Green Wellies

Seaside frippery...

For me, the other side of the fascinating blogging coin is flickr, an online site for posting photographs (one click on the moving pics in the box to the right will get you to mine...this said for non-flickr souls).  Contacts are made, friendships forged and with a click of the mouse, you can peek into homes, watch the daily progression of someone's latest craft in progress, go on holiday with them, wander gardens and drool over their latest cooking endeavour.  What started out as just a few comments left here and there on a photo, has resulted in some wonderful women entering my life.  January's Dew Drop Inn series that I wrote showcased some of their blogs, but the nitty-gritty of their lives is found on flickr in their incredible photographs.  The fun part began when I started to join a few groups...Corners of My Home, Nifty Thrift, Rescue Pets, true loves which was started by Gwen, Teapots and gulp, so far another fifty-nine and counting.  Jayne and I started a group called The Unpretentious Garden, after discovering that there really wasn't a garden group that shared our funky outdoor decorating style.  We decided we'd be okay with just the two of us as members, but another 147 gardening folk joined the ranks.  There's serious groups with serious rules and there's fun groups with fun rules.  Apparently, several million photos are posted on flickr each day...that equates into a lot of people and a lot of groups.

One group that I joined last week as soon as it was formed, was The Art Nahpro Fan Club.  AN is really Paul Jackson, a very talented artist and it was photos of his work that first caught my eye.  Then I quickly found out that he's surrounded by a very witty and very active entourage spread throughout the globe. The Norfolk, Sussex lot chat back and forth in comment form under photos and I finally remarked one day that I didn't think any of them owned phones...they talk to each other on flickr.  Paul sets up and photographs what he calls temporary assemblages in old drawers.  The other day I found an old drawer buried in sand on the beach and the temptation to play about with it got the better of me.  With a few pieces of wood and a rock, I had my own temporary assemblage to photograph to post for the group.

My long-time friends have always made me think outside the box, steered me clear of the norm and made me colour outside of the black lines and now my blogging and flickr friends are encouraging that in me, too, proving once again, that you can put a round peg in a square hole.

I count my lucky stars...

During the last two weeks, there's been some surprises waiting for me in the mailbox.  Kim in Florida sent me the most flamboyant apron on the face of the planet...photo images of Casper and a group of wellies printed on the pockets, embroidery stitches galore, buttons, baubles and bangles.  It has seaside fabric on one side and on the reverse, there's a Christmas theme with red cardinals.  No ordinary photo would do it justice, so I roped a visitng friend into taking my picture standing in the ocean, while Casper howled in laughter.  I was ready to start dancing about doing the domestic goddess stomp!

Here's a closer look at one of the pockets...

As if that wasn't enough, she also packed the parcel with Valentine candy and two adorable books...do you remember those little Golden Nature Guides?  I'm now the proud owner of SEASHORES and it may be vintage and it may be dated 1955, but it's getting tucked into this gal's pocket for those beach walks and I plan to become an expert in identifying seaweed in no time flat.  And then there was adorable Raggedy smiling up at me with that same attention to detail that Kim is famous for...curly red hair, vintage lace apron and holding a cat that looks exactly like Cara's dearly departed Spazzz (with three z's).

From dear Cara on the Atlantic side of the country came a great package of goodies.  Thanks to her, I now have three Newfoundland books to add to my home library collection, but the thrilling part was reading a poem by her clever husband in The Backyards of Heaven...talented family all around.  Even her little Llew got in on the act and drew a picture for me and it forms the backdrop in the photo.  There was Bakeapple tea and a homemade cat keychain that looks like my orange tabby...made for a very worthy cause, so check out her blog for details about them.

From the far side of the Atlantic, Lu in Portugal surprised me with some of her colourful creations....pure hippyxic style that we've come to know!

...there's tea from Portugal, a cloth heart magnet, a postcard from her town of Sintra, a homemade placemat from flowering fabric and an exquisite cloth covered journal bearing streams of pink, blue and red ribbons.  I feel like a queen!

With a grateful heart, I applaud the creativity and generosity of these women, but more importantly, the lucky stars that brought us together in the first place.  My life is richer for it.

Oh, Christmas tree...

Weeks after Christmas is over, there's trees lining the curbside...stripped of baubles and bangles, bare of needles, twiggy, forlorn, forgotten and well, just plain dead.  But, there's hope for them hiding in a can of spray paint.  I saw this idea in the December issue of Country Home magazine and I couldn't help but think how many trees could be saved in the long run.  I guess you'd have to chop down one in order to let it age to perfection or you could always snag one from someone's garbage during a morning jog, then spray it from top to bottom and voila...a tree that could be stored from year to year in the garage or shed and the best thing about it is, it's not even fake!  Not that I have anything against fake trees, but they seem to be getting pricier than the real McCoy these days and at least this one comes cheap...

Knitting Nancy

I just had a walk down memory lane over at Carolyn's blog.  She posted a photo of a Knitting Nancy...sometimes called a corker or French Knitting.  I think I was eight when I got mine and I would spend hours "corking" with assorted odds and sods of leftover yarn, making long lines of mismatched coloured ropes.  When the girls were young, their dad made ones using old wooden thread spools and tiny nails.  Now I want one again and I'd like to make my own.  It won't have a cute face or yellow bonnet and I have no idea what I'll do with the yarn rope, but corking was about as close as I've ever come to knitting something and having it turn out!

*I found this one here

A Maine Plug...And More!

There's exciting things going on, stirring words being written and wonderful crafts being wrought the world over and through the magic of flickr and weblogs, I get to be in on some of the action and hear the news first-hand.  Down Maine way, Jes has taken a huge leap of faith and started a new blog for the sole purpose of selling her handcrafted wares and other goodies, so check it out here and see for yourself.  This woman gardens, lays stone walkways, renovates her home and still finds the time to make wonderful pennants from new and found ephemera and beach glass.  Jes, you rock!

So many of us have enjoyed reading Robyn's daily parcels and being involved in some of the great swaps she's organized all the way from Australia.  In order to write more from the heart and soul of who she is, Robyn has started a new weblog here, so grab a cup of tea and tuck right in for some inspiring words.

Totem Update #1

With somewhat sunny days, Jamie can finally start work on the totem pole again.  When T and I walked the beach road with Casper after school today, he was out there carving, but stopped to answer all of our questions.  He'd just finished with a difficult bit...what he called the "copper plate".  There's an animal totem holding a flat board and this is the plate part that he had to carve out behind.  He let me stand on the end of the totem to take the picture and I asked him if it would give me some power.  Apparently, yes!  I told him that he's going to look out his kitchen window every morning and say, "There she is standing on the totem pole again."  Anything to feel a little more power...I might turn into Superwoman yet!

This is one of Jamie's totem poles that stands on the very top edge of the beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean, along with some by other carvers.  Long before I knew him, I'd stop to look at this...my favourite.  I was thrilled to find out that it was his and now I can follow the progression from log to totem with this new one that he's working on.  Stay tuned!

Not Mona!

This is NOT the look I had on my face last night when I decided to mess about with the colours on my blog.  I reached a point where I had to give it a rest for a bit and decided to read some other people's posts and got completely sidetracked by Amy, Fi, Robyn, Samantha, Jes, Jane and several others...then veered off in the direction of flickr, completely forgetting about the pink columns and banner until I checked it today...it was definitely one of those what-was-I-thinking moments!  I got rid of the pink tonight and now the banner is yellow, with added dashed borders and I'm anything but calm Mona.  I'm off to read some blogs!

* Okay, I don't feel as though I flitted away my time afterall...apparently, the green and "gold" are Australia's sporting colours and I hope that my friends downunder are thrilled that I chose this particular scheme just for them...sort of!

Mermaid Twins

After several feeble attempts on my part to complete a craft Jayne had planned for us to do one evening, I finally had to pass.  It sounded simple enough...wrap a starfish with twisty wire and include a few beads along the way.  Jayne strung seed beads all along her wire and the result surpassed the sketch she'd made.  While the pliers, beads and wire were out, we decided to make a mermaid each.  Actually, I started one as she worked on the starfish (I'd given up at that point) and then she went on to make a mermaid, too.  Here's the result of yet another great late evening spent sitting at the table with my sister, messing about with wire and just having fun...little mermaid twins!

   

Garden Fashion

I hope it's okay to post a picture of an apron that was made a couple of years before January's theme for Amy's "tie one on" came out (I gave it a good wash!).  I wanted a big, baggy, old-fashioned garden smock with large pockets to hold all and sundry. I found this heavy cotton shirt at the thrift store, cut off the collar and sleeve bottoms and then using a 50 cent pillowcase I found the same day, made the pockets.  The case was already finished off with green bias and so I just had to turn under 3 sides before sewing it on the shirt...I even left it double, so each pocket is actually two-in-one for trowel, fork, gloves and seed packets...the odd weed and rocks have found their way in, too.  It's loose enough to pull on over sweaters or jacket. I attached a small red loop for hanging at the ready by the back door.  It was 20 minutes from the first stitch to the garden!

The Fairy's Tail

Taking liberty with January's fairy tale theme for my first contribution to Month of Softies, I crafted a fairy with a dragon's tail! Fairy tales usually show good combating the not so good, so my challenge was to try and stitch that up somehow. I decided that my fairy should be an older and wiser sage, who's battled some demons...hence the white hair, huge wings and staff to lean on...yet managed to overcome the dragon's spell within, standing firm and spreading her wings.  Live and learn.  The tail is wired green felt dotted with gold beads, her dress is the bottom of an old slip and her enormous wings are two eagle feathers found on the beach.  I hate to say it, but her hair is the stuffing from a Hello Kitty that Casper chewed the head off of!