Artist Date

On Friday I went on a date with my friends Mary, Pinky and April.  We went to a quilt show which I blogged about here, and we also hit several garage sales.  The first garage sale we stopped at was at what used to be a plant nursery where the proprietor raised succulents.  She had these beautiful chickens running around the place free.  Aren't they gorgeous?

Here is one of her succulent plantings.  Another type of hen and chicks.  The woman seemed to enjoy showing us around her place and even gave each of us a small potted succulent for free.  I love succulents, they are so easy to care for.  She had some lovely living wreaths that she gives classes on how to make.  I didn't take a picture of them, it seemed intrusive since she does them professionally.  I want one!

I only found a few cool items in my search and the above photo shows my favorite.  It is a jar of old costume jewelry and doo dads and "stuff".  Great loot for this pirate gal!  $2.00.

Here is some of the loot laid out.  Some of these things will undoubtably make an appearance in my mixed media pieces some day. 

This was another great find.  Do you know what it is?  No, not a bottle opener.

It's a boot jack.  $1.00.  A steal! In the winter I'm always having to take my muddy boots off and this will help keep my sock toes clean.  I used to have a wooden one but my dogs chewed it up.

I've been participating in a book study group online, we are working our way through The Artist's Way by Julie Cameron.  So I have been writing my daily morning pages and doing some of the other exercises in the book.  My intention with this book is to become better focused on my art work which has been sadly lacking the past few months as my regular readers might have noticed.  When is the last time I posted any art?  Too long!  I have begun to make a bed quilt, I figured it would be a good start and maybe reduce my fabric stash by a tiny bit.  Amazing how little fabric one uses in a bed quilt if you are making a scrap quilt.

In other news, the past two or three weeks were lovely hot (but not too hot!) dry weather.  Our first for the summer which had previously been cold and cloudy.  It was glorious to be able to shed those sweatshirts and dig down into the recesses of my closet and find a pair of shorts to wear.  I actually got a little bit of tan on my legs and some callus on my feet!  I love the heat, especially here since it rarely gets truly hot.  The hottest it got was about 93 last Saturday.  This Saturday it might have gotten to 63 and rained all day.  We really needed the rain after all that heat so it was quite welcome.  My roses might put out another bloom at this rate because it is supposed to go back to warm sunny weather again once this system moves through.  I'll bet we got 2 inches of rain over the past couple of days.  Even the forest floor is damp and all the plants have washed clean and greened up and are standing tall again.  I do love Oregon.  I love my woods and fields, rain or shine.  Hopefully I will get my groove back in the studio too.  Sure I will.

Be well.

Summer waning

Dragonfly on lettuce.

Bumble bee on thistle.

Ground squirrel in Nasturtiums. 

Sunset over the Columbia river.

Summer is nearing its end.  Still having warm dry weather but, like this sunset, the summer is dimming down.

Time to start bringing the wood in.

Nothing Chainsaw man likes better than cutting firewood.  Lots of wood to keep us warm in the winter.

Stacks and piles of wood make me warm and rich feeling.  Having a big wood pile is like having money in the bank, very satisfying.

This is what will be going on here soon, burning those piles of wood.  I hope not for awhile yet, summer only just got here in this neck of the woods.

Be well.