Planet Auntie

Weeding 2

Posted on May 19, 2016 by --Deb | Comments Off

How often (if ever) do you weed out your library?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

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Tagged Wordpress

The Lilac House …

Posted on May 17, 2016 by mvobsession | Comments Off

Oak Bluffs ~ Martha’s Vineyard

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Tagged architecture, flowers, houses, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, New England, Photographs, trees

Horrifying.

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Anna M. Branner | Comments Off

ONE post since the beginning of the year?

Spring show accomplished between DAYS of rain. We were SO lucky. It poured last year the ENTIRE TIME.

Once we returned home I packed up and headed to visit my Mom and bring her back to my house in Fredericksburg. She bought me a tree for my birthday! It will be delivered tomorrow. And IF the rain is not too bad I will put it in the ground. Our back yard was a blank slate when we moved here. (And I CAN'T believe I have no pictures of our empty yard! All I have are pictures towards the house of the addition...) But here you can see I am making headway. The crepe myrtle is all that was there before. Baby steps....a fence will be added next year.

Thanks to friends with transplants! I am determined not to plant anything treated with the neonicotinoids that are harming the bees. I don't know when they started that, or how long (maybe forever??) they are harmful but at least I am doing my best by buying only from nurseries that don't use them any longer (and most in Virginia still do) or go the transplant route. :) There will be lots of daisies, cone flower, black eyed susans, lillies, peonies (another birthday gift) and more. The dogwood that arrives tomorrow will go somewhere in the back corner...

While here Mom wanted to stop in at LibertyTown...where she found this gorgeous pot by Scottish potter Hannah McAndrew.

It really is a treasure to be able to buy her pots here in the states....if you love her work come down to Fredericksburg!

After Mom's visit Greg and I took off for Florida. It has been raining here in Virginia for WEEKS. All sun in St. Augustine.

There are LOTS of wonderful galleries in St Augustine. This is a piece that was in Amiro. This piece is an awesome example of Estella Fransbergen's work. Raku and wire. AMAZING.

Every time we drove from our hotel to town we passed a nursery full of these gorgeous pots from Mexico. One big one and a few small ones came home with me. It was hard to choose!!

And now we are back to rain. But I've used this day to lunch with friends and start stocking up the Etsy shop!

So now it is back to business!

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Tagged Amiro, etsy, St Augustine

WIP: Mrs Crosby Reticule Shawl (Part 2)

Posted on May 17, 2016 by StephCat | Comments Off

in progress main body I’m in progress on the as-of-yet-still-unnamed Mrs Crosby Reticule Shawl. My goal date for the sample to be finished is the June summer TNNA show.

I frogged my initial prototype.

I just wasn’t liking it. In fact I was rather hating it.

You may recall I posted about this shawl about a month ago. It’s a companion piece to Isn’t It Romantic?, but worked in laceweight yarn (Mrs Crosby Reticule, 100% merino) and a totally different shape. It (still) starts with a few cast on stitches, and grows into a wedge/curled shape shawl.

The main body of the shawl HAD a simple stockinette and lace panel design. I even sort of blocked it out, keeping it on the circular needle, to see how it would look. It was, to me, for this project, boring and a little messy looking. I didn’t like the edges. I didn’t like the lace rib.

One of the things that I’ve found as a designer is that I can go through several love/hate phases on a project. Even if there’s a time I’m not really sure of a project, often if I trust myself and power on, all will turn out fine. I didn’t get that feeling of uncertainty on this one, though. I was simply hating it.

That’s part of being a designer, too – knowing when something isn’t working, and trusting yourself on that, too.

And it is always better to frog sooner than later.

I spent a day playing with different stitch patterns (I use Stitch Maps in lieu of swatching and as an initial check on stitch counts) and redoing the charts. I ended up choosing a very pretty leaf lace panel, from one of the Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries, for the main body of the shawl.

It now makes me happy.

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Tagged Knitting

#MeMadeMay 2016

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Maggi | Comments Off

Last year I was late to discover the hashtagged movement to wear something from one's own hands every day in May. This year I am giving it a go – although I am not posting daily pix on Instagram. Many of these projects have already put in appearances there, although they have not yet gotten a full blog treatment here. So I'll annotate this accounting of what I've worn so far, and plan on details in other posts:

May 1 - Cowichan-style vest – because we were in the mountains for the weekend and it was crazy cold!

May 2 - Endless Summer Tunic & Alabama Chanin bolero – because the next day the weather completely changed!

May 3 - That same AC bolero over fave dress with matching visible mending
May 4 - ditto because some days I am dressed in workout wear for half the time

May 5 - Tempest cardi (Ann Weaver design for Knitty, made in 2009)
May 6 - Alabama Chanin Verd T & matching long skirt (my latest achievement!)
May 7 - Stopover sweater – because I'll follow Ann & Kay to the moon, and the Saturday of Maryland Sheep & Wool was right chilly

May 8 - Threadless-recycled Alabama Chanin skirt & Doodler shawl
May 9 - Smooch Rowan tank & Threadless AC skirt (reversed so the other side was in front)
May 10 - Smooch again with jeans & Unleaving shawl – I knit this tank in 2003 when it was an early bloggers' knit along
May 11 - Tiered cotton skirt – an oldie dating from Little B's preschool days
May 12 - Verd T & pink linen pants I sewed at VisArts one night with coworkers
May 13 - Workout wear all day, which was bound to happen
May 14 - Alabama Chanin orange recycled-T tank
May 15 - Triple S shawl
May 16 - Charlotte's Web Shawl, the Koigu classic I knit in 2005

May 17 - Sockapolooza socks knit by someone else; remember Sockapalooza? I think I participated in at least two of those trades.

May 18 - Rooibos vest and Volt shawl

May 19 - workout wear again, alas

May 20 - My firstest AC Bloomers skirt of thrifted blue and purple Ts

May 21 - Volt shawl

May 22 - Beloved Chicknits Twist cardi, in May!

May 23 - Triple S Koigu shawl

May 24 - Another Chicknits: Cece shrug

May 25 - Rowan Elspeth shrug, in Calmer like the one above

May 26 - Endless Summer Tunic

May 27 - Sonya Philip Dress No. 1

May 28 - this is a doozy: a silk dress I sewed c. 1991!

May 29 - Dress No. 1 again

May 30 - Violets by the River shawl

May 31 - AC long skirt

What a fun month! Will look forward to doing this again next spring.

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Face …

Posted on May 14, 2016 by mvobsession | Comments Off

The prompt this week is to show the picture of a face, or in this case, faces. I purchased this stone sculpture from a Native American artist on Martha’s Vineyard a few years ago.

I asked him how he knows what to sculpt and he told me that he has to get to know the stone first… let it speak to him and tell him what it is meant to be… only then does he begin the process of letting the spirit emerge from the stone.

This particular stone has two faces.

The face of a Native American.

The spirit of an eagle.

Something I find interesting about these sculptures is that when you’re holding them they’re both cool and warm. Perhaps it’s the spirit from within.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/face/

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Tagged art, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, New England, photo challenges, Photographs, postaweek, postaweek/postaday, sculptures, statues, stone, weekly prompt

Newport, RI – Part 2 – The Breakers…

Posted on May 13, 2016 by mvobsession | Comments Off

The Breakers – if you only have time to see one mansion/summer cottage, this the THE one to visit.

From wikipedia: ” The Breakers is a Vanderbilt mansion located on Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. The Breakers was built as the Newport summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. The Breakers is the architectural and social archetype of the ‘Gilded Age’ a period when members of the Vanderbilt family were among the major industrialists of America. Vanderbilt was the President and Chairman of the New York Central Railroad, and was the grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Commodore made the family fortune in the steamship and railroad industries.In 1895, the year of its completion, The Breakers was the largest, most opulent house in the Newport area.”

CLICK HERE to read more….

This was the original Breakers which was destroyed by fire in 1892. A modest summer cottage…

Vanderbilt commissioned famed architect Richard Morris Hunt to rebuild it and insisted that the building be made as fireproof as possible and as such, the structure of the building used steel trusses and no wooden parts.

And this is the Breakers in 1895… somewhat different from the original, wouldn’t you say.

Great hall …

Around the ‘cottage’… 2 sitting rooms – music room – library – bathroom – dining room.

In the library the fireplace, taken from a 16th-century French chateau bears the inscription “I laugh at great wealth, and never miss it; nothing but wisdom matters in the end.”

Back of grand staircase – ceiling – gilded door – portrait – platinum wall paper – chandelier.

‘The kitchen, unlike others in the time period, was situated on the first floor away from the main house to prevent the possibility of fires and cooking smells reaching the main parts of the house.’ You can understand why after the original Breakers burned down that they’d want the kitchen further away. This kitchen is gorgeous, it could even tempt me to whip up a cake or something. Maybe.

The grounds … you never know what you might see out there

The Breakers is amazing… not just in its beauty and opulence but in the thought and foresight that went into building it.

Just a few more pictures, really, just a few

If you haven’t been to the Breakers I hope you get to go. In the mean time CLICK HERE for the Breakers and HERE to find out more about Cornelius Vanderbilt II.

Coming next … what mansion came within weeks of being torn down !!

(photographs by my daughter Deb and myself)

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Tagged architecture, decor, history, houses, mansions, New England, Newport, RI, Photographs, Rhode Island, stairs, statues, water

Weeding

Posted on May 12, 2016 by --Deb | Comments Off

What do you do with books you weed out of your library? If you’re like me, you find this VERY hard to do, but you want your old books to have a good, happy life somewhere … so where do you send them? What do you do with them?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!