Switching gears

Yesterday we drove out to visit my dear friends at the farm.  Lunch is always amazing but this corn particularly so.  It was so sweet and so Yellow...I wish I could capture the color...pure sunshine.  Oh my!

I pulled off the road on the way home to take this picture or maybe just to linger a little longer. It's looking west in the Central Valley toward the Coastal Mountains.

Am going to get back to work for a while on the Farm Cloth...here's the project:

And here's another one that I stitched on the train going East and need to do some more work on.  It's of a mysterious island nearby:

So life is not boring, but all that driving is kind of tiring and here's Agnes at the end of the day:

What, more nurses??

Yes, a couple more, at least for now.  This first one is the Queen of the Nice Nurses.  I'm working a little bit with faces, thinking how important they are, and how changeable, like the seasons.

And this one is called " 'You'd make my job a whole lot easier if you'd take your meds." nurse'.  I'm not sure how to punctuate that.  I was working on this in my doctor's waiting room and someone asked me about it, so in the course of the conversation, I mentioned the title...a couple of the patients looked a little alarmed, or embarrassed, but the woman who'd asked about it, I think she was a caretaker herself,  nodded her head.  It's not completed yet and includes some hand-dyed fabric from Heike's shop.

Update on the Nurses

Here is Nurse #1.  She's almost done...just needs something around the edges.

And here is Off Duty Nurse.  She's been having a good time and just needs a little more stitching and a cover-up for the back.  There's another Nurse in the works...maybe two, and I'll do a new posting really soon, I think. 

I've been experimenting with the font size, wanting it to be easy to read...so far there haven't been any complaints, but I'd welcome feedback...

Enjoy these last few days of summer everyone...:)

An unusual visitor

This pigeon appeared in my yard one afternoon recently.  Right next to the aviary where the doves, Edgar and Molly, live.  The pigeon looked serenely up at me and seemed to be enjoying pecking around for seeds.  Then I noticed he/she had bands on the ankles.  I thought, hmmm...perhaps I should do something...perhaps he/she belongs to someone...so I resolved to think more seriously about it, not knowing quite what I ought to do.  The next morning he/she popped up on the fence and looked directly at me as Agnes (dog) and I were heading out to the dogpark...it was quite a look and I resolved that if the pigeon made another appearance, I would capture it (how??) and ask someone what to do.  Well, it didn't reappear...probably a wise decision, as Agnes' welcoming statement might have meant The End, and my next door neighbor has a cat, but in the meantime he/she posed quite grandly for this photo, and I feel that the visit was a blessing.

Journey to Egypt and back to the garden

On the recent trip to NYC we visited the Metropolitan Museum.  Liam, who is 6, wanted to see the mummies.  I remember being very small and seeing real mummies in the museum.  They were ebony colored and all shriveled and very very fascinating.  Perhaps I made this memory up, because on this trip we didn't see any actual mummies.  But we (I) did become enamored of:

Ceramic tiles from King Djoser's tomb...the lines in between are made from limestone.  I'm not sure who the fine gentleman to the left is.   

Then we happened upon this fragment from Queen Neferu's tomb...they are her protective vulture figures:       

Lastly, here are the pink ladies again.  A better picture I think. They are actually called Naked Pink Ladies...they seem to become a deeper pink with time.  I'd never noticed this before.

Two of my patchwork nurses are nearly done and a third has been started.  That's what's coming up next!
well, maybe.

Bee News!

On page 29 of Quilting Arts Magazine, (August/September) in a wonderful article by Jude Hill, called "Weaving a Cloth Base", my tiny embroidered bee makes an appearance!   I feel very honored, grateful and delighted.  I'm a great admirer of Jude's work and have been studying her techniques in her online classes; she has a unique and warm vision, and was so kind and encouraging to each one of us.  Words are inadequate...

Pink Ladies and the off duty nurse

My garden is having one of its colorful phases and here is a small bit of it.  These ladies need very little water...they are blooming  in unwatered areas everywhere  right now.  They seem to come out of nowhere but actually they have lush green leaves in the spring...you can see the residue of the leaves underneath (the stringy white things).  I like to leave it there as a historical reminder.  Last year there were only four or five ladies in this spot but now they have formed quite a congregation.

And here is the progress report on the Off Duty Nurse...she is not complete yet, but she's getting there, wherever that will be.  Jude's class will end on Sunday, sigh...it has been the best.