Winding down

Back to School time is almost here and that means I will go back to some variety of creative work. I will have Willow to take care of but hope to have some more creative fun inside soon.

Despite the fact that I haven’t created much art at all this summer I have organized things and then set a few things up to create. I have also been cooking and canning and baking including Willow’s cake this weekend. She wanted it to be blue and it was blue!

She was so excited about the pinata too so that was fun when it finally got bashed open.

Melody took photos of the local farm’s flowers for ideas for her flower garden next year.

 

 

 

I am doing this again

 

 

 

I started up my suburban mini farm blog again. You would think that since I didn’t have a garden this year except for strawberries, peas, potatoes and a couple of tomatoes that I wouldn’t do this at this time of year. That is exactly why I decided that I should do it. I wanted to create something to chronicle more local eating ideas and preserving and frugalizing. Ok so that is not a word I guess but you get my idea.

 

Almost done

New fairy arrangements are popping up in the yard. 🙂

I was stressing myself out making a new painting in time for it to be dry for an art sale this week in Portland and then I realized that I really didn’t have to finish it and it would be ok to take a different painting that was already done in it’s place. 🙂  I dropped off the three selections that will be for sale this Thursday at the Paint Your Art Out Event.

So I am going to finish this bike one up this week as well as my owl goddess which my friend Sara mostly finished up for me because I couldn’t figure out how to paint the gauntlet for the owl. I actually lost this for most of the year under some papers and then needed to finish it finally.

I have always lived in suburbs of major cities my entire life (Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Washington D.C. and Portland).
I do prefer living in the more rural suburbs now than closer to the city. Ideally I would like to live on a 2-acre farm. One thing I notice is that I get a little excited about some things when I am in the city or notice things that I think are interesting. Normally I wouldn’t give some of these things a second look but yesterday I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natural dye and fairyland

I am not that interested in dying fabrics or yarn since I don’t sew much anymore and I don’t knit or crochet. The idea of using natural dyes though has always been something that I am interested in learning more about. I would love to make a few wall hangings with dyed fabrics that I made and sewed together. From the library I got the book, Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes. I tried using calendula flowers and got a light yellow and then decided to add tumeric and that really kicked it up. The doll is drying too because Willow decided to wash her hair in the pool.

There is another book on Amazon I just found this morning while looking for huckleberry and salmonberry information. I want to go looking for huckleberries and am not sure of a place to go or how to distinguish the different berries either. I picked the oregon grape berries which I have used as a watercolor paint that makes a sort of pinkish purple hue when dry. the girls made a fairyland with the neighbor and they put some out for the fairies too. 🙂

This is the second fairy installation Melody has done. She did a little garden out in the backyard first.

 

 

Botanical beauty

Melody was bored last week so we went to the botanical garden for a little while. There were no flowers without birds, bees or butterflies almost.

 

 

 

 

Lammas

Today is Lammas, the first of three harvest festivals to Celtic pagans. It’s also called Lughnasad after the sun God Lugh. We celebrate the holidays generally in our backyard with my circle. I didn’t take any people photos for some reason just a few altar shots.

With the first harvest I have also made strawberry jam, rasbperry-blackberry infused vodka, lavender syrup used in lavender lemonade, some kohlrabi saurkraut that I am experimenting with, mugwort and skullcap tinctures (herbs in vodka to steep for two weeks or so) and then bread. Our traditional God bread as we call it was made by our bread artist yesterday! Our newest family that we have crossed paths with made a honey cake with a raspberry filling.