Easter revisited

We experienced our St Louis family's Easter from afar ...

but consoled ourselves by having our Austin daughter visit with her family ...

and a few friends ...

15 adults and 7 children in all (one at 9 months old was too young to pose) ...

and definitely too young to draw ...

or hunt Easter eggs with the big kids ...

There are three more babies expected to arrive before next Easter, at which time G ...

will be able to help his little sister find eggs and bunny tracks ...

Wascally wabbit

Getting ready for an Easter gathering.

Picking mealy blue sage and grasses for the tables ...

Dyeing blown eggs in a vinegar/water steam bath with an old silk scarf (red), mealy blue sage (green-ish egg on the right), red cabbage (blue-ish egg to the left) and lots of onion skins (rich browns) ...

Our porch garden (mostly) defanged ...

with the very spiny chollas replaced by less hazardous succulents ...

and the converted chaise planted with a second crop of herbs and lettuces ...

One of Don's woodplay efforts landed in a planter ...

Speaking of Don ...

I'm thinking our guests tomorrow will be delighted ...

Gathering momentum

More pins are heading out into the world.

One for Dana in Washington who spoke of cerulean blue skies, and also wrought this study in blue for Dee Mallon's Hearts for Charleston

https://deemallon.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/hearts-for-charleston-dana/

The second for Joyce in Virginia, who loves green and natural dye colors. I confess I thought back to our former home in the Virginia Tidewater as I stitched hers ...

And a third for Jude, who lives on Long Island where I grew up 50 years ago. It was stitched on vintage linen from one of my mom's tablecloths, dyed with windfall lichen from the Texas Hill Country, and backed with more tablecloth linen dyed with indigo ...

I'm sending it with a notecard picked up in Santa Fe, New Mexico after seeing Gustave Baumann's 1920s woodcuts in a museum ...

And as I was thinking back 50 years to growing up on Long Island, this quote seemed timely ...

Although I confess to still feeling this way more often than not (with deep regret that the distinctive voice of Amy Krouse Rosenthal, author of the delightful children's book Little Pea, is now gone from the world).

Wouldn't you think?

Addendum: Link to peace pin arrival here ...

http://handstories.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/peaces-pieces.html

It seems like I've made enough of the peace pins that I should be able to stitch them free-hand. Or at least with minimal hand-lettering.

So as I worked on a pin for Hazel, I decided to use a white marking pen to give just a hint of line on madder dyed linen ...

with blue and green to go along with her recent posts ...

http://handstories.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/in-search-of-enchantment.html

Except, as is often the case, what's in my mind doesn't always translate smoothly onto cloth ...

Fortunately, I have one of Hazel's boats close at hand for encouragement so the third time was the charm ...

backed with a bit of indigo shibori ...

and now ready to sail away.

The best laid plans

Fiona Dempster posted recently about how she plans ...

http://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2017/04/planning-and-preparations.html

As always, I loved seeing the process. And if you've been with me a while, you know that Fiona's process has been inspirational in the past ...

http://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2015/04/poppy-progression.html

Her use of upper case lettering within undulating lines fascinated me, ultimately leading to my own work on Hearts for Charleston ...

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2015/07/hearts-for-charleston-one-step-closer.html

Which is all by way of saying how I came to try replicating that technique whilst making a peace pin for Fiona ...

But in the end, it just didn't feel right ...

So when this beautiful piece of Poppies arrived, I found myself going in a different direction ...

Soft gray linen with a variegated floss called "soot" ...

 that reminded me of Fiona's letterpress post ...

http://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2016/08/piles-of-peace_28.html

Backed with madder ... all part of a call and response ...

where the plan evolved into something better.

Waiting

The question every mother at 37 weeks and holding asks: "Are we there yet?"

I did manage to eke a pillow out of my unsuccessful crib quilt adventure ...

It too is now waiting for the arrival of G's baby sister ...

Soon, but never soon enough.

Springtime joys

Life has been busy what with trips to Austin and getting the yard ready for an Easter gathering.

Peace pins are always on my to do list, but when we're visiting G it's hard to find the time to do focused work. So I gathered up more shirt plackets to work on a cloth I started earlier this year ...

I figured it would be the perfect project for G's "rest" time, when he usually falls asleep watching me stitch ...

except I didn't anticipate this complication ...

Oh well.

In addition to weeding and rock hauling, I took some time for a couple of picture walks. 

These nerve rays are a favorite, with their boxy, 4-sided buds ...

that open into a spectacular composite flower ...

I still don't know the name for this tiny white wildflower, but it's everywhere right now ...

as is the antelope horn milkweed ...

this one sprawled out in a heart shape, just waiting for the Monarchs to come ...

Our floodplain has been scoured down to the bedrock in places ...

but when flooding water encounters an obstacle like this poverty weed ...

seeds drop out of suspension and establish new bluebonnet beds ...

Now we mimic nature and create our own water brakes (breaks?) to preserve trails ...

and keep the driveway from washing out ...

which in turn creates safe haven for grasses like this little blue stem ...

And if the water is rough on the floodplain, the lace cactus just hang tough ...

I do love cactus blooms, like this horse crippler ...

which are gone in a day ...

Likewise the prairie nymphs ...

Fortunately, the dewberry flowers leave good things in their wake ...

This one's almost ready ...

My fingers fairly itched to pick it!

And here's what's coming next: Mexican hats, aka thimble flowers ...

Aptly named, wouldn't you say?

Forgiveness redux

This is how I began yesterday's post entitled Forgiveness:

Three more peace pins have fallen from my fingers, the a-sides all hand-dyed cochineal linen (which is not as pink as it looks here, but the color was saturated enough to give my camera fits) ...

with the b-sides also reflecting each person's named peaceful colors ...

Clockwise from the upper left, indigo blue and rose for Stephanie in California, any and all colors for Vicky in Washington, and wild rose colors for Suzanna in California.

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There was more, but I did the blog-equivalent of hitting "Reply to all" instead of "Reply to sender" ... I inadvertently hit "Publish" instead of "Save to draft."

So it was that some of you saw the unedited, first draft version of what appears below (with a tip of the hat to Ann Lamott's classic Bird by bird, which introduced me to the notion of "sh---y first drafts"). I didn't realize my error until later in the day when comments started to arrive in my inbox. I quickly rectified my error by reverting the post to draft mode and sent explanatory emails to the commenters. Then looked at the stats and realized the post had been seen rather more widely than I might have hoped.

Ah well.

Here's the more circumspect version of my less-than-perfect first draft:

Back in my teaching days I attended an amazing training program called the Eastern Virginia Writing Project (one of 200-some sites in the federally-funded National Writing Project). The two month Summer Institute was designed to give us the tools to become better teachers of writing by taking us through the recursive writing process of plan, draft, revise, edit ... repeat as needed, then publish (cue irony here).

Anyway, one of many prompts was to write about forgiveness. I liked the resulting piece well enough to revisit it in one of my earliest blog posts entitled Food is Love (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2009/08/food-is-love.html). 

Long story short, I re-revisited that piece yesterday. Without going into the details this time around, I will simply say: life is recursive and being a parent never ends, even when your kids are in their thirties. The corollary to that being: the need to seek forgiveness never ends either.

And who knows, perhaps yesterday's slip was more Freudian than not. Because it turns out my daughter was among those who read the inadvertent post. Now a parent herself, she brought a new perspective to my gaffe and sent me a text message that read, "Please don't feel guilty." To which I responded, "But I do guilt so well."

So I guess I've already been forgiven ... but I'm still bringing her some cookie dough tomorrow.

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N.B. To those kindly commented yesterday, I am keeping your comments along with the original post, which will remain a draft in perpetuity (or however long Blogger exists). Thank you all, as always, for your presence here.