Our Pets...

It's been a pretty rough week around here for our pets.  Arbour, our 11 year old cat, has gone missing and we fear she may have fallen prey to a fisher.  We've learned since her disappearance that there are more fishers around this area than usual this year. 

Casey was two when we got Arbour and she's always been a bit of a mom to her cat.  As a kitten Arbour would just climb into that little nook in Casey's 'arms' and that's how they'd sleep. Needless to say, Casey has been missing her cat as have we.

To make things worse, Casey started limping on Wednesday and she spent last night in hospital, having had to have a minor surgery to have her damaged 'toe nail' removed.  The claw may grow back, but in the mean time the limp is almost completely gone and she's happy to be resting comfortably at home!  How do you like that cute bandage.  LOL

 Earlier in the summer, when my friend, Heather came to visit, she asked me to back her car down our large hill as she's not as comfortable with it as I am.  Casey, always by my side, followed me up the hill, so Heather told me to invite her in the car and give her a ride back down.  Well, Casey happily jumped in, and when at the bottom of the hill she just curled up on the seat and went to sleep.  She slept there for an hour before we were able to coax her out!  Silly old puppy...(she turned 13 in June, but will always be my puppy!)

Jellybean Row...and a StencilGirl Blog Hop

Today I'm playing along in another StencilGirl blog hop using Jamie Fingal's awesome "Houses" stencil.

A few years ago, my husband and I visited Newfoundland, and while in St. John's, I fell in love with the wonderfully colourful Victorian rowhouses in the downtown area.  As soon as I saw Jamie's stencil, I knew I had to play with it to create my version of those pretty rows of colour.

I pulled out some of my hand dyed cottons, echoing the colour palette I remembered from St. John's.  I also pulled out some black acrylic paint, an old paintbrush (my stencilling brush was at home...and I was not!) and the Houses stencil.

I centred the stencil onto the squares of fabric and 'pounced' away with the brush.

Isn't that awesome!  I probably should have masked off the next part of the stencil, but my seams will take care of that.

I was thrilled with how the black images just popped on the coloured backgrounds.

The next job was to trim the squares up and sew them together.
I added a nice thick black border, did some simple quilting and 

     

              
Ta Da...

Jellybean Row

Thanks for the fabulous design Jamie!

Please make sure you hop on over to the other blogs on the list!  Leave a comment on each of the blogs for your chance to win a prize.  

StencilGirl Talk

Jamie Fingal

Corrine Gilman

Janet Joehlin

Linda Kittmer-you are here

Carolyn Dube -THIS IS YOUR NEXT STOP

Maria McGuire

Guess What I've Been Doing...

If you guessed 'playing with Procion MX dyes', you'd be right.  I'm thrilled with the wonderful range of colours I've now got to work with in my art quilts for the next while! I'm especially excited by how well the cheese cloth takes the dye, resulting in fabulously brilliant colours.  I also made a bunch of skeins of cotton threads which I also included in the dyeing process, so I'll have all of these wonderful hand-dyed threads to use to embellish my work with hand stitch.

There are so many ideas running through my imagination for what to do with these and the indigo pieces I dyed earlier in the summer...I'm off to sew!

A Family of Blue Jays...

My husband and I are always marvelling at the wonderful things we get to enjoy at our cottage.  Last year we were enjoying the Red Breasted Grosbeak, watching it bring it's young to our feeder, and even enjoying the show as the almost full grown youth was fed. This year we have a family of Blue Jays that now visit daily, calling for their peanuts.  There is a mother with her four young and although the young are now full grown, they still rely on mom.  The five of them arrive together, making quite a racket until we bring out some peanuts and set them on the railing.  The young are pretty funny to watch because they still really struggle to get the shells open.  As soon as mom flies off, all four young follow right behind her.  Sadly I haven't been able to get a shot of more than one of them at a time.

Thanks for the peanuts.

So much choice...which one shall I take?

This one looks good!

Look!  I got the shell open!

I'll just take this one in the shell.

Thanks.  We'll be back soon...

This last image was edited with a layer of Kim Klassen's new autumn texture "Savour".

September's Art Journal Calendar Spread...

I've had a few very stressful days, and I thought some art would be good therapy, but at the same time I really wasn't 'feeling it'.  This just might be an indication that I should stick to something that isn't as important to me.  Needless to say, I'm not thrilled with this spread.  I considered 'gessoing' over it and starting again, but that just seems like too much right now...I guess this will live on as an indication of the mind space I'm currently in and since this is an art journal calendar, maybe that is as it should be...

On-going Hand Stitching Fun...

Here's another look at one of the pieces I'm currently working on.  My friend Heather taught me the Sorbello stitch the other day so I added a row of it to the green strip.  I've now started some hand stitch in the indigo areas.  I'm really liking how it's coming along.  Hopefully I'll be able to show you the finished piece in the next weeks or so.

Beautiful Little Hummers...

 I recently spent some time shooting hummingbirds.  These are the Ruby Throated hummingbirds that are common around our cottage.  Their pretty green feathers just sparkle in the sun.  Whether perched or flying, I just get so much enjoyment out of these little beauties.  The make me laugh when they buzz around my head on their way to the feeders.

They're a busy, ever moving target, so I was thrilled to catch two in the same shot in these next couple of photos!

Both of these shots show a couple of females.  They don't have the ruby throat that the name suggests.

 Even the shadow is pretty cool!













This shot really shows off that beautiful ruby throat of the male.














And finally, three of my favourite shots of this pretty little female in flight, the last with Kim Klassen's new texture, "Culligan Scripted":

The Elusive Kingfisher...

I find the Kingfisher such a fascinating bird, but they are also very hard to photograph because they seem very shy and move so quickly.  Having said that, the other day I was finally able to get a few good shots.  Here are a couple of them:

What I'm Working On...

I've started a piece using my recent indigo and other hand dyed fabrics, so I thought I'd give you a little preview of what I'm up to.  The piecing has been done and I'm now adding hand stitch and some beading before I do the machine stitch/quilting on it.

 

A Journal Cover With A Perfect Accent...

I made this journal cover for my sister-in-law using some of my recently dyed indigo fabrics. If you'd like to see how it developed, you can pop over to StencilGirl's blog to see the tutorial.

front

 

back

Beaver Sightings...

There is a play on our lake that we have affectionately called 'Beaver Bay' because there are three active beaver lodges and when we visit in the evenings we are almost guaranteed to see at least one beaver.  

In the first shot, you can see two beavers swimming out in front of one of the lodges.  The others shots are all of the same beaver in various stages of signalling our presence and then diving under.  I especially love the final shot showing one of it's feet.

 

You've Got To Live!

Lately there has been some question about my returning to cycling after my accident three months ago.  The wrist is still sore and the finger is still in a custom splint, but I believe that I can wrap myself in bubble wrap or I can get out there, take some moderate risk, and live life!  Yesterday I was playing in my art journal and this developed...

 

And now, if you'll excuse my, I'm going for a cycling...