Monday mingle

WEEK 4
Having grown up on a farm in the prairies of Saskatchewan, I remain ever mindful of nature, critters and general farm life. I would like to share today some of my favourite blogs about farms and farm life.

• My simple country living is a newly discovered blog. Looks terrific.
• Barn House can be found at either the initial link or here. Neat collectibles, beautiful photos.
• Meet Elaine and Ken at Country Cove Photography and also find them here.
• Katherine Dunn makes fabulous art as well as being a protector of critters. Katherine is also a story teller and dreamer. I adore her book and also love to listen to Katherine's story, "The Eagle and me".
• Carol Marriott is a friend who lives close by, at Ravenheart Farms. While Carol's main love is for horses, she also loves other critters as well as human kind. Carol has become well known for her work as a life coach and equine assisted learning teacher.

Monday mingle

Week 2
In the past week the sparkly greens of new leaves have been bursting forth. I have been fortunate to capture pictures of flowering bulbs and perennials ~ tulips, anemone and scilla. I am reminded of how much I love gardens and flowers and nature, especially how much I love the season of spring.
A picture I found from one of my fave Canadian magazines has also captured many people's interest on pinterest in my gardens board.
For the above reasons, I decided to venture into gardening blogs for this week's Monday Mingle. I am hoping you will take some moments, perhaps with your cup of tea, to find flowering, and often meewing, inspiration with the following blogs.
A) Resurrection Fern
B) Canadian Garden Joy
C) Gardening with Latitude
D) My Little Home and Garden
E) A Garden of Threads
F) Canadian Gardening Magazine

days fleeting by

the days lengthen and my heart yearns for spring. yet I know that I am feeling more peace within. regardless the time of year. I am mostly energized. my emotions are more relaxed. I can accept that when the tears flow they flow for the sadness. they flow not out of loneliness or self despair.

the visions in my sight rarely change. they only grow in loveliness within my line of vision. as I allow.

and then
a bit more spring with a graceful helping hand

Art - new year; old year AND tagged:
I'll start by explaining that I've been tagged by Suze. It's a book tag. You are supposed to pick up a book that's close by. Turn to page 123, go down five sentences and then look at the next 3 sentences. Oh yes, and be sure to say the name of the book and its authour.

Well, I put a bit of a twist to it. I had signed up for the quilt journal group, an off shoot of the CPS group. Each month I, and many others, are to create a quilt journal of, I think, 8 x 11 inches. Since I signed for the group things have changed a bit for me but I have decided I would still like to try to do this. With all of my art I've been having much difficulty trying to choose from many possibilities, ideas, what I would like to do or perhaps focus on. I am hoping this will give me some direction. Maybe I shall try to focus more on using fibers. We'll see. I'm not even sure if I'm still part of the webring I had joined last fall.

But back to being tagged - I have a binder with a number of Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts magazines. I decided to use this binder as my book. I didn't have the challenge directions in front of me and I accidentally went to page 213 in my binder. On looking back I found that page 123 does not have the required number of sentences, so I'll just stick with page 213, or I guess it was actually 212, after having added together the pages from the first magazine in the binder to the second magazine. So I found myself in a Quilting Arts magazine, Fall 2006, Issue 23 .

"I'm pretty sure they didn't use a MacBookPro, with dual Intel processors, nor did they use Adobe Illustrator, because, well, all they had were pencils back then. And maybe some nice technical pens. And a compass."

In these particular "Ramblings" by Robbi Joy Eklow she is discussing how she loves Art Deco. A particular piece inspiring her was finished in 1929. Robbi writes about the minimal tools used to develop the piece initially.

I started to think too, about the tools which I use and how technology has changed what we are able to do. I appreciate how there are still needs for hands, hand stitching, painting, sketching, moving the mouse of the computer. Though technology has greatly enhanced what an artist is capable of, there must still be the planning, the creative eye, the dreams, sometimes visions, beliefs and imagination in order to develop art.

I'm rambling. The top piece, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, is the newer one completed, anyway I think it is completed, just yesterday. I started it at the farm. I had some purchased pieces in the letters, bird and cut outs. I did the main background with wax crayons and then did some scratching of the swirls with a nail file. Later I pulled out the gel pens and started to go over the swirls and add more words. The fabric was at home. It is quite modern - meshy and metallic. So this piece was started with some pretty basic tools and then added to with more modern pieces.

The second piece I did last summer. I was playing with tape transfers. The size of the taped piece is 7 x 8 inches. It is of a cat we used to have named Doby. He had a wonderful face. I miss him still. I am quite pleased with how the transfer turned out. I'm not sure if I should play with it or just leave as is.

I want to say more about the particular magazine I chose for the tagging. As I had pulled it out of the binder to do this post it was sitting available for me to look at otherwise. Coincidence, luck, I'm not sure. On the cover I find "The Art of Journal Quilting". Leaps of joy. I discover information about how journal quilts actually started. I find yet more examples of journal quilts and I discover that I've made a good choice in joining this group. The authour speaks of play, of not worrying so much about perfection, and of going beyond the fear. These are things which I have been trying to deal with the past few years and I think I've been doing well. But this may be an extra little nudge to remind me to keep working in that direction.

If you are reading this and want to be tagged please feel free to accept. I will personally tag Fran, Darcy, and Terri.