Beads and tomatoes

My bead store haul

I'm rolling in beads! Yesterday I went to a bead store for the first time since I moved to Tucson over five years ago. I had finally depleted my stash of oranges and golds, and that's all I planned to buy. HA!

BEADHoliday turned out to be room after room after room of just about every type of bead and beading supply that you could imagine. It's been in business 28 years in central Tucson and is housed in an appropriately colorful old building.

I was swept away with the colors and slight irregularities of the wood beads and bought one strand of each of these colors. (And there were more colors.)

Seed beads, turquoise ...

... an entire rack of leaf beads.

I'll be back!

Another thing I've been doing lately is roasting tomatoes and then using them in salads, sandwiches, breakfast plates and for snacking. It's impossible to buy decent tasting tomatoes in the stores here, but after roasting them with olive oil, garlic and seasonings they taste pretty good.

Do any of you do this, and what seasonings do you use? I just used salt, pepper, thyme and oregano and I'm looking for more ideas.

This morning I had some with a slice of spinach quiche.

On the Juniper front, she continues her love affair with books and with Pops the rescued feral cat. We think he's so grateful to finally be living inside with a loving family that he'll put up with anything.

Have a colorful day

A finish, a start and a Mahjong break

I finished my latest desert door piece, which is 16x20 inches. I just HAD to add sparks of golden-orange because it brings it to life. I decided the coral wall color in the photo wasn't intense enough for me.

Then I did some meditative big stitching with a light aqua-turquoise perle cotton that matches the door. I love blue paired with orange.

While I was trying to decide on adding the orange, I started an envelope quilt like one I made a few years ago. 

I'm not excited about doing the precision piecing, but it's fun to choose the colors for each envelope and arrange a little pile for each one ready to feed through the sewing machine. It goes pretty quickly. I'm making 42 envelopes.

And speaking of quilts, look at this sad puppy ...

Yesterday I took an afternoon break to play Mahjong with the girls for a few hours. It was 107 outside so we needed an indoor activity. 

And of course there was food! So much so that I didn't have to fix dinner. Afterward some of them took their lawn chairs to listen to an outdoor concert in the shade when it "cooled" off a bit, but I wanted to get back to my projects. I don't consider 90 degrees in the shade comfortable!

Have a colorful day

Another desert door collage

Another desert door collage is under way! I started by printing this photo onto white cotton fabric with my home printer. I backed the fabric with a letter-size peel-off label (the kind that you print with your computer) to make it stiff enough to go through the printer. I took the photo a few years ago in one of Tucson's colorful old barrios.

It's not done yet. I think I'll bead a coral colored spiral above the door and maybe do some big hand stitching somewhere.

I painted a sky blue background with Setacolor transparent fabric paints and pulled out some old crinkled sheers that pick up the colors of the door and steps.

The fabric dried in about 15 minutes outside because ...

I'm using Mistyfuse to adhere everything together. It works great on sheers because it keeps them soft and transparent. That will also make it easier to stitch through.

I used parchment paper to keep the fusible from getting on the iron and ironing board.

The photo and sheers are now all held together, so I can move them around the background as one unit until I decide on exact placement. Now I'm itching to hand stitch and bead!

Here's the link to my first desert door piece: 

desert-door-art-piece.html

Have a colorful day

The Texas Rangers are blooming!

 

The purple magic happened again! Tucson's Texas Rangers have been bursting into bloom over the last few days.

The plants in an entire area will burst into bloom overnight, triggered by just the right muggy conditions.

They're glorious, lining parking lots and neighborhoods. I took photos of the ones above from my car today -- they were all in commercial parking lots.

Mine had buds on them last night, and when I got up this morning they were in full bloom! That's mine above and below. 

You can see how big they are. They're also called Texas Sage. The leaves are a fuzzy sage green and the flowers a beautiful soft purple. The bees love them.

And in case you missed last night's crescent moon in your part of the world, here's how it looked from my house hanging over the desert at sunset.

Have a colorful day

Eating (book) club

I haven't written about book club lately, but we had a good meeting last night. We even talked about the book for more than a few minutes, maybe ten. It was "Killing Floor," the first in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. It was way too violent, but I did get caught up in it.

Beth picked a Mexican theme, so we started with Margaritas ... with frozen cherries if you wanted!

For an app, there was tuna with jalapeño and avocado in tortilla cups. Delicious!

We had so many Mexican dishes that I can't remember them all. I made a Mexican street corn salad and there were also quesadillas, enchilada casserole, corn and black bean salad, Mexican rice, flautas, raw veggies for dipping and all the traditional Mexican toppings.

It was Meegan's birthday and Beth made a tasty blackberry crisp, served with vanilla ice cream, instead of a cake.

Not that this happened at book club, but sometimes I do this.

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She's done!

I finished my latest photo/fabric piece, featuring my friend Linda looking at the saguaros. It will be wrapped around a 16x20 stretched canvas, but I'm going to hold off on stapling it just in case I decide to work on it a little more. But I think I'm done. 

My last step was to add bronze beads around the sun. That was after finishing outlining the frame with a back stitch.

I think I'll continue the sun hat theme and use this photo for my next piece. It's from a hike in April 2021 with the Shady Ladies.

After I finished, I went outside to do a little yard work because it was overcast and only in the 80s this morning. All of a sudden I felt a few little drops of rain on my back! We didn't get much -- just what you see below. My little lady is doing a rain dance for more because the desert is parched this summer.

Here's the sunset colors a few nights ago over Pusch Ridge by my neighborhood. Pretty pink clouds in the east.

Have a colorful day