Indulge Your Shelf

Thank you for all your support and for keeping my neck of the woods in your thoughts and prayers.  We have 346 homes confirmed lost.  Among the newly homeless are a young couple that I worked with at my last job; they had to evacuate on their baby's first birthday and lost everything in their rented home that was just last night confirmed as having burned to the ground.  Here's a photo of the smoke plumes from the numerous fires in that neighborhood and beyond that are still smoldering.  We are so grateful to our hardworking firefighters and all the other emergency personnel -- it's going on a week since this particular fire broke out and they have been on the front lines.  The fire is estimated to be 15% contained, today. To change the subject to something more pleasant: my friend Angela asked me to make her a train case, similar to the one I made for Rebecca to take to Birdsong.  She was going to buy one and send it to me,  but I actually had just the thing already at

I live on the plains east of Colorado Springs; it takes me about 20 minutes on residential roads to drive into the city.  Right now Colorado Springs, as you might have seen on the news, is experiencing a firestorm of epic proportions.  It started on Saturday, far outside of town in Waldo Canyon, and has spread quickly. Yesterday, I was in Colorado Springs for an appointment and took this photo from Academy Blvd., north.  I was in the parking lot of a thrift store, and the air was smoky and stinky.  This was about 9:15 am.  I was very surprised to see it so close. Photo by Danielle Mortensen via Facebook Here's that same fire, from a similar vantage point at a mall down the street from that thrift store, around 5 pm.  In the late afternoon, we had unexpected wind gusts of up to 65 mph and the fire jumped all its boundaries and came into town.  Many homes have been lost. Yesterday afternoon, we knew without even turning on the TV that the fire had taken a turn for the w

This past week went by so quickly...it started off with me moping around because both husband and son were out of town.   My loneliness reached new heights on the second day, as I tackled that hated chore of taking down ALL the stuff that is displayed on top of the kitchen cabinets and washing it, then putting it all back up.  (Above, some of my McCoy pottery in the drainer.) I had sent off two surprises to faraway friends, so I was waiting excitedly to hear from them when the goodies arrived! One was this canvas; I used shots of Audrey Hepburn printed onto fabric to make a Breakfast at Tiffany's collage and sent it off to my friend Linda.  I really love how it turned out, with the blues and glitzes of gold and lots of texture.  She really liked it! The second little surprise was a fabric book (I am obsessed); the entire time I was working on this I was thinking about my friend Terri , so in the end I decided it had to be her book! The inside of the front cover fea

I was so busy being inspired and over-awed by Old Glory that I really didn't buy that much -- but I spent all the cash I brought with me! A box of FULL stickers from the 1950s. You know how I feel about this stuff! Many, many different stickers.  Their snarky, scolding phrases make me laugh! The same vendor had this great packet of business banking receipts from 1917.  I usually can't resist anything old that says San Francisco. I found, separately, this old aluminum clock face and some clock hands.  I'm dreaming of an art project... Of course, a bag of vintage buttons...and I haven't even had a chance to open the bag and look at them yet, if you can believe it.  That pearl and rhinestone piece was worth the price of the whole bag, to me. ...But this was my very favorite find: a little pile of medals embossed with names of flowers!  They inspired me immediately and I've been daydreaming about making them into necklaces.  I can hardly wa