My weekend in photos:

Hello pipsqueaks!
Hope your weekend was pleasant. I heard from some of you in Finland, Saskatoon, Austria and a few glad hollows in the USA over the weekend and the news sounds similar here and there: A lovely weekend, fine weather indeed, cool nights and busy fingers with knitting and stitching and so forth. I also heard it through the grapevine that there’s been a jam, jelly and canning revolution. I won’t pretend to be the Pied Piper when it comes to the revival of domestic arts but I’m proud of every lady who did a bit of canning this week past! Way to put up some tasty goods for the winter ahead!
I spent the weekend tending my neglected yard as well as clipping grapes!

The first batch of concords is cut and the scent of purple is wafting out of the kitchen as I type this. I’m tempted to do a quick batch of jelly though it’s 11:11PM here (make a wish)…it wil be one or the other:
concocting jelly or writing letters to friends while laying in my nightie in bed.
Truly a tough call. The grapes are hard to deny but so is my stationary.


The rest of the weekend was spent tiding up a disaster of a home, fighting with the laundry pile, walking and running the dogs in the hills and across town, baking, harvesting veggies from le jardin as well as reading a bit and catching up on long overdue correspondence. Boring. I know. I am, rather admittedly, a serious homebody. I love catching up with time in the sanctuary of my home and gardens; in the quiet of my living room with a book and a red leather couch.

I had some tasty and tremendously fresh meals that revolved, for the most part, around blazing red garden tomatoes and newly baked loaves of whole wheat bread.

I cut new flowers for every vase in the house and surrounded myself with them while I feasted on my gardeny bits and pieces at the kitchen table.


I snaggled up a new house plant when I ran out for groceries and I started a new avocado pit in a canning jar. I’ve never grown a successful avocado but I have a good feeling about this little guy. He’s over in the laundry room on a shelf by the back door but I can hear him humming from here. He’s singing all about ascorbic acid and the like — a sure sign he’s planning on a sprout (I’m praying for a cotelydon or two).

And lastly, my most sincere apologies for not listing new work in the Etsy shop today! I became distracted when I strolled out to the studio and 6 hours later I walked out with this in my hands:

Built of sterling silver and 14 carat gold from scratch. All components, excluding the chain and clasp, were sawed and forged by my hands. The pendant is a shadowbox that features a landscape of a freshly ploughed field (complete with linear perspective), a suspended golden moon and a person, strolling in the distance. With fall coming on strong in Idaho and with so many of our North American farmers counting their yield — bringing in the bounty, myself included, on a very small scale — I was inclined to make a Landscape of thanksgiving today.
Well, the good times come and go, but at least there’s rain
This won’t be barren ground when September comes around
And watch the field behind the plough, turn to straight dark rows
Put another season’s promise in the ground…
[Stan Rogers]

I miss home this time of year. Autumn is when the Great Northern Plains are most glorious. The fields are swathed in flocks of snow geese and the sky is filled with the triumphant squawk of Canadas. The air is crisp and fingers begin to fumble in the fall winds. The poplar bluffs burn with a last gasp yellow and all things prepare for the season of sleep. I, on the other hand, can feel myself coming alive in this season of decay and change. I love it. I truly do.

Yarnbow

Truth be told, I’m not a very good yarn-stress though I do enjoy the clash of the needles from time to time. What I REALLY dig is a trip to the yarn shop. I don’t usually purchase anything while I’m perusing the skeins there, I mostly go to rub up against the color spectrum.

If I can pick up a handful of skeins and actually see the colors in my hands, it aids my imagination even further when it comes to stone combinations and just general color combinations in life. The colors at the yarn shop are bigger than bright. To see that much rainbow in such a small space makes my heart feel like it’s popping out skittles with each beat.

I like to see what my jewelry looks like up against a combination of colors, colors I would call:
south face of the tree trunk
tired cheat grass
in the nest
liquid sunshine
feeling oh so
elderly lady lavender hair
a dash of poupon
Does anyone else like color as much as I do?
Fess up.
Hope your weekends were delish. I’m off to lunch now and then a steady afternoon stint in the studio. Cheerio little tweedleydees!

The Noisy Florist

Yesterday morning was so quiet.
I wanted to spend the entire day in the studio but I took a few moments in the morning to cut some fresh flowers for the various nooks in my home.

It’s peaceful, walking through my gardens, selecting by hand and blade the bits of flora I wish to display in the kitchen, washroom, living room and various bookshelves inside the homestead. Lately I’ve been picking flowers for my studio space as well because to look over at a vase filled with long stem roses and sunflowers on the huge tree stump in the middle of my studio floor instantly brightens me. The freshness is transported from my sight to my heart to my hands and suddenly everything is coming up sterling-roses.

It’s always satisfying to bring the outdoors in, even if the outdoors are cultivated, as is the case in my yard. To be fair, I have a heap of odds and ends that I’ve collected over time out in the wideness of nature:
sun bleached bones and antlers
wasp nests
stones
shells
seed pods
…culminating in a lovely sort of house of curiosities.
The flowers are the cherry on top even if they’re short lived.

The blues were bright, the yarrow bleeding tones of yellow and rust. The sunflowers looked like they’d been sent to earth on a flower barge, pushed by solar winds, to settle in the soil of my backyardscape.

The scent of the Russian sage drifts into my bedroom from where it sits on the bathroom counter. It’s still humming with the buzz of bees.

The roses, delicate and stalwart. Loquacious and fine.
Happy to spend their blooms in the peace of my home.

If I had chosen another path, I might have been a noisy florist for it’s just so fun to harvest blossoms and witness the gladness they manage to imbue a space with.

I did make it into the studio after fooling around with these flowers for a spell and I whipped up something so delicate, ladylike and old world….I cannot wait to show it to you.
And finally, thank you so much for your wonderful WONDERFUL responses to my last blog post. RW is home today and when he read the last bloggity as well as your splendid reflections he was delighted indeed!
Love you all to smithereenies,
Jillian
PS Did I inform you as to the loveliness of my weekend last? I had the darling Miss Stacey visit me and we went hiking, made pear jam together, ate a bunch of tasty food, sipped tea and margaritas and spent some time making some jewels in my studio. Plus, she informed me of the bizarre black market on Etsy which was a FASCINATING education of sorts, though a teenie bit saddening. It was altogether a truly restful weekend spent in the excellent company of a wonderful woman. Wowsers. Sometimes I feel so lucky that my socks might blow right off my feet…knowing all of you kind of affects me like that…your amazingness makes me feel like I’m in a wind tunnel walking into an unnaturally beautiful and strong breeze.
Now. I’m getting off my duff and out to
do a bit of work.