Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Squareathon - September 2020 - Week 3

Day 15
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry


Day 16
The Mermaid Chair
Sue Monk Kidd
(The story took place on Egret Island)


Day 17
The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
The wife in the story was a paper sculptor and this is a very mediocre attempt at a somewhat 3-D paper creation in my sketchbook.  


Day 18
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
Taken very literally.


Day 19 
TheYear of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion


Day 20 
Cold Comfort Farm
Stella Gibbons
"She liked Victorian novels.  They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple."


Day 21
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
The crowd at the Festival of the Running of the Bulls.


And with that, we're done with Squareathon 2020.  This was definitely a challenge as I hadn't read most of the books.  But, being able to use Google to search for information (plots synopsis, characters, settings, quotes, etc.) enabled me to persevere.  I'm glad that it was only 21 days.  I think I would say that 14 days would have been better, but that was not my choice. (Although I could have stopped at 14, but I wanted to finished what I had started.)  

I have some card making to catch up on before Inktober starts.  

Friday, September 18, 2020

Summer Shots 2020

Going through my pictures and finding some worthy of posting from the last couple of months.

A tattered flag spotted near the miniature golf range in Barnegat Light.

 

A view from the top of one of the holes at the miniature golf range - the windmill below looking like a giant metal flower.


One of HWNSNBP's giant dahlias.


And another that was so big, when I cut it I floated it in the biggest mixing bowl I had and it filled the bowl.


Some of the sunflowers that were protected from the deer but later fell victim to the squirrels.



Those tall plants are cleome and they are all volunteers from one plant that had self-seeded itself in that area last summer.  There were many volunteers and it reminded me of plants you might see growing next to a fence so we left them to bloom there freely this year and I have been harvesting seed.


These are the same flowers and they grew on the shoulder of the road across the street from our house.  The seed from that original plant last year found it's way down the driveway and into the soft shoulder and took hold.  I think the mild winter helped.  They were blooming for a while and this week they were mowed down when the county finally came to mow the shoulders on our road.  Wish they could have been saved, but some of that saved seed will be sown in the area over there that doesn't get mowed and we'll see if it takes hold next summer.


HWNSNBP and two of his chums built raised garden beds this past spring and in ours we had a crop of spinach and after that was harvested, we planted eggplant and zucchini.  The eggplant managed to flourish, the zucchini did not unfortunately.  (Spinach, beets, and carrots were planted this week for an autumn crop.  Keep your fingers crossed.)


That eggplant turned into some tasty eggplant fries made in our air fryer.


A bunch of quick notecards to send to some people I worked with that I owed prizes to.  It was serendipity that I had pulled out this sheet of donut-printed paper and had it on a table in the stamp cave.  It was perfect for adding some Dunkin' Donuts gift cards to and sending them off in the mail to the school.  They were surprised, but I like to make good on my promises.


Some felt ornaments that I picked up on a recent trip to Cape May at the Swede Shop.  I can't resist these when I go there.  They are so pretty and something that I know I could create but not for the price of these.   This is the first time that I have seen them in a spring theme.  Usually it's mostly Christmas.


Right on schedule - the view of the 5K Run at the dock in Barnegat on the Saturday before Labor Day.


And a recent sunset.


I may find more to share in the future.  

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Squareathon - September 2020 - Week 2

 Seven more book titles to interpret through art for Squareathon 2020.

Day 8
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams


Day 9
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald


And close-up so you can see the silver and pearls in the attempt at a little art deco jewelry from the era.


Day 10 
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
"He folded his fear into a perfect rose.  He held it out in the palm of his hand.  She took it from him and put it in her hair."


Day 11
A Year in Provence
Peter Mayle


Day 12 
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson



Day 13
Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabeth Gilbert
"This is a good sign, having a broken heart.  It means we have tried for something."


Day 14
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende
I could not follow the synopsis of this book.  What I gathered is that it took place in Chile, was about a journal, and encompassed many generations of a family.  I went with patterns from Chilean peasant pottery. 







Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Squareathon - September 2020 - Week 1

I started the Squareathon on September 1st when it began but I haven't gotten around to posting here until now so I will break it up into 3 posts for the three weeks that it is running for.  This time Mel has chosen book titles as the prompts.  You don't have to had actually read the books (which was a good thing because I haven't read most of these), you just had to create something that would relate to some part of the book - the title, the setting, the subject matter, etc.  I googled the titles and read the synopsis and looked at images for each one to get ideas.  The only hard and fast rule of Squareathon is that the finished product be in the form of a square.  I have a small 5.5 x 5.5 watercolor journal that I've been using for Squarethon.  


Day 1 
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern


Day 2
All Creatures Great and Small
James Herriot


Day 3 
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott


Day 4 
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon


Day 5 
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
John Berendt


Day 6
1984
George Orwell


Day 7 
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou


That's the first week.  More to come.

Thursday, September 10, 2020

September Anniversaries

 I fell in love with this lovebird die as soon as I saw it.  It took a while to come in, and then I was waiting to use it.  It will be an anniversary go-to for a while and then I'll have to come up with some other uses for it, but right now it's helping me to get to those September anniversaries.  






Shhh - don't tell HWNSNBP, but there's a third one in the works for him for our anniversary later this month.