Time to come out of hiding

I am getting back to a place where I care enough about art and felting to feel like I can blog again. It has been rough ever since one of my meds was changed to generic. My cognitive functioning and memory were so bad I decided I would rather be depressed or manic. As a last ditch effort to not do a total med change the good doctor wrote a script for name brand only and I think it is working. (I now spend a third of my income for meds but at least I CAN pay.)
For this post I am just going to share a few things that I have been able to do since I last wrote. Most of all I worked outside. Being outdoors is the best remedy for me when life seems too hard. In March I started building a stick fence around my vegetable garden to keep the chickens out. I got the idea from seeing my friend Cheryl Christner's stick fence last August. I had been pruning the fruit trees and thought the trimmings would work for the fence. It would also keep me from adding to the brush pile which had grown huge since clearing out around the barn and our "Snowtober" storm. I made it my goal to only use materials that were either invasive or needed trimming anyway. It started like this...

using sumac and the fruit tree trimmings (the sumac actually started to sprout as the weather warmed). I only had enough of those materials to do that side of the garden. So I needed to change my design as I turned the corner (I also get bored too fast to do the same design over and over). For the next section I added more curves and hearts, now adding choke cherry that had been damaged in the snow storm (that sprouted too). 

Next I built a gate...with a chicken design in the center. I found a grapevine tendril that was perfect for the eye...

 Then I decided to use up some of the drier brush...kind of like a vertical brush pile. Now when I find sticks on the lawn I can just stick them in the fence!

Then another gate...this time made with old junk wood from in the barn.

By the time I got to the next corner the pussy willows had finished blooming so I went ahead and cut the broken branches. Willow is one of the traditional materials to use for weaving and I can see why. It was such a joy to work with I decided I wanted to tackle making an archway for the next gate.This is the start of it...

Once the garden got growing and the weather got so hot I stopped working on the fence. I hope to finish it in the fall. In the mean time I am enjoying the fruits of my labor (sadly so are the bugs, and I will not use petrochemicals to stop them so not much squash this year).

During this time I had a few things happen which caused me to have a lot of negative feelings about felting, one of which I will go into detail about in my next post. (Hint: it is a common fear of wool lovers). The only other creative thing I did was to play with my pastels, which I had not touched in years. I am pleased that I finished the picture even though I am not all that happy with the results.

Really, to get the results I want would take more colors and a lot more practice with the medium. BUT happily my oldest sister came to visit last month and said something that got me to go back to felting, a medium I feel more confident with. She told me not to stop felting because "there is too much talent here to waste". I had not thought about it in that way before. Thanks again Fran!

Now time to get to work...