We have a few new big city sights in our neighborhood, too. Nettlehorst School has a new horse. It is a lot brighter than the original!
And the sculptures have changed again. This one is so large that it almost scared me.
I hope they move the orange bags at the bottom soon, and I hope they don’t mean it isn’t bolted down!
I remembered to take a picture of the Hebru Brantley Fly Boy statue outside the Chicago Children’s Museum.
While no one was posing under it in a Fly Boy stance as someone usually is, I noticed that the Harry Carey restaurant next door’s new photo opportunity was getting some action.
A popular posing opportunity downtown is the Wings of Mexico statue. One time, when I passed it on a bus, I was surprised to see that my younger daughter was the one posing on it.
Last weekend across the street from the wings, I spied an enormous champagne cork from the bus window on the way to the Blues Festival. It was gone by the time I went to take a picture of it, so I was glad to find that I could take a picture of the Wings instead and that they have stayed around longer than they were originally meant to.
And speaking of the Blues Festival since it was at Millennium Park, I snapped a picture of The Bean – the quintessential big city sight.
Last year, during Stitchtober, I started thinking of other series of images that might work with the prompts from @ajpritchett. While he and most of the others who stitch do individual pieces, I have done two that incorporate all the prompts. Two years ago, as I read the prompts, I thought of fairy tales (blog post #stitchtober2021), and last year the prompts made me think of Greek myths (blog post Stitchtober 2023). One of the categories that I thought might work with typical Stitchtober prompts was tarot cards, but I wondered if I could even stitch 12 or 13 tiny tarot cards, so I decided to try stitching one.
When I think of Tarot cards, I think of the Rider-Waite deck and as a collector of suns specifically of the sun card. Stitching a 2″ version was not easy and I can say with certainty that even if this year’s Stitchtober prompts work perfectly, I will not be stitching a piece that includes 12 or 13 Rider-Waite cards.
I stitched the card on white duck fabric using only 1 or 2 strands of embroidery thread, and although it was challenging, I ended up being pretty pleased with it. At first, I thought I would frame it in the hoop, but when an embroiderer I follow on Instagram wrote that her round flower design wasn’t round enough, I thought. “Well then, my little rectangle definitely isn’t round enough!” So I decided to look for a frame. I was headed for Michael’s when I thought of the local shop Four Sided instead, and I found the perfect frame – a small (2.5×3.5) shadow box frame from Lawrence Frames.
I didn’t know what I was going to stitch next, but a few days after I finished the tarot card, I read an article about Clint Eastwood. He was asked how he stays so productive at his age and he answered, “I never let the old man in.” I loved this sentiment and did some research on it. I found out that he has been saying it for years (sometimes saying “never” rather than “don’t”) and that he originally attributed it to an older man that he knew. It also turns out that after he said it to Toby Keith, he wrote a song based on it called. “Don’t let the old man in,” and it was included in the movie “The Mule.”
I had just received a notice for jury duty and my husband pointed out that I could decline due to age. That didn’t feel right to me and when I thought about the quote I knew why. And I also knew I wanted to embroider it. I pictured it in a black and red tattoo font. I had a piece of 20 count linen that seemed like it would work with letters that were 10 x’s high, so after doing a little googling, I designed a font. The Michael’s I go to has been out of black embroidery thread for a while, so I bought balls of cotton perle and used two pieces of black and one of red.
At first, I just stitched the letters – using “never” rather than “don’t ” and changing “man” to woman. When I finished, I had no idea what I was going to do with it. Then, at a street fair, I saw a silkscreen or painting of the Chicago flag on a stretched canvas and thought, Ah hah! I could stretch it over a purchased canvas if I could find one. It turned out there are stretched canvases that are 12″×4″. 12 inches was perfect, but 4 was a bit big, so I added the heart. It was too small to stretch around to the back of the canvas, and after a few days of mulling it over, I settled on gluing it to the sides with fabric glue (it was barely big enough on the bottom) and then gluing 1/2 inch twill tape over it to cover the raw edges. I think it came out even better than I could have expected.
I hung it next to my bed, which was looking a little lopsided after I put the cross stitch cats I stitched many years ago above the tribute to my youngest sister. I put the tarot card on my dresser, and I must say my room is getting pretty full of my embroidery!
I was excited to see a new little library in my neighborhood the other day, but as I got closer, I realized that it was a different kind of library – a seed library!
Unfortunately there were no seeds or plastic containers!
It seems that almost every time I go downtown, I find something surprising. Recently, when I arrived at Navy Pier to volunteer at the children’s museum, I found two large Day of the Dead figures.
Since it was spring, not fall, it was not only their size that was surprising. It turned out they were part of Mexico Fest at the Pier.
The next day, I was lucky enough to be on my way to an event at the Newberry Library during 900 Michigan’s Fleur de Villes event.
The mannequins are dressed in real flowers and plants. I was especially impressed by the shorts on one of the few male mannequins.
The theme of this year’s Fleur de Villes event was Voyage: “This 5 day show will feature six levels of floral mannequins paying homage to humans wanderlust, all created by Chicago’s top floral artists.”
Last week, when I arrived at the Pier, I was amazed to see a large gorilla in the distance. On my way home, I went over to check it out and found out it was part of a trio of very large transformers who were there to publicize a new movie.
They were packing them up when I arrived this week. Cranes and lots of wooden boxes were involved, and when I left several hours later, the packing up was still going on.
A new sculpture a short distance away will stay a while longer. As I walked toward him, I thought he was a fox, but it turns out his title is Bastet, so maybe he is a cat.
This post will have to end “to be continued” because I just realized that while I wrote about the new Hebru Brantley designed art studio I haven’t mentioned the new Fly Boy statue which is certainly another Big City Sight.
Yesterday, on my walk to buy some more embroidery thread, I found some new examples of sights (or sites*) I’ve written about before. First, there is a new street poet. I wrote about this phenomenon in “In My Neighborhood: On the way to the medical offices.” The new poet only seems to have one poem, though. I saw this one several times on my walk.
Second, the environment enhancing I wrote about in “In My Neighborhood: Sidewalk Landscaping” continues:
In addition to these small chairs for children (I presume since they are too large for fairies and too small for adults) there are strings of beads hanging from the trees that are difficult to see in the photo.
* I’ve noticed some writers don’t seem to know that these are two different words – it amuses me that either work here.
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!
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 