Houston

The Japanese Tea House in Herman Park.

Galveston

A little side trip on our visit to Houston, to walk on the beach and look around.

The New Wood Rack

Jerry finished the new wood rack just in time for our first snow and then we got out of town and headed south for a week, missing our first real winter weather I hear. I love the new wood rack, the posts are made of locally fallen black locust that Jerry milled with a chain saw and the tin roof is salvage material. It's very near both doors, much more accessible in the dark and foul weather than the main wood rack behind the house, and this spring when we renovate the brick patio I think it will be beautiful with the stacked wood. Between the original and the new wood rack there's enough space for a winter’s worth of dry wood, we are hoping.

Some new padded pouches

I was sewing like crazy before leaving for Houston last weekend, mostly making pot holders for The Muse and pouches for Madison Arts Exchange. Next week I'll be adding these pouches to my Etsy Shop. I still have to photograph them as I couldn't get a good photo shoot in before leaving.

walking along the river

It's so warm here, for late November, things are still alive and it seems like the light is different, shifting to winter as the landscape remains suspended and the leaves are rotting in the water a lot longer creating fascinating surfaces.

I made a photo series of water surface images today on my walk that I am posting to Facebook.

Trees reflected in water

The Potomac River and C&O Canal in Brunswick Md near my house, looking like a fairy tale.

Happy Birthday Mom!

It's in the mail.

New Hand Stitch Work

"Undertow" 10"x 15"
Hand stitched glass beads, hand embroidery and acrylic paint on linen.

Well, my sabbatical from the studio lasted a good long time, much longer than I realized.

Partly I’ve been Gardening a lot since spring, mostly for clients, but also getting my Studio garden ready for a local Garden Tour, which was great, and we grew almost all of our produce this summer in our home garden and I have a little public garden I take care of as a volunteer. I also made a lot of handmade pot holders and bags to sell. All this is under the theory of diversifying my income stream to not just rely on Art sales. And I’ve been taking a lot of photographs, just for the pleasure of it. As much fun as I’ve been having, it was absolutely wonderful to get back in the studio and start a new piece this month.

I love this smaller format right now and want to do a series tentatively titled “Postcards from the Garden” but maybe not that sappy sounding. This piece does have flowers, as do many of my pieces, however I am more interested in pattern, the tension of the decorative quality and the process of tending. Well, more on all this later. I have a pie to bake.

A wonderful fall in Maryland

Last Sunday was a perfect, warm, sunny, fall day. We drove the back roads near home and bought apple and cider. Tonight I am going to make an apple pie, yum!

Beautiful New Pot Holders

This is a particularly nice batch of pot holders, featuring some great vintage fabrics. There heading to the Muse tomorrow. If your in Frederick Md, check them out, they make great presents.

A Little Bag Attention

Lilithevy has a wonderful Esty collection that includes one of my bags posted on her Blog. Thank you Eve!

Featured Bag

Joline of blackmustard has posted her list of top 12 bags on etsy, which includes my Flap Bag- short taupe and lime linen. Be sure to check out this wonderful collection. Thank you Joline.

New Pot Holder

I'll be listing new Pot Holder on Etsy in the next few days.

Weekend in Up State NY

It was a perfect weekend and so very needed, we were really over done and hanging out in this wonderful space and garden Chris and Vicky are creating was magical.

It’s so interesting as a gardener driving 6 hours North and experiencing what at home will not come for another month or so. The night we arrived was the first light frost enough to loose the basil and 2nd night a heaver frost, which we prepared for. Then traveling back to Maryland and finding our basil at its peak of production, note-to-self, deal with the basil soon. It’s not like you forget, but the graphic reminder sure made an imprint.

We brought home lots of onions right out of the ground (for now and to store) and purple and red potatoes as well as collected seeds of 1/2 a dozen flowers that I'll be starting next spring for our gardens and clients.

High visibility Art

Michael Bopst stopped by yesterday evening to show us his latest "Death Mask" painting, painted directly on the side of his van. Truly inspiring!

Evening River

Train Station

Jerry's Beautiful Spot

Padded Pouches

A new set of Padded Pouches made of fine vintage fabrics with vintage buttons, will be in my Etsy shop soon and at the Muse in Frederick MD.

Sewing Studio reorganized

I reworked the whole space this week. It's been a year since I started sewing and I am a lot more focused on how the space should work and what I need and don't need in it. It's a real pleasure to come in now and get to work. Unfortunately the domino effect means I have to rework my office now to incorporate a space for shooting artwork, which just got booted out of the sewing studio.

First tomato harvest of the year

Besides the tomato in our garden, which there are quite a lot just starting to come in, this week we have gotten a wind fall from a wonder friend's garden that Jerry helps tend. We are very grateful for food gardens this year as almost all of our fruits and vegetables have been coming from ours or neighbors yards. While our next door neighbor has been on vacation, I've been harvesting masses of black berries and red raspberries freezing them along with the tomatoes for the fall and winter. Vacationers garden care is something I want to do alot more of!

Everything being fresh and perfectly ripe and unusual varietals compared to the grocery store and all the fresh herbs which are truely inspiring for putting together flavors is part of it. Living so satisfyingly and cheaply in very tight times or more precisely experiencing the true value of your labor and it's relation ship to well being is just as important perhaps.

A new batch of pot holders

I found some printed tea towel calendars from the 60's and thought they would make great pot holders and found a big piece of fat woven blue cotton material for padding, so I've got alot of blue related pot holders now.

Installing the window

Jerry fooling around, which is good to see as he has been working hard for days.


Pedro and Wayne were wonderful enough to came over to help with final prep and heavy lifting. There was a lot of dance in the window frame work.

It turns out there are 3 layers of siding on this little house. German Lathe, cedar shingle and aluminum siding.


The main event.


Securing the window.

A new batch of bags

Finally some new bags! These will go to the Book Crossing down the street from me. Then I'll start working on filling up my beleaguered Etsy shop.

Big progress on the new window

Jo stopped by to help out.


They're getting the header into position.


Jerry did all the new framing for the window today, lot's of work! There's a lot of previous termite damage in the wall.


Enough work, it's way past cocktail hour.