Truck Woes

Coolant, everywhere BUT where is it coming from?

Now I know why my truck smells like toasted grains!

The chipmunks have been very busy.

No coolant in here, that's a good thing!

More coolant, both coolant pics are the right side of the motor.

There appears to be a small dribble coming out of the bell at the top of the manifold, but I'm not a hundred percent sure, it's on the far side of bell I wasn't able to get a good pic of it.  The bell sits just to the back of the water pump.

Final Leg

The final leg towards my solo show, finishing up four pieces in the Prairie Series.

Prairie No.'s 9-12
Natural Dyes Cotton and Silk Fabrics.
Machine Stitched

I cut each of these panels off of their canvas stretched frames and cut them down to size, which varies, as I was unhappy with them.  With the addition of more stitching, and in some cases more silk fabric overlays, and then binding off the edges with zig zag stitching, they will then be re-mounted to 18x24 inch stretched canvas.  More pics later.

Journal Back Cover

Back cover of my newly retro fitted journal, and what can I say I'm a ham for very pretty papers!

Retro Fit Journal

At the beginning of the school year I purchased a couple of compostition books.  I cut this one down to 6x8 inches and then glued a piece of scrapbooking paper to the front cover.  Now to embellish the front, I will work on the back of the journal later.

Purple Easter Eggs

If your wanting a natural purple for your easter eggs I suggest using beets or cabbage.

HOWEVER, there is a catch to getting the purple color and getting it to stay purple and not turn grey.

Beets or Purple Cabbage chopped fine
Place in a stainless steel sauce pan
Cover twice as deep with Vinegar and add one cup of sugar to the mix.
Bring to a boil.
Strain the vegetation out of the liquer.
Return the dye juice to the sauce pan.
Bring back to a boil and then remove heat source.
Place your eggs in the hot liquid and roll around in the liquid.
Do this for about 15 minutes.



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Bleeding Hearts Fat Half - WIP

Fat Half - 45 inches long by 18 inches wide. Fabric paint on Poly/Cotton Sheer fabric.

Garden Update No.???

No pics tonight, just a note to say how much I hate Grackles!  The little buggers pulled all of my baby leeks and baby onions :-(  So tomorrow, if it doesn't rain, I'll be replanting and this time applying large amounts of bird netting over the nursery area.

Bleeding Heart Fabric Swatch

Bleeding Heart fabric Swatch, what remains from a three yard piece of fabric I dyed in 2002ish.  I started a fat half tonight in similar colors but didn't add the salt for the speckled effect.

Bleeding Hearts

Bleeding Hearts

Inspiration for a new series.

Salad Garden Update

Lots of weeds popping up in the garden after a weekend of rain, the good news though is the lettuces are starting to emerge.

Avocado Dye Baths

Pits to the left, peels to the right, my not so solar solar vats.  They have been sitting on my table in my wet studio for some time now.

Live Stream - Cancelled

I won't be able to live stream today, I have a stomach bug of some sort - most probably picked up from the place I ate lunch at yesterday.  Took my best friend out for lunch, to celebrate her birthday, and unfortunately gave her the gift of turning icky green!!! :-(  Well we're both sick now and have both decided that it's time to find someplace else to celebrate!

Live Stream

Am planning to live stream tomorrow and anything goes I'll be playing with natural dyes, fibers and fabric.  Stop by at 3pm central time! http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mark-making-with-nature

Harvest Series

Prairie Potholes No. 15

Finally home!

Natural Dyed Silks

It's time to dig out the ironing board and do some pressing!

Natural Dyed Silk Scarves

April Showers

We are currently experiencing rain, much needed rain, yeah I know this is quite the turn around from last year but then who knew we'd have three flood years in a row!  Well it's been dry here of late, lots of grass fires, etc. so when the rain started flying... yes I was excited.  Pictures to be forth coming.

Flower Parts

Bug Nest

Angel

Today - WIP

Natural Dyed Cotton Fabric - Cutch
Machine Stitched
Still have tons more stitching to add to the surface, and then some embellishments.
Size - smallish.

Bright Yellow Orange Fluffyness

Kamala dyed fancy yarn waiting to be couched down onto a new project.

Dinner

Pepper

aka Cookie Face, his eyes are very green today.

Bloodroot

My bloodroot patch has started to spread, finally.  I don't actually use the roots for dyeing with, I planted them because I have a small prairie woodland garden.

Favorite Colors

Just a few of my favorite copic colors!  The marker in the middle is the colorless blender.

Excited!!!

Well I've finally made the decision I'm moving my studio out of it's current space, a second story bedroom, into the living and dining room, these two rooms are open to each other.  What the casual obsevery doesn't know is that my "design studio" has bled over into three other rooms, four rooms if I count all of the mixed media items that are hogging space in my wet studio, of the house and well most of the time I have no idea what I have as far as supplies are concerned.

With John's blessing we have been pouring over various studio organization books, and magazines, and will over the next 2-3 months move my studio into the living and dining rooms, thus consolidating everything so that I can work more effectiently.  I will also be working towards divesting of 'stuff' that I am no longer using and/or interested in using in my artwork. 

The upside is I will have a guest bedroom again AND my current studio space will officially become my office space/library for all of those books I have bought over the years for my studio.  Thank you Alyson for that encouragement!

Rhubarb

Rhubarb, can't wait am already dreaming about slices of strawberry rhubarb pie and rhubarb crisp!

Salad Garden

Bird netting now attached to the hoop house portion of the raised bed and just in time for the baby lettuce sprouts that are now breaking through the soil.

North Garden

Tilled!!!  Before raking.

After raking and ready for cattle panels and peas!

Circle Garden

Circle garden at the base of the crab apple, because you really shouldn't till close to the base of a tree, it once held strawberries but they kept escaping so I'm moving them elsewhere.

East Garden

Before

During

After

Now I just need to rake the garden and plant oats, a green manure, and then till it up again in about three weeks.  This garden will have cucumbers, two types of picklers, cabbages, brussel sprouts, mustard greens and kale.

Samples

Cynthia Wenslow asked on her blog if anyone else made samples, and my anwser is YES!  Consider it a hold over from art school where we were expected to make sketches and color swatches of EVERYTHING before we even made something.  But to anwser Cynthia's question... with the cost of supplies exploding I'm making more samples than I ever have in the past.  Above is a color sample of pink on black to see if it was possible, the anwser is YES with opaque pink paint on top of black fabric.

'Cause Cute Matters!

I bought this at Clare's, at the mall, today.  It's a new coin purse for me and is rather largish, it has a place to hold my license, etc. so it could in fact be used as a mini purse :-)  I liked a LOT of the floral fabric bags, scarves, and headbands they had there but decided that I could make my own and for way less than what they were wanting... which was something like 75% less than what Younkers was asking for almost identical items.

Anyway, I'm off to check my fabric and pattern stashes as I have some skirts and new bags planned for my spring/summer wardrobe!

Garden Stakes

I needed garden stakes so John cut up some of the "shorts" that were littering his shop floor and made some really cute stakes for me, 9 inches long.   Given more time I could have put the plant names on the stakes in a prettier font, I scribbled the plant names on with a sharpie :-)

North Garden In Progress

Last years garden growth.

Raked and shredded with the shredder. I will plant peas in this garden this coming week, and later this spring tomatoes and yellow wax beans.

And now mostly occupying one of the compost bins.  The super wet vegetation is on top we won't shred this due to it being super hard on the shredder.



Salad Garden Planted

Filled with salad fixin's and various herbs for my summer menu.

Three kinds of lettuce to start with, spinach, chard, kale, anise, basil, purple basil, parsley, fennel, dill, and cilantro.  I have more lettuce and  herbs to plant, the other herbs go into another herb garden that's in serious need of raking first.

Raised Beds and Hoop Houses

This raised bed is waiting for it's hoops still, first I need to turn the soil and then plant it with lettuce, chard, and other salad nummies.

Tomorrow I'll add the mesh and then the plastic to the hoops.  The mesh is for later in the season to keep the critters out, the mesh I use is a half inch square plastic netting.

The boards are covering my leek trenches.