Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Hopping By

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you.

       I think I have finally readjusted to the time at home from the 6 hours ahead that Greek time was . If I'm slow at stopping by your blog it's because I have been ready for bed by 8 PM.  And I can't say I've been very ambitious in the morning either. 😕 Hopefully I can get back on track by the end of the week.

     Today I have another journal page for Chris' On All Fours challenge  over at Art Journal Journey .  This challenge runs until the end of the month which (as we all most likely know) is this coming weekend.  The dragonflies in the background don't work for Chris' challenge, since they are insects with 6 legs, but Mr. Happy Frog does work.


     I just love this frog die-cut. I don't use him very often, but he does make me smile.  I added him to a hand drawn lily pad. I  die cut the flower that is blooming on the lily pad. 

      The background is made with blue and green inks. Some of the ink is sprayed and some is from rubbing an ink pad. I stamped all the dragonflies. Mr. Happy Frog is colored with an ink pad, some paint pens, and a Sharpie.  The quote is a sticker from an Art By Marlene set.

     Before I left for Greece and while I was away we were having some lovely spring weather. Thankfully I came home last Friday night because last Saturday we had a big winter storm. By Sunday morning the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and that made all the ice covered trees sparkle.









      All of the ice didn't fall from the trees during the day, and in the light of the full moon that night, you        could still see some ice sparkle.


Thank goodness the ice and the snow from late March storms doesn't last very long, because I am not interested for more winter. 😏
That's all for me today.  Hope you are having a lovely day too.





Monday, March 25, 2024

T Stands for Welcome to Greece

Hi everyone. Happy new week. 

You might know that I missed last week's T Day as I was away on a girls' trip.

Photo I took at gate in JFK airport, NYC and no, it was NOT beach weather on my trip

      I traveled with 2 of my friends. The 3 of us taught together for many years, and we'd been talking about going to Greece since around 2017 or 2018. It was something we planned to do when we all retired. Between COVID and some other things in life, we finally got around to taking that trip. It was worth the wait though. 😊

        We didn't take a tour; instead we planned our own trip, rented a car and shared rooms. The fact that we didn't drive each crazy for 10 days is quite the achievement. 😏 Our trip was quite the adventure also. Greece is an amazing country, and the trip exceeded all my expectations in every way. ❤



          We started our trip in Athens. Then we drove northwest and inland to Trikala. From Trikala we first made our way  a bit north to visit Meteora, and then we went to the west coast and visited the island of Corfu. After Corfu we headed to Delphi and then it was back to Athens to fly home. Although we were sight seeing, we were also on a family  heritage tour for one of my friends. As I get my 3000+ photos squared away I'll have more to share.


           While we were in Athens, we were able to meet up for a couple of meals with Mia, who you might know from T day or from her blog Craftartista. Mia is such a lovely person, and not only did we enjoy the time we were able to spend with her, but it was great getting to know her a little better also. ❤

            At dinner one night, we shared a bottle of Greek wine that was very good. This is my ticket to T this week over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog




Cheers to friendship and adventure.

Mia also gifted each of us with some lovely items that she made. My gifts came in this bag with a pretty bow.


She had made a pillow cover that is now on a pillow on my couch.


Here are some of the other items I received from Mia.  I pushed them together so this post didn't end up being too  long so this may not be the best photo. 😞 I think you can see most of the items though, except the face on the girl at the top. 


Here is that cute face.


        Missing from the photo is a small zippered bag Mia made that is now in my purse with my Euro change (I still need to switch my purse back) and also a lovely pink and grey scarf that I ended up wearing for much of the trip. Since we only returned home late last Friday night , my friends and I  haven't had any time to do a photo swap. I had been hoping to show you a photo of me in the scarf.  Hopefully I will be able to do that later.

        Mia also gifted me a couple of stencils also. You'll be seeing those in my art soon I am sure. 😏
Thank you again Mia for such a lovely introduction to Greece and all these gifts. I know my friends loved theirs  also. ❤

This post is starting to get a bit on the longish side, so I will wish you all a Happy T day and week ahead. 



Saturday, March 23, 2024

I'm Home

 Hi everyone. I hope you are having a nice weekend. 

I'm home from my big adventure to Greece. What an amazing trip. There was gorgeous scenery, delicious food, interesting sites to visit, lots of driving, wonderful people, and so many smiles and laughs.   We made a great threesome for traveling. ❤️  I have a lot to share, but between readjusting to the time change and also only getting home late Friday night, I'm not organized to share much yet. I still even have unpacking to do.  😏

Sadly I came home to some nasty winter weather though. Today we had snow, rain and ice.  It shouldn’t  last but what a mess right now 😩

I had some art made before I went away, and since we're   into the last full week of March, I want to share a spread for Chris' On All Fours challenge at Art Journal Journey


I had been using up some scraps and made this collaged spread. To fit AJJ and Chris' challenge, I die cut the cute little kitty on the left and the funny little dog on the right.



I am also linking this post up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles. 

That’s all for me today! Have a great rest of your weekend. 




Tuesday, March 19, 2024

A Song on a Spring Day

 Hi everyone.

     This is a scheduled post as I am away on a girlfriend adventure.  I'll be home Friday night, and like the rest of my journey, time is flying by too fast. 😏

     It's time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday. Before I get to that, let me thank Anke for being our guest designer for our last spring-themed challenge. Also thank you to everyone who joined in.

And for our new challenge, this time we're asking you to

USE A STENCIL

     The design team has some wonderful ideas, so be sure to check out their art. For my piece I made a journal page. I  used some blue paint and a music stencil to make the background.


I also used a bit of blue spray ink on the background too.

     The flower ( from a large AALL & Create stamp) was stamped on white paper. I then cut out the flower from the rest of the image. I glued it down on my page and colored it with water color paints, paint pens, and a couple of markers. I also added 3 small heart stickers that I used a paint pen to color over.

    The leaves, the dragon fly and the watering can are all die cuts. I used markers and paint pens to color them in. I also used a bit of a glitter pen on the dragonfly to create the iridescent effect. 

    I drew and painted in the arm holding the watering can, and I used a marker and blue watercolor paint to make the water coming out of the can.  Finally I added a sticker quote from an Art By Marlene set.



As always, our Try It On Tuesday challenge runs for the next 2 weeks, and we accept all types of art.

I hope you're feeling like playing with a stencil, and we get to see your art linked into our challenge. 
Thanks for stopping by my blog.


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Lowell National Historic Park-the Final Part

        Hi everyone. Today's post is a scheduled post since I am now (hopefully)  in Greece.  However, I did want to finish my Lowell National Historic Park posts because I know that when I come home, there will be other things to share. 😏

    For this last post about the National Historic Park we'll be heading to a boarding house museum where, in the early years of Lowell's manufacturing history, the women employed by the mills would live.  The first 2 parts of this visit, if you're interested, can be found here Part 1 and Part 2.

     These boarding houses were very close to the mills themselves, so the mill girls (as they were called) could easily walk back and forth not only at the beginning and end of the day, but also for their meals. 


      That brick building behind this park is one of those boarding houses. A lot of the mill girls  came from farms in the area up to a few hours away from the mills. At that time, New England farms could be pretty tough places to live because most farmers were not wealthy, and farm work was not easy or leisurely work either. The soil here is rocky; there are so many trees to clear and keep clear, and the winters are fairly long (in comparison to other places). Never mind that the small family farms meant there were always animals to care for or crops to deal with. And on top of that, there was the normal day to day living for women which included cooking,cleaning, keeping  fires going, and helping out with child care.

     A lot of the stories the museum shared  talk about girls who felt they had a chance to get out in the world by going to work at a mill. Besides work, there were concerts, parties and often church related events the workers could attend.

    However, keep in mind, the workers were at the mills 6 days a week,  many day for 12 (+)  hours, so even though these girls were out in the world, it's not like they were socialites who slept in and went to glamorous balls. (And the question is, did they really escape to better conditions?)



Here's a boarding house bedroom where several women slept and even shared beds. 


And this is part of the dining room where the women shared communal meals.

And you might not be able to read these next few photos, but the meals the girls were fed were pretty hearty sized meals. This exhibit showed typical breakfasts, lunches and dinners. 





As you can see, it was not a glamorous life. 


Over time, the overall make up of the mill workers changed, especially as other opportunities for women came into being. As immigrants arrived from other parts of the world, they began to fill those mill jobs. 

However, when the mills shut down, it did create a lot of hardship. New England is filled with mill towns, some textiles, some not. Even some farming communities had small mills, including my town where we have under 3,000 people today and  where there were fewer in the past.  Was it an easier life than farming? I don't know the answer to that question, but as the west opened up with better farming land, many New England farms ceased to exist. Mills became a place for people to make their livelihood. The forests grew back.  People left the country and went to the city  where there were more opportunities.  Immigrants arrived from various places in the world.  And the economy in New England over time, as it is in many places (and as many of you probably already know) has changed from manufacturing to white collar and service jobs.

However, I think the history of an area is always interesting to glimpse. The history of the Lowell Mills might have begun as a unique commercial project, but it does reflect one part not just of Lowell's story, but in New England's history as well. 


I'll finish this post with  a view of a mill and the same park (only a different view) as my first photo.

That's all for me today. I'll "see" you back in the blogosphere when I return home at the end of next week. 


















Monday, March 11, 2024

T Stands for Last Week and Signs of Spring

 Hi everyone. And hello to all of the ladies stopping by for T this week also. 👋

     Our weather here has definitely gotten spring-like.  Well, New Hampshire spring-like. I don't have any spring bulbs popping up yet, but the snow is all gone, the mud is slightly drying out, and temperatures have been above 40 degrees F (4.4 degrees C) most days. It's exciting to see spring arrive so early because I'm someone who has had it with winter by March. 

     But since March and April aren't over yet, I'm not holding my breath the snow is over for the year yet either. But I'm hoping. 😏

    Last week I went for a couple of beach walks. One day it was cloudy and cold on the beach, the other day it was sunny and beautiful.


As soon as I let Miss Maddie off leash (the beach was empty as you can probably see in the photo), she went running for the water, and Mr. Pete followed along.


This rock exposed at low tide was covered with  rock-weed. It's not the prettiest of algae, but I thought it made an interesting texture in my photo.




For my birthday last Monday I went out for soup and an ice cream sundae with a couple of girlfriends. 


    My friends told our waitress I needed more than 6 cherries on my sundae. I had to explain to the waitress how the last time (back last summer) when I had a sundae at this restaurant, my husband had moaned how bad his day was going. The waitress had given him 6 cherries and only given me 1. This time we had a good laugh when our waitress returned and announced she had to beat the 6 and that she had given me 9 cherries. The photo shows 8 of them since one had slipped down on the side out of view. I think since she got a bit carried away with the cherries that she skimped a bit on the walnuts, but oh well. 😏

    Another day last week  I was at Target and found these plain wooden eggs in the dollar section. I decided to get some to decorate.


       At first I painted them, and then I decorated them. The tape (in this next photo) is not part of the decoration. I was using it so I could paint part of the egg a different color and have a more or less straight and distinct line between the 2 colors.


     I'm including this photo (above) as it is my ticket for T this week over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. Some days for lunch I have a  protein shake.  Although I don't drink hot coffee, I love coffee flavoring. That's a coffee protein shake with a bit of ice in my glass. 

I haven't quite finished decorating the eggs, but once they are done, I will share them.

     One spring thing that hasn't happened in my area yet is ice out. There was hardly  any ice this winter.  Ice in was not until February, which is very very late. But as of this past weekend there was still some hanging on in all the lakes. We walked into my mother-in-law's home this past Saturday, and that's where I took this photo. 


    It's unusual for there to be open water at this time in March. Usually ice out is usually sometime in April, so this year it will be early, and probably it will even happen this week  with the wind wind or more warm weather in the forecast.

That's all for me this week.

    I will be missing T next week  since I'm heading out on a 10 day long planned and twice a postponed trip to Greece with a couple of girlfriends. This is our "retirement celebration" trip that took a while to happen between COVID and a few other life events.   I am sure I will have lots of stories  when I get back home.

   "See" you later this month. Have a great T day and the next couple of weeks.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Pretty in Pink

Hi everyone. I hope you're having a great weekend. Mine right now is is wet and dark, but with the clock change, at least I could sleep in that extra hour. 😏

My page today is for Chris' challenge at Art Journal Journey . This month the theme, On All Fours,  is all about 4 legged animals .


    I started by rubbing some ink pads on my page. Then I used a stencil and some pink paint to make the big dots. 

   That cute pig is cut out of an old greeting card that I found recently while doing some cleaning. She was too cute to get rid of, so I chopped her out of the background and glued her down on my page. For some reason I felt she would be sitting in a flower patch, so I die cut some flowers from pink and burgundy textured paper and added them to my page. 

   I couldn't find a quote (that I liked) to stamp, but I did think about how my page has a lot of pink on it, and so I used some letter stickers and made the quote I added to the page. But I think pink is perfect, especially for a page about a piggy. 

   That's all for me today.  I am also linking this page up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles. Have a great rest of your weekend!





Friday, March 8, 2024

Lowell National Historic Park-Part 2

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. It's almost the weekend too, so for many people, it is almost time for a little down time. 😏

And FYI-today's post is a bit on the long side. 

    This past Wednesday I shared some photos and info from a trip last month to Lowell National Historic Park in Lowell, Massachusetts. My daughter and I  visited this park back in early February when she had some vacation time before starting a new job. Here's my Wednesday post if you're interested in reading it: Lowell National Historic Park-Part 1.

    Since it is time for Nicole's Friday Face Off and also for Gillena's Friday Lunch Break , I have some face photos today, as well as some photos from the museum at the Historic Park.  The museum is on the floor above where the park has a large number of actual still working looms.


   This historic park had me thinking about Fabric/Textiles, and how it is one those "things" that most of us probably take for granted.  Textiles are all over the place; in clothing, linens, towels, curtains, rugs and other items too. I'll use clothes as an example. 

    We go to a store or go online and buy clothes. Or perhaps we get second hand clothes from someone. Or maybe you even sew and just get the fabric to make your clothes.  Obviously we couldn't have clothes without the fabrics that make them. (Unless we shot all the animals and ran around in fur, but that would definitely decimate the animal population. 😒) I don't know about you, but other than the type of fabric something is, I don't usually think about what it takes to make  the fabric. 

  I can see why weaving fabric by hand would take up so much of a household's time before mechanization came into play. Clothes were needed for warmth, privacy and protection. Yes fabrics could be bought, especially specialty materials like silk, but it was often out of the budgets of many people. It also explains why clothes closets were small or weren't even put into many older homes.  People didn't need them because they didn't have all that many outfits. Unless of course they were wealthy.

   Mechanization was good for fabric production, even though there were a lot of negatives too. Not only were the early workers subject to long days, no safety constraints, and relatively poor working conditions, there were also nasty environmental effects like  dyes and other discharges.  I could probably write a whole post about the pros and cons of mechanization, but I think you get the point without me doing that. 

       The mills in Lowell were historically  about making cotton fabric. I liked this glass tube they had in the museum that showed the results of the entire process, starting with  the actual cotton. To keep this short, I'm not writing about each step but you can see in the photos how the original cotton changes to become, eventually, fabric.


The cotton must be cleaned and then spun to be  turned into thread.



The thread is woven into  cloth, which might need to be whitened before it is finished.


 And it might then need to be dyed to create colorful threads, or perhaps the entire sheet of fabric is dyed.


And then you get bolts of fabric.
 (Sorry for the lousy clarity on this next photo. I think I smushed my finger over the lens on my phone before I took this photo.)


After production,  the bolts of fabric have to be shipped to their destinations.


      I really like this (above) photo because of the perspective of the museum display with  my daughter. She loves fabric, as you can see from  all the various types in her outfit. She also is a clothes horse extraordinaire. And she is a pretty decent quilter too.

     Historically, the importance of making textiles was right up there with getting food. The oldest garment found to date (based on my internet search as I am not a fabric expert) was from somewhere between 3482-3012 BCE/BC in Egypt. You can see it and read about it here if you are interested: Tarkhan Dress. Sadly, fabric doesn't often survive the millennia things like pottery, sculpture, tools and buildings do, and a lot of early archaeologists didn't  bring the importance of fabric front and center in the research, mainly because even they found it, it wasn't showy and usually very decayed. 

      I was also reading about natural versus synthetic fabrics. Although natural fabrics (cotton, wool, linen and silk) come from non-man made sources, man manipulated those sources in order to have the fibers to make fabric. One example  is how sheep have been bred for millennia to have more wool, and wool that does not shed. The ancestors to today's sheep shed their woolly "fur" or had people pull it off. (Rather like having a shedding dog and pulling off clumps of hair.) Sheep are most likely the second oldest domesticated animal right behind dogs because wool makes fantastic yarn then used to make fabric.

     There are books written about textile production, types of textiles, uses of textiles, etc. I've read quite a few, but this is a blog post (and it's already pretty long) and not a book about fabric.

OK, this is enough for one post. I'll end this post on the lighter side with a selfie my daughter took of herself and me on our day out.


If you're interested my final Lowell Park post will be scheduled next Wednesday.

I hope my look at fabric wasn't too boring.  I will be missing the next couple of weeks of Friday Face Offs and Friday Lunch Breaks as I'm heading out on a long planned and twice postponed girls trip. 
Have a super weekend.