dahlias delight:just a quick post of some of the dahlias in the garden. man they grow quickly!


harvest from the garden:




berryliscious:it's a battle between me and the robins to see whom will take more! they're ripening faster than i can pick them. there a just gazillions of them out there! i think this is the first time in years that i have been home to enjoy them. i have put away bag after bag in the freezer to save for winter muffin making. i should make jam if i have time. the bunnies delight in their raspberry treats. it's just too cute to watch them eat these ruby morsels. ....yum


garden treasures of late:these skyscrapers are 9' tall. i thought for sure they would topple in the strong winds yesterday but these stalwarts didn't budge. the scent is heaven sent.those strong winds sent these campanula lactiflora horizontal. i like how a different orientation from the usual upright makes them look fringie.i'll have to save the seeds for poppy seed cake!this is a bee magnet. there can be four bees in a flower at the same time. i was buzzed quite a bit while trying to take the photos. i thought for sure i'd get stung, but didn't. they know i love them.


new applique +this one is about the history of strawberry farming on the island
ichigo kaku-dako

yosemiteit has probably been twenty five years since i last visited yosemite until last week. we were supposed to stay in the high country, at white wolf, but the road was still closed because of deep snow so we had to stay in the valley. as soon as i stepped out of the car in the valley mosquitos amased from all directions to zero in on my tastey flesh. i quickly learned that even in the heat i was going to be dressed like a victorian lady, covered from neck to toe, in order to prevent further attacks.
on the way up to glacier point wildflowers of all colors spoke to me from every switchback. i was hoping hoping hoping that the meadow i had remembered from long ago would be blooming with shooting stars on this trip. and it revealed itself resplendent in brilliant pink and cobalt blue (cammas lilies) at the height of bloom. it was perfect timing. i was in heaven. perfection. alpine wildflowers in profusion. life just doesn't get any better than teeming wildflowers in the sunshine.


birdie totefrustrated with the limited selection and high price of fabrics here on the island i went over to the hardware store, bought a couple of tea towels (nice heavy weight cotton canvas) cut 'em up and made a new tote bag. the cut outs made pockets for the inside. the handles actually go straight up unlike how it looks in the photo.


slip castthe light pouring into the bathroom this morning was so crisp and clean that it made this bowl sparkle. can you guess how the bowl was made? i took a sugar pumpkin, yes it was home grown (i like to make pies, bread + soup from them), cast it in plaster, then poured slip into the mold and voila (after firing + glazing) an assymetrical organically shaped bowl.


latest from the gardenin order of appearance: campanula percifolia (along the front walkway), carpenteria californica (one of my favorite shrubs), deutzia 'goodsall pink' (a gift from my friend sarah, who started the smith + hawken nursery in mill valley, when my son was born...it's travelled from garden to garden and still thrives), oenothera (from my grandmother's garden...wow that one has been quite the traveler...to my mom's garden then to my various gardens...it has the happiest-best-shade-of-yellow flowers ever)


birdieoodle
you might wonder why this blog is called "birdieoodle". when i was entitling paintings for my "circular needles" show last summer one painting jumped out as the encapsulation of everything that i love, aside from my family. there were wildflowers, birds (red breasted nuthatches...oh i love the noises they make), knitting needles + tools in an obvious nod to the joyous active nature of william morris textiles. that oil painting was called "birdieoodle". birdie has always been an endearing nickname given to my pets, as well as the usual greeting, "hi birdie", to visitors at the bird feeder. -oodle, with various consonants at the start, has been the middle name for many pets since i was little. i guess birdieoodle is me in a nutshell, or nutcase as my sisters would say. so here's the painting that named the blog.18 x 18"oil on canvassold

ahhh bloedelevery year before school ends and everyone is home for the summer i grab my fleeting moments of solitude and take a walk through the bloedel. i feel so lucky to have such a magical place so close by that is different every time i visit. it is the perfect place to stroll, although i always walk fast, and just appreciate the subtle beauty of verdure in peace + quiet. to peer into the blackness of the duck pond and get lost in the reflections, drawn into that space, nearly transforms into a state of vertigo. but that is the bliss of solitude, to allow one's self to be uninterupted, just for a moment, before it becomes a rarity for a long while.

ichigo kaku-dakohere's the model and a hint of the paintinggouache on awagami

kimonosince my latest project has japanesque influences i searched for and found my old japanese architecture sketchbook from college. i just found out from my latest issue of selvedge magazine that the plural of kimono is kimono. that is the greatest magazine for fiber devotees.

just a peek at what's to come in augusti'm just packing my sketchbook with ideas but frustrated that i won't be able to accomplish a fraction of them in time. this is such an amazingly busy time of year, and it just gets more complicated when summer activities start soon. i don't sleep because i'm thinking about what i want to make and how to fabricate it. everything requires it's own uncharted pattern that starts with a blank page. i love the process and materials that conspire to form the product. i look at the array of materials before me and swoon in rapture, hoping to honor their beauty with competent construction. we'll see.
more floriciousness...can a tree pack more blossoms onto a branch than styrax japonica (japanese snowbell)? and for an extra whammy of admiration this tree permeates the air with the most intoxicating perfume. i started this tree from a seed and now it's 25 feet tall i would guess. when i used to hang birdie basket feeders in this tree the racoons would regularly smash the baskets to the ground and break the branches with their avoirdupois, the porkers, and they gouged chasms into the trunk with their beastly talons. you can guess what i think of those critters!?#!and now to the simple delicacy of rosa glauca. sweet.

ahhhhh june!it just doesn't get any better that petal profusion and perfumed air!

nexti'm working on my next show, coming up in august, at gallery fraga. this is a peek at my work zone.

new scarfit's still in progress but i couldn't wait to see the pattern taking shape so i blocked the work so far, probably not a good idea until it is finished. now i know how to make an imitation missoni top using the same stitch pattern.... ....using koigu yarn.

maceratedlately i've been fascinated by the form of flowers as they are ravaged by the elements. my early mentor, angela danadjieva, used to buy a single stem of orchids and left them on her desk for months, watching and relishing the sublime forms as they withered and decayed. in college we studied "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", by edmund burke, and i was rapped by the notion of beauty in decay. this has permeated my perception of idealized landscapes, and i guess in a way buttresses my devotion to providing habitat for wild species. when i see developers wipe a site clean of all it's indigenous materials i feel a blow to the stomach. degredation of habitat not only happens in china or south america but right here in a place where nature commands attention by it's enormous scale. when a builder, just for the heck of it, stripped the understory from the forest behind our house did he know that all the critters that used that place for forage and shelter would be displaced or killed? it was nesting season. the pheasants are ground nesters. was a generation wiped out? with a verdant garden the pheasants are here far more than they used to be when the forest was replete with hiding places. i just wish more would not see native habitat as an object to subdue, but as a nursery for a myriad of interconnected indigenous species.

is it fabric?no it's just a hosta leaf that was corrupted in photoshop. photoshop is so cool how it can change the perception of an object by adjusting its color. we are so conditioned to only think of leaves in terms of green or fall colors. but what if a leaf were cobalt blue? would we perceive it relative to the status of a flower? instead of just a leaf?

pistilokay, so i'm going to weigh in on all the da vinci code rhetoric and give a plug to the divine feminine. in the middle of a flower is the pistil. it is the female reproductive structure of a flower. all the other parts are arranged around this central figure. she is the axis around which all of nature rotates.oil on canvas, detail from 9 x 12" painting, from an exhibit of botanical paintings.

transformedinspired by the book "the art of chopping up a sweater" i bought a used men's golf sweater, felted it, removed the ribbing on the cuffs and bottom of the sweater, then added the decorative knitted trim and some flowery brass buttons from my grandmother's button box.

these leaves look as if i used my pinking shears on them. it's in the saxifraga genus. i'll have to try to find the tag for it to find the species name.

resplendentit amazes me how fast everything grows this time of the year. many plants in the garden are reaching full blown glorious mature size and grandeur. collecting tiny plants from arboretum and botanical garden plant sales over the years and then watching them expand every year to this, the year when they finally look fabulous is pure joy. it was especially so last night, just after dusk, when it was still warm and the white of the abundant viburnum flowers glowed in the diminishing light.knitter's view, oil on canvas, 4" x 4"

this is an experiment in animation....

faggottingprobably twelve years ago i bought this eyelet fabric and faggotting with the intention of making some dainty p.j.s for my daughter. after lying in wait in the stash closet their time had come to manufacture into something else for my daughter. she had seen an eyelet skirt at a local shop that she loved and which cost around $150. knowing full well that i could easily make the same thing for nothing i went home, pulled out a pattern (also stashed away for years) that was the exact replica of the skirt in the store (three tiers of gathered fabric with an elastic waist), pulled out the fabric and at last it would all come together into something new. what i didn't expect was how delightful the marriage of the eyelet and the faggotting would be.
it makes me crazy that real quality fabric stores are disappearing all the time. just this year one of the best quilting stores in seattle closed. a couple of years ago a local store with gorgeous fabrics closed. no one seems to enjoy sewing anymore to support this sector of the marketplace. i know fabric has become expensive and labor is cheap so why sew? because like with anything hand made there is a great sense of accomplishment when you make an object, especially when it is useful. having something one of a kind, instead of one of thousands, is also a lure of making things by hand. yes it take time and skill but the results are ultimately far more gratifying than plucking something off a store shelf where someone somewhere was paid next to nothing to make it for you.
if you know how to sew and a young person you know doesn't please teach them how to sew (i'm a 4-H needle arts leader...teaching the next generation to appreciate needle arts is very important to me)! you can make just about anything...it's not limited to clothing. i just made a dry bag for the dinghy last weekend etc. etc.

bill jensen, one of my critics at the vermont studio center, told me that if you don't like a painting come back to it later and work on it again. well, this painting has been sitting around for three years and i recently decided to crank up the colors on it. i like it much better than before. i think working with digital media lately has changed my sense of color use for my oil paintings. i am stepping into bolder contrast, higher key colors and enjoying the results.
permeation, oil on panel, 20" x 30"

flower girlfor the past few days our cat has come inside with brunnera flowers on either her back or on top of her head. i think it is so cute.... joy is found in the minutia of life.

it's that celebration time of the year...
happy anniversary + happy birthday
ah buttercream! it is just so much fun to play with.

Happy May Day!i dug up a few bulbs of erythronium (fawn lily) from the wilds surrounding my in-laws old house, in the foothills of the oregon cascades, years ago. now they are flourishing in our garden, happily seeding about the understory, after being moved from our old garden. what a pure and delicate wildflower!

prunus padusi LOVE LOVE LOVE this tree (european bird cherry) which was blooming right outside our favorite restaurant in portland, oregon, when we celebrated an anniversary dinner years ago. a rare tree, not easily found in nurseries, i took a cutting and it survived the long drive home and sent out roots. it was continually mangled by maurauding deer until we put up a fence! but a persistent tree it is and flourishes as a huge blooming wonder right now. i love how is says, "happy anniversary" every year with its ever increasing grand display.ahhhhh spring!

progress on my hankie quilt