A Seed Stash

Seems I have another secret stash! This one features hollyhocks, verbena, baby's breath, four o'clocks, zinnias (both green and white), cup-and-saucer vine, poppies, morning glory, castor bean, sunflowers, love-lies-bleeding (green and red), cardoon, basil (purple, green, cinnamon), ageratum, cosmos, love-in-a-mist, and five packets of green nicotiana 'langsdorfii'!! Maybe this is the year that I'll make better use of my stash, like the fabric stash, and create a patchwork cottage garden extraordinaire. I'll let you know my progress. For now, the fun, as always, is in the sorting.

When Spring Turns Cold

What to do when the May weather in March turns to February weather in April? Pick as many daffodils as you can and bring them inside to enjoy.


The little duck planter holds my business cards, and the tray is an old oak-framed mirror -- I glued little circles of felt on the backside and voila! A mirrored tray.

Suddenly Spring

A few short weeks ago, inches of snow covered the ground. Suddenly spring has arrived -- in color!

Stash becomes Purse

A year ago, I began a fabric stash. I purchased several fabrics at the local Hancock fabrics, then started finding pieces of fabric at garage sales and thrift stores. Of course, I intended to use these fabrics, so I also bought a couple of patterns for handbags, including one Amy Butler and one Laura Ashley.

Funny thing, the stash somehow became The Stash-for-Stash-Sake. Finding, buying, washing and ironing, folding, stacking -- this was enough! I could spend a stray hour just looking over the fabrics, sorting through the colors, restacking, and then leaving the craft room again. Almost every week I found a new piece to add. Ah, but now I need to create something with these fabrics. So here are my first efforts, sewn in the last weeks -- my new purses!

The week gone by

Thrifting this past week . . . found these wonderful stools and domes that I love to display things in . . .

Why is it such a joy to find a cast-off treasure? To search through all the cracked and chipped china, past the 70s leather coats, the plastic wreaths, the burned-out pots and pans . . . and then finding the gem. Aha! There it is! I knew it was here! I could almost feel it calling out to me. The joy of the hunt and the thrill of The Find. So satisfying.

For a year now I've been visiting blogs, finding one after another, like hidden candy eggs on Easter morning.

Links draw me on to another crafter, another artist, another chef or baker. Seeing their projects, reading about their lives, their concerns and triumphs.

Little visits with people I've never met, and I come away happy and a little disoriented.

What am I doing with my time? Do I have something to share?

Am I creating the life I want?

Last summer, husband and I sat in lawn chairs,

listening to the chatter of the young girls

on their trampoline in the back yard across the steet.

Drifting over the fence, this phrase: 'You are too creative!'

aha!

What does it mean?

For me, sometimes it means that all of you are so creative,

too creative,

and I am not even close.

And sometimes . . .

just sometimes . . .

I feel that I can do things . . .

And so begins this blog.

u r 2 creative