Spring is finally, truly here. The daffodils are now gone as are the crocus. Now is the time to seed grass. Since our house was renovated last fall and winter, we are living with the remains of the work. As you can see from the photos out our front door, we have much to do. Plans are in the works for the gardens, but the back yard and fields are crying for grass seed. I don't really like having to mow a lawn, but with kids, you definitely need some areas of grass. I have been working slavishly to get the soil prepped for seeding. There were a lot of rocks churned up in the grass, they took out our propane tank because we switched over to geothermal, but left the hole filled with all kinds of rocky, gravelly soil, and finally there are the remains of our old brick patio and mortal laying around in the most unexpected places. We have been picking up and hauling these remains away, and tilling the soil, raking, and finally seeding, covering and watering. I have two big sections done, but the biggest sections are remaining. I keep telling myself, this too will pass, and it will be a relief to have it done. I look forward to planting the garden sections of the house, but I am waiting to finalize plans and budgets. I will be doing most of the planting myself, landscapers won't an obscene amount of money to seed grass and plant. Luckily, the kids are now beginning to be a big help with it all.
In the meantime, on the nights when I haven't fallen asleep by 9, right after getting my 9 year old son to bed, I sometimes manage to stay awake long enough to do some knitting. I am trying to finish a couple of projects that I started last year. I did manage to weave an hour yesterday.
I have started on a new project. I am not sure where this will lead, but I thought I would show it and see if anyone had suggestions. I was struck by the wonderful lines in the spring onions this year. This year they had lovely loops and curls, I don't remember seeing them like before. Maybe the deer always ate the lovely loops and curls off before I saw them. (Sorry about it being sideways, it is not like this in my photo album, but keeps coming up sideways in blogspot, weird, huh!)
In any case, I decided that I would try a new technique and embroider them onto silk organza. I am embroidering one or two at a time. Now, what should I do. The original idea was to layer them in some type of mounting. Not sure this is going to work. I have also considered just embroidering words around them and mounting them separately. I like them, just not sure what to do with them. Any ideas?
4 comments:
I actually love the idea of layering the organza! What if you do a bit more on each layer, then some embroidery that goes through them both? Pretty shapes. I can see why you want to do something with them.
Thanks, I hadn't thought about embroidering through all the layers. I was thinking of separating the layers by about an inch (there are three). The curly one is finished, but the other bent piece is just started. I has another stalk to go on that one, and I haven't started the third. Embroidering through all three is intriguing. I have also been thinking of embroidering words on the organza around the onions, maybe in silver so they don't really show until you are up close. I was looking for poems on spring onions, but just found two.
Spring Onions by Wendy Cope
Decapitating the spring onions,
She made this mental note:
You can tell it's love, the real thing,
When you dream of slitting his throat.
I think is it a funny little poem, although I am sure my husband won't agree. Thanks for the ideas, still thinking on what to do.
Susan
Susan,
I love the onions. An embroidery idea: instead of doing stem stitch to create the onions you might find a heavy green thread and couch it down. I think you could get the movement of the onions a little better and there would be no white space. You can find directions for couching online, I'm sure.
Susan
I will try that with the third piece and see how I like it. The middle part which shows up as white is really a lighter green supposedly to show the light reflection. I guess it might be a bit too light so I will blend some more in with it. This is my first time stitching on organza like this. It is interesting to work with.
Thanks for the help,
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