A Week of Pleasantries

I noted with a bit of joy the return of syringa blooms behind my place this past week. Syringa is the Idaho state flower and holds quite a few special childhood memories.

I've also been reminded that some of the trees in my development do indeed bloom. 

If I didn't know better, I'd say this was an apple tree in bloom. But I DO know better. Unless it's some mock or decorative variety that doesn't bear fruit.

I put my morning quick draw on hold while working on the Sketchbook Revival lessons in April. But I had printed out this batch of applique ideas off of the American Quilt Society 30 Days of Flowers series to use as prompts when I returned to the daily quick drawing. The prompts I'd been using had started to repeat too many from month to month, and I could feel myself losing interest. I'm still working in the sketchbook with the less than wonderful paper and getting out my cheap colored pencils to recreate each day's flower, but instead of drawing from memory as I'd been doing with the other prompts, I'm switching to studying each flower before drawing, breaking down the component parts and strategizing how to approach the shapes and the order in which to draw them. This has been enlightening, especially when I see a flower with so many parts, like the top one, that I am tempted to be overwhelmed into skipping it. But my experience with Zentangling kicks in and I can see how to proceed. Then I work in the color, striving to match the colors (which sometimes takes the blending of two) and shading light to dark where needed. These are still fairly quick to do and feel worthwhile as a daily practice, at least for this month.

A packaged arrived this week from my globe-trotting cousin who was on the last legs of a south sea island tour when ports started closing because of the virus. (No one on her small cruise ship tested positive but they still weren't allowed to debark for any planned flights home and eventually restocked at Hawaii for the unplanned cruise to San Diego - a trip extended by many days!) She often will pick up a souvenir for me if she can find something textile related. I'd seen her post about this yarn which she got in New Zealand and could only dream it might be for me. And it is! It is hand painted blend of merino wool, silk and possum fur! It has a wonderful feel and there are even instructions about how to work with the two skeins at once to even out any variations in the colors one skein to the next. Nope nope nope, no idea what I will knit out of it yet, but I am truly taken by it. And it will forever remind me of her floating around at sea for days before the captain could arrange a port of call.

The Whitlock women

Finally, I had every intention of finishing up the April bookbinding lesson last week (3 different stab stitches). But guilt is a great motivator for me, and I've been feeling guilty for quite awhile about harassing my brother for months and months to find and send the missing carousels of family slides from the larger collection he'd already delivered, and then after scanning a few, leaving them to languish for well over a year I'm thinking. The boxes sit in my studio because I've been scanning to the laptop I keep in there, and one day last week the pull was very strong to forget about bookbinding and do some scanning. The two carousels I worked on had slides from 1949 into 1953, so before I was born and when my brothers were very young. So many delightful photos including this one of my mother (right), aunt (left) and grandmother (center). Mom wrote on the slide frame that this was the first time she and her sister had been together with their mother on Mother's Day since mom had gotten married in 1938. Family was rooted in South Dakota and mom was all about family. It must have been so difficult for her to leave them behind when she and dad (and the first of 4 boys) moved to this mining region in Idaho during WWII. Her sister eventually relocated there for awhile as well, teaching in nearby schools, and she shows up in most holiday and camping pictures from here on out. Anyway, how sweet to run across this photo just days before Mother's Day.

Claud & Dot Sink with baby Mary December 1950

That strong draw to scan may not have been for my benefit though. I also ran across a photo of my parents' best friends with their newborn as they visited at Christmas in that same year. I've kept in touch with a few of the many children they had (they were Catholic), most recently one on Facebook who I'd promised long ago I'd share any photos I ran across with her family in them. I had no idea she wouldn't have a picture like this herself, but she told me that she was 13 when her mother died and that she had very few pictures of herself with her mother. She was over the moon to get this one, and especially just before Mother's Day. Sometimes you just have to follow those urges . . .