i've recently been feeling like life is a racehorse that has gotten away from me. i'm still hanging on but it's ugly: having rolled to the underbelly and now desperately clinging on as i try to decide if it would be better to just relax and let go . . . churned into dust . . . ashes to ashes. dust to dust. and all that. or should i continue to hang on within a tangle of furiously fast legs and attempt to regain my seat . . . is there even a choice really? as i said it's ugly.

i'm late for the TAST (www.pintangle.com) challenge. this weeks was the wave stitch and i was completely caught off guard with how challenging it was for me. it looks simple and yet i could NOT seem to get it to look like the sample on pintangle no matter how many times i started over and tried again (and it was quite a few)~! i tried turning it various ways to work it and i tried working it on various fabrics. nothing was working and i ended up feeling totally dyslexic so finally gave up. the sample that you see here was the most interesting of my failed attempts. i worked it in a heavy variegated cotton thread on a piece of hand dyed 14 count aida cloth. i still have no idea how to make a proper wave stitch . . . if there's help out there; i'm listening.

i try to send my daughter weekly mail but i'm even failing at that lately and have missed at least a week since my last letter/card. so this morning i had another art session out in the sunshine and made her this postcard.

i used a watercolor paper based card that i had previously prepared as a background.
some of the elements include a fortune from my last fortune cookie, an old tag off of i know not what, some metal (fruit and vegetable) charms that i painted with adirondack paints, various cutouts from a discarded magazine and other bits, stitch, gesso, etc.

my daughter is a vegetarian so i thought she might like this one. i even managed to find some postage stamps that had tropical fruits on them for the actual postage.

i'm feeling both photography starved and challenged. i want to be able to learn much faster than i seem to be able to and i think in part it's because i don't find enough time to practice. lately getting the camera out feels like quite the guilty pleasure. this is one of my most recent shots that i actually liked:

~Life's A Killer~

i love the way that rust and peeling paint look and happened see this safety pin lying on one of my outdoor cabinets which has been "peeled" by the elements. is it just me or does it look absolutely decadent~!?!~

within a past post i showed this quilt that i made for a local raffle/fundraising event. i found a set of Curious George board books and a sock monkey from Etsy and tied it all up in this neat little bundle. the fundraiser is now over but i have not heard how this item did.

the little monkey did not want to get tied up within the quilt . . .
the compromise was to leave his head and arms out . . . hopefully he didn't end up wiggling completely free and there is some child somewhere enjoying him, the books and the quilt.

i have started making scrappy broken dishes blocks for the next charity giveaway quilt but am not too very far along just yet. i better get busy with it though as it is due to be going to a children's hospital in november. seems like a long way off but i work so slowly and would like to have it done in time to give my long-arm quilter plenty of time to get her thing done too.

out in the garden today the moss rose are doing their version of the happy dance.

and within the same bed the very first cactus bloom is opening up to the warming summer weather. isn't it interesting how similar the blossoms from these two plants look?

i think they create a great pairing within the garden. the nice thing is that when the cactus have completed their riot of blooming, lasting roughly two weeks at most, the moss rose will continue on throughout the summer.