august showers

August is one of the rainiest months here in North Carolina and my flowers are loving it. I picked up some new flowers when I moved to town because I couldn't stand to have a bare deck even if it already was August. Luckily, Wilmington's long growing season meant there was still a bit of variety to choose from before the winter pansies had arrived. And now they are soaking up the rain and when the sun comes out it makes them sparkle.

the colors of summer.

These are a few of my favorites taken at the Dallas Arboretum. In full bloom & in full color. The colors and scents of summer. The Arboretum is a beautiful place to spend an afternoon with bright sun & blooms alongside shady, cool hideaways. It isn't hard to find a favorite spot (or two, or three) to spend a few moments to just enjoy yourself. The only thing that would make it more perfect is a glass filled to the brim with iced, fresh lemonade.

what's sprung.

Some of my beauties growing out on the porch right now. I really love spending the sunny afternoons in the shade of the porch with some cool Italian soda, a snack, and these lovlies to look at. They brighten up my day. I hope everyone is enjoying the colors & warmth of summer in bloom! Don't forget about my giveaway - there's still plenty of time to enter!

fungus among us.

Photo highlights of a morning spent away from the crochet needle, away from the computer, away from the stress, & just out in the open. Enjoyed the warm, humid day, the flowers by the trails, the extremely photogenic fungus, & a picnic in the trees. Did not enjoy forgetting the bug spray and occasionally be swarmed by hungry mosquitoes on certain trails.

Tomorrow it's back to the grind doing those weekly chores like groceries & laundry while also catching up on some online business. I hope everyone's weekend has been as lovely as mine, if less mosquito-y.

bookmark it!

Just in time for Mother's Day, I am introducing these new flower bookmarks in both the Artfire and Etsy shops. 

The bookmarks feature a fun flower with a glass bead accent in the center. The flower rests on top of the book's spine, while the three strands of yarn below easily keep the place in any sized book. 

It's a fun, feminine way to mark your place. Not to mention unique and colorful! It would also make a great handmade addition to cards (like Mother's Day cards!).

An assortment of colors will be available in the shop soon. But Mother's Day is coming up fast and there's only a limited number of shipping days left to ensure your one-of-a-kind, handmade gift will make it in time, so custom order a great crochet flower bookmark in Mom's favorite color today! Direct shipping to Mom's house is available at no extra charge along with my customary gift wrapping. 

These bookmarks are great for any occasion, though! Toss one in a 'Thank You' or 'Get Well Soon' card - it'll be a gift that won't quickly be forgotten. It's a great way to say 'I'm thinking of you!". 

These and more available in my Artfire and Etsy shop! Check them out today.

do it right. do it bright.

These two new headbands are my latest. I'm producing them as part of a new series entitled: Brights! I bought new buttons to produce a more coordinated look in the headbands featuring the button accent.

One headband features bright, colorful buttons in shades of green, yellow, pink, blue, and purple. The other features colorful flower buttons in shades of purple, orange, green, and pink. Both are bright, funky, and fun! The headband ties in the back like my other styles and is crocheted using 100% cotton for ease of care and maximum comfort. 

Black is just the first color of band I've produced with white on the way! I also have some more fun colors of yarn in the mail so there will be more colors including a charcoal grey coming soon. 

On top of new band colors I am also working on another 

color series I'm thinking of calling Bloom! that features muted shades of yellow, pink, and orange for a very colorful spring look.

So check back soon for more information on the new headbands coming soon. And in the meantime you can check out these headbands and many more that are already available in my Artfire shop. As always, if you have a custom idea for a headband, I'd love to work with you. 

friday spotlight: spring flowers

This Friday's (semi-late) spotlight is flowers! Check out these wonderful, flower-ful items by clicking the images above!!

flowers of a different sort.

brokenhallelujah

Buy Handmade

Now available in my shop! These beautiful and delicate looking flowers are crocheted from mohair blend yarn and accented with real pearls in the center. They make great additions to coats, sweaters, blouses, scarves, and even hats and purses! They add a nice delicacy to anything no matter how you decide to wear them. They also would make great gifts for only $9.50!

I've really had fun working on these flower brooches and hope they do well because I would love to continue making them and explore new textures, colors, and designs.

You can see these brooches in the shop along with all my other goodies, or if you're just dying to have one now go ahead and purchase right from my blog by clicking the images above!

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

ups & downs.

The last few days have been just plain hectic! 

Andy's been having to go do grad interviews out of state, and being in the small town that we are, we of course do not have a large enough airport nearby so I have been having to drive him 2 hours to nearby airports and picking him up a few days later. So we've been dealing with all the stress that comes with flying - especially on his last trip. A delayed flight got him into Houston at midnight meaning we would not have gotten home till around 2 am. Needless to say, I found the cheapest hotel I could and we spent the night in Houston and drove home in the morning. 

On top of the travel calamity, I found out yesterday that I had been denied admission (aka rejected) from Scripps Institute of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego. Scripps had been my top choice of schools, but I think the terrible economy has played a large impact on their admission decisions this year. My first graduate school admissions decision - rejection. Even if I was slightly expecting it, being rejected is never a good feeling. 

One good thing that has come out of the past few days and all this driving is seeing all the beautiful wildflowers in bloom. I stopped to get this shot of a hill covered in blue bonnets on the way home from one of the airport excursions a couple days ago. It was breath-taking in real life. It's my favorite time of the year here. 

spring has come.

I woke up one morning and realized spring had finally come! The days are marked by warm humidity, the nurseries are full of colorful flowers, and even wildflowers have started to peak up from the side of the highway.  If there's anything I'll miss about Texas when I move in August, it'll be the wildflowers that mark the coming of spring.

The pictures above are from the flowers I planted this past weekend including some strawberries and blueberry bush. 

fall.

The mornings are finally getting a little bit cooler here. Means fall must be around the corner. I say it's about time. Needless of the weather, my fall decorations have been out since mid-September. Unfortunately it's not time to bring out the long sleeves yet. 

a time to blossom.

 

There's some evidence emerging on the front porch. Evidence of new life, new growth, and of the fact that I don't always kill every thing green that I set my hands on - all of which I am grateful for. 

The first picture is of my very first little baby tomato that is teasing me with its slow growth. The image to its right is one of the fleeting blossoms on my hand sewn bottle gourds. I wish the flowers lasted much longer than they do because they are so feathery and gorgeous, but they usually wither within a day. It's the oddest thing, but they have the sweetest smell of honey dew melon to them. No baby gourds just yet, but right now I'm just enjoying the silky flowers and the whispy curley-cues of vines that wrap themselves around anything they can come into contact with. 

out and about/ roommate woes

Today Andy and I ventured to a nearby nursery we'd never visited, Martha's Bloomers. It was a fun trip, but I was a bit underwhelmed and expected a bit more. They didn't really have the variety of flowers I was expected, but had a wonderful "Native to Texas" wildflower section that made me wish I had more room to plant since I'm confined to planters on the front porch in this apartment. One thing I didn't expect to find there, though, was baby doves. Not quite the cutest baby animal I have ever laid my eyes on, but who can resist a classic mom & baby picture? Awww - kind of.  The baby was actually pretty big and his feathers were starting to come, but hadn't broken out of their casings yet. Both mom and dad were pretty protective of their little birdy baby, but it's rather hard to find the coos of a dove even remotely threatening. 

There has been random disappearances of my items from the living area lately. I asked my roommate about it, asking if perhaps she had borrowed my textbooks, but was presented with a "I haven't seem them, but if I do I'll let you know." Yeah, right. This, on top of other curious behavior like the huge delay in getting me her half of this months rent (which I still haven't received) is really irking me. I'm beginning to think she took the books and sold them back to one of the stores here without my permission. Both her and her fiance have not been very pleasant roommates and this just seems to be the cherry on top of the huge crap pile of a sundae. I have the worst luck with roommates - luckily this one is leaving in August. 

At least it's a long weekend coming up! I hope everyone enjoys it.

urg and yay.

Urg. I bought a pretty new bright pink bougenvelia today to go in a pot on the porch with some small gords I am growing, and of course when I'm trying to get it out of it's pot I get poked by its horrendous spines and rip half of the roots off. To say the least it is unhappy with me right now and is all weepy. I hope the poor thing doesn't just die on me right here and now. I was already very enamored with the thing. Hopefully with the water I gave it and a little bit of settling in it's new pot it'll grow a bit of those roots back and perk up a bit. Keep your fingers crossed. 

In happier gardening news, I'm getting my first blooms on my cucumber plants. Horray.

It's my first experiencing growing veggies my self, and with limited porch space and limited funds right now it's just, well, limited to a couple cucs, and some grape tomato plants. I hope to see some baby vegetables out there soon, which I'm sure you'll all be presented photos of as soon as they appear. I cannot wait to have my own place where I can actually grow a little garden. Some day, some day...

It's been raining cats and dogs, er, I mean frogs, here the past couple of days. I think all these down pours are supposed to be making up for the lack of rain we got this spring which led to a slightly lack luster wild flower bloom, but I still now the plants are loving it. My tomato and cucumber plants on the front porch have grown so much this week and are finally putting out some blooms. 

Rainy days are always perfect ex

cuses to stay inside and craft. I've been wiped out because of work lately, but I still managed to finish up a pair of slippers that I had tossed aside for school early this year. I really love the color of these. I had bought this yarn about a year and a half ago for a whole other project that I never got around to starting (let alone finishing). I hate to let any good yarn go to waste, so of course they became a pair of slippers. Maybe these will be a best seller because I think I have about 3 more skeins of this stuff left in the yarn closet. They should be up in the etsy store sometime tonight.

One last thing, I've uploaded new photos to my flickr account, so if anyone would like to add me I'm always looking for new friends and new photos to look at. 

spring is here.

I took a break from my busy school schedule and went to visit Andy's (my boyfriend) new puppy in Dallas with him this weekend. I don't have pictures of the adorable yellow lab puppy (deemed Lemonbutt) because Andy's mom stole the memory card I put the pictures I took on, but hopefully I'll have them soon. However, I do have pictures from all the great wild flowers that were in bloom along the way. The pictures aren't that great because I took them from the car as we sped by, but I thought I'd share them anyway.

My favorite are the bluebonnets, the Texas state flower. We don't get them up where I'm from so it's very exciting for me to see them in bloom out in the wild. Very gorgeous. Sometimes we'd drive past these huge fields of them that just took your breath away. When we weren't driving and playing with puppies, me and Andy had a Sonic Spinball marathon on his Wii. Here's Andy playing with my wiimote (it has sea life on it!) in his glasses from seeing Meet the Robinsons in 3-D, which was totally worth seeing because the 3-D was awesome even if the movie wasn't the greatest. "I have a big head, and little arms. I'm just not sure how well this plan was thought through." But anyway, we found these glasses hilarous because they were like Horn Rimmed Buddy Holly glasses. Just proves that "Heroes" is an influence in designing 3-D glasses.