Hello,
I sure am enjoying the wonders of summer. I do not grow tomatoes as the squirrels always take a bit out before I harvest, but my friend Betty and her husband Dave do and they kindly share.

 

I spent a day with Liz and her neighbor and we did Shobori in Black. The tee shirts came out great.   My dyed stuff is  in the washer at the moment.
Julie Booth was the instructor for the Textile Artist stitch club this week. We are only working with the blanket stitch this week in black and white. We all drew numbers and used her chart to determine our parameters. Mine Format was circular with the layout to be scattered with thick lines that were jagged. I am still working on this one.

 

Progress Report: Golden Garden This work is 32.5″ X 45.5″ . I added the buttons to the center of the applique yellow circles at the end of the week before finishing it.  All  the   base fabrics but one are   ones . I hand altered in some fashion.     

 

Many are from different classes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monkey Priest Mayan Dancer Series   

I am making slow progress on this fellow.   I also decided to call these new ones dancers because of the new background fabric.

 

 

 

Flag Play Susan challenged us to do flags this week. I decided to do the work on interfacing and draw/paint with water soluble crayons and pencils as I have never really explored these before. I am learning a new skill and I like the little challenge.

New work After finishing Golden Garden I am moving onto a new piece here.  The birds are wool with a felted chest of white.

 

 

 

Squares a Dancing I now have 126 square for this project. I am still coming up with different ways to develop circular patterns

 

 

 

 

 

Childhood Memories-  The McElhinney Farm  II

The garden was as imports for the successful running of the farm as the animals and field s were.  Grandmother Ester loved Zinnia’s and always grew then from seeds of the previous years flowers at the east end of the garden. It was fertilizer ed with manure form the chicken house so the garden was always bountiful. Grandmother grew two species of tomatoes- reds and golden ones. She said the golden ones were less acid. Another memory of food was summer of lunches. Grandmother told us in the morning if we were going to have corn for lunch so when she rang the big bell mounted on the gate post in the door yard we knew what to do. You could hear the bell from a long way off and we would come running to the machine shed. Behind the shed was the corn field . Grandfather Merit planted seed corn in the first eight rows to fool the raccoons and it worked. We knew to go into the field and count eight rows in before we started picking. We were to pick as many ears as we wanted plus one for Grandmother and two for Grandfather. We then shucked the corn and carried it back to the house. After handing our corn to Grandmother were she put it in the boiling water. We went to the basement to wash up and then returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table. The lunch was the fresh corn with as much butter as one wanted along with as many tomatoes and ice tea too. It was great and it is still one of my favorite summer lunches. She also grew beans, peas and onions as well as other vegetables..
I really did not have choirs at the farm but I was often asked to gather eggs. I did not mind that job too much with the exception of one hen. I though of her as the “Mean Pecker” because she always peck my hand when I slipped it under her to get the egg. I often skipped her nest and let grandmother get extra eggs from her the next day. Grandmother’s egg money went for fabric and other extra’s she wanted.
Bailing hay was a big event at the farm, Grandfather would watch the weather and when conditions were right he would cut the clover. After it had dried it was raked into rows and the neighboring framers showed up. They came with their trackers and hay wagons and the many jobs were divided up. Gene and I always wanted to help. They never seemed to find a job for me and I was sent back and forth from the field to the barn and back again before I was told to go help Grandmother. I was in tears when I got to the house” Gene is littler and younger and they let him help,” I lamented. Grandmother gently explained to me that it was a case of the men not feeling that they relieve themselves without embarrassment.
I remember when the phone line was added to the McElhinny Farm. It was a party line and their ring was two longs and a short. But one also heard all the other rings when the line was in use. I was a bit scandalized one day when I came in to find Grandmother listening to a neighbors conversation. Dad pulled me aside and we a talk about being judgmental of others . He told me to think of two reasons why she might do that and then empathized with why a person might be doing an action before I judged their actions. That idea of thinking of the reasoning for actions of others, served me well through out my life.

I will be away next week on Thursday so there will be no entry  as I am off to deliver a treadle sewing machine to an Amish family.

Keep Creating

Carol