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!
Sometimes, when I get a gift, I know exactly where it’s going to go. Sometimes, it takes a while to figure it out. And sometimes I know where in general but not exactly where. When one of my gifts from my daughter was a papercut Day of the Dead mermaid card from Two Hermanas I knew I wanted it to be near the Two Hermanas Loteria papercut card my Birmingham niece had given me. We tried it in a few places on the gallery wall and realized it looked best behind the Day of the Dead mermaids.
At first I thought the nativity my Birmingham niece brought back from Oaxaca would be displayed with all the other nativities at Christmas. But when I put it with them it didn’t look right and I knew it belonged on the gallery wall shelves where we’d get to see it all year.
It was my husband who figured out that it needed those little birds on either side.
I knew exactly where the mermaid we got from my Pennsylvania in laws would go. There was a space in the mermaid display that had been bugging me ever since I hung the mermaid plate there this summer. I think this mermaid may be a bookmark but I think she looks perfect here.
My husband gave me a framed collage “Believe” and he was so glad that I figured out a place for it. “I loved it, but I had no idea where it was going to go,” he said. There was the perfect space for it in the workroom.
There are a few more gifts that need to be incorporated when the Christmas decorations are put away, and there is one that I need to figure out how to display, so there will be another incorporation post soon.
For the most part the Christmas decorations landed in the same places this year – snowpeople and Santas on top of the speakers, gnomes on the white book shelves, Christmas villages on the small bookshelf, and nativity scenes on top of the china cabinet. The deer moved about a bit, though. The plaid deer found a new home on top of the new bookcase.
I found the one in the front at the end of the season last year I think at a drug store but I’m not quite sure. I made the little wooden guy inspired by one at Four Sided. Theirs had wire antlers and I had tried to make that work but couldn’t and had given up. But when I was making something else with pipe cleaners this year I got the idea to try them and I like the result. I just made this one though.
I got two new wooden trees this year so 8 had four foe each side of the “wooden” deer on top of the small CD bookcase.
We purchased the one in the front with some bark on it at The Found Cottage on our Michigan vacation. The one behind it came from a World Market.
We went to Columbia, Missouri for Thanksgiving and did a little shopping the next day. We found another cute alpine house (the one in the middle on the second shelf)
We also found this little metal pitcher for the kitchen ornament collection. It reminds me of the child sized pitchers at Nonotuck.
Our first purchase for this year was way back in the Spring at a TJ Maxx. As soon as I saw this Dala horse I knew we had to get him.
And my last one was The Grinch. When I saw him at Walgreens on my last last minute shopping trip I knew he belonged on my children’s book and movie characters tree.
I got a late start on this year’s window decorations since I was still working on my Stitchtober piece in November (it’s still not done…). I had seen some stars created by The House That Lars Built using a Cricut but since I don’t have or want one, I didn’t want to buy the template which meant I had to figure it out myself. I ended up with 12 pointed stars which is less than the originals but they worked and I liked the way they looked. I had a progressive size hole puncher so I decided to make a line of holes on each point starting larger and getting smaller at the center. Each star has two sides and I started out making holes on both sides. The hole puncher broke before I finished the last star but luckily I hadn’t put the penultimate one together so the last two have plain backs which is actually fine since they get the same amount of light shining through and you can’t see the holes from the street anyway.
The kitchen “window” decorations were also inspired by The House That Lars Built. This year’s Instagram #larscraftalong Heirloom Ornaments involved printing photos on fabric and then embellishing them with embroidery and stuffing them. It also involved ornaments made by famous people who do a live crafting session on Instagram. Mary Engelbreit was one of the crafters this year and rather than embroidering on a photo she was embroidering a drawing she had made of a snow person which gave me the idea of using gnomes. So I googled gnome drawings, found some cute ones, and figured out a way to save and print them. I embroidered them with red thread and then backed them with red fabric.
I also made some Heirloom Ornaments of my grandchildren and and one set of grandnibblings.
I was also inspired by another #larscraftalong participant, Robert Mahar who embroiders vintage photos. I made packets of two photos of the Baby Group Moms for a Zoom crafting session.
I made an Instagram post and Robert Mahar liked and commented on my post and shared Cheryl’s in progress piece.
And I think this is just the beginning…
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 