wishful Wednesday

in which our plucky heroine tries to make a difference...

Since summer has icumen, it has been heating up outdoors, and this morning there was enough temperature differential that it was time to start running the window fans for the first time this year. Monday was a scorcher, heating up even before 8AM, and I think it reached over 90F.

This is the season when weeds go berserk in the backyard. I miss my monthly garden helpers, currently laid low with COVID, and even were they not ill, visiting from faraway is not a good idea, not now, not for a long time. I keep chipping away at the weed pulling, and have made a start at putting together some planting places for the zucchini. If I had more tolerance for hot and sunny, I could do more. It is getting close to the end of peapod season, but I went out this morning and managed to pick another half pound, yum yum!

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Probably the strangest thing seen in the last year or two, this morning I saw a crow playing with large drink cup with lid attached. Not sure if it was trying to open it, or just enjoying the sound of it, but it kept repeatedly grabbing the cup, flying up in the air with it, and dropping it to the street. I could see it for probably five lift-and-drop attempts before it was too far away to see

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~ 100 day creativity challenge - day 23 ~

Since I (with too many risk factors), cannot march or protest publicly for social justice and change, this is my way to do what I can as an artist in isolation: blockprinted cards of HOPE...

I want this artwork to be accessible to most, so my thought was to ask for $5 as a minimum, and for those who want to/can pay more, that would be great. The prints are on 4 x 5 postcards, and are available with either a solid red, or a rainbow background. I will be sending the proceeds from this fundraising project to Don't Shoot Portland.

For one (or more) please contact me at fjorliefartist@gmail.com

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Since block printing can be messy, with ink and all that, I figured it was time to refurbish my old kitchen apron. I cut down the edges and removed the old straps, which were always annoying, and will be making some new detachable cross-back strapping, but for the moment, just tied some twill tape to the new loops and called it good. Eventually a new apron entirely will be needed, but this one has a few more good years...

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beauty in the time of isolation - day 95:

I'd not seen this plant since I was a child in Los Angeles... we called it the bottlebrush plant, as the flowering portion resembles nothing so much as a red/pink bottle brush. Later on in the year it has hard nodules along the stem where the flowers were, and as a child, I loved harvesting those for dolly "food", but then as a child my best friend and I did a lot of rambling around foraging for faux food and other survival supplies. Other little girls may have played "fashion" with their Barbie dolls, but ours were usually marooned on a hostile planet and had to create places to live and find edible foodstuffs.

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Nandina gets eyebrows, and new shoes
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June SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	5½ pints rhubarb sauce	apple tree pruned	rotten beams
2	20 masks for Tullia	apples thinned	frozen blueberries
3	2¾ pints blueberry sauce	aphids soaped	yard waste bin
4	3 half-pints bramble syrup	peas harvested	yard waste bin
5	turquoise linen pinafore	pea plants pulled	yard waste bin
6	2 more masks	moar peas picked	-
7	tiny Nandina	x	-
8	Nandina shoes	x	x
9	Nandina overalls	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - Did I mention that I love the internet? I have already had two people want to buy one of my cards of HOPE... which is a great validation of my artwork.

Monday musings and a bit of no-mo-fo-mo

in which our plucky heroine plays catch-up...

when I step away from posting, usually it is because I've no need for me to spread gloom, nothing particularly positive to share, and am feeling disheartened... Still, when making the effort to write here, it does help shift focus to a more positive outlook, however ephemeral. Times remain difficult. Hope remembers that births are messy things, and humans may manage to birth a world with greater justice and lovingkindness, if we are extraordinarily lucky.

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~ 100 day creativity challenge - day 22 ~

Nandina wanted some more appropriate gear and clothing for marching in, so some indigo linen turned into overalls from the new Ann Wood pattern. I am particularly chuffed with how a scrap of vintage jacquard woven cotton trim was exactly the right dimensions to complete her own little mask. Now I want to figure out how to make a pair of little Doc Marten's for her to wear...

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I've been thinking about what if anything about the current situation (having to be isolated from all that I care about, in any way other than via pixels and electrons) had in any way anything good or helpful about it. The only thing that comes into my mind is that for me I have less of a feeling that I am missing out on fun activities (FOMO), since most everyone I know is also stuck in isolation at one level or another.

Last year I didn't get to go to ATWW because of sudden appendicitis, but all my friends went, and had fun (whilst I languished in hospital). This year, no one gets to go, which is horrid in a completely different way, if more evenly awful. While I do have flares of intense envy of those of my friends who are in quaranteam bubbles with other humans (either housemates, or even groups!) or those who have animal companions, I mostly manage to keep that damped down to a dull background ache. On a good day, I wonder at how this extending isolation will affect me, and on a bad day, how it will be to spend the rest of my life this way...

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would that there were several of myself, so that part of me could rest, while part of me got work done, and part of me did housey chores, and part of me was creative... but alas, is only one to do all those things, and it feels as if nothing gets done to completion. I sleep poorly these days, which impacts all else, and then fall asleep in midafternoon for several hours.

This morning I paid the bills, and then rode my bike to the post box to mail them. 9AM is too late in the day to ride about, already getting too warm and sunny, with too many people on the street and sidewalks, and impossible to keep properly distant from the unmasked, which is most of them.

I recently was chosen to make some enameled regalia medallions, and so will be firing up the kiln in the next week or so, which will necessitate a fair bit of workroom clearing. I have a few other bits of work that were put aside for a long while, and also had some nibbles of inquiry about regalia possibilities that combine a rainbow background with SCA motifs. It will be good to get back to my actual work for a change, and perhaps help with the feeling completely unstuck in time/space/culture

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beauty in the time of isolation - day 93:


breadseed poppy, growing in an alley
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To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it, may be a help to living it well.   ~ Ursula LeGuin

1st of 6 episodes by LeVar Burton

When you want to tell deep truth, you make up stories   ~ A. M. Brosius

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The first sowing of snow peas was ready to be put in the compost, since the heat stopped their flowering, so no more peas from those pots... the tiny tomato starts will go in there tomorrow, and hopefully the extra nitrogen from the pea roots will be of help. I will scatter some more ground eggshells and supplemental nutrition in the top of the pots to help renew the soil. The second batch of snow peas are now taller than my head, and still have quite a lot of peas to pick and eat and freeze. Tomorrow will be homegrown stir fry again, yum!

The nasturtium, though still in a small pot, had this amazing flower yesterday, and will go into a salad for special delectable spice! I will be planting it in the yard, in the hope that the plant will continue to flourish!

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I've not been much inspired to finish up my SWAP sewing, but managed to pull out the grey linen, the TNT pinafore patterns, and the TNT pattern for my loose-fitting woven shirt. Maybe this week a waft of mojo will appear and help me get the last two pieces completed. Truth to tell, I am more interested in my printmaking project lately than in sewing. It is feeling a bit odd, now that I am approaching "enough" in my wardrobe, that my impetus to sew for myself is diminishing. I am, however, going to make some aprons for the Mud Bay crew, as well as refurbish my own work apron - if there is printmaking and other messy arts in the future, then some protective gear will be needful... ditto with making preserves in the kitchen... we shall see

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June SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	5½ pints rhubarb sauce	apple tree pruned	rotten beams
2	20 masks for Tullia	apples thinned	frozen blueberries
3	2¾ pints blueberry sauce	aphids soaped	yard waste bin
4	3 half-pints bramble syrup	peas harvested	yard waste bin
5	turquoise linen pinafore	pea plants pulled	yard waste bin
6	2 more masks	x	-
7	tiny Nandina	x	-
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude -have I mentioned how much I love my SIL... not only is she the best thing that could be imagined for my big little brother, but she has sent me two packages of Sharpie pens in the last week, I now have 36 different colors to play with... seriously, it feels like when I was a kid and got the Big Box of Crayolas (the 64 pack, with the sharpener in the front and the gold and silver metallic crayons)

wishful Wednesday - more tinyworld time

in which our plucky heroine took some time off...

...in times of isolation, a tiny world can be a place to rest and recover equanimity. And so, I made a new little housemate for Acorn Cottage, because the little bed I made was asking for someone to sleep there.

I'd made a few of these tiny rag dolls earlier, Hazel and Zinnia, who ended up going to Olympia to live with little Kestrel's other dollhouse people... Ann Wood creates wonderful and whimsical well-written patterns that are a joy to use.

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I decided that stripey stockings would be a fun change from my previous attempts, primarily because some micro-stripe fabric turned up

Her name is Nandina, and since her older sister Zinnia left behind her SCA clothing when she moved North, I was able to dress her right away...

Her SCA clothing still needs a bit of detailing (tiny brooches, and some other bling) and she really needs shoes, too...

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I miss and wish for a time when touch is possible, when a strong and gentle hug can go on and on, soothing and enlivening to all involved, when a passionate kiss between dearloves is not potentially deadly, when something as simple as sitting close and holding another's hand as support during an emotional time was/is not fraught with unintended consequence. May those days come again.

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~ 100 day creativity challenge - day 21 ~

Nandina may be only just over 5" tall, but she still has something to say! She needs her own face mask, and some modern clothing... I think she is getting a pair of tiny overalls next.

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a wonderful take on a favorite song...

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beauty in the time of isolation - day 88:

an amazing allium, about as big as both my hands outstretched...

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June SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	5½ pints rhubarb sauce	apple tree pruned	rotten beams
2	20 masks for Tullia	apples thinned	frozen blueberries
3	2¾ pints blueberry sauce	aphids soaped	yard waste bin
4	3 half-pints bramble syrup	peas harvested	yard waste bin
5	turquoise linen pinafore	x	-
6	2 more masks	x	-
7	tiny Nandina	x	-
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - so many kindhearted gifts this last week... a multicolor set of Sharpie pens, some cut-to-size lino blocks and lino ink, a delivery of produce, and a USB webcam so I can use the laptop instead of squinting into the cell phone for zoom-time!