-50C and Sunshine

It's true.  Canadians to talk a lot about the weather.  But how can you not when there's a range of 90 degrees between winter and summer?  Seasons are a big deal here.  Though we cannot go outside, we are still enjoying the sunshine inside.  My daughter and I set up our workstations wherever the sun was.  This morning, it was the kitchen table.  She was complaining that she was too hot in the sun.  (lol!)  Here's what she worked on.

The big table sits near the patio doors, so there is glass between the snow & us.  And me... I made a couple hundred french knots into the canola field with shiny rayon thread.

It's only about 1/10 finished.  But after I did a hundred of them, they sure became easy!  I poked my finger a couple times while pushing the needle through the canvas without a thimble.  My daughter got quite upset and begged, "mama?  do I have to sew when I grow up?"  No honey, you can be whatever you want.  You don't have to copy your parents.  "Then I want to be an artist, but with paints."  : )  Sweet.

I put some chunky beads into the seaweed on this piece.  I love it - it looks like jewels and hidden treasure!  I'm still not sure how to finish it.  I feel it needs white.  This is interesting.

I used some more batiks to make a Spring Prairie Sunrise.  I only used them in the sky.  I've always wanted to do a big sky full of horizontal strips.  I wedged it all in and tried to make some curves, but I'm not sure if you can even tell there are curves.  : )  This is the pieced top in progress.

I recently discovered Anne Brauer's gorgeous pieces, and that's what inspired my sky here.  Anne makes hundreds of these as little blocks and puts 'fractured' pieces all together to create sunning works of art.  So I didn't want to copy her.  That's her thing.  ~By the way, I did email her about it and she was okay with me doing this.~  It was my attempt to use batiks effectively in a prairie sky.  It still needs to be stitched and bordered and I plan to work lots of blooms into that land.  It measures about 22x26" with the border.

I had an interested talk with my mother this morning.  She told me she had seen some of my work.  (She's a landscape artist, hippy, no internet, lives in a cabin.)  I think my nephew showed her pictures on his phone.  She said, "can I make a suggestion?"  Oh god.  Sure mom, I think reluctantly to myself.  Little walls go up.  She tells me, "Put wind in it.  Make the trees move and the branches sway and the snow fly."  I paused.  I told her I work from my photos and it wasn't windy out.  LOL.  And then I looked again at my stuff laying all over the place and said, "But mom,  I don't DO trees, just land and sky.  Trees get in the way."  And she said hollered, "WHAT!?  No trees?  We are definitely NOT the same then!"  Yeah.  : )  And that was the end of that.

Oh well.  Just a funny story there for you.  I did attempt to photograph the wind once.  Check it out here:

But mom, I tried!

~Monika