The standing cypress flowers are going bonkers in our meadow this year. We have at least a dozen three foot tall stalks bursting with bright red flowers. The bees and hummingbirds like them too!
Bees knees
Scenes from the trail cam
It has been awhile since I’ve posted trail cam photos. Mostly they have been blurry pictures of raccoons, opossums, armadillos, cats, and the occasional bird. After some adjustment of the camera position, I am now getting less blurry snaps. Mostly.
Soft Pastels
I am loving soft pastels as sidewalk chalk! I didn’t care for them much in school, but for blending and color intensity, they knock the socks off “sidewalk” chalk. We tore little bits of foam off the packing to use for blending, which is the secret key for art on bumpy concrete.
Yes, I drew an eye. At least it is a right eye this time, as I typically default to left. I’m trying to give equal time and effort. I’d hate for an eye to feel left out. That just wouldn’t be right. Left on their own, they save face and stay right together anyway.
Experimenting more with weaving
I saw some pins on Pinterest on twining yarn around the warp threads and the string was sitting there, and the frame was sitting there, and shouldn’t I just try it? I started out going back and forth, then decided to try some random blocks of color, then since it is a washcloth anyway, tried some spirals and arcs.
I liked doing the arcs the best, especially the top white central arc, as the S twist of the twining went well with the S twist on the yarn. I don’t care for the knit look (that results from doing a S twist on one row, and a Z twist on the next), not only does it look knit, it is very stretchy in an unpleasing way for a wash cloth. The warp threads were very easy to pull through, though.
I do like that the twining covers the weft threads on the back of the work as well as the front. I also like weaving in the ends in the middle and of the work, rather than the edges. On this piece, I only wove the ends in one way, rather than going back and forth three times as I’ve done previously, so it will be interesting to see if the ends work loose.
Rock painting
We hid all our painted rocks at a local park, so we came home and painted some more. I’d seen some face rocks on Pinterest that were painted with just shades of black and white, using the natural rock as the skin tone. I tried one, but I like painting eyes better. I may try the whole face again if the right rock rolls in. I will coat these in Helmsman before we hide them.
