resurrection fern

colorful circles in the stream of life

Stream of Life 

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day

runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. 

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth

in numberless blades of grass

and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. 

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth

and of death, in ebb and in flow. 

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.

And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment. 

                                                                     RABINDRANATH TAGORE

The ephemeral art I showed your yesterday was really just a warm up for what I want to share with you today. This is something I have been envisioning in my mind for a while now and patiently waited until autumn had worked its magic on the leaves and the weather spirits were cooperative enough to allow the leaves to not be blown away while we ( my daughter and I) worked.  My only regret is that I didn't have a larger canvas to work on but then I would have had even more difficulty photographing it unless suspended from the ceiling. Just so you understand the scale of this, the finished product occupies my entire porch table. Good thing we are not really in need of it at the moment for meals as it is just a little too fresh outdoors in the evenings.  I hope your rods and cones pasted on the back of your retina enjoy this display. I know I thoroughly enjoyed working on last weekend.  It fits so well with the week of autumn color.                                                                                                                                          

So hard to pick a favorite circle. I think every time I look at it I change my mind but really I love each and everyone and they remind me so much of all of you out there who make my life so colorful and bright.  

Lastly here is my little contribution to the week of autumn color orange day.

Please come back tomorrow for some more orange to celebrate the first day of October.

autumn ephemeral art experiments

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer. 

 Max Planck

           

This experiment started with a handful of vintage yardsticks purchased from the young lad at the same garage sale where I found the vintage clothesline and a very colorful collection of leaves from my walks in the forest on friday and saturdays.  This is how my autumn is measuring up so far. Very colorful indeed. I am so glad I did this on the weekend because now it would be impossible with the heavy rains and winds we are experiencing. Ephemeral art is fleeting not just in the materials used but also in the opportunity to use such materials. When nature calls you have to listen or you might miss an excellent opportunity.

Today is green day (isn't every day green day) on poppytalk's week of color.                             

That was easy:)                                                                                            

                             

falling softly

One of the things I have noticed most about this autumn compared to most is how softly and slowly it is transforming. Usually we go from summer to winter in the wink of an eye where hard frost and a fierce rain storm brings the leaves down almost all at once. Not this year, or at least not yet. When I was taking my regular walks in the forest this weekend I stopped in one of favorite colorful spots and just listened. It was then I heard it the  symphony of gentle breeze, colorful leaves twirling as they fell ever so softly down to the earth and a faint intermittent popping sound that I later discovered was the exploding seed pods of the jewel weed that grows down by the narrow stream. I was on a leaf collecting mission for some ephemeral art projects I had envisioned. This little outing also inspired my banner for the kitchen. A room I spend a great deal of time in when it is too cold on the porch. I used some vintage sheet music paper and some onion skin sheets that the letters were printed out on. I layered them and then sewed them onto a length of kitchen twine. 

The raspberry corn from the farmer's market was as delicious as it was beautiful. 

Edgar and Arwen both are liking the exact same spot of the porch.

Today is yellow day in the poppytalk week of color. I hope you will all play along.

Here is my contribution to the day. 

My motto for the week is going to be " it's worth the effort".

It all started with this adorable vintage clothesline I purchased from a sweet young boy at a garage sale for 25 cents. He didn't know what it was and was apologizing for the cord being all tangled. I spent some time untangling it and I removed the old soiled cotton cord in order to wash it. I will put it back once it is clean and I am going to put this to use as a retractable indoor clothesline. I just haven't decided on the location yet but it will probably be close to the corner stove in the kitchen. 

Oh, I almost forgot, when I was looking through my stash of old paper I rediscovered on of my favorite types of paper, velum graph paper. I used it to make the little clothesline sign and also to line the tray for the colors of the day collections this week. It felt good finding an old friend.

sea ghost meets tree ghost

Sea ghost

 arrived in the mail this week after a trip on an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean.

Lisa puts so much thought, love and skill into every little thing she makes. They would make wonderful gifts for the people you love or you could treat yourself, as I did, to a little LL&O magic. My little sea ghost needed a special little house made to remind him of the sea so I created one out of some small smooth sea stones, sea glass and sea pottery that had just arrived from this fantastic little etsy shop. They are collected from the beaches in Scotland. I am going to make some crochet covered necklaces with some of them.

It was so kind of lisa to include one of her hand embroidered with teeny tiny stitches whale pin. I immediately found my soft striped jacket and adorned it with the new patch and some pins from the sweet and talented becky. Sea ghost said the stripes reminded him of his maker, lisa and he wanted to hang out in the pocket.

Before long eggplant ghost got up out of the wooden bowl and joined in the fun.

In homage to the ghost for a ghost concept of nicole's I conjured up a new very special tree ghost yesterday that will soon be heading out on it's own trans atlantic adventure but I will save the pictures of it for another day.

Today will be devoted to colorful leaves and ephemeral art if all goes well. Have a wonderful sunday!

gathering expedition

It might seem almost a tradition that I end my week with forest walks, gathering expeditions of flowers, colorful leaves, fungi and on this occasion acorns and a view of the ever changing porch. I have come to think of my porch as a canvas and a natural science museum. I am looking forward to getting a great deal of rest this weekend, spending time with family and of course being creative. What are your going to be gathering this weekend?

The arrangement in the wooden bowl was inspired by this.

long way home and a calico cat

"When a cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it and wait until the wind changes."
T. S. Eliot 

I think on this evening it was I that was adopted by a calico cat. You see I have had a little bit of a difficult week as some of you might know. I had to juggle my office visits, canceling some appointments on one day and rebooking them on to the other already full days. Wednesdays are my long day and this week it was even busier and more demanding than usual. It was a beautiful warm, breezy september day and evening and the sun had not quite set as I headed home tired. On a whim I decided to try to see the sun set with one of my favorite rural backdrops, a very beautiful small building that has a spiritual, almost church like look to it but is always home to a varied array of special farm animals. I parked my car by the side of the road and waited for the sun to dip below the horizon. I was not disappointed. If you look very closely at these pictures you will see the a special little animal that noticed me and slowly but surely crept closer and closer until it was right beside me and definitely wanting a conversation and some stroking. It was a beautiful calico cat and I think in that moment it adopted me. After the sun set we bid farewell and agreed to not be strangers.

my little medusa

I wanted to show you the last of the small hand sewing and crochet projects that I made last weekend. This one is my personal favorite. It started off as a flower that I was planning to turn into a brooch but then I was compelled to turn it into a jelly fish with an abundance of beautiful tentacles , thus the name of the post 

medusa.

Medusa evokes the concept of beautiful yet terrifying in greek mythology and also in psychoanalysis. I have a feeling my little medusa is much more beautiful than terrifying. 

I almost forgot to mention it was made from liberty tana lawn, embroidery thread, natural felt and vintage crochet cotton. 

falling back into the earth

"I see myself growing out of the earth and falling back into it like the leaves in autumn" 

          Wendell Berry

He goes on to say that the autumn for him is a time to pause and consider whether and how our work enriches the world. I am going to follow his lead and consider these things. In some ways I feel like my life is just beginning, there is so much potential and so many chapters still to be written. I guess I feel a little like an acorn. 

I have a great love and admiration for these little vessels and I made one on the weekend with liberty tana lawn fabric and a beautiful brown cap crocheted from vintage crochet cotton. I am going to turn it into a necklace.

the spirit of an abandoned cottage and boat

On my recent trip north for the wedding of my niece I did a little exploring with my sister and brother in law. We discovered the most beautiful abandoned cottage that I have ever come across and also a really wonderful weathered old row boat. In the old days, when my father was still alive we wouldn't of thought twice about exploring the inside of the cottage as it seemed to be just begging us to visit. We just couldn't risk an arrest for B & E for us three physicians so we decided to explore it only from the outside. I did manage to explore it a little through the internet and discovered it was once owned my a Doctor in the early 1900's and his plan was to turn it into a tuberculosis sanatorium. The idea was to screen in the second floor balcony and put cots out there so the patients could breath in the wonderful fresh pine scented cool air off the lake. During the TB epidemic in Canada there were a number of such sanatoriums built in Muskoka and in fact the first free TB sanatorium in the entire world was in built here.

That last image of the boat, weathered oar, coiled snake like rope and the copper colored maple leaves is one of my favorite photographs of the past months.

I found a small piece of driftwood that weekend and inspired by these images and by my little tree ghost that I moved out to the porch this weekend I crocheted a demure spirit or ghost that is a necklace. A wearable tribute to the abandoned cottage and boat. A few of you have asked about the porch ghost so I included the link about the history of its creation. I am on the search for some fallen branches to make a few more of these to put in my etsy shop this fall. 

like a bird on a wire

I had a "tiny happy" sort of morning. If you know the lovely melissa and her always inspiring blog you will relate to this. The other night as I was driving home I had to pull over a take a picture of birds, power lines and sky.

I got out my blue linen, made some white sponged areas for the hint of clouds, black embroidery thread and stitched up this. One of the things I love most about melissa  is how she sees something that inspires her and in no time flat she has translated it freehand onto fabric with a needle and thread.

TIP: How to make a tiny little bird with two french knots and three tiny stitches. Make a french knot wrapping the single thread 5 times for the body. Close by make a french know for the head wrapping 3 times. One little stitch for the beak and two in a chevron shape for the tail. There you have a tiny little bird.

Related links :

>powerlines mini trend scroll down to the post on the 11th of september

repeat fabric

my second favorite leonard cohen song

(the first is suzanne)

this new flickr contact and amazing artist

this flickr group

"I have tried in way to be free" 

free to wander,

free to observe,

free to create

thank you summer of 2009