Showered with Gifts

The other day my boss was talking about cleaning out her dad's home after they had installed him at a care center.  She mentioned that they had found all sorts of things including two hand-crank wheat grinders.  This week she showed up with this in tow and gave it to me as well as a 13 gal trash bag of yarn skeins and balls.

She said that some of them had belonged to her late mother, and that some looked to have been in some sort of kit.  We think they might have been a rug kit as the texture of them is far more coarse that that of the other yarns.

She further explained that the yarns she was giving me were the worsted weight yarns that were in colors she found ugly or could see no use for as well as a select few smaller gauged yarns of the same description.

I tell you it is a marvel at how many lovely colors and varied textured yarns she gave me! ☺

I can think of a few uses for them such as as a variegated wheat colored flower, or as some sort of colorful flower combo.  I'm so excited!

Hope that your Sunday is lovely and filled with color.

~Fraise

Belated Easter Stuff

Seems like I followed the general trend this year and made the Lamb Pillows from the Purl Bee tutorial.

Though truth be told I've been dying to make them ever since they published that pattern last year.  I've had a sort of lamb obsession ever since I got married, since our last name is Lambert.  I know, kinda cheesy, but lambs are too cute!

~Fraise

Helping Mom...

I love how little children are such a good example of how we really see our parents.

This week when I visited Marina, the girls kept arguing about who got t help put the flour in the crepe batter. 

Later they were both helping Marina clean up the grass left over from weed whacking the front yard.  I guess we all love our moms and want to help them, and show them how much they mean to us!

Happy Mother's day to all you moms out there in what ever form you come.

~ Fraise

Awwwwwe, I feel ...better!

Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU

My husband and I went down to the BYU Museum of Art on Saturday to see the Carl Bloch exhibit.  It was so nice to be able to go to a museum again,  I haven't been to one in a long time.

It was a lovely and fairly simple exhibit, as far as BYU stuff goes, but it was awesome to be able to get that close to the real paintings and see how the artist used his paint, and how he used color to indicate a change of light.

I thought it was interesting how many people were willing to pay the extra $3 to rent an iPad.  Aparently it gave insights and additional information about the paintings and etchings that according to my mom you wouldn't normally notice.  We chose to take the tour as it came and save money (since the tickets were already free).  I figured that I had been going to museums long enough without having extra technology like that to help me appreciate the art, that it wasn't really necessary.

I guess it was a good test to see how much I remembered from my Art History, Art Theory, Design and Figure Drawing classes.  I loved his religious pieces.  However my favorites were probably his portraits of his parents in their home and of his wife.

He had some other fun, satirical and though evoking pieces of the street life he observed in Rome while studying.  It was really fun.  I just wish we had gone earlier this year, because it was a little crowded.

We also decided to visit one of the other exhibits going on in the lower level, called, "At War! The Changing Face of American War Illustration."  Mostly highlighting the use and adaptation of illustration for use in ads and posters.  For those of you that know my art tastes well, know that I kinda geek out on poster art, so this was right up my ally.  (I love it especially because it combines illustration and design).  Some of the imagery was a little gruesome, they were war posters after all, but some of them were simply breath taking.

They even had posters done by famous illustrators like Norman Rockwell and the surprising one for me was Dr. Seuss.  My husband's favorite Rockwell was this ammunition ad (appropriate since he served in the US Army and Airforce).

They also had some illustrators that I wasn't as familiar with and I really liked:

J.C. Leyendecker

  

Howard Chandler Christie

It was also very interesting how they used advertising, everything from buying bonds and stamps to saving rubber and not wasting food.  Behold the power of advertising:

Oh to live in a time when advertising was as much an art form as it was a form of persuasion!

~Fraise

(all images were from the BYU exhibits pages)