I like 205

Welcome to another week of things to like! While our friends in Colorado were dealing with the massive snowstorm (what a winter for extremes!) we had nice spring weather hear this weekend.  Yesterday and today have turned back cold and really crazy windy, but I guess that's just March for you!

I started cleaning up the "garden" outside this weekend and uncovered this delightful large toad!  He was huddling under some debris, but I was glad to see him!

The pups are good, they were enjoying sunning in the warm weather this weekend.  Spooky keeps eating things (ahem furniture) that don't belong to him, but is otherwise fine.

I made my donation quilt for the SAQA spotlight auction this weekend.  It's a great fundraiser for a great organization,  I'll post about it again once it goes live.  The quilts are 6x8 and bidding starts at just $20.  I started by printing out (on fabric) one of the micrographs I took of my grandpa's grass specimens from his lab notebook.  This one is a picture of the infertile spikelet of Andropogon scoparius.

I painted it with watercolors and then quilted it and couched sparkly thread over it.  I like the way it turned out!  I hope someone else likes it too.

I also finished some knitting this week and started new knitting!

I finished a pair of socks I'd been knitting this winter.  The legs and tops of the feet have a heart pattern on them but the yarn is so busy they're a little hard to see.  They're nice and cozy though so that's good!

Yesterday I shared this green quilt on instagram for St. Patricks day.  It's really more springy than St. Patrick's day, but I guess green is green.  It was one of my very early quilts from 2012, back when I was doing a lot of experiments with precision cut vinyl silk screens.  My work has become a bit less traditional since then, but I love the bright colors and quilting on this still.

I hope spring is coming for most folks and that our snowed in friends can unbury soon and stay warm in the meantime!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

I Like #180

My sister, her kids, and my cousin Kelly who is living with them this semester to take care of the kids after they finish homeschool every day came up this weekend for a short visit.  We mostly stayed home, playing games, doing crafts, and playing with the dogs but we did go for an early morning hike on Saturday before it got too hot.  We went on a section of the lake trail I hadn't been on before and we didn't see a single other person which was great.  

Blue's friend Auto came up with Becky and they had a raucous good time rumpusing together which is fantastic.

I couldn't get Blue to sit nicely for a picture in front of the lake, so we have lake picture and Blue picture separately.

And of course whenever Alex is visiting, Bentley knows there will be extra placemat goodies.  He always licks backwards from underneath and it makes me giggle every time since usually all you see is his tongue wrapping around the table (second pic)

I saw this cool grasshopper in my dahlia this week, not as colorful as the one last week, but right in the center of the big pink flower.

I blogged this week about a wonderful busy book my mom made for Becky and me in the early 80s,  click here to see more about it.

I really enjoyed this short article about a beautiful Roman mosaic being discovered/uncovered at an Italian villa.  It's amazing how intact it is after so many years buried!

I hope you are all hanging in there and staying safe.  Click over to Lee Anna's for more things to like!

I Like #134

Welcome to another week of things to like.  Overall this was a psychotically busy week and emotional week, but it was filled with good things.

1.  I loved being able to participate in my dear friend's funeral.  My friend Trish died a couple of weeks ago and it's been a rough time.  She was super involved in our church, a really central part of our community in addition to being someone I was close too.  And of course her family is grieving.  But the funeral was wonderful.  A beautiful service with all the liturgical features she would like and tons of music.  She was a professionally trained vocalist (which made it even sadder that she died from complicatiosn of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and hadn't been able to sing for several years), and music was always super important to her.  We had a lovely soloist, and a saxophone quartet to accompany the organ.  And we had a large full choir.  Every time I heard the harmonies of our whole group singing around me it filled me with joy and sadness and hope and faith.  Lots of crying, but it really felt like a good memorial for her.

2. I loved going to the Fiberworks opening and workshop!  I'll share some pictures from the opening next week, but this week I blogged about the pieces I painted/embellished at the juror's workshop with Betty Busby.  She's great and the workshop was fun.  Click over to see more of what we did in the class.  Here's a closeup of one of the pieces I was painting.

3.  I loved this exhibit of art by Liz Whitney Quisgard.  She had a solo at 108 Contemporary and her work is phenomenal.  I'd never seen anything like it.  She makes huge wall installations with tons of small pieces as well as individual pieces.  They're all made from brightly colored yarn and the way she combines the colors to generate the overall field is just amazing.  I was so glad to get to see it; my pictures do not do it justice.

This piece was about ten feet long

This piece was about 20 feet wide by 8 feet tall

4.  I love my dahlias!  I think we might be close to the end for them this year, it's cooling off, but I cut another bouquet to bring in the house.  

5.  Here's a weekly picture of Blue.  He was playing crazy ball, wherein I throw the ball about three times over the course of fifteen minutes and he spends the rest of the time running around, wriggling excitedly, and throwing the ball for himself.  I tried to get a video but was unsuccessful, so this picture of wriggling will have to suffice.  I always throw the ball once for Bentley-  it has to be really close and bounce loudly so he can hear and find it.  He gets really excited to play, but then grabs the ball and immediately runs inside with it, so the game is sort of over.

6.  I got a kick out of this giant snake monster Halloween blow up I saw in the neighborhood while walking the other day.  It was bright and colorful and very very weird.

I hope everyone had a great week!  For more things to like, head on over to LeeAnna's.

I Like #97

I missed two weeks of I Like posts as a result of traveling for the holidays!  Now I have three weeks of wonderfulness to catch up on, but will try to limit myself so as not to overwhelm everyone.

The number one thing I loved during these three weeks was getting to spend such a great long time with my family.  I spent Christmas with my sister and her family in Dallas where I got to join in in one of her Christmas Eve traditions, going to the Zoo, followed by the wonderful Christmas pageant (my niece was an angel and my nephew a wayward sheep), followed by a lovely Christmas service.

One of these giraffes was missing teeth or something so his giant tongue always stayed flopped out!

Then Christmas morning Santa came and visited the kids and we played lots of games and saw Becky's family and then started the caravan trip to my parents. It started snowing immediately upon our arrival at my parents and continued on and off for three days culminating with about 11 inches of snow.  It meant less access to other family there (though we did get to see almost everyone eventually), but it meant really wonderful days of playing board and card games, as well as tons of fabulous sledding and snowman building.  Unspeakably wonderful, and strongly reminiscent of childhood Christmases.

Great sledding hill at my parent's.  The dogs loved playing with us.

Then after that, we all caravaned along to Tucson for a wonderful family wedding (congrats Queston and Mandy), complete with some hiking (I love love love the Sonoran desert), and a visit to the desert museum.  Unfortunately along the way, my dad had a blowout on his 5th wheel so we had to stop on the side of the freeway while he changed it.  My mom and I got her dogs out of the car and walked them along the railway easement.  The trains were pretty loud and we stayed out of their way!

The train was very loud and three trains came by in the hour and a half we spent there.  

My mom snuggling with her two brown dogs on the couch in the trailer.

Upon my return I was reunited with my precious doggos, but we had a snow/ice storm here.  It made for a little bit of prettiness and a bunch of annoying slippery roads as we all went back to work, and ten tons of mud in the house.  This was followed immediately by our biennial 12th night feast at church.  I've been in charge of it for several years and it is a TON of work, but as always we had a blast at the actual event.  Lots of singing and laughing and funny skits and great food and wine.

Icy branches in OKC at work.

Mike sent me this picture of Blue while I was gone to remind me I missed them (I hadn't forgotten!).

Cast and court for our 12th night feast!

And now, finally this week I feel like life is finally easing back into routine.  I find myself thankful for the every-day, for going home at the end of the day with only a normal sized to-do list and not a psychotic pre-holiday to-do list.  I am so very very grateful for all the wonderful time with my family, and am looking forward to a productive and creative 2019.  Here's to positivity for all of you and best wishes!  Linking up with LeeAnna!

I like #82

Welcome to another week of likes!  I'm in New Mexico this week visiting my family and installing/opening our exhibition in Santa Fe.  My parents have a beautiful place, so this week is pretty flower heavy!

1.  I like indoor flowers!  My mom has a beautiful sunroom with a lap pool, so tropical plants grown wonderfully.  Her begonia has turned into a tree, and has the beautiful hanging pink blooms.  And one of her bromeliads has two giant pink blooms at the same time.  I love the bromeliads.....

2.  I like outdoor flowers!  You guys know I've been desperately growing one dahlia plant all summer, and so proud of it.  Then I get to my mom's house and she has all the flowers.  So so many flowers!  Flower beds everywhere!  Too many kinds of flowers to count, just absolutely gorgeous.  In addition to her beautiful flower beds, she has so many pretty containers, and a giant patch of hollyhocks growing in the crack in her asphalt parking lot.  These are just a few of them.

 

 

3.  I love wildflowers!  I love hiking too- we've had really great hiking this week up in the mountains and the rain they've gotten here recently has meant there's been a huge variety of wildflowers in bloom.  My parents and I usually go with the dogs every morning we can to hike in the National Forest just across the street from where they live.  

4.  I like fresh veggies!  My mom has a huge garden, I've spent a ton of time this week picking.  Lots of squash, cucumbers, bell peppers, poblano peppers, green beans, peas, jalapenos, tomatoes, and onions.  I'll pick some more this weekend (as well as apples) on Saturday to take home.

5.  I love the pups!  Of course mine came with me to NM and they've been visiting with their dog cousins, and even Sirius, the small black visiting dog who stays with my parents.   In contrast to the other five dogs who all just sort of hang around together, but Sirius mostly just stays in my parents' bed.  He tucks himself under the quilt; it's pretty hilarious.  Sometimes he'll peek out when you walk in, but other times he just stays a little lump underneath.

Thanks to Lee Anna for always keeping us going!