Happy birthday J!

From my daughter's Facebook post ...

J's birthday cake request was for Strawberry Shortcake from the book Cook-a-Doodle-Doo by Janet Stevens (a perennial read-aloud favorite when I was an elementary school librarian and now a go-to storybook with my grandkids) ...

in which the great grandson of the Little Red Hen bakes a cake with the help of his friends ...

and they all lived happily ever after ...

Homesteading

This is The Land as the Crow Flies as it stands right now (about 40" wide by 19" high) ...

Over the past few weeks it has morphed considerably from green grids of cloth weaving laid out linearly ...

to various trials at angles ...

along with a fair bit of design mending as I realized I wasn't happy with some of my fabric choices.

There was also consideration of how and where to eventually place the house ...

and how to represent the stone wall boundary lines (torn strips of linen rolled between the fingers and couched down with two strands of floss), as well as the topographic elevation contours (detached backstitch worked with two strands of variegated floss) ...

So far, so good.

Stitching the floodplain

The first part of The Land as the Crow Flies (20" high x 15" wide) has been basted down using Jude Hill's glue stitch ...

I played around by imposing an angled frame with a 4 1/2" square opening and a 5 1/2" exterior over each cloth-woven square ...

basted down the raw edges up to the inner frame dimensions ...

which is easier to see from the back ...

then cut away the excess ...

and started overlapping the pieces so they were effectively 5" to a side ...

After which I played around with different arrangements until I settled on one that represented some of the major features on the floodplain (dry creek bed channels, scoured bedrock, poverty weed patches, etc.) ...

Next up will be the greener, tree-covered part of the property, as depicted in these composite shots ...

Here's hoping I'll be as happily surprised by the results as Parker is here ...

(Seriously, I'll use any excuse to include grandkid pictures in my posts)

Process

This was my Father's Day gift to Don ...

an incomplete label that promised a piece of cloth to be finished this year.

As we flew home, I couldn't help noticing the patchwork of land and cloud shadows, so much like the vision I have for this new cloth ...

So when we got home, I walked out to the flood plain ...

taking pictures of droughted milkweed ...

the few patches of green amongst rock and dried grass ...

the sereness of it all, like a Wyeth winterscape ...

Then took a screen shot of the accumulated images, cropped and rotated it ...

comparing it to the first piece of woven cloth (in the manner of Jude Hill) ...

considered the cloth strips already assembled, made more ...

and continued ...

on and on ...

How time flies

The sock puppets were a wonderful diversion, if not exactly as I had imagined they might be ...

Boys will be boys ...

And if the weather wasn't as sunny as usual, still there is nothing better than a walk on the beach ...

Unless maybe it's a bonfire with s'mores ...

or a trip to the aquarium ...

or a dip in the pool ...

or making cookie dough (with some baked cookie dough for those who prefer such things) ...

There was even some stitching on a family sampler long in the making, now nearing its end ...

All our grandchildren together for one last picture ...

until next year.

Whimsy

Last year I decided to make sock puppets at the beach with the grandkids, after which they could put on "shows."

Logan (then 12) helped me shop for supplies: feathers, colorful foam shapes, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, glue dots, and socks (some gently used).

Unfortunately, the boys were only 3-going-on-4 years old ... too young to visualize how to put puppets together, let alone put on "shows." So this year, I decided to make the puppets myself ...

then see where G and J's 4-going-on-5 imaginations might take them.  And I don't doubt that 2-going-on-3 Jace will get in on the action, too.

Even if the whole idea goes nowhere, I must say I had a lot of fun making sea gulls ...

pelicans ...

jellyfish, rainbow sharks ...

sea horses, coquina clams ...

turtles, blue crabs ...

and whales ...

However, with any luck, there will be pictures of the puppets in action to share next week. We'll see.

A functional work in progress

I put myself on deadline so I could finish this in time to show my teenaged granddaughter when we go to the beach. Happily, the placket cloth is now usable as a shoulder bag ...

even though there are minor details to be attended to, such as substituting proper sized D-rings for the top knot (the ones I got are too wide) and managing the fringes so they don't go any farther (although I don't think that would be the end of the world, actually) ...

Overall, I'm quite pleased ...

The interior pockets are just the right size for my wallet and phone ...

while the very deep back pocket will serve well for odds and ends that get used less often ...

Best of all, I can still add stitching on the go ...

which is sure to get me some side-long looks at the airport next week!