allsorts

Ahoy mateys!

have to show you the fruits of my Saturday. Around here, most days are more chaos than productivity (especially Saturdays), but yesterday I managed to get a lot done. This is my latest bunting design, based on maritime signal flags. It's in the experimental stages but I am so happy with it I'm pretty sure it will evolve into some sort of kit. It's only loosely based on real signal flags, so this doesn't actually signal anything, or at least I hope it doesn't signal anything bad. With my luck it probably does. Oh well. I never was a very good sailor.

My other buntings have fewer pennants, but this one has sixteen in various shapes.

These were super fun to design, easy to stitch, and make a big impact. I only wish I owned a charming boat house to festoon and photograph. Alas, the humble garden shed in my back yard had to stand in. Still, it was fun capturing the texture of the weathered wood, and pulling out some props that brought back good memories of our London days. I remember buying the oar in a Camden Passage shop, and the deck chair is one of a pair bought new at Habitat and stenciled for a nautical themed room. I used to have a nifty red and white life ring but it has disappeared somewhere along the way. Boo.

And in a semi-related topic, did you know you can change the "language" of your facebook page to Pirate? Aye, ye just be scrollin' all the way to the bottom of the page, then ye click where it says English, then select English (Pirate) from the menu. Arrr!

Cheers ye scallywags! Arrr!

Cap'n Jenny

ps - I was so inspired, I decided to change my ava-tarrrrrrrrr!

Flowers at the window

finally got over my headache, but now I have a really bad case of Spring Fever coupled with Wanderlust. Let's swoon over some images of windows and flowers, shall we? Photo above by Susie.

italian girl in georgia

Dave Reynolds

cherington

Eric Hauser

bachspics

vessimages

anslatadams

Libby & Co

Enjoy the tour? Me, too. And thank you to everyone anywhere who takes the time to create such generous displays of loveliness. You make the world a beautiful place, one window box at a time!

Cheers,

Jenny

Well, I spoke just a smidge too soon

Boy did I jump the gun with my Yay It's Spring Flickr post yesterday. This is what we woke up to this morning. Really cold fluffy white stuff stuck to everything!

This was not supposed to happen! But it was a great opportunity to play around with the new lens I just got for my camera...

And enjoy a yummy French Toast breakfast inside by a cozy fire...

Spring will just have to wait until we finish up with this last bit of Winter!

Cheers,

Jenny

ps - Ro actually took the photo of the iron gate. But I begged him to walk across the street and shoot it for me because it was too cold out was the art director.

Breathing room

Time to get back in the saddle. 

I can't even begin to tell you what a time it's been the last few weeks. Just after my mother-in-law passed, I was hit by the worst flu ever. Then the morning of the services it began to snow... big wet lovely snow dollops that clung to every twig and leaf. As the limos pulled away, I stayed behind, bundled in a big chair, sick and loopy. It was so surreal, watching the snow fall endlessly, especially when the power went off and the house was dark and quiet. When it began to get cold downstairs, I retreated to my upstairs room where I slept for what seemed like ages, until I heard the hum of voices downstairs. I learned later that the church was completely without power for the memorial. Finally, later in the evening, I joined the family in the living room, snuggled under wool blankets in a room lit by only candles and a cozy fire. We felt incredibly lucky when our power was restored, and the lights blinded us after we had grown used to the dim light. By the next morning we had almost a foot of snow, which is the most any of us can remember. We were very fortunate again that we didn't lose any trees, only a few big limbs from the tree on the left, and one from the courtyard tree. Ro and Katy and Jeff played like little kids in the snow, made snowmen and took lots of photos like the one above.

Since then I've been slowly improving, finally feeling almost back to normal this weekend. I even had the energy to work on recoding my blog (thanks to some excellent instruction by my web guru Katy) and finally figured out how widen the main column. Now I have room to display bigger photos, and give them plenty of room to breathe. Very satisfying to get that checked off my to-do list. I've also got some other new projects going in the Makery, some new patterns, even kits! I'm very excited by the ideas that I've been having lately.

And thank you to everyone who commented and emailed about our family's loss. It was a big help in a trying time.

Happy to be back!

Jenny