deluge

By my mason jars on the deck we had about 4 inches of rain overnight. Enough to top off the pool and later today Jim will run the new pump for the first time now that the water level is where it needs to be. The frogs are so happy that we are not using the pool yet that they were up screaming about it all night long. With that and the thunder and lightning, sleep was scarce. 

beach

getting his bearings

For those of you who are following the Bear restoration, he can see where he's going now and his inner eye is on the game as well.  Mere buttons would not do here. A nice no-nonsense nose seemed in order. I'm still thinking about how I want the mouth to look but I have to get some new stuffing first and get him back to being 3D before any grinning or dental work is started.

silkwinds

I'm done stitching on this one - the base was starting to deform. I love working with the dyed silk.

It reminded me that I had a whole series of 3D pieces that evolved just so I could wrap them with a variety of transparent fabrics including a rainbow of sheer poly and some cotton lawn all stitched over stuffed damask "heart, livers and other uniformed body parts" .  More of this here

and here. I'm thinking of rounding these up and making them available.
Boy, do they take up a lot of space!

stitching silks

Here's a game's worth of stitching (minus a two inning nap) with some of the scraps of silk that I dyed earlier this morning. I've always been drawn to the possibilities of transparency no matter the medium. It can spell trouble for me, too many possibilities that is - like having the really huge box of crayons used to trouble me. I always felt like I had to use them all.

I held the line at just three colors of silk for this little sample which was supposed to be about getting used to handling and stitching silk and silk gauze.
Lesson one...I need a manicure - I keep snagging the gauze with my leathery finger tip!