note to a sweet friend this morning

Dear Anita, How wonderful to hear about you and how things are going in your life. Thank you for writing to me! Glad you like the blog. I have ideas for more I want to put on it. I have been collecting shots of my rugs (many are gone, lost in the fire or sold since etc) Many of the remaining ones are darker in color from the smoking and cleaning. So good fresh photos like we used in our book will go on the blog as a slide show soon. I have also been collecting photos from friends of the old house interior, and I want to do a slide show of cape shots. Ditto some of the antique dolls. I have the 2 blogs, and enjoy hearing from people so much. I miss old friends!
We are well settled in a modern house in town, but looking always to downsize some and have a one story that we can treat with more warmth. This one has the high ceilings and white tile floors and so forth. We put the yard in after we bought it, this is our third spring here, and the yard pleases me. There were no trees at all, and of course what we have planted does not ever get the cozy old treed look. But we are working on it! Bird feeders and blooming things and healthy tomato plants are joy. When God put man and woman in a garden, He had me in mind! Have a great day, Edyth

Stand up!

We are having a warm but dry spring, and our gamble to plant tomatoes early looks like it will be a winner. For the next week we are expecting highs in the eighties. Nothing is really more rewarding to me than watching living plants, so the busytime of spring is the height of joy. My overused hands do not allow me to actively garden anymore. But I water and putter.
Tending the house and yard and enjoying our hobbies and visiting friends and family, all fill out pleasant days around the basics in life like caring for Tyler, and for Jack's parents (90 and 96!) who live nearby. Escaping into hobbies like collecting, or handcrafts like knitting and quilting keep a happy balance for people and I believe have importance for that reason.
Just as everything in the garden wants attention right now, there is always the ongoing care of restoring the doll collection. I feel decidedly like the old woman in a shoe with so many dolls I don't know what to do! 80 plus dolls is quite a commitment. Only a handful of them have been bought in original clothing on original bodies in acceptable condition for display. Dolls in prime condition command a premium, when one can find them. So for the past two years now I have been working first to repaint heads and make new bodies for the 26 fire damaged dolls we saved, not to even mention clothes for them yet. And I have added over 50 more antique dolls, almost all of them very needy too! I worry at night that my hands and my time will not be sufficient to put them all in good order. Thank goodness for the help of friends who have made garments for some of them.
Now Jack is making some saddle type stands for them. We used coat hanger wire, in dowels on round wooden bases. A belt of velcro around the waist holds the doll tightly in place. Some are quite heavy, the Greiner doll pictured is 36 inches tall. we have made 4 now, need about 12 or 15 more! In case you are wondering, the little green house in the photo is our cat's door into the garage. Edyth

Happy Easter Dear Friends

For a number of years I enjoyed painting papier mache eggs to go around our old hen at Easter time. I did most of them in a take off of the Quimpere pottery style. The only ones left now are these two large ones. I think I need to revive the tradition and paint some more. Barb Carroll and a few close friends have been gifted with them in the past. Barb has a lovely collection of Quimpere pottery, as does my little mother in law. In it's earliest history this tin glazed earthenware of France paralleled the production of Delft, the 17th and 18th century pieces Jack and I have collected over the last 15 years or so. Folk art springs from a common well in us all! Edyth

Quilter's clamps

Jack and I love early iron and had a huge collection of it before the cape burned, all of the iron was saved and cleaned, but little of it has found a place in our lives here in a modern new house. Still the old hand wrought pieces are decorative and graphic, and we find ways to show it here and there. Among the charming pieces we have had a long time are a set of quilter's clamps, one for each corner of the frame, when 4 long flat boards were used to make a collapsible frame. This was often set across several chair backs to hold it up while a group of quilters gathered around to finish it in perhaps a long day. The little hand made ones in the photo with some hooks belonged to our friend Felicia many years back. Felicia used them on her mantle to hold garlands of seasonal material, not only at Christmas when they held strands of cranberry garland. This was more interesting than a nail or hook in the mantle board. Yesterday, friend Nancy gave us a set that had been her grandmother's quilting clamps. These are Victorian in feeling, and mass produced as are most of the Christmas things we collect. I thought you might enjoy seeing these. Edyth
I heard from friend Helen, "Happy Easter to you two, and, as the old toast goes, "to all whom you love, to those who love you and to those who love those who love you." Just visited the website and spent a pleasant while reading it - like a visit, almost. Great clamps, by the way. My Grandmother Ashcraft had a quilting frame with clamps like that in her old West Texas farmhouse, except it was suspended from the ceiling by ropes, let down to work and rolled up other times. I have such vivid memories of that place and time, bleak and bare and a world of sand, but home to me."

Spring is here in Central Texas

Spring is here and Easter is almost! We have a few tomato plants in the garden and the daffodills have finished. Our part of the state is very very dry, but we are grateful to have been spared the floods north of us. Every day we want to spend some time out on the back deck just taking in the fine spring air! From that vantage point, unfortunately we can see a hundred things that need doing in the yard. Instead I have been enjoying a host of projects inside.
At the Boerne antique show a few weeks back we picked up 4 little dresses for some of the doll family. I am committed to getting as far along as possible dressing them this year. Pictured is a little wax Alice in her new dress. I made her fresh unders and the dress does very well just as it came to us. Friend JoAnne is searching among her treasures for just the right ribbon.
Today I finished a copy of a painting lost in our family some time back. It was tiny and dearly bought. Jack gave it to his mama and she loved it as much as I did, but lost it in her move to Fburg 6 years ago. I had taken a photo of it and recently found that and scanned it and have it now to paint from. My dolls love anything to do with fairy tales. I am sure the one we had, while a hundred years or more old, was not original, but rather a take off on an engraving by Gustave Dore. Here it is, finished except needing a warm colored varnish after it dries a few months.
So many people have emailed lately telling me of their projects, we are all busy as bees it seems! Have a great Day!! Edyth

We three plus one

Photos of Jack and me and Tyler with his drums. We all live here, plus Elizabeth, 9, who visits several times most weeks.

A house full of Grandchildren

Happy New year. Let me brag and bask in the warmth of our grandparenting for a bit. Having the children out of school gives us time to enjoy them. I am delighted with the art teacher 9 year old great granddaughter Bailey Elizabeth has this year, that teacher opens so many doors for her. Some days she wants to paint and tells me which impressionist painters they are studying and something of their styles as she does her own thing on the breakfast table with my acrylic paint.

Lately in art she has been touching on weaving, so I have set up in the middle of our living room the big upright triangle loom that I made my own shawls on several years back. Together we have begun a shawl for her. We spoke of natural dyes like indigo and butternut and she knew of Cochineal, and she put in that the native Americans made red paint from it, and how to gather it. We visited a friend of mine so Elizabeth could sit at the big 8 harness McCumber loom there, and also see bobbin lace made on a lace pillow, as well as view a great first period Navaho Chief's rug on the wall. Of all we saw she was most in awe of the museum quality rug.

Elizabeth learned to rug hook at age 5. She and cousin Hailey both hook and knit. Now Elizabeth is learning to crochet also. I do not expect many finished projects from all this, but it is so heart warming to me to see them take on a love of fiber arts. Getting to spend time with them like this is pure gold! We are blessed with 6 grands and the one Great grand, all nearby. How many people get a chance to weave with a great grandmother??!! This is the best of the best. Edyth