Cleaning Up or Why Did I Ever Buy so Many Drapery Samples (Answer Below)

Up until today, the weather here in western NY has been gorgeous!!  The hibiscus are loving it and blooming like crazy but soon be be crowded by our perennial hibiscus which are shooting up and with all the rain the last couple of days....

Anyway, the reason I have so much and believe me it is far too much is because they were 27 inches by 27 inches and between 10 cents and 25 cents each.  At the time I worked near the place which always had tables of them and would go over at lunchtime and pick through picking out the really pretty ones or the all cotton ones, always going for several of the same kind.  I was doing a little broderie perse (an applique technique where you take actual images, cut them out and then arrange them on a background).  I got a little carried away and found myself with 16 boxes of the stuff (not small boxes either).  During the past couple of weeks I have gone through all of these and actually am keeping about 5 smaller boxes of those I couldn't live without.  I have made several "market bags" with these in the past.  There is some gorgeous fabric in there from Germany, Japan, France and Holland -- nice abstracts on interesting backgrounds.  So the rest will be given away within the next two weeks -- sigh..

This is one of the salmon colored hibiscus of which we have several.  Warren lovingly takes them to the beach each fall and brings them back in the spring.  They bloom almost continuously but take up a lot of space in the back of the van!!

Here is one of the pink hibiscus with one of our frequent visitors -- Ruby Throated Hummingbird.  They much prefer the hibiscus to their feeder!

Our neighbors' feeder is usually full of birds but they have been really lacking this year although I have seen them in the trees.  This was one of the House Finches.  Joe says that there has been a large hawk hanging around that has been picking off the laggards so they aren't coming to the feeders as much.  I have seen a few Goldfinches, a Hairy Woodpecker and a Cardinal pair who must have a nest nearby as they are always around.  Today I even spotted a Northern Flicker in the back but he was gone by the time I got my camera out.

Of course, I would see a Red Bellied Woodpecker.  Over the years I have seen almost all varieties of woodpecker in our very wooded back yard!  The Pileated Woodpeckers have been absent though probably because of our hawk friend whose last meal was a Mourning Dove.  It feels like the northern branch of Gail's Fla retreat!

I have found a lot of my old dyeing notes and will be publishing some of those soon!  I also have been cleaning up my dyeing area in the basement and will be back to some ice dyeing and low water immersion dyeing soon.  Amazingly I found my missing class notes from several classes I took -- too bad I can't decipher some of them!!