We have been in social distancing mode for two months now. When our schools let out for Spring Break on March 12, we thought they might let the students and teachers take an extra two weeks as an abundance of caution. Instead, and we were in total agreement after seeing how coronavirus has spread, school has remained "out," with distance learning replacing regular in-person schooling. Today was the official last day of school.
My family have spent the last eight weeks still working hard, as we have two teachers, a high school, and a college student among us. But the lack of commuting and social activities left us with plenty of time after work was done to indulge in art. One project that I have been working on is the prep work for some landscape paintings. My source of inspiration is images from a Vermont Facebook Group, with plenty of blissful landscapes represented. My process thus far is to take an inspiration image and edit/tweak it in photo-editing software. This way, I can correct color, remove distracting elements, enhance a bland sky, and crop to the ratio I want. Finally, I use the artistic treatment of "oil painting" to give the look of brush strokes, soften edges, and simplify the color palette in the scene. These treated images will be what I work from when I start painting. Following are two Vermont scenes in the original images, with the edited version beside it. I will post more about my painting process as I work through these projects. My main goal is to paint a rather large watercolor painting to hang on the wall over our couch.
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(content previously published on old Filigreen blog in 2016)
One beloved and well-used item lost in the tornado was my 33-year-old Kenmore sewing machine. Given to me by my Grandpa Wynn for my 16th birthday, it was my creative partner through four decades of fabulous fashions. I made some emerald green satin pants in 1979, some corduroy baggy jeans in the 80's, sundresses for my first daughter in the 90's, Halloween and Medieval Fair costumes for both children in the 00's, and what seemed like a whole forest of burlap tree costumes for The Wizard of Oz musical in the spring of 2013. Although my sewing machine did not blow away, it was rained on at our house site for three days after the tornado, and the carrying case had several inches of water in it by the time we were allowed back to the wreckage of our home. I drained the water, set it out to dry in our rental home's garage all the hot summer long, unable to dispose of it as there were so many memories of my hands guiding one vividly remembered fabric or another through the machine. When it was time to move into the new home, I finally put the ruined machine out with the other tornado debris that I had been reluctant to actually throw away. Yes, we had good insurance and I had been reimbursed for the value of a sewing maching, but the thought of a new machine just left me unimpressed, as I had loved my old one so much. As time passed, I searched for a metal-bodied sewing machine like my old Kenmore, but found only plastic-bodied models. After hemming and hawing, and complaining so much out of proportion to the issue to my patient husband, I went ahead and bought a plastic-bodied Singer. Of course, it sews just fine. And I have started a new parade of fabric swatch memories as I have sewn cream/blue toile curtains for the new house's kitchen bay window, cream lace frilly cowgirl skirts for the flower girls in my nephew's upcoming wedding, and started a quilt for my oldest daughter in red/white/black scrap fabrics. Red and Black were the school colors of her elementary school, Plaza Towers, that was so horrifically demolished by the tornado. I found a black-and-white gingham fabric shirt at the thrift store, with colorful flowers embroidered all over it, so I have been cutting little squares of the embroidered sections, to put at the intersections of the strips connecting my nine-patch blocks. I also am appliqueing seven little raspberry-red pinwale corduroy hearts randomly on the quilt-top, for the Plaza Towers students whose short lives ended that day in May 2013. For many years, especially as a young person, I was embarrassed of being so domestic. Cooking, gardening, and sewing are my great passions, and I always felt so dorky when asked what my hobbies were. Sometimes, it seemed as if I were born 100 years too late, but as I have grown older, I truly treasure my knowledge and skills in the humble domestic pursuit of sewing. Knowing how to mend, tailor, innovate, and alter garments, costumes, and home furnishings has given a richness to my life that I wouldn't want to do without. Nowadays, when someone asks what I do for leisure, I am proud to say, "I like to sew." (content previously published on old Filigreen blog in 2016)
I haven't made any blog entries since my announcement that we lost our home in the May 20 tornado. Recovery took precedence over creativity, and truly, I just didn't have it in me to continue at that time. So here we are months later . . . Several nudges this past couple of days have inspired me to take up my blog again and the first day of the new year seems like a perfectly appropriate time to start. I am sitting at the kitchen bay window that looks out over our backyard, at the "new" house. We have been here now nearly three months, and for me, it has begun to feel like home. My children are taking longer to feel a connection, but they are usually gone all day at school, and the other house had been their only home. My feelings of being connected to a homeplace are more grounded in functionality - where do I cook? where do we return to sleep? where do we feel a haven from the world? Both kids made more of a connection to the rental house we stayed in while we were house-hunting, while my husband and I were too freaked out by the bustling insect kingdom that was part & parcel of the neighborhood full of old and established maples. My hope is that downtime spent just hanging around the house during the school break will foster a little more of the home feeling for my children. Now that the usual round of holiday gatherings are over, there are more free evenings to tuck in with blankets on the couch with a book or movie marathon, more meals at home with both Mama and Daddy here together, and a whole new year ahead of us to look towards as we plan and dream. New Year's Day usually involves some incarnation of black-eyed peas, to ensure prosperity (perhaps through frugal living) for the coming year. My family is not really that fond of the humble black-eyed pea, and I really only have two ways to serve them. One is to open a couple cans of them, and simmer them on the stove for an hour with a little chopped bacon, some shaved onion, a bay leaf, generous salt & pepper, and a half-tablespoon of vinegar added at the end of cooking. They DO NOT reach the full glory of baked beans, but they are not half bad, either. The second way we eat them is as part of "Texas Caviar" - mixed in with the basic Pico de Gallo recipe: a can of black-eyed peas opened and drained, 3-4 good tomatoes chopped, green onion and white onion minced, 1 raw jalapeno seeded and minced, a couple tablespoons of fresh lime juice, small bunch of fresh cilantro chopped, and salt & pepper. Mixed and refrigerated for a couple of hours, it's good with tortilla chips or alongside meat as a savory condiment. Black-eyed peas always remind me of a story told by my Grandpa Wynn. Growing up poor as a sharecropper's son in East Texas, he ate plenty of beans growing up, cheap and filling and easily grown in his mother's well-tended kitchen garden. After church one day, he overheard another lady say to his mother, "Well, we better get home, I need to check on my beans. Lord, I am so tired of eating beans! Don't you ever get tired of eating beans day after day, Rosie?" Grandpa's mama replied, "Why, no I don't! We don't just eat beans, we have black-eyed peas, green peas, pinto beans, butter beans, pole beans, lima beans, and more! We eat something different every day!" (content previously published on old Filigreen blog in 2013/2015)
Living in the Tornado Capital of the World, I have come to regard Spring with one eye on the daffodils and irises, and the other on the thunderheads building in the west. What is for other parts of the country, a gradual awakening of Mother Earth, can be for us a season of nail-biting and being afraid to go to sleep in case a storm strikes in the night. While my husband and kids go on to bed, I spend the late hours of the night with the "other men" in my life - my local news station meteorologists. I trust these guys with my life, as I have seen over and over their dedication in staying on air for 12-14 hours while storms wheel across the state. The feeling I have towards them is somewhat like my feelings for the OB doctor who delivered my two babies - they really have protected the lives of people here with their devotion to getting it right on these critical days. In the 19 years we have lived here, we have had 4 tornados hit in the vicinity and so a spring thunderstorm can make for a sleepless night. Once I get the all-clear from "my weather guys", I am off to bed to dream of the quieter days of midsummer. Added as a postscript -- On Monday, May 20, 2013, the unthinkable happened. Once more, an EF5 tornado ground its way through Moore, Oklahoma, and our home of 19 years was destroyed in 60 seconds. That day left some enormous wounds in our hearts, lives, and our community. We are all moving forward as best we can, trusting God with our futures, knowing He is always with us and working from within us. (content previously published on old Filigreen blog in 2013)
Thriftstores . . . aaahhh, the seductive lure of saving money on necessities, finding abundant fodder for my creative machine, discovering a lost treasure amongst the castoff cake pans and plaster plaques, and vintage clothing to make my inner 80's teen very, very happy. But there is a dark side, too . . . I make myself watch a couple of episodes of "Hoarders" every week so that I remember to keep myself in check. The thriftstore can be a goldmine in savings for people on a budget or for a high school drama department that is rich in talent but poor in money. At a sewing day yesterday for my oldest daughter's upcoming musical, some of the other ladies and I were sharing our attraction to the fabrics, colors, textures, the POSSIBILITIES!! . . . to be found in the clothing racks at the thriftstore. We are opportunists walking a sheer cliff, discovering, snatching up, and showing off our unique and fabulous finds, but we have to use both foresight AND restraint, because you can only fit so much of this stuff into your closet or costume room. From the time I got my driver's license, I could roam around our four-state corner looking for great thriftstores. I still visit my first and favorite thrift - the Friendship House in Miami, Oklahoma, when I go home for a visit. Great memories of shopping thrifts with sisters and friends - once a friend (Hi to Judy D**a!) and I went to a small town in Kansas in 1982, where an old decrepit department store building was being emptied. We found heels, dresses, sweaters, and jewelry from the 50's, and then we went out to lunch and had Monte Cristo sandwiches (the way they are SUPPOSED to be made, deep-fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar). When my first daughter was born, I wanted everything new, pristine, and clean. No used clothing for my children, please! It only took a short while to understand that 100% cotton stains, not everything can be bleached, and that $24 onesie looks like a hand-me-down after one wearing and an encounter with baby carrots. As the holidays and seasons went by, the realization sunk in that the $50 holiday dress and faux fur baby coat, worn for one Christmas party in 1998, might not even FIT the next baby at the right season, and thrifting began to look very smart. Over the years, I've bought clothes, boots and shoes, toys, decor, furniture, and costumes at various resale sites - whether consignment, antique malls, garage sales, or straight-forward thrift stores. A favorite photo of my husband and first daughter at age two shows her wearing red baby cowboy boots I bought at a thrift store on my lunch break at work. I loved those boots and so did she; when she outgrew them, I donated them to charity and kissed them good-bye. One of the great treasures found at thrifts is the handknitted or crocheted afghan. I'm thinking they were handmade as gifts, then people took such good care of them that they were never used, and they have ended up in new condition on a hanger in a thrift store. Naturally, you have to inspect everything carefully and be sure items can somehow be cleaned before using. In the case of afghans, they are almost always made from acrylic yarn and machine-washable. I recently ran across a Hudson's Bay wool blanket for $5, but it had several moth-eaten spots. For someone who was willing to dry clean it, and then cut it up and use the good parts creatively, it would have been a steal, but it wasn't worth it to me that day. I am fortunate to live in a large metro area where there are several thrift stores - and they all have their version of a sale, whether it's Wacky Wednesday, brown bag day, or buy-it-by-the-pound day. I do try to go on these days, so if I buy something and have second thoughts later, I haven't invested too much money. Lately I am fascinated with ladies' brooches, something our mothers, grand-, and great-grandmothers would have worn. I may not ever wear them, but they don't take up much room in my jewelry box, and I get a lot of pleasure from looking at them. Some day my daughters may raid my costume jewelry looking for just the right accessory and find them there . . . waiting to be treasured again. I have always been a writer. I have not ever been much of a talker. The quiet child, quiet young person, quiet adult, wife, and mom who has always found it easier to listen than to articulate my thoughts. Now that I am older and the world in general (and I in particular) have become more aware of introversion, I value my quiet nature in a way I never could when I was younger. But writing . . . writing was always a magnet to me, and I started composing short poems when I was in grade school. In my middle school years, I wrote long, loopy letters to my pen pal and my grandmothers. In high school and college, I was committed to making regular journal entries. I did my best to keep up with my journals through motherhood, but sometimes years would go by between entries. However, when I felt the urge to write, I could always pick up my journal and pen again, and the words would flow as if there had been no interruption. It was with much delight and enthusiasm that I took up blogging a few years ago, with the best intentions of posting at least twice a month. Well, let's just say reality was quite different from my intentions! In the interest of getting back into a habit of regular blog posts, I have revamped my Filigreen site and am hoping to be a more productive blogger! I hope you enjoy my blog and reading about my different perspectives and projects. 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AuthorI am Kelly - a wife, mother, cook, gardener, sewist, and much more. Creativity is the gift that I have been blessed with, and it has been a river of blessings to me. A creative outlet is good for you, body and soul. This blog is about helping you find ways to fit more creativity into your life, to enrich your own life and that of others. Archives
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