Mud Season

Hi! I love forsythia, don't you?

The yellow sprigs are just are so hopeful and cheery, rays of sunshine in a dingy world.

Usually we don't have "mud season" here at the beach, but this winter's snows have made everything, even the sand, look soggy and dull.

I picked up these forsythia branches after one of the big windstorms a week ago. Stuck them in a Mason jar...

And within a week they have opened into bright yellow blooms.

No flowers blooming outside, of course...even the crocus are just tiny nibs of stripy green. But here in the house, sunshine has burst into bloom.

  love


          lizzy

gone to the beach

Random Quilts

Hi everyone! This is a warm and cozy flannel quilt for a blustery winter night!
I used easy and random Log Cabin blocks, quite large.

I made it a few years ago for my son....

I saved all the bits of flannels from his pj's and boxers and shirts for years, since he was tiny.

I chose a Log Cabin block...

Fussy cut the red Snowmen for the centers....

The Log Cabin layout is a big star...and the stars in the border are his date of birth. Rnadomly tucked in too are labels from fav clothes and embroidered uniform names, saved and imtegrated into the strips.

His name is pieced on the bottom (but he asked me not to show that....lol!)...

It is machine quilteded with a meandering star pattern and has a flannel batik backing; my only regret is that I had the quilter machine sew on the red binding...and she curved the corners! Ick. I am going to fix that someday! The yellow stars are machine appliqued too---I wanted it to be very utilitarian, no: Oh be careful! I handsewed that! etc.

He doesn't use it much, it's not his "style"---just for friends when he has guests sleeping over...but every time he goes skiing he brings a patch for me to sew on the back! So it has become a memory quilt, of sorts, beyond the fond mom memories of tiny Christmas flannel pyjamas and itty bitty flannel shirts!

That may mean he likes it? I made something similar for my daughter---hers is a heart...but it is temporarily among the missing, so no pix right now.

Have a cozy weekend!

love

        lizzy

gone to the beach....

So, okay...It's March again. sigh......

March. Not my fav.....
 Except for the "winter is lousy" bit [I adore winter!] I think Dorothy P. said it well:

Summer makes me drowsy
Autumn makes me sing.
Winter's pretty lousy.
But I hate spring!

                                                           Dorothy Parker

And yet....

The page above is from my ongoing Nature Journal. The current book is in its sixth or seventh year.

And here's an art journal....

Yeah, I'm a bit of a beach/nature nerd, I admit it. As you all know, beachcombing is a big part of my days, years round. It's great excercise, right? No treasure to be found on a Stairmaster thingy at a gym, is there? And I just love a treasure hunt! See:

This is what the native Americans used for money...

Wampum...softly rounded polished bits of clamshell, still found on the beach.....

                            

And you all know about me and seaglass and seashells... 

These are some of my collecting boxes for very special finds...

an Altoids tin, with pretty scrap....

and tiny containers inside....each little box marks a special day or trip, or summer's finds...

A tiny glass and aluminum box of oystercatchers' hatched eggs....below:

A small pocket box, ugly but useful, it stays in my beach bag or cargo pants pockets...

Here are some of my art journal pages....You maybe can see how these subconsciously translate into my quilts, like on the previous post?

                

My mom went through a French stage, got me making the captions in French, oooh la la and lah-di-dah!

My smallest collage book....just 4 inches square.

Wonder what March will bring me... last year, a table?

not really, I resisted!



This year---the sailboat? A blue glass float.....

               

love

        lizzy  

gone to the beach...