So helpful

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I've had this cloth, a summery linen-cotton blend, for ages but never cut it: today I did. This is an above-the-knee simple tailored skirt with a yoke-type waistband.

The sewing project was going really well...




until my helper showed up. How do they know?




All comfortable.

That's OK. I got the skirt cut out and marked and the darts pinned; ready to start sewing next time. (I did take it away from her.)

What's not going particularly well is the drawing. It's the weirdest thing; i was all into it, and then, suddenly, it was like a love affair gone bad. I didn't feel like doing it at all. Practically overnight. So odd! So I'm giving it a rest. At this point in my life there's no point in forcing myself. It will come back; I think I needed to release myself from the pressure of the daily drawings. After all, I've been doing it almost every day since the beginning of April.

A good time to make a skirt instead.


I spent most of the morning at the garden. it's looking pretty nice over there -- lots of things in bloom: late tulips, forget-me-nots, my lilies-of-the-valley are just starting. For the past three years, I've had a bit of a focus on delphinium. Nobody else grows them because they are finicky in this climate, but I always had them in Vermont and decided to try, and so far, they've done well. That is, until this spring, when not one of the Pacific Giants - the tall ones - came up. The small free-flowering ones seem to be OK, and I never grow the mid-size Magic Fountains, because they really aren't reliable here year-to-year. So the other day at the garden center, I bought a bunch of new plants, and today I put them in, after digging out a bunch of anemones that had spread into the area I wanted to use, and then did some other tasks. There's something so satisfying about garden work, even with the inevitable reversals, failures, surprises. I was all grubby and hot and sweaty when I finished, but it felt great.