Now that my daughter’s addition is finished, she has a lot more walls to decorate. Since our condo here has a lot less wall space and we have boxes full of pictures that we didn’t hang, she came over to take a look. She found a few to take, and I found some I had overlooked. One was pretty surprising as it was perfect for the bathroom off the living room. When we first moved here, we hung this bird that used to hang in our kitchen on one side of the door.
Somehow, we forgot that we had the perfect piece for the other side of the door.
So we remedied that omission:
But what to do with the bird we had purchased at the Lakeview East Festival of the Arts for the other side? We found the perfect solution because it fixed something that had been bothering me – the fact that the towel ring looked unanchored on the opposite wall.
When I wrote about this bathroom before in post titled “Horror Vacui,” I resolved to try not to fill this bathroom with birds, but I realize now that it did need one more bird!
The first time I went to a World Market was with my daughters one time when we were visiting Chicago. I was reminded of the way Pier Ones used to be and was excited when I found the green flowered egg. But I was disappointed when I displayed it with my European wooden eggs because it didn’t really go with them. For one thing it was larger, and for another, it seemed to be made differently, so I was glad to find two more eggs during trips to two different World Markets over the course of this year. I was excited to find out more about them, too, as one had a Made in India sticker.
Then, my husband discovered that there was a Google feature on our new phones that enabled us to scan things and get more information about them. When he scanned our eggs, similar eggs popped up. Turns out these are Kashmiri eggs. Wooden eggs covered with paper mache made from recycled paper pulp and hand painted and then lacquered by artists in Kashmir, India.
I decided to try the Google feature with another egg I’ve always been curious about. I bought this egg in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from a strange store to buy a decorative egg from – if I remember correctly, it was a shoe repair shop (or maybe a dry cleaner). It took a while to find a similar image, but then I found this one.
Not quite the same image, so I zoomed in so you couldn’t see it was an egg to see if I could find out who it was an image of, and I found this.
I thought this was even more similar, but I didn’t find out who she is yet. Although I think I can safely say my egg is from Bali, Indonesia. Now I’m wondering what other countries I can find eggs from!
Spring decorating this year began with St. Patrick’s Day. After seeing these “shamrocks” on The House That Lars Built’s Instagram account, I decided to make one for each dining room window. I put shamrocks in quotes because they actually start with 4 leaf clovers. And then when I saw a video on Instagram of an umbrella made in a similar way by Ann-Sophia Garcia, I decided to make one for one of the Spring trees. The umbrella starts with circles that are folded in half and then half again, glued together, and then opened up and glued together. I couldn’t tell how many circles she used, so I searched for more directions and ended up using nine. The House That Lars Built also has directions for eggs that are made using this accordion method, but they call for something like 64 half oval shapes, so I don’t think I’ll be making those!
Last year, I made a peg doll to represent a Påskkärringar – the young Swedish girls who dress up as witches on Easter Thursday and go from house to house begging for candy. Then I started to wonder what the Swedish boys were doing – didn’t they get to dress up and get candy, too? Well, it turns out that they do. Some also dress as witches and some dress as Paskgubbars – Easter Old Men – in “their best and blackest suit, a large fake mustache, and any old top hat laying around in the attic” according to the website scandinavianstandard.com which includes this photo.
So I decided my Påskkärringar needed a little brother. (I know he looks like the Monopoly guy!)
I’ve been wanting to make some felt flowers for the end of the hall, and after I took the class on wet felting flowers, I bought some fiber thinking I’d try wet felting and needle felting some. I hadn’t gotten started on those when I saw some felt flowers on Instagram made with felt sheets and hot glue by Resa Curbo Creative, which I thought might look even better. Resa sells patterns and bouquet kits, and I thought it made sense to start with a kit, so I ordered the Wildflower one. The flowers were easy to make, and I love the way they turned out!
You might not think celebrating Spring would lead to a whimsical frog collection, but that has been the result. For many years on the Spring Equinox and some years for the week before, frogs have appeared around the house.
There were seven teeny tiny frogs this year. Last year, two larger frogs surprised my husband when he opened the kitchen cabinets. We put those away with the Spring decorations, and this year, he positioned one as if he was listening to the portable speaker.
Some stay perched year round where they first appeared.
Some actually have a job to do:
And one year, I found this frog game in the table at the recycling center. It was hard to get the frogs to sit places with their peg bottoms, but it was fun to have so many!
I certainly never set out to collect chickens but it seems I have a chicken collection. My older daughter was probably the first to give us chickens. This rooster she gave me sat on top of our refrigerator in Northampton but now sits on her bench that became a part of our gallery wall.
The other end of the gallery wall is where most of the chickens reside.
This chicken, an original painting gifted by our oldest daughter to her father, is in the rear of the middle box:
That box also contains a chicken I bought thinking of it more as part of a collection of our art made of discarded materials (the body is made of recycled plastic bags) than of the fact that it was a chicken but since it was a chicken it ended up in front of the painting. For a long time, I couldn’t remember where I bought him, but then I saw a basket of them at a Sidewalk Sale at the Smith College Art Museum and realized he must have come from an earlier Sidewalk Sale.
I love that his cockscomb is made from a plastic fork. Some other chickens have migrated to this shelf as well. The glass one on the right had been in an Easter basket one year, and I think the little Loteria card matchbox on the right is one from one of my husband’s Christmas stockings.
I have also contributed to the chicken collection in other ways. The little painted one on the left is a Dala chicken I recently bought from the Swedish American Museum here in Chicago. Many years ago, I also bought the handpainted plate in the bottom box in an antique store that was in Florence for a while.
The back of it says, “Today would have been my parent’s 51st wedding anniversary Denise J. Myers 8-16-2003. Since August 16 is also the day my parents were married (in 1947), this plate had to come home with me.
That little chick in the corner is another Easter basket gift and is also from a Smith College Art Museum Sidewalk Sale. Items bought for Easter that then stick around is certainly a source for the chicken collection. Our kitchen hosts a chicken I bought from the Dollar Tree that looked so good here it never went into the Easter box.
And now I’ve even made a chicken. I saw some potholder loop chickens at the felting store in South Deerfield last summer and just had to make one.
I think I wrote before about this card my Birmingham niece gave me, which made me realize that perhaps a chicken collection wasn’t so weird for someone who also collects suns and mermaids.
And I recently learned about the benefit of a chicken collection at an exhibit at the Swedish American Museum “Swedish Folk Painting: Tradition and Change.” Artist Alison Aune said of the traditional pieces that inspired her rooster paintings: “Because the rooster is always on alert these paintings were placed in the house for good luck and protection.” With all our chickens, we should be well protected!
I had so much fun participating in the Instagram Stitchtober challenge in 2021 that I knew I wanted to do it again in 2022. I also knew I wanted to stitch one piece again but in cross stitch this year. Unlike the year before, when I thought of fairy tales as soon as I read the list, nothing came to mind this year. I didn’t even know what one of the words meant, but when I looked it up, everything fell into place. Ichor, it turns out, refers to the blood of the Greek gods. I realized that several other prompts also made me think of Greek myths – Unending made me think of Sisyphus, Reflect of Narcissus, and Beneath of Persephone. Obviously, the final prompt All Hallows had nothing to do with Greek myths, and as I researched Greek myths, I realized it would be difficult to stretch any myth to fit Black as Night. Luckily, though, I had come across images of Greek vases, and I decided to base my design on those and to have the first and last prompts refer to the thread colors.
I have always been fascinated by the Greek key pattern, so I decided to use it for the border and make it obvious from the first post that it was going to be all one piece this year. Day 1 Black as Night DMC 310 thread.
The final list: Unending – Sisyphus, Bloodthirsty- Ares, Monstrous – Medusa, Ichor -Talos a giant “automatum” who was powered by Ichor until his ankle was pierced and it ran out of his body, Entrancing – Orpheus, Shadow – Nyx goddess of the night, Slither – Hydra Lernaia a nine headed water serpent, Banish – Athena whose father Zeus tried to banish her before she was born by swallowing her mother, Reflect – Narcissus, Beneath – Persephone, and Imprison – Cerebus.
When I searched online, I found great silhouettes of some characters like this one of Sisyphus. I adapted others, including Talos and Nyx, from images on actual Greek vases. Orpheus and Persephone were a bit more challenging since the images I found of them were not as simple. Orpheus was particularly challenging because I had actually left out Entrancing when I designed the piece. Nyx originally had some horses beneath her that were probably my favorite part of the design, but they were not essential, so they were replaced by Orpheus and his lute (I really like the lute so that makes up for losing the horses). The hardest image to design was Narcissus because all the pictures I found of him were more three dimensional and showed him leaning down looking at his reflection which I thought would look like a disembodied floating head if I attempted an adaptation. Then, one day, I was looking out the window at the sailboats reflecting in the water and decided that was how to portray Narcissus.
Of course, I hadn’t finished stitching the background when it came to the final day and I posted this picture for All Hallows – one strand each of DMC 783 and 976.
I used three strands for the black, but when I began stitching the background, three strands of either color or the combination didn’t look right. I used one of each color because I couldn’t decide between them and because together they looked just like the background of a Greek vase that was being auctioned off here in Chicago at the same time I was stitching.
I continued to stitch through November but had to put it down so I could do my Christmas crafting. After I finished my niece’s house portrait in January (I had given her the promise of it for Christmas), I picked up the Stitchtober piece again and stitched it through February. It was pretty challenging to stitch the background after stitching the characters, and if I didn’t believe in making my x’s individually and crossing them every which way, it would have been impossible. When it was done I turned it into a pillow!
I love it! And I already have some thoughts for Stitchtober 2023!
My Chicago niece has become my Missouri niece. She moved to Missouri last June for her husband’s medical residency. We went there for Thanksgiving and I took pictures of their new house so I could make them a house portrait to celebrate their move.
I also used a Google search photo so I could see what the foliage looked like in summer.
Inspired by two embroiderers on Instagram who embroider house portraits – Kenzie of Neverland Knots and Kylie of Saint Rogers Street – I sketched out my design. And then I watched Kylie’s YouTube videos on embroidering house portraits several times each before beginning. I had been embroidering on duck fabric and was pleasantly surprised by my success but had run out. They were out of it when I went to Joanne’s, so I ended up using a thinner fabric, which presented the tension challenges I remembered from my long ago attempts at hand embroidery. Consequently, there are a few puckers above the roof, but all in all, I’m pretty proud of it, and I think my niece likes it too. She commented particularly on how I stitched the French knots.
I used a little artistic license and “removed” the trees that block the entrance. In this photo, I also used the erasing feature on my new phone to obscure the address to post it on Instagram, but I think it’s also a bit crooked. Although I wrote, “I’m pretty proud of it,” I meant considering it was my first house portrait – I think it will also be my last one!
I mentioned my Valentine’s Day decorating in my last post but haven’t shared it yet. I kept the garland up in the kitchen and hung up the valentine ornaments I’ve made and collected as well as my yearly card ornaments.
Continuing with the fortune theme I used a couple of years ago, I used the Fortune Teller Miracle Fish image and Swedish fish candy for my Valentine’s this year. When I went to get one of the wooden bowls I usually photograph them in, I saw this fishbasket and thought I have to use that!
I struggled with what to write on the back since there weren’t any actual fortune telling fish but finally settled on “No Fish…..Go Fish.”
In the dining room windows I hung the cherry and heart garlands I made a few years ago along with the origami heart my oldest granddaughter made. And I arranged the M&M spokespeople beneath – a nod to all the recent drama about them
A couple of Saturdays ago, Brenda of the Cozy Little House blog shared a post called Easy Vintage Valentine’s Day Cloche Display from the Follow the Yellow Brick Home blog. When I clicked on it, I saw it was a hop of sorts hosted by the CountyRoad 407 blog. Called a Pinterest Challenge, the host picks an image from Pinterest and invites the other bloggers to recreate it in their own style. In this case, the Pinterest photo was from the blog Crafting While I Wait. I had fun looking at the original blog post and at all the creations inspired by it. And then I was inspired to make one in my tiny cloche.
I was looking for a vintage spool of thread and was especially excited when I found one from Corticelli Threads, a company whose fascinating history began in Florence, Massachusetts where we used to live. I also found a small wooden spool, so I made a tiny shadow box too.
Not sure why the box looks so dented in on the side. I need to go fix that, and I’ll probably add a loop so I can hang it on the garland next year.
This pretty little glass piece from my Birmingham in-laws obviously belonged in the sun so it now lives on the top of the new bookcase.
One of my Northampton friends sent me a picture of a wooden mushroom her son had made. When I told her I had begun collecting wooden mushrooms, I got one in the mail! Now the mushrooms live on a shelf in the new bookcase as well.
My sister gave me a dish towel featuring suns and my first thought was to make it into a pillow like I had with another sun dish towel but I realized that wouldn’t work with the design so I decided to display it on a hanger I had. Right now it is on the inside of the workroom door but I’d like to move it to the outside so I can see it when I’m sitting in bed.
And the dish towel we got from our Seattle niece is perfect complement to our kitchen Valentine’s Day decorations.
My niece bought the dishtowel on her annual New Mexico trip. It is from Kei and Molly Textiles and is handprinted by their “diverse staff of artisans, immigrants. and refugees.”
I bought a new phone recently and before I did I saved the photos my Birmingham niece had shared with me by text over the last year. I saved them to my Sim card thinking that it would get transferred to my new phone but that didn’t happen so I am using my old phone to write this post on her doll collections and save the photos here before my old phone’s charging port is completely shot.
My Birmingham niece’s latest doll collection is of Motanka dolls from Ukraine. She started collecting them when Russia invaded Ukraine as a way to do something by supporting Ukranian artists.
On Indigenous People’s Day last year she shared this display.
And for Black History month:
She also has an Amish doll collection:
And one of Matryoshka dolls:
And here’s a small glimpse of some of her Frida Kahlo dolls:
I know this is just a small portion of her ever growing collection – the last time she went to Santa Fe she texted me that she was leaving with 13 dolls in her suitcase!
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 