needing color

Here’s another pic I took last summer. I have no idea what kind of flower it is, I took it in my neighbors garden, but I think it was growing outside the veggie beds so it could be a wild flower of some sort. I like it though, its different and it gives life a splash of color! It rained pretty good on Monday and its supposed to rain again today. You can see the effects slowly appearing, the grass is turning greener, buds are swelling on the trees, the sun feels a little warmer. I even noticed some of the sedum in my front yard greening up!

Last night I laced up another handful of flowers. I had intended on working on leaves, but I was in the lacing mood so I went with it. Tonight I do intend on locking myself in the bead room to make leaves or construct what I have already. That’s the plan anyway, we’ll see what actually happens.

seedlings

Here’s a pic of the seedlings. Most are doing really well. Everything has sprouted except the columbine flowers and the egg plant. I’m a bit bummed about the egg plant b/c I was really looking forward to trying that out. So if they don’t work this time around I might try again in a week or two. The squashes are taking off, and the tomatoes look very happy. The coleus are still really small little guys, but they’re growing and I’m excited to have a bunch. For lack of a better idea I’m going to put a bunch of them in the front yard.

M gave me the challenge of finishing a quarter of my pile of unfinished flowers before picking up more colors and making more unfinished flowers. At first she said half, but I finagled it down to a quarter. So every night this week I’ve been lacing flowers and I think I’m close to having a quarter of them laced. I might be just under, but its a guess-timate, so close enough. A couple more flowers to lace, and a handful of more leaves are on the agenda for the rest of the week. Then this weekend we’re dedicating to house stuff. I have paint colors picked out for the guest bedroom. And I’m going to start cleaning up and then ripping out the front yard. It’ll look worse before it gets better I’m sure, but I’m excited. Hopefully it won’t rain!

kitten attack

They look all cute and playful here, kitties playing in, on, and around the box. This weekend my seedlings had they’re first kitten attack! Saturday morning I went downstairs to check on the baby seedlings. They have been planted for a week now and most have sprouted. The damage wasn’t too bad, three kitty footprints through the plastic and into the soil. I think the culprit was surprised to be somewhere they hadn’t been before (and knew they shouldn’t be), so they didn’t hang around up there for long. There was no digging and nothing was knocked over. Surprisingly no seedlings were squished, the zucchinis got the brunt of the weight and they’re big seedlings anyway so I’m not worried.
This was a nice weekend. We intended to be more productive than we actually were. But we did watch some movies and I worked on some flowers. I made enough leaves for 4 bouquets, and laced up those flowers plus 3 more single flowers. Sometime during the week I’ll do some construction and make a few more leaves and I’ll have a whole nother batch to show off.

lollygaggers

Apparently it is the week before the official start of baseball season.  I’ve noticed some pre-season games on the tube but what I’ve really noticed is that they’re showing all the good baseball movies on TV this week.  After finding out that both Chris and CP hadn’t seen Bull Durham before, there was no discussion to be had….that’s what we watched tonight.  Bull Durham is probably my favorite baseball movie, although there are some close runner ups… Field of Dreams, the Sandlot, and even Major League.  Still even with all those and more baseball movies out there, Bull Durham tops the cake.  It has the best and most quotes and one liners out of all the movies.  Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins, and Susan Surandon are hilarious and full of chemistry.  Best of all the main character is the catcher.  I played softball for maybe 10 years, and most of those I was a catcher.  Not that I could totally relate to Kevin Costner, but I did think a lot of the same things about my crazy pitchers.  At one point I think I even called one of them “Meat” a couple times, the reference was lost on them, but thats ok.  We also tended to be Lollygaggers, and that part in the movie always makes me smile.

Skip: You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!
Larry: Lollygaggers!
Skip: Lollygaggers.

I don’t watch a lot of baseball any more, I used to have the W. Sox on in college while I studied.  Now we watch when we catch them on.  This year I’m really hoping to go up to Chicago to catch a game.  Doesn’t matter if they’re no good, it’s fun to just hang out at the ball park.

Dzogchen

Some of you may or may not know that Chris has a gift with the guitar. He’s been in numerous bands, but ever since we’ve moved away from Chicago he’s had a solo band. Some may have heard his The Ash and the Red project, some pretty heavy metal by my standards and very technical. Lately his interests have changed, the idea of simplicity in the notes but not in the sound has intrigued him and ultimately he has created a new project out of it.

Dzogchen pronounced “zo-jen,” is the name of the new band. Dzogchen is a term from Tibetan Buddhism that fits very well with this meditative zen metal. Songs are shorter, but have the same powerful intensity to them that is very much Chris’s style. They seem to flow naturally from him with ideas popping into his head constantly, but best of all he’s having fun. And that truly shows in these songs. The songs can be heard on his myspace page, http://www.myspace.com/thedzogchen keep in mind the software for myspace is not the greatest. If it interests you send him an email and he sends out cd’s for free.

egg plant?

In my list of seeds planted you may or may not have noticed egg plant. Sort of a different choice at least for me, considering I’ve never cooked with or even eaten eggplant. So what is it doing there? Last year my neighbor planted it in his garden, I’m not sure he ever ate the fruit, but I did notice how pretty the plant itself was. Here is a picture of the unique little flowers. The foliage is pretty too. So my thoughts are the egg plant seedlings will go into on of the planters I’ll have around the patio. If I get some fruit out of it I guess I better find a good recipe. That shouldn’t be too hard though, they use eggplant a lot on the Food Network.

Bead update, construction continuing on project flower. Thoughts actually went to what shape/color leaves I should make soon.

starting garden

Last week was a whirlwind that left me not wanting to blog.  Today is Monday and the start of a new week.  This weekend was a ton of fun, and productive.  My parents and brother came down and I cooked a really yummy dinner on Saturday night.  They got to meet Mira and the two kitties had lots of attention.  They are both very squishable, Mira in particular b/c she is quite the fat little thing.  Yesterday I made oodles of french toast for breakfast.  It was soooo good and we had tons.  I had french toast for breakfast, dinner, and then breakfast this morning.  I really like cooking, mom got me a new cook book and I think my next adventure in cooking will be to try the steak tacos! 

This weekend was also quite productive.  I got up early Saturday and planted the seeds I wanted to try and start myself.  Here’s a pic of what I’m growing by seed.  Who knows how well I’ll do, I’ve never done it by seed before.  I have a few other things I want to grow from seed, carrots and some herbs, but I’ve read its best to plant the seed directly where you want it.  So they’ll wait till it warms up a bit.  I’ll probably also buy a few other veggies from the garden center, but we’ll see what we get from this little crop.  The flowers I have in the mix will go in the front yard.  As soon as it warms up a bit we’re going to rip out some overgrown shrubs that line the front of the house.  We face north so this is a very shady area, so I plan to put in a fern garden.  We have a ton of hosta I can transplant to the area, I want to get some ferns, and then keep my eyes out for some woodland plants.  Trillium, and foam flowers are very pretty and would do well there.

Here is also a picture of what it looks like right after planting the seeds.  If all goes well and things grow, I’ll show progress pics here. 

Mom and I also worked on some photography.  A deadline is approaching this week and so we took a ton of pictures.  One of them ought to work and then once this is checked off my list it’ll feel great!  I have a bunch of small flowers that need to be finished up, instead I spent all afternoon yesterday working on a project flower.  I’m enjoying these more and more.  You’d have thought I’d have gotten more done, but construction was taking longer than expected.  And I was having a hard time making decisions.  My burst of creativity resulted in plans for two other project flowers.  I have a feeling I’ll be working on these until one of my butt kicking friends whips me in shape to work on the smaller ones! 

MIA

Here’s another picture from our trip.  It might be my favorite one, even though it was taken inside the car while we passed.  The Owl Creek winery was a fun little drive to get to.  Small bumpy country roads with crazy turns and dips and hills.  We followed small signs to find the little gem.  When driving back to the lodge we turned a corner and both Chris and I saw this tree at the same time.  We both commented on how it was a cool old oak tree, and I quickly snapped two pics.  This was the better of the two. 

I think this tree helped inspire my burst of creativity last week.  It made me think of a lot of things and helped me realize there are few more things that need to be added to my list.  I’ll go into more details as time goes by and as I find time for the new things on the list.  =0)

I hope you enjoy the Old Oak as much as we did, while I’m MIA this week.

Style

First I want to announce that both our kitties are now bug free and healthy. They are both healthy and happy to be off medication.

I realized I have been talking a lot about being inspired to bead, but I don’t really have anything finished to show from this inspiration. The majority of it is still in doodle stages, I’ve made petals for a few but nothing constructed. They’re growing, just not ready to show themselves yet. This is a flower I made last week right before our trip. I used this photo as inspiration. My intentions were to really truly try and copy this flower…but my style has dictated otherwise. Originally this was going to be a larger flower, I had every intention of going that route. And while it ended up having more petals and layers than my normal flowers it is about the same size. I’m not a bead counter, I find it tedious. So when I start to eyeball the size of an approximate petal the size that I made was the one natural to my hands, eyes, and brain. Large flowers use more beads, get very heavy, and are not my taste.

In the past I’ve read threads on forums discussing how eventually a person will develop their own style. You can look at a flower, well usually they say jewelry, and know the artist who made it. I’m not sure I’m to this point in the beaded flower world, but I’m getting there. I have distinct finishing techniques that I don’t see on other people flowers. The size of my flowers is often smaller than others. This has pluses and minuses, details and shading can be harder to make look natural, but then to me several smaller flowers together look nicer than one large. And possibly one of the larger differences is that I don’t often try to make a flower exactly how it exists in nature. And when I do it doesn’t ever look like what it is supposed to. I don’t think this flower above looks anything like the one from Mom’s flower pot last summer. The shape is similar, colors are similar…but very different. I try to take the ideas of shading from nature. I think its amazing that a flower knows just how to shade itself to attract pollinators. From searches that I have done and books that I own the majority of beaded flowers out there are based on natural flowers. Many are done wonderfully and realistically. But I think this sets me apart and is part of the definition of my style. Granted this definition is in no way set in stone, I’m definitely still working on it, and it will always be evolving. I’m just happy to see that I’m starting to see and realize that I do have my own distinct style in the world of beads.

This weekend we’re heading to Chicago to make the rounds. I’m bringing beadwork, but probably won’t have much time. Next week I’ll have more time, but I’m not sure how much I can dedicate to beadwork. I have somethings on the list that have deadlines looming.

bursting

Much like the flower bud in the pic I’m about to burst!  =0)  This was the not effect I was expecting, I knew I was re-energized, but last night I had such an overflow of ideas my hands couldn’t move fast enough to keep up.  My fatal mistake was actually going into the bead room to work.  I only had an hour or so and I went to the bead room to look for just the right shade of blue.  I came out with literally over 10 ideas for flowers.  Many were partial ideas, color combos that need to be put together, or a style that needs a color palette.  But at least two large flowers are fully formed idea in my head right now.  One of these will be either turned into a table piece or formed into a large bouquet.  The other might be loose but always shown off with just the right accents. 
Now I’m restless, thinking of color combos at work and helpless to actually feel beads in my hands.  Whats more frustrating is that work is horribly slow today.  So for the tenth time today I’ve sorted out the game plan for after work.  It consists of going to the Vet to see if the kittens are parasite free, coming home and cooking a frozen pizza, and going into the bead room to work on the first flower to fully visualize itself last night.