Another Birthday and Spring Cleaning, etc...

March 21st and another birthday for me. I'm looking forward to an action packed day - a trip to the movie theatre to see another live HD opera broadcast from the Met and then out to dinner. Afterwards, my sister and brother-in-law are going to teach me some techie computer things that I have wanted to learn.

I will be away from blogging for a couple of weeks as I want to focus on doing a thorough spring cleaning and decluttering. I will also be de-toxing by going on a very simple diet of fruits and veggies (after my birthday dinner, that is). I need to reset my taste buds as lately they have gotten far to used to too much salt and sugar.

And now as the weather is improving and I feel like there really might be spring to look forward to, I want to get reacquainted with my fabric stash and plan a few items of clothing to sew for spring.

So I will not have time to make little Cotton Picker dolls and things and I will not be posting any new recipes on my cooking blog either. Please check back in a couple of weeks.

The little flower is from a notebook of stylized flowers that I drew a while ago.

Inspiration From A Folk Art Basket

As I was thumbing through one of my folk art books, I stopped to study an image of a woven basket. The design had a human-like figure but no face. I thought is was really sweet and naturally I had to give my version a face.

I had to have something with a little bit of green in it since today is St Paddy's day but as you can see, this is about as far away from an Irish "anything" as you can get. :)

For Karin

My travelling friend, Karin, has a birthday coming up just a few days after mine. We are both March babies born in the same year. I am five days older than Karin.

Karin and her husband Mike sold their house and many of their possessions a few years ago and took off in their RV to live the nomadic life. They have had adventures all over the United States and Canada are currently stationed in Florida until the end of this month. In fact, Mike has even written a book about their travels. Hubby and I took a vacation two years ago and met up with them in Tennessee and Kentucky. We had the most wonderful time. (Love the weather down there).

These days I only get to see her once a year when she comes back to Canada, but we are able to have very lengthy phone chats thanks to Skype.

I wanted to send Karin a little something for her birthday. It had to be little because you don't give big things to people who are living in a space challenged motor home. Actually their RV is quite big but still, you can't store junk like you can in a house.

Karin's favourite colour is yellow so I made her this ornament which will take up very little space. It has quite a lot of embroidery and texture. It's going out in the mail tomorrow so that it can get to its destination in plenty of time.

Cat Mummy

I paint faces in all colours. I'm learning to stay away from pink and purple tones because they don't feel right to me. I did this one in pink and had to search my stash for some fabric that would compliment the face. There wasn't much choice, however, I found this cotton blend which has a very interesting pink print so I paired the two up.

The result is an Egyptian inspired cat mummy decorated with pearl buttons and sequins which unfortunately cannot be appreciated in the photo. The kitty glitters and sparkles. This worked out OK but no more pink faces for me.

Creature II

This is my second creature. Alright, I guess it does resemble a cat. I'm working on a series of animals with human faces that I will refer to as creatures.

I liked the grey basket weave pattern of the fabric so much that I didn't find it necessary to embellish the fabric any further. I prefer "less" over "more".

Thank You

Thank you to everyone for their expressions of sympathy, both in comments on my last post and in Emails.

Above is nice picture of my late sister Ene, taken in Estonia last June at my father's funeral. That is me in the background.

I never knew Ene until I was 29 years old. She was my father's daughter from his first marriage. As happened with so many during WWII, my father was separated from his family with little hope of seeing his wife and daughter again. Their only contact was by mail and a very occasional phone call.

My father met my mother and started a new life in Canada in the early 1950s and they had me and my sister Milvi. In 1982, after more than 20 years, dad was finally able to be reunited with the daughter he hadn't seen since she was a baby. He brought her to Canada for a visit. And that's when we first met our "new" sister.

We were fortunate enough to visit with Ene a number of times throughout the years and had a great affection for her. It's hard to explain the feelings that can be evoked when one meets a sibling in adulthood. We found a real treasure in Ene and we will cherish her memory for the rest of our lives.

Sisters

R.I.P. Dear Sister.
Ene Laur
October 11, 1943 - March 1, 2009

Puhka rahulikult, kallis õde.
Mälestavad
Inga ja Milvi