majestic sea swap...

my partner in Gypsie Mermaid's Majestic Sea Swap was rebecca from Bec's Shabby Dreams in australia. she has created a beautiful, light, french-y shabby chic home, and i tried to create something to compliment it. she also has three sweet children, so i started by printing three scallop shells on a piece of fabric right out of the dye bath, and went from there. bek mentioned liking aqua also, which isn't a colour i use a lot, but lucky for me i remembered one of my daughter's tutus from a few years back was that colour, so i snipped away at one of the seams i had taken in. she'll never miss it. i stitched on some pearls, a couple of mother-of-pearl buttons, and some seaglass from my fave beach out back. it was fun doing something so frilly for a change.
on a very not-related note, has anyone else lost their followers? i've lost mine, and can't figure out how to find them...:(

ABAA's bird challenge~

rosie & linda of Rosie & Linda's Awfully Big Art Adventure put out a challenge for bird-themed art. i was mulling what to do when i heard chainsaws start up at the neighbor's. they are fairly new to the neighborhood, having moved in last year. within an hour and a half they had cut every single beautiful ancient moss covered old growth sitka spruce tree down (almost 2/3 of an acre). all the huge trees you can see behind our banya in my previous posts are now laying dead on the ground. it's just about the saddest thing ever, and changes not only their home, but the look and feel of ours as well. no fuitcake for them this xmas. even sadder, as the days have passed i keep finding tiny newly hatched baby birds on the ground...and am enduring the wrath of many families of homeless squirrels in the aftermath of what my kids are calling the sitka spruce chainsaw massacre. so, i made my bird themed art with a heavy heart. i created a little 2" copper wire cage, enclosed an egg in a soft nest, and locked it up safe & sound with a tiny key, until it hatching time.

for 48 very short hours...

... my daughter thea rose came home. she turned 21 on the 9th, and was able to get a friday off of work to fly home for cake, her first glass of wine with me, and her new license. it was a painfully short amount of time, but the sun was shining, the sky was blue and we crammed as much home as we could in. we walked on the beaches, ate king crab, hiked up to see the new wind generators on pillar mountain, and dad took us on a skiff ride over to long island for a few hours, where we found a hidden cove of sand dollars. she was scheduled to leave sunday morning, but true to our island we got fogged in and the plane couldn't make it in until dinner time, which was fine with me. i can't believe i won't get to hug her again until xmas...but it was wonderful to have her while she was here.

summer mini quilt swap

i just finished this little starry~eyed halibut quilt for the Good Ol' Summertime Mini Quilt Swap i'm in. it's a pity the real fish isn't this cute, but they do taste quite good and i guess that's what really counts. we've caught some big ones this summer, always weird to haul up a big old flat ugly fish longer than yourself out of the water. anyhow, i hand appliqued him and machine quilted it, and will be sending it off in a day or so. hope my partner likes it.