Clearing the Decks, Felted Bag, Photoshop Tip, and an Art Show

Pay attention to underlying supports so your foundations are strong and structures don't collapse... it is important to "clear the decks" once in a while so you get a new perspective, whether it's your house or yourself, and always try something new.

Experimenting with Felted Bag/Photoshop Tip This is a wonderful felted bag I bought last year at a museum shop, it has been sitting unused because I realized it had far too much drab olive green for me - all of the circles/ovals were encircled with raised green felt cord. So I pulled out my fibers, and began needlefelting - in the first pix you can see I have added red and turquoise around some of them, still not quite there... I do like purple, so in the second pix I have added purple which I like much better, it has more punch, and perhaps will do a little more color tuning to be satisfied and use this bag. Now, here's the tip - the second photo I actually painted the purple onto the pix with Photoshop to see if I'd like it. I'm realizing this would be a great tool to test out a color on something like this or even a painting or collage, without doing it to the real thing until I'm sure it's what I want. Any paint software would probably let you do this sort of thing.

Rose House Art Show
Last week I went to the art opening at the Rose House, part of the 3rd Thursdays Edmond's Art Walk. I visited with several friends including one of the featured artists Sharon Baker, who creates fabulous hand-hooked rugs, portraits, purses and whimsical boxes... The show is on til April 9, I do recommend stopping in. PS, the wildly creative green bag is no longer for sale, as I had to have it for a journal bag... I enjoyed seeing her stitching it a while back.

Clearing the Decks

Aside from arty things, finally work has begun and the contractor has demolished the decks along the back of our house so that new ones will replace them. A vast improvement as the old decks had a huge sagging beam and dry rot underneath, and the new one will be made of partly recycled materials (Trek) that will not require any painting and be very low maintenance... and the new ones will be reconfigured a bit differently giving us more room to enjoy overlooking the fruit trees and garden below. Here is a before picture and demolition almost done, ironically you can see our neighbors started the same project on the same day (2nd pix bottom).