Leanne Shawler, Artist

 I started this post over a week ago. And then my last grandparent died and well, blogging has not been as big a priority as watching TV, sewing (you'll see the project soon, I hope), eating chocolate and, well grieving. I wanna send out a HUGE thank you to Claudia of Mockingbird Hill Cottage who was finally able to point me in the right direction for adding the "Wednesday's Where's God?" button and code to my blog. So here's last week's post followed by this week's. Last week: I've signed up for another online art class (with Suzi Blu again, called "A Lovely Dream" . Art journaling from September 1 until May next year. I just made the journal today.) So I shall be a bit of a journaling fiend. I also want to finish the big painting from her La Sirena class. I have faces sketched, just need to shade and get rolling on that one... So here is this week's Where's God? which covers the anniversary of 9/11. And here is thi...

I wrote epically in my journal about Sunday (9/11). Mainly about forgiveness. I've decided not to share it, mainly because it goes on for pages. However, what my church's rector (aka pastor) said on Sunday about the hard work that is forgiveness is well worth sharing here (scroll down to the September 11 listing). It also appears I forgot to hit the Publish button last week. Oops. So here's last week's Wednesday's Where's God: Karla from Back at Ya Babe wrote in last week's post that: "God has been in our circumstances this week." Here's my page for week 13... And here's this Wednesday's Where's God: The envelope holds a copy of the vows that we renewed on the 4th. (Not quite our anniversary, but we wanted to do it before our community of faith). Where was God in your week? Comment below with your own list, link to your blog post about it, perhaps a photograph you took that illustrates it (a picture ...

I wrote this by candlelight ... and then transcribed it this morning.... The "Great Blackout" [for those who missed it, the entire San Diego County, bits of Orange County, bits of Arizona and Mexico had no power for up to 12 hours last night] made me aware how ill-prepared we are for an emergency, but oddly I wasn't freaking out over it. We had a few days worth of food (probably a week once we started in on the cereal) and we still had running water -- but our emergency, hand-cranked radio up and died within minutes of turning it on. Thankfully, the hubby scrounged up some batteries. We have a BBQ with propane, thank goodness. So dinner was clam chowder by candlelight. (Wish I'd taken a picture, but oh well!) It was really odd that I wasn't freaking out. It probably helped that I was able to call Mum on a land line and let her know I'm okay. While waiting for traffic to ease at church (where I work--the outage started at 3:40pm), I handed out melting...

Here are some items I picked up recently(ish): two circa 1880's photographs, a white crocheted tablecloth, doilies, lace, and some super-fine tatting (and some anglaise lace)... Here are some closeups... The anglaise will probably end up around the hem of a skirt, or turning a top into a tunic... Mum says I can't cut up the crochet tablecloth even though it looks fairly new, has a hole and only cost me $12.... This tatting(?) is amazing ... it is completely whole in the round ... (can't find a seam) and possibly edged a skirt once? It has a lot of aging and not a few holes in it -- and I suspect possibly too fragile to actually stitch on to my clothes --- especially as I'm a bit of klutz and constantly catch myself on things (usually door knobs and flanges).  But I'll either come up with something, or this could be the third piece in my vintage trio (along with an apricot chemise and my christening gown).

There's a lot of bird life in Mum's backyard (back in Australia),  mainly because of the gum trees (aka eucalyptus) on her property.  This is just one of them. It's a tawny frogmouth owl. Yes, and it's eyes were open during the day. It moved from one tree to another and took us a couple of days to find it in the new tree. Isn't it cute? (Ok, the staring right at the camera in a "you're disturbing my sleep" annoyed kind of way, isn't quite so cute... but it's not a very big owl.) Their feathers and coloring make it very hard to spot.  Don't believe me? Check out this video I shot of it. Took me ages to find it via the viewfinder. (And the answer is, it's in the bottom left corner ... at least until I managed to find it). It's moved on from this tree too and Mum hasn't found the new location yet. Maybe it got tired of getting looked at and having its photo taken.  When I was visiting Pop in  hospital, the old man in t...