antique treasure, gallery show, dunes

I found this over the weekend (Michigan City Antique Mall) and am still bouncing a bit. It really helped put a smile on my face. I put labels on it.For our Valentine's weekend Hubby and I played. We went out to Brauer on Saturday (Valparaiso University). If you're in the area, this is a show well worth seeing. It'll be there another month. Paintings by Richard Loving. African art and photos also in the galleries. But the paintings--they just were amazing.We headed back into Indiana on Sunday, first to the antique mall where I found my treasure, and then on to Lubeznik Galleries by the lakefront. We saw the end of the show of art from the McDonald's corporate collection. There was a wonderful of display of photos from the 70s--culture at a particular set of bars on the north side of Chicago, full of famous and not-so-famous faces. And two children's exhibits--always our favorites. One was photos by the kids in the Boys and Girls clubs and the other Black History month posters. It is amazing what children see.

Then we drove out to the Dunes to blow some fresh air into our lives. The snow was piled very high both on and off shore. I took this photo of pack ice at the water's edge from the road with a strolling couple in it for scale. I don't think I've ever seen the pack ice this high.This week has been a big melt off. We may hit record warm temperatures today (60F!). At first the temps hovered around freezing--snow would melt during the day and everything would be wet--and then freeze at night. Very slippery, especially when it all began to melt again. No morning walks. Now I'm dodging puddles on my walks, enjoying the "warm." This is kind of "Indian Spring" like we get "Indian Summer" here each year in the fall (Indian Summer is an unseasonably warm period of a few days that follows the first hard frost in the autumn). Winter will soon have us in it's grip again. But for now I'm enjoying no scarves, shawls, mufflers, mittens, hats and boots!

Lake Michigan in Winter

Brrrr, it was chilly looking out over Lake Michigan on Valentine's Day. We did not venture down to the beach as these brave souls did. The wind was from the west, along the shore, and it looked a bit like a wind tunnel down there.
Another view of the lake. The ice here is dangerous, although when I was young I regularly wandered out on it. It's often floating on water and you never know when you'll find a thin pocket.
I was fascinated by the pearly sheen on the snow. The temperature and light were just right.
Birds were active here. The sheen was much more visible in person--but only from one direction. If you looked back, it was gone.
Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth often talks about edges and I found myself contemplating the edges made by the snow and ice.
It was very good to get outside for a bit.

We also visited Lubeznik Center for the Arts for their new shows, The New Moderns and Seeing the Light. I hadn't been excited about them, but I was very happy we went. I learned a lot, saw a lot and left enlightened.

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.

Spring!

We've been having some lovely warm weather here and we took advantage of it on Sunday to head to the Indiana dunes. We took a long walk up and down the beach and found some rocks to pick up and a piece of beach glass.

We also found several beach spirits, which we left. (Beach spirits are rocks in which we see faces. The most striking this weekend had two round crinoids (fossilized worms) for eyes, a canted nose and a mouth even more to the side. He looked very much like the face of a Hopi Kachina or art from Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest.)

We both spied the stone above at the same time and both saw the same thing--a forest. I mentioned making a beaded bezel for it but Steve thought that would be too much hard against hard and would clash. I had been thinking dull beads not shiny, but I saw his point and think he was right (he usually is). He suggested cloth or fiber of some sort and we sat a long time at the beach (away from the water--near the water it was like standing by an open freezer door) as I contemplated the reeds and grasses and wished I knew a bit more about basket making.

After we left the beach we went to a great bead shop, Bluestem Beads in Chesterton, Indiana. There I found a spool of hemp cording and brought it home to work a bezel for the stone. (Dinner was VERY late.)

I used knotless netting (aka detached buttonhole, not nalbinding) to create my bezel and just some knots for the neck cord. I wasn't sure of the differences, if there were any, between the techniques, so I spent some fun time doing some research. The terms are often used interchangably and it does seem to me that knotless netting and detached buttonhole are the same, but nalbinding is definitely a different technique. BTW, visit here for some incredible knotless netting artworks by Renie Briskin Adams.

There are no glues or anything permanent (or damaging) holding the stone in place (and, as one site pointed out, the cord can be loosened, unlooped and reused--not that I'd want to do that with this cord, it was pretty stiff stuff and I made those knots and stitches tight, but, still, it's a thought.)

I wore my new necklace yesterday and felt very good all day indeed.