Links to Enjoy #36

Maybe you'll enjoy one or two of these links:  corn sounds, word connections, upcycled animals, or Smokey Bear.

Did you know corn makes a noise when it's growing?  When I first heard this I thought, Really?!!!  Now I wish I'd paid closer attention when I was a child, standing in my uncle's cornfield.  (Be sure to have the volume up for this video.)


From the video description:  

This time lapse photo sequence from a Nebraska corn field allows you to see and hear corn grow.  It's thought that the crackling noise is due to tiny fractures that occur as the plant stretches, breaks, and grows again.

I have also heard that growing corn (in acres and acres) increases the humidity in the air....  

Pathfinder shows a  line of connection between two things in four ways and three steps.

I love these upcycled, recycled, adorable, creative animals made from mostly wood by Kirsty Elson.  A pig, a lion, a cat, a bird, a gorilla, and a few dogs.  Which do you like best?  (I can't decide.)

Did you or your mother or grandmother hang clothes outside and use clothespins to attach the clothes to the line?  I remember helping my mom and grandmother hang the clothes and, for many years, I had a clothesline.  And we all had clothespin bags similar to the one in this tutorial (except all of ours were deeper, and some of my mom's and grandmother's looked like little girls' dresses).  I'm thinking about making one of these.  I have a narrow wooden hanger 6"-8" wide that would make the cutest "peg bag."  Wouldn't one of these be great for other purposes, too -- miscellaneous ribbons, notions near the sewing machine, thread,...?  

My introduction to Smokey (we called him Smokey the Bear instead of his real name, Smokey Bear) was probably in TV commercials in the 1950s.  The Ohio State Fair has a 15" Smokey who greets children by name (with a little help) and who used to invite children to sing with him.  Smokey's Story and  Smokey Through the Years  are fun websites to learn more about this famous bear.  Who knew there was really a Smokey?!  At the website you can also watch some of his commercials.


--Nancy.

Somewhere Between Green and Blue....

Aqua, turquoise, blue-green, green-blue, cyan, cerulean, azure, celadon, turquoise, teal, and probably hundreds of slight variations in those color combinations make up the color range between green and blue. Aqua is the RSC color for August, so I made a few nine-patch blocks for my quilt similar to this quilt Jolene made.  My preference leans toward teal, but I have plenty of lighter, brighter fabrics in the blue-green range.

There are one or two squares in this group that I might think of as absolutely green, but aqua is one of those flexible colors.  Put it next to blue and it might look very green.  Put it next to green and it leans toward blue.  Ah, well, since no one polices the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, we can all decide which fabrics look aqua (or pink or blue or red, etc.) to us.

I love Jolene's quilt but I'm not sure whether the blocks I'm making will pull off the look.  I haven't laid them out in any arrangement yet.  I think it's too soon to know, specially since I don't have the fabrics for the  background blocks (white, or off white) chosen yet.  

I also made a few more pink and purple blocks.  I don't know how many of each I will need....

Does it count for good when you really want to do something positive and can't quite muster the energy to do it?  It feels like life is passing me by as I wait to get past the effects of the drug that I hoped would alleviate this headache.  I sometimes wonder if I will ever be able to fall asleep quickly again, or if I will ever recover from having too little sleep.  What do you think, or what have your heard, or what has your experience been:  Can we catch up on sleep?

I did not know that Hens and Chicks plants grew flowers!  (Unless maybe this is not a Hens and Chicks plant.)  I was in an office building the other day and when walking past one of the doors I saw this plant with a long "string" coming out of it.  At first I thought someone had raped a pink charging cord over the plant.

Upon closer inspection I realized it was a stem with flowers.  Aren't they the dearest little flowers?!

 

If I get back to the building in the next week or two, I'll check on this plant and see what the next development in its growth is.  Or maybe I'll stop in at the office and ask about the plant.

Linking this post to Angela's RSC post at https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/2025/08/scraphappy-saturday-aquamarine-vibes.html.

That's it for me this week.  I hope you have a good weekend and upcoming week.

--Nancy.

Links to Enjoy #35

ChatGPT, the kindness of others, textile sculptures, spinning and weaving, and postcards are the topics of these links that I enjoyed.  I hope you will enjoy one or several of them, too.


Writer Amanda Guinzburg asked ChatGPT to evaluate and choose several of her essays to send to an agent.  Read her crazy conversation with ChatGPT, all presented as screenshots.  It's unbelievable how human-like ChatGPT sounds.  Have you interacted with ChatGPT before?  What do you think?


I thought some of these Site-Specific Textiles by Rachel B. Hayes were beautiful.  


Read about the mostly-anonymous kindnesses of others in "A Restaurant Surprise I'm Still Thinking of Two Decades Later."  Also, don't miss all the stories in the comments section.  They may be better than the original article.  Do you have experiences of being the recipient and/or the kindness-giver?


There's a movie called "The Nettle Dress," about the process of harvesting, processing, spinning, and weaving nettle to become cloth to make a dress.  Below is the trailer.  And watch another brief video showing how the spinner/weaver scoured (cleaned) and weighted small skeins of the yarn for the weft.  (Whenever I think of nettle I think of stinging nettle, a wild plant that causes an awful reaction on my skin.  How does he prevent a reaction, I wonder.)


I think this was so interesting to me because in earlier decades I was a spinner, dyer, and weaver.


For a while, Bonnie and Ellen worked together.  They became good friends and then Ellen moved away.  She began writing a postcard a day to Bonnie who saved them all.  She amassed thousands which are now on exhibit at Willamette College.  See photos here at Bonnie's blog and read a news article here.


--Nancy.

Four Purple Blocks this Week for July's RSC Challenge

It's purple month at RSC and these are the first four of my purple blocks.  

I don't have many purples and the ones I do have seem pretty boring to me.  Maybe it's because I'm not a big fan of purple that I have the ones I do.  I have three more blocks ready to sew which I hope I can finish this coming week.  They are of different fabrics than these, ones I found when I dug a little deeper.  (I'm already looking forward to whatever the next color will be!).  For anyone who is curious about these blocks, I'm hoping to make a quilt similar to this one.

I'm wondering what I did this week, since I haven't done much sewing and I haven't posted for a few weeks (except the quote a few days ago).  Not much, actually.  A little cutting and pinning of fabric, and a lot of sleeping/trying to sleep/trying to wake up/napping.  I'm giving up on the most recent medication the doctor prescribed to try to get rid of this New Daily Persistent Headache.  It persists through the drug and makes me so sleepy that I'm awake for about eight hours a day.  Enough is enough of this medication.

My husband fell twice last week, once at the doctor's office and then at home.  He's a big guy.  He fell in the kitchen and asked me to help him up.  I suggested we call the squad but he didn't want to.  He told me to let him get into a good position and then he said, "Now lift me up."  And I thought, Well, I'm strong, I can do this, and I'll just lift with my knees bent.  We tried three times and he couldn't get up.  I called the squad and they lifted him in a minute.  His blood sugar was much too high and he's been losing ground for the past few months.  So I've been doing the things he used to do, plus taking care of him and his needs, and not keep up very well with the things I would generally be doing..

Life's a little slow right now.  It'll change again in coming months, I'm sure.

I hope you are healthy, happy, and doing things you love!
--Nancy.

P.S.  I would link this post to Angela's blog, So Scrappy, but it looks like she didn't post this Saturday but you can still see plenty of purple blocks on her other July posts.

Everything We Create is a Collaboration

Marian Parsons posted this quote at Miss Mustardseed the other day.  It's from Rembrandt is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey.

Everything we make, in some measure, relies on the help of others.  All of us rely on borrowed light.  Even the blind composer sits at a piano not made in darkness.  There’s only one who can make something from nothing – God.  The rest of us sub-create.  We work with what can be found lying around on the floor of creation and repurposed from the belly of the earth and the salvage heaps of industry.

Marian then commented, 

It’s something good to chew on as we do creative work.  Every tool and material we work with – fabrics, paints, pigments, brushes, nails, hammers, sketchbooks, pencils… they have all been created and made by at least one other person.  Not just that, but there are the people who pack it, ship it, deliver it, put it on the store shelf, etc.  Everything is a collaboration.

I love this!  Everything is a collaboration!  Everything we make ... relies on the help of others! 

If I had to independently prepare the ground (with a shovel I made?) and plant cotton seeds (which I would have purchased or traded with someone else), care for the plants as they grew, harvest the bolls, pick the cotton from the seeds, card the fibers (with carders I made by hand?), then spin the fibers (and how much practice would it take to be able to spin a fine thread, and where did I get a spinning wheel or even a drop spindle?), warp a loom (which I made?!), weave the threads into fabric, dye it or print on it (with dye I made myself?  (No, wait, I've done that!)), cut the fabric (with scissors, or ripe it), sew it by hand (using needles I'd made myself).... 

If I had to do all of that to make a quilt, I don't think I would make one.  I would probably stop at harvesting the bolls or possibly even preparing the ground....

None of us creates in a vacuum.  We all need so much more than our own creativity to make beautiful things.

Just a few thoughts....

--Nancy.

The Last of the Orange Blocks for RSC 2025

On Thursday, we had the most beautiful weather.  Blue skies except for an hour or two of clouds when we thought it might rain.  It didn't.  The day was cool enough and windy enough to open the windows and let the breeze blow through the house and billow the curtains.  Outside, the branches of the trees swayed in the wind.  Just glorious!  I wish I'd taken photos.  If every summer day could be like that one, I'd love summer!

These are the last of my orange RSC blocks.   (Linking to Angela's RSC blog.)

I have 10 now, probably too many for the quilt I'm hoping to make.  On the other hand, having so many will offer me options when choosing blocks to use.  And orange also happens to be the favorite color of one of my grandsons.  I could make some more and have enough for a quilt for him.  But you know how fast children's favorite colors change....  (And considering how little I like orange, I'm sure I'd struggle making enough for a whole quilt.)

Vertigo has been visiting again this week so my only accomplishments are finishing these orange blocks and finishing the bindings on Everyday Patchwork and Parsonsfield.  I'll post about those when I can get some decent photographs.

I hope you have a great weekend.
--Nancy.

Links to Enjoy #34

I haven't been getting around the internet much recently so I'm sharing just three links this week.  Enjoy!

I love this high energy Vivaldi on Marimbas.  Wow!  These girls really have it together!




I think it probably takes a steady hand to decorate these cookies to look like ancient art.


I enjoyed these paper quilts made from maps and old currency for their visual interest.


I hope you found something to enjoy.
--Nancy.

RSC - Orange Is the Clown of the Color World

As I was arranging orange squares in preparation for sewing them together for this week's RSC blocks, the thought came to me that orange must be the clown of the color world, joking around, teasing, having fun.  And I thought, orange can't possibly take itself seriously.  Can it?

I like orange in very small doses and prefer the ones that lean toward red, or coral.  I found a few fun fabrics with orange (and chose not to use the yellow-ish oranges).

I don't think I'll need many orange blocks for the quilt I'm planning, which you can see here.  Maybe another one or two....

I'm linking this post to ScrapHappy Saturday Orange at SoScrappy.  Thanks for hosting, Angela.  Visit the link to see the blocks that other participants are making with orange.

Health Note.
It's been a really slow week.  The nurse practitioner doubled the dose of medication I'm taking to try to get rid of this headache.  I guess that was always the plan---to start low and increase.  It hasn't done anything for the headache but it makes me so extremely tired.  I can hardly make myself move.  You'd think 12 hours of sleep in a night would do it but I still have to push myself to get up in the morning and do things, and four hours later I'm ready for a nap after having done the bare minimum (shower, dress, brush my teeth, breakfast, etc.).  Several reliable websites agreed that the tiredness should go away as I adapt to the medication.  I'm grateful I don't have a full-time job away from home because if I did, I'd surely get fired.

Even with being tired, I've partially sewn another simple summer dress, stitched a few feet of binding on Everyday Patchwork, quilted Parsonsfield, did a load of laundry, and nearly no house cleaning.  Cleaning requires consolidated energy for longer than five or ten minutes; the other activities I can sit and do.  One of these days I hope things will get back to the old normal, or at least to a new normal that doesn't include a headache and extreme tiredness.  Isn't life interesting?!

I hope you have a good weekend.

--Nancy.