Summer on the Porch

A little bit ago, K and I went to Ikea to look around for a desk for his art studio. We came across their outdoor furniture section and fell in love with this four piece set. After carefully making sure it would fit in our hatchback, we set our sights on setting it up and all the great meals we'd eat out on our back porch. I must admit, I bought the set really for the bench seat. I've wanted a good bench for a while, and loved this one. The entire set cost what I've seen just a good wooden bench cost. The large chairs are really comfortable as well.


The bistro like chairs didn't come with the set. But did come from Ikea as well.


My favorite seat.


A shot at dusk.

maine and...sunburn

Kinsey and I have been going to Maine every year since we've been married. Our very first time, we went to the wonderful Acadia National Park on the beautiful island of Mount Desert. Unfortunately, our schedules don't really allow us to take a longer trip like that right now, so we haven't had the chance to go back yet. (Next year seems like the year, though!) Nonetheless, we've still manage to enjoy the rocky Maine coast and view in another great and closer area in Maine...(although I have yet to find a location in Maine I haven't fell in love with). The past three years we've been staying in the Portland area. Cape Elizabeth is a favorite of ours and we've spent lots of time just sitting along the coast, collecting stones and shells, sketching, and looking out at the ocean.
This past trip was very relaxing and inspiring....and well, hot. Everyday except the very last day, was in the mid to upper 90's. It definitely put a limited on the amount of hiking we did. Our massive sunburn that we got on the VERY first day at the beach also didn't help things.


Kinsey is a tiny speck among the rocks along the coast.



Me looking for sea glass among the rocks.


One of my favorite things to do in Maine is take photos and look at the tide pools. The colors are very inspiring and beautiful. Here's one picture I took near Two Lights State Park. (Mere minutes before eating what I consider (and many, many others) the BEST lobster roll in Maine at Two Lights Lobster Shack.)


This was taking at dusk in the harbor in Portland. I can see an embroidery piece in the future based on this photo.


This was taken at a super quick detour to York Harbor on our way back home. We first discover York Harbor last year and didn't have a chance to go back and spend more time on this trip. We did stop and put our feet in the water before getting started on our 9 hour drive home. This of course did three things: 1 -Made it incredibly hard to leave. The water was actually a decent temperature for Maine and felt so refreshing. 2 - Made us realize why we keep coming back to Maine and everything we love about it. 3 - Made us get sand over every area in our car. I were my flats I wear almost everyday out on the sand and as a result a never ending supply of luscious, white, Maine sand keeps coming out of my shoes.....of course I'm not complaining. Any reminder of Maine is a good one!

Summer

In between picking and processing the many fruits and veggies of the season, I realized that my everyday purse was, well, a little autumn like. Dark brown and green made up the bag and the inside was a dark (and quite messy) mess. I'm on of those people who can put something into a bag and it becomes lost among the growing collection of pens and gum wrappers. I'd really like to try to keep a neater bag, so I thought a new one was in order. A few years ago, I got this great screenprinted linen and never knew what to make with it. I loved the mossy green color and the flower print. I decided this with my current favorite sea green canvas would be a perfect combination.



A square bottom is essential. I used to be real big into tote bags, then I discovered how easy a more shaped bag can be. This one took a hour in the evening and another hour the next day.



I love the contrast in the yellow lining.

I will keep this bag neater. I will not leave trash in it. I will not keep a stash of pens in it.

A great, new summer bag just in time for our trip to.......Maine. :)

New listing...

Just listed:





I've been working like crazy after work every night this week on new things. This is one that came to my head one night and I was quickly able to finish it in the same sitting. I got the sea green canvas a while ago from our local fabric outlet, but never really used it. Now I've been using it for a lot of my embroidery. I love the color and because I often stitch in earth tones (especially greens) it really stands out nicely.

Art Show

The bookstore-cafe that Kinsey and I are managers at (www.midtownscholar.com), had an employee art show for the month of April. We each exhibited 3 works which all but one were made especially for the show. Here's what 4 of them looked like.

Here's Kinsey's burning building collage. Kinsey's medium of choice is recycled magazine pages. I don't know how he can find the exact colors he needs so well. You don't really noticed that his art is made from magazines until you really get up close.


And a close up of the building and a car. I love all the detail in this one.


Kinsey had the idea for each of us to do the same design, but only in different materials. He chose magazine paper and I of course, choose fabric and embroidery. We entitled these "Ship at High Seas I and II". The first two shots are of mine. The overall work didn't photograph well in this light. I'm hoping to get a good shot before the buyer picks it up.


You can see the colors better here:




Kinsey's version:


I've always had a fascination with maps and trail booklets. I've had this idea in my head for a while and thought this show would be a good experiment with what I like to refer to as map embroidery. My subject (which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone) was Acadia National Park.


My favorite part. I liked this close stitch look a lot. All the different colors and the circular stitch motion have a really nice feeling to me.

Garden Update....lettuce anyone?

We've been busy gardening - starting seeds, transplanting, planting, raking soil, expanding beds, etc. The last post (quite a while ago) I showed off our salad table we built. I'm thrilled to say that it's worked out wonderfully! Here's our lettuce all ready for eating.


So far, we've had no problems with pests or animals (the squirrel population here is a bit out of hand), so overall it was a great thing to build.



Chives are beginning to bloom:


The Bleeding Hearts are beginning to die. Doesn't the shriveled dead one look like a bean?


Our irises finally bloomed this morning. The purple and white marbled color is quite striking against the green leaves.

Grow lettuce, grow

So I love the reality now that we have our own backyard and can build a garden or whatever we want. We'd like to make raised beds for our vegetables this year. Our backyard is on a slight slope, so we're hoping this will help level out the yard when we make them (hopefully this weekend). In the meantime, we remembered an article we saw last year on salad tables and decided to check it out again now that we have space.

We used the wonderful directions here to build it: http://www.hgic.umd.edu/_media/documents/hg601.pdf . It's pretty easy to build and the supplies are easy to find all at Home Depot or such. A few things to keep in mind though. 1- Make sure the battery is charged on your drill or saw. We recently bought ours and this was our first project, so we never took them out to charge up. We had to wait a while to be able to really use them and lost our daylight time, which is why the next point happened. 2- When assemblng and stapling the window screening to the frame, it may be helpful to do this on a light colored surface. We attached ours down in our basement where there was a section of dark carpet. Needless to say, one of us accidentally stepped inside the frame and ripped the screen halfway out.

You will step on it or at least almost, trust me.

3- Make sure when buying the rolls of hardware cloth, you get the right size. I for whatever reason didn't double check the width and it ended up being 10 inches to short. This involved us running to Home Depot right as they were about to close for the correct size. After we got back, we were anxious to finish and #2 (see above) happened.

Aside for these minor setbacks, it was really fun to build. It was definitely excited to move it outside and fill it up with the soil. We planted 3 rows of a lettuce mixture on one side and 3 rows of spinach on the other side. I plan on planting more rows again in a week or two, once these seeds are up.


Halfway filled with dirt.


The finished salad bed!


Planting our rows of seeds.


Our markers for the rows.


Our spinach seeds, all ready to be planted.