Me 'n Daddy do a Art Project - or - My Father's ABCs

 

My Father can draw. 

And I'm not talking - oh, he's good at Pictionary - I mean my Dad can really draw. No training, he does not have to work at it - it comes naturally. You know the black and white drawing of my house on the right on my blog? He drew that. It is an enviable skill, one I have to work very hard at. He's a lefty. Maybe that explains it.

We've been talking about doing a collaboration for a long time. The ideas we tossed back and forth never seemed to resonate for both of us. During my visit last Christmas we talked more about it and proposed an alphabet. We still tossed ideas back and forth. Then, when they visited last month, we went to Chanticleer and he was inspired:  an alphabet of flowers. 

He has been unstoppable. Apparently letters E-N are in the mail to me, currently I have A-D. But what do we want to do with it? Make a coloring book? Write verse to accompany it? We are leaning on coloring book considering the current craze -  and to that end I decided to sit down and see what I could do with "C". 

If we were going to do a coloring book - the letter could not be black. That goes without saying because people are part-tick-you-LER about their letters and colors. When I mention this to him - he said (in a tone of - details!), "oh, you can just get rid of that in the computer." Well, no, not quite so easy. What worked better was putting his original composition on a light table and tracing it out. 

Here is his beautiful original drawing for C - California Poppy.

  

In writing this blog post I see I need to scan the original again for my records since I saved over it after trying to erase the black. 

After tracing it, I scanned it again and printed the drawing out on Rives BFK, a favorite drawing paper. 

 

Then I dug out my dusty but trusty Prismacolor Pencil sets.   

 It has been years since I have used these. They were my primary tool as an artist in high school and undergrad. I had forgotten how much I love to apply color with them.

   

They blend beautifully and seamlessly. I loved to draw with them because I had so much more control than with paint. 

What a joy to be working with them once again. They can be layered to achieve so many tones. 

In spite of how excited I am about this, I have not had time to color what with too much work and all.

 

This evening I have arranged to finish coloring outside. It is a beautiful evening, cool and dry, there is a breeze, and someone in the neighborhood is cooking garlic. Mmmmmm. :)
In about an hour the fireflies will emerge.
What a perfect evening. 

A good visit

My parents were here last week.

and it was a lovely visit. All too short.  Swee'Pea was thrilled there were people to pet him while I was busy cooking and such. 

Ann and I played with paper. 
 

Lots of Danish woven hearts to be made and figured out.

We also decided to make Yotam Ottolenghi's Clementine and Almond Cake.

 

If you are an orange and chocolate fan - this is the cake for you! Wow. There was lots of good food to be had. It is really fun to cook for people who enjoy the finer fuel of life.    

And while there were so many wonderful moments the highlight of the visit had to be our trip to Chanticleer. I had heard about these gardens from a friend for many years and then a co-worker said she had gone and I thought it would be the perfect place to visit. We were not disappointed. 

Words simply cannot explain this "pleasure garden."

 An an entire hillside of allium with yellow Adirondack chairs in the distance.

 Daddy and Ann by a fountain.

 Foxglove and Alium in a planter.

 Ann in green chair.

 Lilac blooming.

Planters overflowing.

Planter with baby Robins. 

As I inspected the second gorgeous planter full of sweet pea, mustard greens, rosemary, johnny-jump-ups, succulents, dill, and other flowers I did not know, a noisy birdy darted out from the top of the planter. I had a hunch there was more to it and sure enough there was a nest. Little baby robins. 

Unknown flowers.

Snowball trees.

 White wisteria patio.

 

 

 

Orange color planter.

   Lilly of the Valley.

Pink leaf trees.

After dropping the Parents off at the airport on Saturday I got a whim to go to the Home Depot and work some more on my little garden. What I found so beautiful about the gardens at Chanticleer was that the gardeners used all sorts of plants to create their compositions. Mustard, mustard weeds, lettuce and herbs all figured into compositions to create texture as well as beautiful design. 

I needed a new large planter for tomatoes and while I was at it, I thought a second one couldn't hurt.

 Foxglove, bleeding hearts, petunias and various herbs were also on sale.

 

The rain which had threatened all week finally came drizzling down. And while Jacques was thrilled that I was outside he kept an eye on things from beneath the garden table where it was safe and dry.

Happy 2016!

Good Grief! What does it take to get a blog post written around here!?

Well it does help that the holidays are done. When you make stuff that you normally blog about and it's holiday time - you can't blog about the stuff you are making! The elves in Santa's little workshop would be most upset!

I was in California for the holidays visiting my family. It was a lovely visit. Colder there than in Philadelphia though! But I got to spend time with my two favorite boys. 

 

Liam is on the move. He crawls but mostly he wants to pull himself up and walk along stuff. He can't do it by himself yet, well, at least he couldn't three weeks ago. He is also tasting all kinds of new foods. So far the favorite? Spinach and pears:

 

How do you spell adorable? L-I-A-M. 

The problem with waiting so long to blog is that there is SO much I want to post, then I start thinking of how much, and I groan, and I find go something else to do. The quick update is this one:
I made a lot of socks.

Ann's socks:

I got this fantastic book a few years ago, Around the World in Knitted Socks. Absolutely love this book and I want to make every pair. But who's got time for that? This pair was a Swedish design with Ann's name written all over them. I love knitting color work, much more than cables, so these were just so much fun to knit. 
Ann has tiny little feet and so even though I knitted the smallest size, she was still flopping around in them. Quick repair before leaving California - take off the toes, straighten the yarn (still attached to the socks) and knit less of a toe.

  

All fixed!

Daddy's socks:

 

Daddy got the "poiple" socks this year. He said he would wear them, but not in public. Fair enough. 

I had a little left over red yarn from Ann's socks so I put hearts on the bottom of the heels. And then I had even more purple yarn left so Liam got a matching pair of his own.   

 

We tried valiantly to take a picture of the two of them and their cute socks, but Liam was having none it. So here is the next best picture of his little socksies:

Tara's green cable knit socks:

I had a vague idea I wanted to give these away when I started them. But then they became way too much work. So I wear them now. These are also from the awesome socks book. 

 And since I decided to keep them, I suppose I could have blogged about them sooner.

I made other stuff too:
The purple sock yarn seems to be never ending (I still have some). I saw this really cute hat and wanted to knit it for Liam. It knitted very quickly - and I swatched I promise! But it turned out teeny tiny.

 He sure looked cute modeling it though - then I sent it to a friend who just had a granddaughter. Maybe she (the granddaughter) could wear it for a few minutes before she out grew it.  

For Christmas I got this gorgeous Købenstyle pot - in my favorite color!

And you can't have cruddy old pot holders that you've manage to catch on fire a few times with your new pot - so you crochet some new ones.

Think the making and the crafting stops there? Ha! Nope:
I got Ann a book for Christmas and we sat down and crafted our hearts out.
 

Danish traditional Christmas decorations include the woven paper heart or Julehjerter. I stumbled on this publisher, Klematis, a while back and they have some great things - including some books in English. Unfortunately not this one.  Now, it's not as weird as you'd think - ordering a book in Danish. I studied there in college and then my Dad and Ann went there for a semester as well. The book has lots of pictures too - but the fact that it is in Danish sure makes putting some of these together extra challenging. But we did it! We put quite a few of them together.    
                                                              

It was very sad to leave the book with Ann. I'm actually having withdrawals from crafting these things. It's kind of a high once you get one put together. I have to say that the swirly one almost did me in. 

Then of course, there is the collecting of things to make other things: 

My dad said, "Let's look through my type and see if there is any face you want out there. But there are some faces I want to keep like Caslon." He wanted to be able to de-accession his type cabinet so that there was more room in the garage. Alas, I didn't make that big of a dent for him. But I scored big time:

Look at that beautiful face! Fat slabby serifs, and the type has to be at least 84pt. It's bigger than 72 for sure.  

So I packed up the contents of the drawer into two flat rate boxes from the USPS. Thank goodness for those - let me tell you!

 All of that lead type weighed a little over 36lbs. I asked at the post office if there was a weight limit to the flat rate boxes and she said, "yes, 70lbs." I don't know how the box could possibly HOLD 70lbs, never mind how any human could lift it. I was worried with my measly little 18lbs in two boxes! And one of them did arrive a little smashed. Nothing was damaged inside, but the outside of the box looked like someone had just tossed it off a cliff.

When it arrived I got is sorted into it's own little drawer.

 

I got a little bonus too - these beautiful decorative Caps. These are only 36pt. 

My new year's resolution is three weeks over due: to blog every week mostly about stuff I'm making. Why not? I'm making things all the time... food, knitting, clothing, stuff...
stay tuned...