this. Scraps of fabric stitched down for the trunk. Branches of either split stitch or back stitch. Now I need to work out the rest of the piece!

M is for Mushroom

So dainty and vulnerable amidst all that spikey grass.

Tidal Rhythms

High tides lapping at my neighbour's garden on the Annapolis Basin on a blustery day.

Only three hours later. The line of grey on the top photo is the outer side of the dyke that stops the ocean lapping at our front doors. Hope it holds up for many a long year! The grass to the left of the post is in fact the first dyke built by Champlain by his band of merry Frenchmen way back when.

Memories of a Father

Today is my day for quietly remembering my Dad.
He loved exploring the world and here he is looking over the Isle of Mull.
He was an ink and watercolour artist.
He was a wood turner and I think he was happiest doing just that in his garage, despite the bellows that would come out of there if things weren't going quite right!
Miss you Pops.

Beginnings for a Show Called Rooted

This handsome oak grew outside my mother's little house in Dorset. Mother and I used to paint it, draw it and of course photograph it. We loved that tree. Do you see the crows sitting up there watching us right back?

Yesterday I drew it onto linen, and stitching has started on a cloth that will tell the story of immigration and having "roots" in two continents.

Whilst on the subject of trees....where the tops of trees meet the sky is fascinating to me. Here is a nearly naked ash and some tips of spruce.  I am still at the photographing and recording stage; no clue yet as to how I would interpret this fascination in stitch.