Author Archives: KellyAnnD
Another UFO becomes a FO
Here’s a design from Mary Corbet’s “Spring Variety” pre-printed towel set. I am calling it Summertime because I need more towels for June, July and August. Not to mention Sunflowers and Zinnias bloom in summer. I see that horizontal crease but have been unable to press it out. You are warned not to press the pre-printed designs prior to stitching, and now I don’t want to compress the lovely 3-D effect of the threads by pressing too aggressively so I’ll just have to live with that crease.
I’m getting close to having a towel for every month, which was my initial goal for this project. What to embroider after that? Honestly, I think I’ll just keep on with the kitchen towels. They are so much fun to work.
P.S. In crafting circles, a UFO is not a suspected alien spacecraft, but an UnFinished Object.
C’est Fini
Well, the first sketch in someone else’s book is now finished and sent off to the next artist, about a month ahead of schedule.
And this has allowed me to go back to my own personal perpetual sketchbook and get back to work there. This is my first image that adds to something from the previous year since I started about this time last year. There are some lengthy gaps in the year, but I’ll make a real effort to put something in every gap this year. It will be interesting to see if the gaps tend to want to occur in the same places each year.
And here’s the real magic if this kind of work: when I opened the book and saw that mantis sketch from this time last year I remembered everything about the day the boys and I discovered the mantis on our pickle ball net and took photos:
I posed him (Her? Who but another mantis knows for sure?) on a lichen-covered branch I’d collected over at the coast. My journal, my rules. No true naturalist would unite 2 finds collected at such distances from one another in both space and time, but it made for a much nicer image. Style over substance? Sure, but the nature journal police are not welcome here:
Yellow Star-thistle is a noxious invasive weed, but I can’t resist wanting to draw those spiky thorns. This specimen was collected on my morning walk around the River Nine sewage treatment plant last Monday. As Mom used to say: there’s the effluent of the affluent. She did have a way with a phrase.
The other project finished this week was Isabel “Izzy” the doll and her blue jammies. This is a joint project with Penelope.
All in all, a productive week.
But wait, there’s more!
As promised I’m adding a Zinnia blossom to this month’s sketch.
I planted the California Giant Zinnias with the express purpose in mind to use them as subject matter for this project and my own personal journals as well. They’ve taken over the back corner of my yard with their cheerful exuberance after a very slow start. The first batch got mowed down immediately by either slugs and snails or earwigs. A second planting was more successful. Perhaps too successful.
And you can also see that I’ve been doing some embroidery at my drawing table. See the little green origami ort box and my tool block at the back. It’s dangerous when I start mixing metaphors and artistic pursuits. You never know what might happen next. I could put stitches in my artwork or paint on my needlework. Simply shocking!
Sketching away…
Adding to this beautiful initial sketch and title page from Ellen Blonder made me very nervous at first, but then one of my botanical illustration buddies mentioned that if my sketch was, well, sketchier, that would actually help the person who comes after me on the exchange list. I think it was Lee McCaffree who said this. Thanks Lee! That simple thought was a game changer for me.
Remembering that while people had 2 months to create their initial pages, we are more likely to have just 2 weeks to get future sketches done and in the mail if we are to keep this project on time has helped me get back to basics and do what I love to do: walk out in my yard and sketch something that’s there that no one would notice if I didn’t sit down and draw it.
So here’s a branch from my Crape Myrtle that’s setting seed. Next I think I will add a zinnia blossom. I grew California Giants this year and they are giants! Here are a few posing with my vintage Kamaka Ukulele.
Of course the true giants are my 12 foot tall sunflowers! But they won’t fit in a 4″x 6″ sketchbook.
Pumpkin mania
While there’s no frost in sight, there are pumpkins galore in our fading garden. This is about half of the first harvest and there are about this many more remaining in the garden yet to be harvested and set out to cure. We hope they will last until Halloween, safe from rot and pilferage. Vile pumpkin thieves multiply and grow bold as Halloween approaches, as we know from sad experience, but this year we have so many that even if a few went walkabout, we’d still have plenty of Halloween dècor. And all this bounty springs from only 4 hills of pumpkin plants, basically ignored all summer.
The tomatoes are finally coming in to their own and the sunflowers are just now setting blossoms at about 10 feet high but everything else is slowing down to manageable proportions. The aphids and the ladybugs are in a fight to the finish. The aphids are winning and sapping the energy from the corn, squash and cucumbers, but the ladybugs are giving it their all bless them. I’ve never seen so many in one place since I witnessed an aggregation of ladybugs on a hike in Redwood Regional Park many moon ago, and that is a different, winter phenomenon. Possibly I will photograph some of these industrious little aphid-munching factories at work and participate in the Cornell University Lost Ladybug Project.
High Sierra Hijinks
Well hiking in the mountains with kids is just the best way to spend a summer weekend! But that’s not all, folks. We fished also:
Here are the boys on Caples Lake, where the fish were not biting at all, but then neither were the ubiquitous mountain lake mosquitos either, and the weather was fine so at least we were comfortable in the boat while we were NOT catching any fish. Also, none of the other fishermen on the lake were catching anything so we didn’t feel too bad about getting skunked. And finally, if you catch no fish, you don’t have to clean any fish.
During a rest on a conveniently placed log while hiking the Kirkwood Lake Loop, Ryan (age 6) composed this little sketch in his nature journal showing a small wooden dock on the edge of lake and the surrounding trees:
He’s going to have to get a set of Faber Castell Albrecht Duhrer watercolor pencils for his birthday. It’s currently his preferred artist medium and while you always think of mountain lakes as sparkling blue, this color combination is quite accurate to depict the swampy-looking water we saw.
Connor was a trouper on the hike:
Daddy only had to carry him about half of the way. Not bad for 3.
Harvest Proceeds Apace…
The garden continues to grow well. In fact, this photo is about a week old and now you really can’t easily walk between the tomatoes and the cucumbers or the cucumbers and the squash. Trellising cucumbers has its advantages, but it’s a lot of work to set up a trellis system and then keep training the plants up constantly, so the decision was made this year to let the cucumbers sprawl as Gary’s dad used to do. The pumpkins are also creeping into other rows in the back. I’d thought to train them into the back 40 there behind the garden, but they have a mind of their own and will not be trained.
We harvest daily and are getting crazy amounts of squash and cucumbers but nothing else so far. I did see one reddening tomato today and an eggplant that’s ready to stuff. I expect to pick that first garden-ripened tomato some time next week, making this a late year for tomatoes. But once they get going, watch out!
Here’s what I’m doing with the excess zucchini and cucumbers:
Cream of zucchini soup, hold the cream. This soup has only 4 ingredients: one onion briefly sautèed in olive oil, gobs of cubed zucchini, and salt. I throw all that in my largest stock pot and cook it down until the zucchini falls apart. Then after it cools for a bit, I purèe it with the immersion blender I borrowed from Laura and freeze it in my Souper Cube Trays before I vacuum pack it:
Come December I’ll be glad of these little reminders of summer deliciousness! For Gary, I’ve made traditional bread and butter pickles:
I personally am a dill pickle fan and I don’t know how to make those. But this recipe calls for 10 pounds of cucumbers and that pretty much cleared out the excess cucumbers from this week, so HOORAY! Maybe I will make one more batch this year. We’ve planted a second row of cucumbers so we’ll be in cucumber heaven until the end of September if no gophers hear about it. Mum’s the word.
Creative Collaboration
The NCalSBA Sketchbook Exchange is officially underway and I’m working on the title page for my sketchbook, which will start traveling soon and then return to me containing entries from 10 other botanical artists next June. Meanwhile, I will be adding one botanical sketch each month to a new sketchbook belonging to someone else that arrives in my mailbox before sending it on to the next artist.
I made some discoveries about working in a little accordion journal that I post here:
- The accordion book is hard to work on without adding some kind of support underneath whichever side is highest on the page spread you’re working on. Originally, I ordered several different sketchbook options before settling on the Etchr model and you can see in the photo above that one of the other journals turned out to be just the right size for providing that support and it’s peeking out from under the left side of the Etchr sketchbook on my work table. I also tried using a stack of 4×6 index cards and that worked well too because I could make very fine adjustments so that both sides were equal in height and therefore my working surface was flat. This is very important if you’re working over the folds on 2-page spreads.
- I also noticed that the book was unwieldy and tended to unfold itself as I shifted it around until I thought to use the built-in elastic band to hold the rest of the accordion together while I was working. You can see that band on the right side of the image. Luckily, I was not planning to work in that area near the band today. I will make a couple more bands from some 1/8″ elastic as that narrower elastic will not interfere as much while I work and bands that are not attached to the end boards will be easier to shift as I move around while working in an open page spread.
- I wanted to make that circle on my title page and it was bigger than the largest circle my handy circle-making template had to offer so I needed to use my compass. I did NOT want to make even a very small needle hole in the middle of my paper where I was planning to put my echinacea blossom. I have a roll of some white “artist’s” tape that features post-it note-like adhesive. I love that stuff, I think I bought it at Utrecht years ago. After testing carefully, I stacked 3 small pieces of the tape in the area where I needed to place the needle of my compass. It worked perfectly. The hole is in the tape stack, but the needle did not penetrate to the actual paper and the compass did not slip or skip. You can also see a piece of that tape off to the top right on top of my mock-up page spread.
- The creamy hot press paper in this Etchr book is excellent for my Micron Pigma 005 Sepia pen plus colored pencil style of sketching. Graphite pencil marks erase beautifully.
- Finally, I noticed…this is FUN!