Friday, August 11, 2023

Monsoons, Geodes and whatever else comes to mind!

 How is it that a month goes by in a flash, and I start feeling like I'm forgetting to do something?  Oh yeah, how about a new blog post?!


Here's what I've been doing this past month - Geode ice dyeing!





I've also been dyeing some aprons - those babies have been flying off the rack, so I bought a bunch more and need to get crackin', our 25th Annual Open Studios tour is coming in 2 weeks!


BTW,  If you are not in the Flagstaff or Sedona area and want to order something from me,
just click on Contact Me and drop me an e-mail.

 On the home front, we have had a bumper crop of Humming Birds this year!  I had to go drag out a couple of old, ugly feeders to stop the rioting to get a place at the feeder, but they hold 32 oz each, so I don't have to keep going out to refill the smaller ones :



Normally early in the morning or in the evening we get swarms of them!  This lonesome guy was contentedly sipping away and pulled his head up just as I snapped the shot.

Well, we finally started getting monsoon storms in the past week or so - last year this time, our area was being deluged with post fire flooding - first time we ever got flooding across our front area and ended up with a couple of inches of mud in the garage!  I never did post photos from the mess, but after a year, the County Flood Control district has done a great job enhancing the flood mitigation efforts - we've had some heavy downpours the last couple of weeks, and our river did come back for a short visit on the southeast corner of the property, but no bad floods across the front - just lots of large puddles and a lot of Thunder/lightning.  

Oh, one more thing I've been doing this month, especially when I'm working a shift at Arts Connection:


I created a long continuous strand of "fabric twine", where I take strips of fabric, twist them together, then when I get a pretty good length, I created a cover for a glass vessel.  I used a blanket stitch to secure the rows, then slipped the vessel into the "sleeve" I made.  Busy hands are happy hands, right?

One last thing to share - my dear friend Sherrie Spangler of http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/  stopped by yesterday on her way to joining a friend to head to Gallup NM!  She takes lots of pix and once she's back in the Oro Valley, she will be posting about our visit, so be sure to check it out next week.  We played in my studio for awhile, chatted for awhile longer, gorged on yummy Mexican food at Salsa Brava, then she headed to her hotel.  Sherrie wrote the tutorial that got me started years ago on making my fabric wrapped coiled bowls!  And the last time she came up, I taught her how to make Spirit Dolls, which she has shared about in her blog, so do take a minute and browse all her wonderful posts!

Okay, big plug - if you're in the Flagstaff Area Aug 26/27, I do hope you'll find time to drop by Studio #14 and say hi, and see some of the beautiful creations by the 5 artists who will be there!  If you visit flagstaff-arts.org, you will find a downloadable brochure with locations and see which artists are participating at each location.  Hope to see you there!  Bye for now... 😊



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