- Land of Flood and Drought

This is what my patchplay has led to ...

a record of the rain that has fallen on our Hill Country land,
measured in one inch patches of blue ...

surrounded by patches of sunlight and sun-baked rock.

It's a far cry from my first arrangement of white linen patches back in August before I added colored linens and over-dyed the patches with Prairie Tea ...

The idea to make the cloth a record of the year's rainfall came early in October ...

Bottom third: January - April
Middle third: May and the Memorial Day floods
Top third: June - September (including 0" in July)

before the Halloween flood pushed the monthly total to 19 inches ... almost as much as the total rainfall for 2011 in the Austin area.

So the end of the cloth awaits the final rainfall for November and December ...

Hopefully not more than 12 inches

Meanwhile, I'll ponder how to back and stitch the piece while working on Christmas presents. 

- A boot for the Blanco

Detail from the assemblage described below

We had friends from Virginia visit for a week and managed to fit a lot into a very short time. The fun part wasn't just showing them around places we love, it was taking time to discover new places for ourselves, too.

One of those new places was Art on 12, a gallery in Wimberley that had escaped our notice until recently. As we wandered through, Gary overheard someone describing a project that involved decorating a Masonite boot cutout for a Blanco River Monument fundraiser. He later suggested to Don that one of his assemblages would be a perfect fit, a notion seconded by Martha and me.

On my next trip in to Wimberley this past Monday, I picked up a boot and asked when the finished product was due. "Thursday" was the answer. "This Thursday?" I squeaked.

Yikes.

Fortunately, Don was up to the challenge. He took some gnarly metal that we bought years ago from By the Bridge, the same antique store that got wiped out by the Halloween flood last month. After cutting the metal in the shape of the boot, he then cut away the paths of Cypress Creek and the Blanco River ...

The shops in Wimberley Square were represented by a wooden nine-patch, 

including two broken pieces representing the buildings destroyed in the flood ...

Note: the panorama photo warped the actual view, but By the Bridge is on the far right

He even replicated the signs that stand at the entrances to the town ...

It was nip and tuck, but the finished piece ...

By the Bridges

made it to the community center on time. And tonight we attended the artists' reception, where we discovered three silent auction bids had already been placed on Don's boot ...

Pretty cool.

- The best pickles ever ... for the record

This one is an old standby ... and when I couldn't find it right away I thought, "What will I do if I can't find it?"

So here it is, for safekeeping ...

Frozen Pickles from the Surrey House

3-4 cups thinly sliced cucumbers (food processor works best)
1/2 thinly sliced onion
1/2 thinly sliced pepper (bell, anaheim or poblano)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp celery seed

Combine and refrigerate. After 24 hours you can supposedly put them in containers to freeze, but ours have never lasted long enough to need freezing.

- Another beginning: Natural dyeing workshop, part 1

The natural dyeing workshop that I attended this past weekend did not disappoint ...

Fabrics dyed by 16 participants in Brazilwood, cochineal and madder (from left to right)

and it will take more than one post to describe it all. For now, I'm waiting on permission from the workshop leader Maura Ambrose to post images of her work.

In the meantime, here are some of my pieces fresh out of the dye pots ...

An indigo dip for "it's only RAIN" stitched last year

Prairie Tea dyed linen shirts dipped in Brazilwood and madder

after triple dipping ...

Double-dipped madder with a final dip in Brazilwood (left)
Double-dipped Brazilwood with a final dip in madder (right)

and not quite dry ...

The back of "it's only RAIN" and an indigo-dyed piece of vintage linen tablecloth
I'm especially excited about the waterline ... more on that later

This panoramic shot includes some other student work along with my first attempt at Shibori ...

My two Shibori pieces are 6th and 7th from the left, followed by a yellow linen scrap dipped in indigo
Note: the indigo vat had gotten pretty tired at the point I dipped the Shibori, which was fine by me

all done with this beautiful view in the distance ...

Texas blackland prairie in Bastrop (site of major wildfires in 2011 and last month)
with a rare bit of sun peeking through (most of the weekend was cloudy unfortunately)

- Heartbreak in Wimberley

Those of you who have been reading the blog for a while know that By the Bridge Antiques in Wimberley is a favorite, both for furnishing our home and garden, and for Don's assemblage art projects.

The building was damaged by flooding over Memorial Day, but Jill Jones and her daughter Amanda worked hard on a comeback until a second flood the day before Halloween did more damage and took away more stock than they could ever hope to replace ...

Note the purple "Wimberley Strong" flag  on the porch actually made it through the flood

Having no flood insurance, they are now trying to raise funds through this website, which has more images and information if you feel moved to contribute.

- Grass (not wool) gathering

We have friends coming to visit from Virginia, so we're fixing things up a bit and I decided to show off some of the grasses that grow on our homestead. This is the view from the kitchen window with a westering sun back-lighting the (mostly) single stems, the better to see the incredible diversity of forms ...

Our funky balsamic vinegar vases on the front porch beams needed refreshing ...

so I filled them with stems of purple top, yellow Indian grass, and little bluestem ...

"Do you think they need to be cut down a little?" Don ventured. 

"Not at all." I replied, "I want to show how incredibly tall they are."

Add caption

A bit of Lindheimer's muhly ended up on the breezeway ... 

I gathered some more love grass and just let it arrange itself ...

... at least I think it's love grass

And ended by picking out stems of switchgrass broken during the recent storm (which dropped a foot or so of rain), adding them to the dried blades Don cut last year ...

when my eye caught on Don's latest assemblage (upper left of the previous picture) not yet documented here, so I snapped one last picture ...

Time to call it a day.