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.

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.

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.

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.

Studio Garden

This is my most wonderful surprise. I thought I was getting a deep red gladiola, but this most amazing deep purple has bloomed. I love it.


The 17 year old cat. He has decide to eschew bathing and since he is the King he does as he pleases and that's okay.

p.s. Brunswick has been getting some press recognizing some of the creative people who live here.

The beginning of the next phase of renovation

We rescued this wonderful window with a central picture window flanked by casement windows. It will become the dinning room window looking out on the grotto garden.

The before view, with the almost finished bump out with french doors.

Getting started by removing siding (revealing cedar shingles) to make the cut for the larger window.