Monday's Memory - Me & My Sister

My husband and I have lived in Morehead City (North Carolina) since 1992. My sister moved here several years ago. She and I are very close, and spend a lot of time together. Lately we've both gotten into crocheting with a passion. Michael's has become our favorite store!

So I was thinking back over our time together, and came across this picture. Lynn was born in April, 1949, so that's probably the month this photo was taken. I would have been about 18 months old. Our mom is holding Lynn, and I'm leaning on my grandmother's shoulder. Maybe I wasn't totally enamoured with the idea of having a little sister? Sort of looks like I'm pooh-poohing her (and the attention she was undoubtedly getting!).

Another photograph taken that day is one of my all-time favorites. It shows me standing with my grandma Cordelia in her iris garden. Some of the irises were as tall as me! In 2006 I made this mixed-media piece and named it Memories. "Memories," which is 12"x16", began with a piece of fabric fused to a canvas. The flower petals are pieces of netting. They're outlined with glue which I painted with gold paint. There are little beads glued into the center of the flower, and the stem is made of wooden buttons. I decorated the piece with gold trims and small metal pieces.

Here's an enlargement of the photograph.

And another detail picture. "Memories" is also posted on my website.

Friday's Fotos - Egrets' Encore

Last month I did a post on the white egrets that often hang out at a pond near where my sister lives. (Click here if you'd like to see those pictures.) While there were a fair number of egrets at the pond that day, I kept checking back to see if I could photograph a larger group. On this particular day, as you can see in the above photo, quite a crowd had gathered!

It was one of our colder days (27 F), and huddling together probably seemed like a good idea.

One antisocial egret was off by himself. This was my favorite picture of the day.

Wednesday's Work - Hooked on Hexagons

I was reading Fibra Artysta's blog one day and she posted a picture of a hexagon that she had crocheted. Lynn gave a link to where she'd found directions for crocheting an afghan of hexagons with an ingenious technique of crocheting the hexagons right into the afghan, rather than having to sew them all together at the end. The link was to the blog, Attic 24. Lucy, at Attic 24, does some incredible crocheting, and includes directions to much of her work, including this hexagon how-to tutorial.

I was totally smitten, and within an hour had headed off to Michael's to buy yarn. I decided on Lion Brand Yarn. This picture shows the Prairie color. Many of the skeins are variegated, and I bought most of what caught my eye! I had decided that there wasn't any real reason to plan the afghan ahead of time and calculate the amount of yarn needed. More fun to just shop....

I started working on it and got as far as what's shown in the first picture. At that point I was getting tired of starting and stopping four colors in each hexagon. I decided to drop down to two colors, one that would make the inner circle, and another that would convert the circle into the hexagon.

Here are some of the circles I crocheted. I decided I would limit the outer color of the hexagons to a single color to give the afghan more cohesion, and I picked the Prairie color for doing this.

Here's how it looked, as I started to add the different hexagons. The four-color hexagons will form a "medallion" in the middle of the afghan.

Maybe you noticed my title of "Wednesday's Work." I'm trying to motivate myself to blog on a more-regular basis. I saw a friend, Robin, a couple nights ago, and we were talking about this. She had decided to name her blog posts with the days of the week, like Monday Marvel and Tuesday Texture. I liked this idea and am blatantly plagarizing. I've chosed "Monday's Memory," "Wednesday's Work," and "Friday's Fotos." (You can check out Robin's beautiful fiber art at Nestlings by Robin.) Wednesdays will be for showing my current works-in-progress.

Have a great Wednesday!

Jean