Magical Visitor, Hooking Rugs and My Future Studio

First the  picture below is a new friend who came to visit my back yard and hunt my bird feeder. I saw her swoop down numerous times but never catch anything. I'm rather sorry about that as now I'm worried about her as I assume she was hungry to be hunting out in the open and in the day time.

She's rather small so I decided it's a she. :) She was here all day Sunday from when I first saw her out my window at 9:00 am until about 6 and the sun was setting. I think the workmen (see story below) scared her off or she went on to hunt elsewhere.

I hear owls all the time. But I've only seen one here once and that was a very long time ago and I hadn't lived in the hollow long.

All in all it was a thrill to have her here. I'll post the little ink and watercolor sketch I did in the near future. She was truly magical.

For the last year or so I've been planning then building an addition onto my house. Anyone whose done something like that knows the impact on one's life that causes. :) Add my health issues and I've not been focusing on this blog.

The addition is a garage with a studio space above attached to the house by a two story breezeway. Not only can I just walk from the house into the garage (in Winter!) but from the house into the studio.

The studio is amazing and less then a week away from completion. If all goes according to plan it will be done and all the little things finished and painted and I can start moving in.

 I'm going to create a separate page on this blog to post the pictures of the whole project. But a sneak peak is the picture above. It's turned out better then I'd ever dreamed. The guys that worked on it are true craftsmen and I'm eternally grateful.

I decided, along with redoing my studio I'd revamp this blog and it's focus. While the garden and kitchen are still important in my life my real focus has

reversed back to my art and craft work.

This past year I've done little art work; mostly due to the above health issues but also I've had no place to work (old studio is storing just about everything that had to be removed to start the construction). Aside from a little art journaling I discovered Rug Hooking. Or rather re-discovered as one of my Grandmothers used to do a little rug hooking and taught me.

This is a picture of a printed pattern I got from Deanne Fitzpatrick. I found her just searching the internet and loved her work:

 I chose my own yarns, fleece and colors. I'll be talking more about this craft in the future but one thing I'll add is I'm taking Dianne's online workshop, "Getting Wild with Wool" and loving it. She offers several.

I'm currently working on one I designed based on one of my Raven paintings you can see in the above Flickr feed. (assuming it's working properly again)

 My plans for this blog; which are subject to change at my whim... :) are to discuss and show what's going on in the studio in general, the processes of the work I'm doing, as well as some tutorials for some of the things I do. 

(I'm going to reproduce the "Birth of a Block Print" I first posted on Facebook a couple years back as a tutorial. As well as create one for the rust prints (see the rusted Raven in the above Flickr feed). This is the same technique that I created my logo/avatar image seen above.)

If there is anything in particular that you know I do and want to see how I do it leave me a comment or email me. I'll be glad to see what I can do.

As I said, the studio should be done in less then a week so I'll be getting to work and have some news and another update soon.