Studio located in Cleveland, NC. 704-528-4648 Judy@goneawaystudiodesigns.com Hours are by appointment only.

Category: garden

24 days later

Judy1 Comment on 24 days later

WOW!  It’s been over 3 weeks since I wrote.  Time does apparently fly when you’re having fun.  Or is it that it moves faster as you age?  Or is it just that there’s so much to DO that I forget to take the time to blog?

Either way, it’s been a while!

The chickens are doing well.  We’re getting 7 eggs a day consistently, which is more than we can use so I’ve started selling a few dozen a week.  The difference in fresh eggs is so amazing that I am convinced I’ll have chickens as long as I have the land to raise them on!

Our garden has been going crazy this year!  My new canning shelves are almost full, but I still haven’t put up any fruits, nor enough fruit juices, well besides the strawberry jam and strawberry sauce.  And as you can see I’ve got more potatoes to store today now that they’re dried off from digging (note to self get another storage basket):

Whoops!  I didn’t realize I left my sandals on the chair when I came in from mowing last night!  And it’s time now to re-till the ground, pull some of the plants in the garden, put up the fence to keep the critters out and plant my winter garden.  The winter garden here this year will be mostly greens, beets and peas.

On the knitting front I’ve finished one shawl:

Although I need to re-block it as I didn’t get it shaped quite right.  It’s supposed to be stretch into almost a half circle shape.  And I’ve almost finished a second shawl:

This one was a kit I purchased some time ago when I fell in love with the colors of the hand-dyed yarn in it.  I think I’m going to really like the shape of this one as well, it comes to more of an elongated point on the front edges.

On the quilting front I’m still working away at a few new patterns (to be shown at a later time), and I’ve done quite a bit of custom quilting this summer.  This is a sneak peak at the current customer quilt on the frame:

It’s taken much longer than I anticipated, due to the bending over neck issues and my lack of hydraulics on my machine table to raise it to height.  But it’s coming out pretty well and I’m hoping my customer will love it when it’s finished.

Of course part of what takes away blogging time is always the “normal” stuff….. you know the real job (husband’s company paperwork) and the required job (housework) and in the summer there’s the acre of land with all that weeding!  Who’s idea was it to put in so many flower gardens?  Oh yeah, that one was mine!  LOL

Oh and I’ve revamped part of my design room to allow for a little bit of painting:

And even allowed some time to play with a little bit of silk painting on stretched wire:

And lest you think that in all this I have neglected my spinning wheel, I assure you that I haven’t:

The jumbo bobbin is a silk/merino 2 ply that I struggled with a bit this summer.  It wasn’t the fiber, it was apparently me.  But I’ve gotten it done and moved onto a Merino/Alpaca blend that I carded myself and am now spinning with the lace flyer in the hopes of getting a fine enough 2 ply for another lacework shawl.

So, as you can see, time really does fly when you’re having fun…….and there’s so much to do that occasionally I tend to forget to blog.  Okay, maybe MORE than occasionally!!!  But I always try to make up for it……….even if that means it’s a super-long, photo heavy post!

Happy quilting, spinning, knitting, gardening, painting, or whatever else makes YOUR heart sing!

I love it when I’m right!!!!

Judy1 Comment on I love it when I’m right!!!!

Everybody who knows me knows that I dearly love my husband.  And everyone who knows him knows his logical thinking often trumps my creative/emotional style when it comes to practical stuff.  But every once in a while I am RIGHT and emotion trumps logic, and I just love those little bits of  time.

Remember back a year and a half ago when we started the studio addition?  We had some shrubbery we had to take down to put in the foundation.  One of the shrubs was my Rose of Sharon, and I mourned it’s being cut down.  In deference to me, and probably against his better judgement as it was in the way when laying the brick, my husband didn’t dig it up but just cut it down almost to the ground.  All the while informing me that he might as well dig it out as it wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly come back from that deep of a cutting.  He only left about 3″ above ground on the stump.  And as it had gotten so very overgrown  before he cut it down, it had become one of his least favorite shrubs on the property. It had grown up to where it was difficult to mow around outside the box it was in and sometimes it even blocked the satellite dish reception. But I loved it so he left it during the construction process.

Last summer it started trying to come back, but it was a struggle.  That was a major pruning and for a while it looked like DH was right and it would have been better to just take the stump out and start over.  Today as I walked near the studio porch I was DELIGHTED to see I WAS RIGHT!!!!!  It came back, and is blooming once again!!!!

Now I will have to do a better job of annual pruning than I had in the past as I don’t want to lose sight out of that window.  And yes, you are seeing completely through the studio to the front window with the cherry tree in front of it in that window.  But it’s BLOOMING!!!!

Why am I so enamored of this particular Rose of Sharon?  Here’s a close-up of the actual blossoms.  It’s easy to see why I love it.

So many layers of petals in that flower, with that peek of the deep color in the center.  And the petals aren’t quite white, nor are they quite pink.  Yes, it’s one of my favorite shrubs on the property.
The rest of the porch is coming along nicely, in spite of some replanting that needed done after our heat wave:

And the color is filling in nicely now along the driveway side of the studio boxes too, although it looks like I need to trim and weed again:

Unfortunately not all of the Canna’s I planted came up so next year I’ll fill in the missing spots with Gladiola’s and Hollyhocks.  But there’s lots of flower and color inspiration around the studio.  And a fare share of bees too, so I’m careful what time of the day I go out and play in the garden.  ;>)

Of course we won’t discuss in this particular post how many times he’s right when it comes to the practical landscaping stuff……

Will it survive?

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Remember how the garden looked a week or so ago?

See how tall and straight the corn is?   Do you see my heirloom tomato (behind the zucchini trellis) standing almost as tall as the corn?  Isn’t Wasn’t it lovely?

Earlier this week we had a storm come through and the next morning my garden looked like this:

The corn was down, that gorgeous tall tomato was bent in half where the metal cage came out of the ground in the winds and it was on the ground.  The tomato wasn’t a true concern, it was still green and showed now signs of damage other than being down instead of upright.  The corn, I’m not so sure of.  But being the stubborn determined person that I am, the youngest grand and I spent a bit of time weeding out from below the corn, standing every stalk upright and stringing it to help it stay upright until it would re-seat itself (if it would) in the hopes of still having corn this summer.

And it looked good!  But by the time I got out to take a picture, we had a gentle breeze blowing again.  Not a storm breeze, just a gentle breeze and the corn that was upright was now turned in the opposite direction and starting to try to lie down again:

Will it survive?

Will we get corn later this summer?

Neither of those questions can I answer, but I do know I won’t be spending a couple hours trying to stand it back up if it goes down again!  Although it probably did need the weeding done.  ;>)