Birds & Gardens

Well I got the new bird feeder up, it holds a 2 pound suet block that has all sorts of seeds in it. I went ahead and bought the starling baffler so that the block hangs upside down. I'm doing this as I want to encourage woodpeckers and the like, not starlings. I filled the thistle feeder back up, spilling about a cups worth on the ground, I should have thistles like mad there this spring.

I spent the better part of today cleaning the garden on the eas side of the house. I cut back the grapevines until the trunks were about 2 foot tall with only a few braches on them. I cut all of the large brush down and will rake it really well tomorrow. I had about half of it raked when John and I decided we still had enough light to trim out our trees. I did both of the cherry trees, and the neighbors crab apple, and John did the Red Oak in the front yard, we both worked on the Amber Maple which looks ridiculous right now but will look great in a year or two.

I still ahve the front gardens to do, and the garden - especially my poor herb garden - on the west side of the house. The north side of the house is hopeless at this point, but I hope to remedy that and soon.

I'll take pictures tomorrow, I had hoped to trim out my clematis vines as well but that grape vine thing, WOW was that a lot of work. And we still have the blackberry bushes to cut back hard, they are taking over everything!

Studio Mess

Here's a shot of my rather messy studio.

Here's another shot for kicks and giggles.

Spring Cleaning

I'm doing a pre-emptive strike on spring cleaning. My studio and my house for that matter are absolute chaos right now. I just spent a half hour cleaning the north bedroom, which has hit critical mass at this point. I have a couple more hours of cleaning in this tiny room in order to actually use it as a guest room. that's not the purpose of cleaning it though, I need at least one room in my house that doesn't look as if a tornado went through it, and it helps to find all of my artwork and put it away properly. Plus I have a huge stash of fabrics in there as well.

I plan to clean out my studio closet, no more office supplies in this room, nada, el zippo, it's all going. I plan to use the smaller shelves, attached to the wall, to store my fat quarters, smaller yardage pieces and all of those containers of beads, threads, etc... This doesn't include what's already in my plastic cart units that will stay as is. Then I can put large pieces of yardage, quilt battings and the like on the big wooden, free standing, shelves.

Now to just figure out what to do with all of my fibers, wool fleeces, silk top, etc...

I've come to the realization that one of the reasons I'm so pissed off all of the time is I am not creating art anymore, and that is the very core of who God created me to be, an artist. The fact the artwork also helps to drive sales for the business is another perk.

So from now on, or at least until I can get a store front or a studio outside of my home, I'm scaling back the business, and am upping studio production time. The first key to upping studio time is to get all of the junk out of my studio and get my house in order, so I can actually function.

John is busily building me a screen printing table for my studio, under which will live lots of storage. This is good, it means that the stuff currently living on the south wall of my wet studio (I have two studios) can now go live under the table, and he can the put in a sixteen foot long counter top with shelves underneath, for more storage.

I'm seriously thinking of just getting warehouse space for the business and scrapping the whole storefront idea. Now to just find such a space.