Spring weekend--no stitching content

What is it that makes a meal with friends so much fun? I got together Saturday with two good friends for our annual lunch and we had a great time. We didn't discuss anything earth shattering-I can't even tell you where the conversation ranged- mostly just a general catch-up about husbands, kids and pets, weddings and grandkids. We went to Taj in Chesterton for wonderful Indian food. I left feeling very happy. There is nothing better than friends.

Before meeting my friends for lunch, I snuck into Pat Winter's class at the Chesterton Art Center. It was a chance for me to drop off my "pieces of friendship" puzzle pieces and (mostly) a way for me to get to see more of Pat's lovely work in person. I envied the ladies in her class--she had a large group of lovely ribbons for them to select from and wonderful project kits. And a nice selection of her work on display for inspiration.

On the way home I swung by Bluestem Beads (also in Chesterton) and some of my favorite shops (Jo-Ann's, Catherine's clothing, and Borders). The weather was perfect and I drove down the highway with the windows down and the radio blasting an oldies station.

The latter was a bit of a mistake--some of those oldies have staying power and they stayed, rattling around in my head! It got rather annoying to have songs I never liked in the first place stuck in my head, playing over and over and over. Last night I put on the sound track to Chocolat to help and it did help me shake the oldies out--but then Steve got the movie theme music stuck in his head!

On Sunday the weather was still great and we went to Bailly by the dunes. At this time of year, we like to go every week if we can. The first picture here is a mass of Spring Beauties (out of focus--it was just windy enough). There were Spring Beauties blooming everywhere, now accompanied by purple violets and yellow violas, pink phlox and deep red trilliums. It made a lovely show.

The trout lilies, toothwort and bloodroot were already done blooming. The May apples are huge and have buds but no blooms yet. In the center of this green photo is a Jack-in-the-Pulpit (blurry, sorry, that breeze again. I punched up the color a bit to help make him more visible but couldn't fix the blur). They're hard to see but once our eyes picked out the three arrow-shaped leaves and the smoothness of the pulpit hood, then we began to see them everywhere. More this year than ever before, perhaps because of all of the rain.

The path became impassibly muddy (I hadn't thought of all the rain during the week and didn't wear appropriate shoes, duh!), so we didn't go the whole way to the homestead. We still saw plenty of lovely spring flowers.

The Jacks were the most amazing. We saw large ones and small, alone or in clumps (although they looked rather antisocial, and stood with their backs to each other when in groups).

This last photo is the only one I got that wasn't blurred. Steve spotted it, not me. It's a log in a stream with interesting leaves trapped underneath. The mud's settled in patterns and the leaves look like they're becoming skeletonized. I love the layers of shadow. It's the only photo I was happy with.

I did do some stitching in the evenings and when I get photos, I'll post them.

not just stitching

Just to prove I don't just sit and stitch, here's a photo I took Saturday at Bailly near the Indiana Dunes. While we know the Bailly homestead and the area was occupied and farmed for years, we always attribute the garden flowers (iris, hyacinths, Narcissus) to Mrs. Bailey. So these are Mrs. Bailly's Hyacinths. We also saw many, many of our favorite spring beauties, some early violets, trout lilies, trilliums about to bloom, and a white flower. The trout lilies' coloration was very subtle and beautiful. May apples are coming up, too.

The color gradations of the grape hyacinths were just wonderful and, of course, the photo doesn't capture it. It does capture the memory of it for me.

We also changed the oil on my car Saturday (I use "we" quite loosely there--I help haul stuff to and from the garage and then sit and kibitz) and we stopped the the Century Plant which still hasn't bloomed. It's become a weekly pilgrimage. It was cloudy all day and the rains began in the early evening.

On Sunday it rained all day. We visited my sister and her husband and my brother and his wife came up. It's really cool. We have our own show and tell. I love seeing what everyone is doing. And it's great to get feedback on ongoing projects (like my Japanese paper pieced quilt in the works).

It's been raining since Sunday--Monday night snow was predicted but I haven't seen any. One evening I went through a pile of books. Found some things to discard or recycle (yay!). I found my wildflower field guide (which is why I began on this pile) and learned the white flower I saw Saturday was bloodroot (I thought it was that or hepatica, but I wasn't sure). I haven't picked up a needle since Sunday. Maybe tomorrow night.

TIF-still in April...

I've had the first band here (band #4 overall) done for a while but couldn't get the scan transfered here. (I've learned all new usb drives have software added and our older computer at home does not like this software. (DIRE warnings on what would happen if we tried to install it.) So, I'm back to borrowing my hubby's drive and being extremely careful with it. My beloved little pink drive was officially declared toast today by our IT staff. I'm very sad.)

I added more to #5 after I changed the plan. I used one of Laura Wasilowski's overdyed perle cottons and some silver braid from Kreinik and went wild. It was a lot of fun.

And here's the start of #6. I'm feeling a bit of time pressure so rather than finding textile paints, setting things up, painting and letting the Lugana dry, I used some fabric markers I had handy to block in the general areas of grass, trunk, leaves and sky. It's not as delicate as the painting. Then I pulled and rewove the threads and my plan worked quite well.

I should have put it on a frame but I was working with a small piece of fabric and managed okay. A frame would have been a bit easier, though. Now I've started hemming with a nun's stitch along the folded edge. I folded it because the Lugana's quite loose and I didn't trust just a plain edge stitch to hold it.

Since scanning it, I've gotten about halfway around the edge with the nun stitch. Once that's done, I have a more stable edge to work with for mounting it to a small stretcher frame if I choose to do so.

I think I'll make one big tree in front with a couple behind it. Since taking this class, I've been really looking closely at trees! I thought of a way where I could add more dimension to the front tree by bring a making a branch to the back. It has a ways to go.

We finally are having spring here. We spent Sunday at the Dunes area and saw more wildflowers than ever before (we've gone every spring for the wildflowers for about thirty years now). We saw a couple dozen Jack-in-the-Pulpits! I've never ever seen more than one or two. And thousands of spring beauties. Plus many colors of violets, phlox, toothwort, trilliums (red), hepatica, and lots of plants we don't know. Fields of Mayapples, too, just about to flower.

And Mrs. Bailey's Narcissus. The place where we walk is the Bailly Homestead. The wildflowers are all along the walk between the parking lot and the homestead. And near the very old house are Mrs. Bailly's flowers. This year the grass was full of spring beauties, too. They used to be a bit closer to the house and had bigger blooms: narcissus and hyacinth. Ages ago a docent told us that Mrs. Bailly had planted them in the 1840s. I doubt it's true, but they're still around here and there and we make a point of looking for them each year--they were abundant this year. It was glorious.