Both of my computers spent the weekend in the shop again. This is really getting old. The laptop only had photos prior to 2009 and no calendar entries prior to June since I had it cleaned for spyware. They were able to transfer all of the photos but the calendar information is gone. The old MacMini is the one that I mostly use for photos as it has an older version of Photoshop that I am more comfortable using, but Friday I discovered that it is no longer able to burn CDs. !!! This is a problem since this is mostly required for entering shows these days and I burn a lot of CDs so I took that one in to be fixed. Unfortunately they were not able to fix it. So now I have two choices. Transfer manipulated photos to the laptop to burn CDs or learn to deal with the Photoshop version that is on the laptop that I don’t like. The MacMini is too old to get an external CD burner for, but it does have calendar information prior to June.

The new fabric that I ordered for the landscape background doesn’t work so I am going to have to suck it up and deal with what I have. I did re-do the fawn’s face a couple of times til I think it looks better now.

In the meantime I have been sorting old fabric, weeding out those prints and traditional fabrics that I will never be able to work into what I do now. Here is a shot of the progress so far.

And here is the rejected fabric, which is all wonderful fabric, just not the type that I use anymore. I am not even half way through and that is a lot of fabric to get rid of! Hard to believe it was on the shelves, really packed in!

I’m still in the process of sorting the blues.

Nice progress was made yesterday as I stayed inside all day waiting for a call that never came from a computer tech. The weather was cool and nice and I would have loved to have been outside working, but the time was well spent anyway.

The doe is taking shape, and the only two fabrics that I have that show leaves against a pale green background are laid in at the top. I think they will do the trick. Finding fabrics that will work together and play off one another is part of the challenge that makes this fun. I like how this one is coming together, but it has been slow work, with so many little pieces!

Yesterday it rained all morning so it was good to stay inside and sew. The day before we went to town, which kind of blows the whole day so there is not a whole lot of progress to report. Lots of little pieces! It is fun to begin to see the deer emerging from the brush…

I wish I could find what I need for the background, though!

Today I have to work at the gallery all day, so will most likely not sew a stitch. At least the weather is nice. There has been a lot of tornadoes around lately, but not near here, though we have had nice rain and the pond has water again. The flowers are loving it and I’m sure there will be a whole new rash of weeds to pull!

Charles Benton is a local photographer who has participated in the annual Inspirations exhibit, as have I, since the beginning three years ago. This year he offered me his “Konza Mother and Child” as inspiration, so this year for the first time I will have two pieces there. This one, and the “Eagles Soar” one inspired by Tammy Patterson’s “Eagle Soars” that I started earlier.

His copyrighted photograph is on canvas and I can’t get a good picture without reflections, but you get the idea. It is a wonderful photo and I am fortunate to be able to use it with his permission.

Susan said she would like to see the two layouts, so I took this picture this morning.

The top one was my first and I wasn’t happy with it so never finished it. Then I decided to start over without looking at the first one that had been done probably a month ago. It was interesting to compare the two after I was finished with the new layout.

Here is the progress to date, work done over a period of about three days.

Usually when I do animals, I start with the eyes, but in this case, remembering how much trouble I had finding fawn spot fabric for “Spring Encounter”, (click on ‘fawn’ in the sidebar) I needed to see what I could find to render the fawn’s spots and set my colors by that. I couldn’t do very much though, until I established the background fabrics.  That distant background is going to be hard. It has a lot of pink in it and I haven’t been able to find much of that. The foreground grasses were easy and the scale of the bush fabric was good. It was nice that it had dark areas that worked in well against the tree.