Then it was passed
The festive play room, which is actually a real dining room.
The drive to DH's parents and to the farm.
A milestone… ours is now officially an old car.
Huxley's cousin L, Bobby, DH, Huxley
L riding on Bobby
Huxley riding on Bobby holding the reins and grinning at dusk
That 15 foot tree being lit by the construction crew, here pretending to be on break.
Real candle light on the tree and a festive decoration
The Star and it's reflection on the ceiling
Camera swinging
Getting wild and doing camera tossing a blog about it
and flickr
The four-legged beauties
After the misty-drizzle-ride and just in time before the rain really started.
Now, at home, lazy and getting dinner ready. A salad, just greens, some bread, some tofu cubes. Light fare. Tomorrow? Relaxing, playing, dinner out and folding laundry, cleaning up and pretending that we're on vacation (huh… what's that? says any mother…)
The Day After
Cleaning, shopping, cooking, family, festooning, breakfast in bed (brought to us by Huxley), two nights in a row up until 2:30 am, Santa eating his cookies, gifts wrapped, gifts unwrapped, dinning room decorated, flowers on the table, the cat almost catching the hamster, home-canned pears with chocolate sauce and ice cream and whipping cream, a large snowman built and now melted, my mothers 50 year-old wedding dishes used, gifts of love and fun for everyone, a new camera for me, 15 pairs of socks for DH, Santa visited, hugs and kisses, an allergy reaction by DH to the fibres of the linen from the couch (the only downer, and something we must change).
Today driving to DH's parents, lunch, stockings, white elephant gifts. Then to the farm and the horses, a raclette dinner, a sleepover with a 15 foot tree, real candles, riding, visiting, coming home.
TTFN!
Enjoy the festive season.
Thank you for stopping bye, for reading, for participating, for inspiring.
Love and Peace to Y'all!
Festooning in Action
We did some festooning with the little one… but first he helped me create some wonderful "Fliegenpilze" red-white mushrooms. I made some salt-dough, we cut out the 'shrooms and today at the studio I painted them.
I used organza ribbon that has been left over from when I did Huxley's birth announcement. I like the way mushrooms look, and I will use them as little gifts for Huxley's friends at school, and as packaging enhancements for my cookies. I also just "absolutle" adore anything with red and white polka dots and mushrooms. But it has to be bright red and clean, pristine white.
a bit of a staging with an old gocco-print of an angel, used in 2002 as a show invitation, this year, some of them reworked by my husband as his client christmas cards. (I don't think any of them read this, so I can disclose it here)
A bit more nostalgia. A 1996 or so fibreart experiment "coiling" gone wild. I'd used a wooden garland as my core and chenille yarn as my wrapping. Since then, every christmas it hangs by the door until christmas eve, when a carrot gets inserted, because, hey, I'm sure it's obvious, but it's Rudolf's feed sack!
Another art piece that only comes out for the winter season is a reverse-applique snowman picture that I did some years ago. These "Organzas" used to be part of my greeting card lines, a business that I had for about 5 years and gave up around the time when Huxley was born 4 1/2 years ago.
Speaking of the sweet little one… by chance, I put him up against the growth chart today and noticed that last year I had happened to do it on exactly December 15th as well. He's grown 6 1/2 inches in this past year. No wonder I can stroke his hair so much easier now.
We just returned from a Christmas tree procuring expedition now, but IKEA, where we've been getting them for the past 5 years where already sold out. I guess this year, we won't be getting a cheap one. Dang… but we never get it before now, as I insist on our tradition of putting it up on the afternoon of the 24th. So tree-searching we will go.
Zooming in
Studio details in visuals from this past week:
itty-bitty-batiked piece of paper, done a while ago, will be incorporated into current canoe series
newly reverse batiked boats awaiting sewn details
detail of sewing on one larger canoe paper piece
ditto, finally learned to do them french knots… an error I had made was to point the needle towards the surface, i.e. wrap towards the hole, instead of away from it….
Playing around with painting and pencil drawing on paper
making it more raw
paste paper on japanese paper, textural, rich, decadent… to be used with canoes
noro scarf, like so many others, except in seed stitch, my favourite
love the blending of colours, more mottled, and less defined rows than doing it the other way, i.e. in a rib pattern
another section
the finished scarf, 4 balls total of noro used. I'm in love with it, sadly, nobody so far has commented on it… but I love it, love the colours, the feel, the texture, just everything.
Starting a completely new series of works, on paper, for framing, lower price point, for world domination (grin)
blurry, by intention, so they're protected….
details, pieces are worked on ancient (at least 60 year old paper, once used to house archival photographs at the Toronto archives. They threw out this lovely ledger-sized book last year, so I snatched it up.
What do you think… you like? I want to do some every week, because it's like DH said, if I do another 50 of them, I'll become very proficient.