"If you hear a voice within you say, 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." --Vincent van Gogh

Saturday, June 21, 2008

A bit of art & Garden of the Gods

Another round tobin has made its way back to the owner, so I can share my piece with you. This one belongs to Emmy in The Netherlands and you can see the entire piece on her blog. Her theme was mermaids in green and blue. I was the last to work on it, and the other parts were covered up. There was not too much to see! But the piece is very cohesive. Here is my part:


I am not partularly adept at facesm so I solved that by just using lots of yarn and avoiding a face at all. I think it was effective. I am particularly fond of the tail. I used a lime green floral print, covered with a lime green sheer fabric that contained spots of crystals. I stitched the piece ti Peltex stabilizer and the cut out the shape. I took various shades of sheers and layered them to make the fin. I used some of my hand dyed cheesecloth in the background. Here is a closeup shot.


The bottlecap says "Las Sirenas del Mar" which means "Mermaids of the Sea" in Spanish. The irony of the fact that the owner's first language is Dutch did not escape me. I tried to translate the phrase into Dutch but it was too long to fit in the cap.

Here are a few more vacation pics. We spent a few hours at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. The kids thought it would be funny to cover up the "G" so that it would reads "Garden of the ods".


We hiked to the "siamese twins" rock formation, which framed a beautiful view of Pike's Peak. The woman who wrote the song "America the Beautiful" wrote it while sitting at the sumit of Pike's Peak. It really was beautiful.
Yesterday brought an interesting experience. We have a bay window in the front of our house, and there is a small couch there. There is a huge old oak tree about 20 feet in front of the window. I was lying on the couch reading, during a thunderstorm. Suddenly there was a huge crack and I saw a fire ball out of the corner of my eye. Lightening had struck the oak tree. It was pretty amazing and I am so glad it did not strike - or jump to - the house. The sap was boiling at the base of the tree for about an hour afterwards, and it stripped the bark off in the path that the lightening travelled. That was a bit too close for my comfort!!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where is the picture of the oak tree?

Michelle said...

I will take one and post it as soon as I can ...

Sequana said...

WOW! boiling sap even! You could have used our 15-min cold hailstorm today.

We've had so many T-storms already that I finally bought a surge protector that is specifically to guard against lightning.

I think our weather is in for BIG changes in the next few years.

Anonymous said...

The kids look like they are having a great time Michelle what a wonderful picture of them - all smiling and happy.

Did you lose the oak tree then? We lost one of our maples last summer in a micro burst storm. Took 15 minutes and cracked the trunk. The tree was 23 years old it was like losing a member of the family everybody was upset including the neighbor next door.

Judy Rys said...

LOVE the rock formation frame. Good eye!

NEEDLEWINGS said...

Wow! you were lucky! I couldn't imagine the boiling sap! Too bad it wasn't a maple tree! I would have been making pancakes! lol