twenty pound tabby: September 2009

I've been dyeing, sewing, painting, drawing, beading and felting in Denver, Colorado for quite some time. I especially love starting with a blank piece of paper or fabric and coming up with my own designs from scratch.

I've been making art dolls for several decades and out of this evolved my cloth pins and ornaments. Each one is like a miniature version of my larger art dolls.

My pins and ornaments are first sewn of good quality white cotton fabric and then stuffed with polyfill. Then they're hand dyed, hand painted and finally beaded. A pin back is sewn securely on the back of the pins. Because of the nature of the hand dyeing, no two are ever exactly alike.

My spouse loves to spin and weave, and I dye warps for his beautiful handwoven scarves.

I've been painting my entire life and especially love to paint in a celtic or medieval style, but pure fantasy is also great fun.

The well fleshed orange kitty that my shop is named after is Donovan who has his own web site.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Xeric Garden - Sedums

I have quite a few gardens in my Arvada, Colorado yard and way in the back of the yard is a small garden of sedums. This garden rarely gets any water other than what comes naturally from the sky, although I will occasionally bring a watering can of water back there if I think about it. That occurs once a month, maybe.
It's been interesting to see how different sedums grow in this garden compared to how they grow in the gardens that get regular water from the drip system. Here is Sedum Autumn Joy in a well watered garden compared to sedum Maestro out back. The well watered sedum is much lusher and has much larger flower heads. The leaves on the sedums out back are often a bit limp, especially after several weeks of no rain.

Autumn Joy