I had the most amazingly rejuvenating, artsy day yesterday. I went to an art show, wandered botanical gardens, and had other lovely adventures. This was one of those posts that really couldn't decide which blog it belonged on, so to hear the whole tale, I'll send you over to Beach Treasure. Be sure to check out all the artist's links I've included.

The only part of the day I'll share here are a couple photos I took on my walk through the autumn colors. I wanted to upload more photos, but Blogger is being sluggish today, I'm getting really frustrated, and I don't want to lose the entire afternoon to watching that little uploading circle go round and round. So I guess these two will have to do, to pique your interest. Maybe I'll be able to upload a few more later.



As always, you can click on the photos. Unfortunately I've downsized them (why?), so they'll only appear a wee bit larger.

Another project finished!! This is my Train Hat. I bought the yarn and needles in Glastonbury, but no pattern. I figured I could "wing it." Throughout our trip, whenever we were on the train, I worked on it until I got to the point where I decided I should start decreasing round. I couldn't figure out how quickly I should decrease, so I tucked it into my backpack until I could find a pattern. Well, there it stayed until tonight when I searched the net, got the general idea, and round and round, smaller and smaller it got.

I hit another snag when I got to about 30 stitches and realized I couldn't finish it on the circular needles. First I tried using two sets of circular needles (in two different sizes I might add). That didn't work. Then I remembered I'd found a bunch of sets of open ended needles in different sizes in an antique store. I dug those out and tried to figure out how to use them. I'm sure you experienced knitters would have had a good laugh watching me try to reinvent the wheel. I kept ending up with all the stitches on two needles. I finally figured out you had to divide them up evenly onto three needles and always stitch on to the fourth needle. And then....

Tra-La-LA! A hat!

Here I am posing with Rosie and Buck, two of my knitting advisors. Yoda and Maisie, my feline helpers for the evening, thought there was far too much DOG energy, and refused to pose with "that other kind".

So tell me, do you? Huh? Huh? Do you like my hat!?

I finished it last night - my Samhain Scarf. Whew! For awhile there I wasn't finding time to work on it and thought it wouldn't be finished in time to wear it this year. Not that I can't keep wearing it after Halloween. It looks as much "tiger-ish" as it does "Halloween-ish". Didn't plan on that, but there you are.

Not the best photo of me, but I lost all my photographers after this take, so it was the best I could do today. Notice how jauntily I balance that piece of wood on my head while modeling the scarf?

I have this really cute orange and black polka dot ribbon with dangly bats and pumpkins and what not. I wanted to audition it for the ends of the scarf. I apparently put it, like many other items in my house, "someplace safe". Of course that means it's so safe, even I can't find it. Maybe it will turn up in the next few days, and it if looks nice and I sew it on, more photos to follow. In the meantime, I gotta throw on a jacket and my new scarf and go off to meet a friend for a late night Whine Fest and Dinner.

See ya later!

No photos today, although I posted another image from the same church yard as the photos I posted here yesterday, over on Beach Treasure, if you'd like to see it.

I'm just popping in to say, uhm.... I'm sitting here knitting. Well, I was knitting before I went back to typing and posting. But at least that's something, to spend a little bit of time knitting today. I'm working on my orange and black Samhain scarf. I thought I'd have it whipped up in no time but I haven't had a lot of "hand time" in the last few weeks. Did I mention that I tried to knit at one of my son's football games a few weeks ago. It turned out that they lost - got stomped really - by a team who's school colors were.....

yep, you guessed it - orange and black. The coincidence did not go unnoticed. So maybe no more knitting at football games.

More holiday photos, these go along with the Holiday Photos #14 on Beach Treasure.

Looking up on the Conway Castle. Wouldn't want to try to scale those walls. Too, I was standing on a nicely paved, winding walkway that took me up the rocks. I'm assuming that in days of ol' one had to start out down at the beach.


This was a fence that surrounded a large park area we had to walk through to get to our B&B. I like the way the fence seems to stretch and warp.


Hmmmm, doesn't seem like this church gets much business anymore. At least not through the front doors.

I liked the symbolism of a time piece (this is a sundial) in the grave yard. Time flies? Time's up? Time waits for no man?

There was something sort of sad/sweet about how these gravestones seem to be simply leaned up against the churchyard wall, like they've been set there temporarily, maybe for a yard sale or something.

A little while ago I mentioned that I was hooked on these things on ebay called ACEO's - which stands for Art Cards/Editions and Orginals. Basically they're teeny tiny original art from everyone from professional artists to well intentioned and sometimes surprisingly talented (and sometimes not) unknowns.

It must be a fairly new phenomenon because I've been watching and bidding on them for just a few weeks now and in that time the prices have skyrocketed! I have to admit that I was torn between sharing this new discovery and keeping the news to myself because... well.... I didn't want to push the prices up even more.

But alas, they're already moving quickly out of my price range and I've now spent more then enough pretty pennies on them so I guess it's time to share the secret. I certainly want to encourage and support the artists that are making these wonderful miniatures. I'm gonna bid on one or two (or three, okay, maybe four) more and then content myself with getting them all framed and displayed in a little montage.

I stumbled upon them while looking for Halloween art and all the ones I purchased have a Halloween theme of some sort. If that's not a theme that appeals to you, then I'm sure there are ACEO's that are right up your alley. Maybe it's cats, or botanicals, or fairies.... let's say you like horses - in the eBay search box type "ACEO horse". When it pops up, click in the sidebar to narrow it to Self Representing Artists and then again to narrow it to Originals.

I think there are places other then eBay to find ACEO's but if there is, you better not tell me. I might be tempted to buy more of them. What I really hope to do now that I've managed to get myself some teeny tiny original art from other artists, is dabble in making some ACEO's myself. All I have to do, as I mentioned before, is get out my oil can and loosen up of my "rusty fingers." Hmmm, maybe I should get out a pen or pencil. It might be hard to practice with an oil can. Snerk.

I did art!

I joined an art deck swap, my first ever. The theme was Between the Worlds and you could do anything that reminded you of Halloween, Samhain, Day of the Dead, Carnival, Ghosts, Cemeteries, and so on. You could choose between numerous mediums, although I suspect most folks did collage of some type.

I tried and tossed several ideas before I finally settled on the one below. This isn't the first image I tried for the idea either, the first one was too complex for the size parameters, which was 3" x 5". I had to whittle it down to it's most basic symbolism, a good lesson for little ol' detail oriented me.

First I'll show you the image, which may or may not make sense to you without the description that follows (and was included on it's own 3"X 5" card). It'll depend on if you know the mythology I used. But see how far you get first just looking at the image, I'm curious if it's at all effective. It's not at all the type of image I expected myself to design. Sorry for the tiny image:

Confused? Well, here's what I wrote to explain my card:

My card came from the juxtaposition of two unrelated events - the recent deaths of three local youth on a single day and a stray comment about the River Styx. I Googled “River Styx” and discovered that in some myths the Underworld is thought to have many rivers within it’s borders. Two rivers in particular caught my attention - the Lethe, from which you drank to forget one’s past life, and the Mnemosyne, who’s waters you drank if you wished to retain your memories upon reincarnation. It occurred to me that a death forces difficult choices upon both the living and the dead, between the pain of remembering and the balm of forgetting. I went to sleep dwelling on the grief of the teenagers in our community and woke up the next morning with this urban punk image of the river mythology that is more more in keeping with their contemporary world.