On the seventh day...

Dear Readers...thank you so much for your visits this year...I hope you will ease peacefully and kindly from 2012 into 2013.  The peaceable lion,

Gilly, Molly (the dove), and I send you greetings of hope and love.

Here is Gilly licking the platter of 2012 clean...

Tomorrow, in just a few moments, she will officially be ONE year old! And I'll go play Auld Lang Syne on my fiddle to the sleeping neighborhood.  A secret gift.

xoxo, S.

On the 4th and 5th day

Life intervened.  My close-work light was fixed.  Thank you Martin.

I made gluten-free blueberry muffins and took Gilly to the gentle-dog park and tried to take a picture of her very fast darting hither and yon, but she is too fast for the camera!  After the other dogs left, we took an off-leash walk around the park and she managed well!!

I re-did the wreath:

Better, yes?

Went to two movies, Hyde Park on the Hudson, and the Master. This is a good time of year for movie-going.

And here's the progress on the peaceable lion:

Only seven more days of Christmas left. 

That's all the news for now.  I wish I could send you each a blueberry muffin, because they turned out better than I'd imagined possible.  Let me know if you'd like the recipe.  

On the third day...

The furnace was fixed!  Now it just needs a major cleaning. Sigh.

I added some sprigs to the wreath...little twigs found at the dog park etc.  I think tomorrow I'll have to rearrange things a bit and add some cloth...and the ivy. I love the star shape of the hubcap but it's too metallic and humblejumble now.

Here's Gilly on the other side of the window:

And here is more progress on the peaceable lion:

That's all for today.  Time for a sleep. 

On the second day...

I like to take advantage of the fact that there are twelve days of Christmas. The pre-holiday part of sending off packages and worrying in general wears me out completely, but on the second day of Christmas, I added some very prickly holly to the wreath:

contemplated something silly:  (Gilly at the farm eating the catnip toy she (we) brought for Raffa, the cat):

took another picture of Gilly at the window where the Christmas tree is now:

and worked on the peaceable lion:

Yesterday it poured and poured; driving was no fun.  The furnace decided to not work.  All that was annoying, but putting the holly in the wreath made me feel what a good symbol it is for representing irritating (or worse) circumstances, and since luckily I have a space heater to create a coziness, it really isn't much of an annoyance after all, especially remembering, and sending love to, those who are really having troubles right now.  Anyway, that's all for today. 

for Peace

Hello everyone.  It's Christmas Eve.  Tomorrow Gilly and I go for a visit to the farm in the Great Central Valley.  We'll see the donkeys, the horses, the dogs and the cats (and the dear people!)  I'm taking presents for the cats because they are disrupted when Gilly is there.  Tonight I made special gluten free crackers and an apricot cream jello to take to the farm.

My son and his family are in Ohio so I haven't been too immersed in Christmas...my upbringing would have me be more into decorating for the holidays, but this year I've been trying to use what I have and I was despairing about a wreath for the front door, when suddenly it occurred to me that I have several hubcaps lying about:

It seems a little stark, as do the times, but I'll add to it little by little.  There's a volunteer holly tree out front under the persimmon and I think a little holly and maybe some ivy would be nice.

This next is something I have very mixed feelings about, so perhaps I shouldn't even post it, but it seems like I'm going to anyway.  There's a "Christmas fantasy" up by the merry-go-round in the park to the east.  One year there were real reindeer and I loved seeing them.  This year a friend and I visited the event, hoping to see the reindeer and this is what we saw.  A fake reindeer.  A pony with antlers.  People paid $5. for 4 minutes posing with the "reindeer".

I've not been playing much music for a very long time, but last night something shifted inside and my fiddle and I went to a party; a friend showed up with a guitar and we played carols from a 1940's hymnbook for a terrific sing-a-long.  I miss the feelings I used to have about Christmas, so I've been trying to re-invent them and downloaded some Lessons and Carols from the internet.  I don't want to go to church, but I do love the music.

Gilly's lessons are going so well.  She had her first romp off-leash in the dog park.  Here she is looking around at me from her post at the front window.

And lastly, here's the beginning of some work for a "peaceable kingdom" piece.

Thank you so much, dear readers, for visiting my blog, and I do wish you Peace...and may that peace radiate outwards into the places where it is so desperately wanted.

My life as a happy factory

Hello everyone...I've been busy continuing to make brooches for a sale on Saturday.  Here are a few examples:

That one is Prairie Star.  The next is Fish Bowl, an interpretation of a design on a wonderful Japanese bowl being displayed up the street:

When I go back east, I'm always amazed by the cardinals:

Above is Standing Cardinal, followed by Flying Cardinal:

They're all about 2.5 inches in diameter and have flannel backing under a pin.  I've been very much enjoying the making...

And now for the real birds...the Cedar Waxwings that come along to finish off the persimmons...they have a tiny bit of red on the wings but weren't keen on me photographing it:

And here's Gilly, age 11 months.  She's been doing very well in her training classes, and now we're having to work on her skills around the house.  When she has complete freedom, little puddles appear, so restrictions come into being.  It's hard to enforce, because I identify too dearly with her desire to wander out of sight.  But I reached my limit and she is cheerful about the new plan. We work together on it and it does seem to be getting better.

Lastly, in case you are as fond of donkeys as I am, here is a link to part of Ramsey's story.  He is a baby donkey in New York State who has had life threatening hoof problems, which are gradually getting better...

That's all for now...