Winter?

Seriously! I logged in to blog and realized sheepishly that the last post was titled Fall! Oh how embarrassing. Once again, where do I begin? Fall was l...o...n...g around these parts. When the ground finally cooled enough to plant bulbs in early November we had 2 busy weeks of gardening. The funny part is that the trees still haven't dropped all their leaves so there is work to be done perhaps even into the first week of December. This week was a quiet one. It has been cold and although they were calling for snow and quite a bit of it we saw a skiff at the most. Someday I will learn to not put stock in the weather people. It is good that I was off work this week though for a couple of reasons.
The first is that my poor little guy is feeling the one down side of not going to daycare. Tuesday he developed croup! Poor little man had to get steroid shots on Tuesday night and then it morphed into an awful bronchial cough complete with hoarseness and low-grade fever which resulted in another visit to the doctor - I am pretty sure he has been to the doctor a total of 3 times this year and that includes this week. So I have been home with him catching up on laundry, playing games and complementing lego creations, making muffins from scratch, Sneaking extra garlic into everything I can, listening to podcasts of The Splendid Table, Radiolab and Story Corps and most of all getting caught up on my stitching! I am crocheting bowls constantly and when I can , needle-felting a whole lot which is where I am ultimately heading with this post. I have lots to share! All are in my Etsy store and as always you can reach the listing by clicking on the picture. I do want to stipulate that I do not decorate for Christmas until the first of December and after the very wonderful holiday of Thanksgiving is past, but I do need to start listing items in my Etsy so that people have a chance to shop for and receive these items with time enough to enjoy them for the season. :-) I say this mostly because I posted a semi-rant about the skipping over of Thanksgiving on Facebook today. Silly Me!

Fall?

It is nearing the end of September and here in Colorado Springs (and most of the front range of Colorado for that matter) it is HOT and DRY! No rain has fallen in 3 weeks and temperatures have been in the 80's and 90's. Instead of cutting back from frost and waiting until the right time to plant bulbs and garlic we are watering to keep things from dying before they have a chance to go dormant! You can almost feel Fall in the air but can't quite smell it through the dust.

I have been working away creating some fall inspired pieces and wanted to share a couple with you today. Hope you like them :-)

Going Global

My Heart Ring bowls are now being sold in the Netherlands on a really pretty site. The wonderful gal who runs it is marketing them for weddings as an alternative to a ring pillow which I think is brilliant and really wish I could take credit for. The store is called Het Zijstraatje. Sadly I can not read the site, but it is still beautiful to look and fun to peruse all the items she has brought together!

I have also been featured in an all EtsyFast (Fiber Art Street Team) Treasury that also includes some of my favorite team members work. It is called Fabulous Fall Fibers

Where are you Gretchen?

I know, it has been months! Apparently I am not capable of juggling a F/T job, my family, weekly hikes but most of all those three things combined with summer heat and a worse than usual allergy season (and my allergies are pretty bad to begin with). I love my job though! Today we reinvigorated one garden, weeded and dead-headed 2 more, and spread 2 yards of mulch in another! It was an exhausting but gratifying day; the beer I am drinking is well deserved!

As for the hikes, you can read all about them at our other blog: Ode to Ormes . My husband does a great job summing up our adventures and keeping track of our miles. If you feel compelled, leave a comment or follow the blog. We are still not sure how much it is being read.

I will be posting soon again here about some custom work and projects I have been working on. In the meantime, check out the hiking blog! Peruse the fabulous blogs I myself follow and be sure to stay hydrated until the heat wave breaks!

Cheers and Happy Summer!

Blog Feature!

The gardening season is off and running and I am holding on by the seat of my pants! Because of this (and my seasonal allergies) I am spent in the evenings and usually have enough energy to muster dinner and fall asleep on the couch. Hopefully this weekend I will find some time to post more pictures of what I am doing in the garden and also pictures of some needle-felted goodness as well. Especially since I have received a custom order from a friend for a Columbine bowl.
On another tangent, his Saturday I am running in the Take 5 in the Garden. It is a very hilly 5k or 5 mile (Tam and I are running the 5 mile!) in the picturesque Garden of the Gods. Cross your fingers for us that we will have fabulous weather!!
Finally and probably most important, my bird's nest felted bowl has been featured on a fantastic blog: What. No Mints? Please drop by and check it out if you have a minute. Sasha also has a really cute Etsy store by the same name where she sells little felt plushies resembling such outstanding things like paramecium and pet rocks and these adorable bird ornaments:

















As always, thanks for checking in! I hope you get a chance to get out and listen to the birds singing their twitterpated songs to one another and see the flowering crabapple trees about to burst into glorious bloom. Cheers!

A Little Spring Beauty

I am more distracted than usual lately! I have taken to changing the subject mid-sentence a lot or taking a detour to check things out. What is my problem? Spring is here! Things are busting out in bloom all over the place here. Flowering Crabapples and Forsythia; tulips, crocus, daffodils... the list goes on! My house is suffering even on days that I am not working because I am in my own garden planting seeds, amending soil and trimming things back. I seem to be consistently dirty and that includes bark and leaves in my hair. To anyone that knows me this isn't much of a surprise. So why am I writing this? I inadvertently found the coolest gal through Etsy the other day. I saw she was in Antarctica and dropped her a note to tell her how much I admired people that can go live and work there (my husband was one of them). We have been writing back and forth a little bit since and the last e-mail from Chelsea asked if the flowers were really starting to go off here. She also gave me a link to her blog: Chichi's Ice Adventure. This post goes out to Chelsea a little bit of Spring color for her in anticipation of the long dark winter ahead. Thanks for giving me the excuse to post some of the thousands of flower pictures I have been snapping these days!

Fun for the Little Ones

A while back Greenstylemom and I thought that it would be fun to put together some cute Waldorf style craft kits for the kids. There are 2 different ones: Gnome Family and Royal Family and I have just re-listed them in my Etsy store. I have multiples of both kits! They are $10 each and if you are in Colorado Springs, I will deliver them for free!