Tag Archive for 'trees'

This is Spring


Soooo, I have Fridays off and this Friday I was really scooting around town getting all sorts of stuff done. A very productive day. At one point I had to run into work and on the way back home I passed a tree that I’ve been passing often this spring and thinking “I should stop and take a picture”. Since it was my day off, I had the leisure time to pull over, run across the street and take some pictures in some random person’s front yard. Hopefully they weren’t home, but if there were, they probably could tell I meant no harm. That or they thought I was a little “weird” so they didn’t want to mess with me.

The tree is one of those tulip trees that just explode with flowers in the spring. I don’t know if it’s because of where the house is located and the sun hits it just so, and/or because the color of the flowers against the color of the house (very much like the blue sky) but for this fleeting period while the tree is in full bloom each year THAT house is Ahh-Mazing!

I was underneath this gorgeous tree and just snapping away, taking as many pics as possible, as quickly as possible before someone comes out and shoos me away. It was one of those moments where I felt really alive and just completely and fully happy, not to absolutely surrounded by beauty (above, around and below as you will see in the video). When I got home to see if any of the pictures were usable, meaning I could post them to flickr, and I clicked next, next, next, I saw that there were all okay, but they were even better put together like a slideshow. Watching them all together gives a better representation of what it was like to be there.

I used Windows Movie Maker and it was a real pain this time. I just wanted to make a quick simple video, but the program made sure that was not going to happen. I edited each picture frame to be on screen for 1 second exactly and when I finalized the film, some frames are extended right over other frames, eliminating them entirely and other frames I can tell are way shorter than 1 second. Humph. But, after toying with it for a day and barely being able to finalize it all anyway, I decided no one would even notice or care. It’s probably one of those things “if you hadn’t brought it to my attention, I’d never would have noticed.” but it bugged me enough that I had to bring it up. I hope you enjoy it all the same.

Oh yeah, and I put a song in the background, that went along better with the frames until WMM did it’s own editing, but it’s still nice, so please turn on the volume.

Happy Spring!

update update

Earlier today I saw this knit piece on flickr and was inspired. I want to knit a vest using my handspun, I’m excited. And then if you notice the belt in that same piece. The pattern is so perfectly suited (small and repeating) for such a piece. It has inspired me to create the pattern at the top of this post to iron onto fabric. I love fabrics with small repeating patterns. Often I see fabrics with the cutest patterning, but it is so big, so if you cut or sew the fabric down you can’t really see the pattern much anymore. So I decided to design this tree pattern where each tree is less than 1.5″ in size.

On Monday, my sister and I went into the city to the Art Institute to see the Hopper and Homer show. Chris liked Homer and I liked Hopper. I kind of had this impression that Hoppers work was all like Nighthawks, and kind of lonesome and distant, but after seeing this show I don’t think that anymore. His pieces really spoke to me because of their interesting and unusual composition, angles and obvious inspiration from film noir. His work is not sad and lonely, but like a screen capture of a story. That being said, my favorite piece in the show was a very simple painting that actually didn’t really have elements that I listed above. The above painting titled Hodgkin’s House, has a pretty central composition, the content isn’t very dramatic, but just a sweet house with angles of the light and spectacular use of color; greens with splotches of dramatic red flowers.

One last thing: here is a cool tutorial to turn an altoids tin into a tiny water color palette.