Wedding Bells Are Ringing!

One son got married last May and my daughter is getting married in March.

I am sewing.

At the moment, small bits of antique lace are being appliqued to the silk bodice fabric. My daughter is handling most of the plans, thankfully, as that is not my area of giftedness!

My other creative energies are going into cooking and food/lifestyle changes. This transformation has been slowly taking place the last two or three years but with increasing fervency last year partly as a response to autoimmune conditions and mostly as a desire to be a healthy and useful person as long as possible!

I am reading, researching, and buying mostly organic vegetables and grass fed meat. I am investing, on a small scale, in a dairy herd so that I can drink raw milk.  And trying to not be snobbish or obnoxious about what other people are eating!


Good food costs more and takes more time. But I am convinced that cheap food is bought "on credit" which will come due sooner or later in medical costs! And would you rather support small organic farms and ranches or big pharmaceutical companies? I prefer the FREEDOM of real, nutrient dense foods like my grandparents ate as children! 

I hope to see, play with, read to, sew for, love, influence, pray for and with, and know grandchildren!

The Foundling
part 3

"What will we feed her?"

Horse mint tea with honey, wild oat porridge, grass seed cookies, yucca blossom fritters, wild lettuce, mesquite bean scones, and rattlesnake steak.

Pa is out this morning hunting rattlesnake and this afternoon harvesting honey.

The Foundling
Part 2

So, they took her home to their nice dry burrow in the roots of a lacy thorn tree.

                             The Foundling

In a secret valley ringed by grassy hills the little people found a baby. She was bundled up in a colorful patchwork quilt. They looked all around, even climbing one of the small thorny trees for a better view. There was no sign of another large human: no buildings, no smoke, no tracks in the grass.

"We will have to take care of her until her people return."

to be continued

Back to the Drawing Board

This past week I combined several of my creative streams in these drawings. First I was playing around with drawing one of my cloth dolls.



This is Lily. She has a handspun angora rabbit yarn wig.



















I drew Lily and added some of my doodled flowers.

















I enjoyed this drawing so much that I wanted to do a watercolor version and this is the result.






I usually strive for realism when I draw people. And I am not always pleased with the results! But since I was drawing a simple, stylized doll the resulting simplification, a sort of symbolic child resulted. It is fun! It reminds me of some of the paper dolls I drew as a child.

Waldorf Dolls
and Brazilian Verbena

One of my dear sons, with his much nicer, more expensive camera, used his considerable skill to take pictures of my newest Waldorf dolls.

I decided to try get that "bokeh" look early this morning on some flowers in the front yard, "bokeh" being the out of focus points of light in the photo of the pirate.




This is the Brazilian verbena, Verbena bonariensis.




The Brazilian verbena is the only plant that has actually thrived this drought year, leading me to do some research to see if it might be invasive. And it gets mixed reviews. Most people think it worth the risk because of its beauty. But when you decide to pull it you will probably want to wear gloves because of the hispid stems. Hispid was yesterday's new word for me! It means, "covered with rough hairs; bristly." I came across the term several times while researching the verbena. Of course hispid is from Latin.

WALDORF DOLLS, PIRATE, AND EYE PATCHES

Two of my children had to wear eye patches when they were little, starting at or before age two. Both had slight crossing that was only apparent when they were sick or very tired. They got it from me! We had amblyopia or "lazy eye." My Zachary even had eye surgery when he was 3 years-old. Now, at age 22, he doesn't need even to wear glasses!

My vision problems were not caught until I was 7. There was no noticeable crossing of my eyes but one eye was not even trying to see because of the mismatch of the two images. The patching for the next 3-4 years was horrible from my "point of view"! They were hot, made of latex or something I was allergic to, made the world a dark place because my "good" eye was patched, and were a source of embarrassment. My mother, usually a stickler for honesty, told me that I could make up stories about being a pirate, having my eye poked out by a pointy object, or such, not that I really fooled anyone. But the stories were a comfort to me! Now, they say that patching at that age is too late to be effective.

At least my children didn't have to wear patches often in public, because we home schooled nor when they were as old as I was. They were not always happy to wear the patches but it was more of an annoyance than embarrassment!!