- Mountains or beach?

Retrospective (7/22/2016)

Patch #201 Tuna Tower

Original Post

My belated patch for July 8th is a play on Don's assemblage Beach or Mountains, which I first wrote about two years ago (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2014/06/good-very-eye-imho.html?m=1). 

I've turned it around to ...

One way or the other, this question has been asked of boyfriends, and then of potential spouses for our daughters. For many years, the "correct" answer was "beach." However, once we moved to the Texas Hill Country (1000 feet closer to heaven), the answer changed to "yes" because we've come to love both (okay, Don's always loved the mountains, but now I've learned to love the land, too).

Around the same time as Don was making his Beach or Mountains assemblage ...

I was embarking on Jude Hill's Considering Weave. There I met an amazing group of Kindred Spirits who inspire me to this day. Mo at It's Crow Time was working on an illustration of Old Man Crow's music that included a lock and key. So I sent her a bit of rusted cloth, much like this one ...

made while rusting the key for Don's assemblage ...

She in turn used that bit of rusted cloth in The Key Book last year (https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/the-key-book/).

Perfect, I thought, I'll use my bit of cloth for a Remember patch (at last). Except ... there was the comment Mo made about how tricky it can be to stitch on rust ... and the size wasn't quite right for the Remember 2016 patches.

So I drew a new, smaller key, colored it with Inktense pencils, carefully lettered the words with a Pitt pen, and stitched a single strand of floss around the edges.

Oh, and there's this ... when I made the Inktense tulip yesterday, some color bled. Not a lot, but not intended. Today, I took advantage of that tendency, letting the colors bleed, as they did in the original rust cloth. And truly, the Inktense was much easier to stitch through than rust.

So, Patch #190 Mountains or Beach? has found its way to the original July 8th post.

As for today, I'm wondering how I might remember this ...

exceptional tuna sashimi at A-Tan Bistro in San Marcos, Texas. Gotta love it ... and the colors!

Addendum: The Key Book by Mo was gifted to me in late 2017 ...  words fail me
http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2017/11/letting-go-of-dream.html