"Give Gramma a Kiss."

A year ago I thought this would be an easy job, the photo had been blown up and I could copy.  Not easy at all. I got so discouraged I put it aside for most of a year.  In the last couple of weeks I've taken the lower part of the picture apart and redid it. It's not right yet, but it's better and I don't have the patience to keep puttering.

Aside from that lesson there's the usual lesson of misjudging the color contrasts. I should have had a darker background. Well, live and learn. What I think I learned is that I don't have the artistic eye for proportions needed for a realistic portrait.  I'm happy with  Finn's hair and sort of happy with the gray streak in Rachel's hair. That's about it.  Oh, I think I'll go back and give Rachel a small pearl earring.  On to other kinds of quilting challenges.

Well, Folks, I Really Have to Post this Picture

Since I've been reading blogs, of course, I come across cute kid photos. They're all cute, I can see that, but I know the Mama or Gramma or Great-gramma who posted it saw an even cuter kid.
So this is Stella and I'm "Great" and her Mommie, Cori, has a good camera and a perfect model. She even makes the cold, cold snow look cuddly and wonderful. 

New Little Quilt

This little quilt (about 18x22) is a sort of color wash background illustrating William Carlos Williams' little imagistic poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" which is written in the blue rectangles. Here''s the poem.
 So much depends
on a red wheel
barrow
glistening with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

I've puzzled over this poem for years and now I've been told that he means simply, we must pay attention to the little things around us.  Okay?  Okay.

The quilt is done except I need to get some silver  paint and give the wheelbarrow a few splashes to "glaze" it .  I'm thinking of three other short poems that I might treat in the same way, although not necssarily with  a background of squares -- a small series. That wheelbarrow is certainly red, isn't it?

Unusual Visitors

I looked  out the window just a bit ago to see a not very pretty head, on a not very pretty neck pass the shrub just outside my window. Quick as I could I grabbed my camera.  On those long legs, finding nothing of interest on the snow or on the now  bare brown lawn they were moving along.  I got one picture anyway.

Now and then I see wild turkeys when I'm driving but I have never seen them on this lawn before.  They are BIG birds. I am always thrilled when I see them because when I grew up I understood that wild turkeys were nearly extinct.  The first ones I saw were in Indiana about twenty-five years ago.  Now, of course, they are all over the country -- or a large part of the country.  It was the same with deer.  There were none near the Indiana farm where I grew up, but later on, when I was married and living in the east, I sometimes when home to visit my mother and we would go to the near-by state part around dusk to look for deer and often saw them. Now I know deer are all over and cause traffic accidents often. I still get a warmth in my heart when I see a wild deer.

I understand the ecology and the way farming has changed in America, and that that has led to growth of more woods than there used to be, more wild places for wild creatures. But here, of course, these are wild creatures wandering around very populated areas. This was a delight today that seeing half a dozen robins combing the now uncovered (from snow) lawn was not.