Friday, January 22, 2016

Friday Inspiration - Winter

A few weeks back, we had a pretty good cold snap - snow, ice, wind and just generally the type of weather that makes you want to hang out by the fire all day.  But the wind brought down trees, so my husband had to go out and check the fences.  And way at the back of our land, he found these twigs and small branches covered in the strangest ice either of us had ever seen!  All we can come up with is that it must have had something to do with the wind.


Now we're sitting here at 58 degrees and actually enjoying sunshine, which has been in short supply so far this winter.  However, as I listen to the forecast for record snowfall on the east coast, I have a feeling winter's not finished with us either!  So now seems like a good time to sit back with a cup of something steamy and look at winter inspirations!

I love the simplicity of quilt artist Bobbie Sullivan's Winter Quilt.  The background of pieced squares works perfectly to capture winter's colors.  See more of her work here.

Winter Quilt

Another piece that shows winter colors well is New Mexico tapestry artist Elizabeth Buckley's Sandia Mountain Winter Sunset, which she amazingly created from a black and white photo.  Be sure to take a look at more of her New Mexico inspired pieces here.

Sandia Mountain Winter Sunset

California artist Helene Lohr uses embroidery and beading in her nature inspired work.  I really enjoy the great textures she creates!  See more here.

Winter Dream

Ludmilla Aristova uses her background as a fashion designer to create gorgeous fabric, embroidered, and beaded abstract fiber art.  She has work inspired by nature, the seasons, and also various world cities.  Take a look at more here.

Winter

And sometimes when winter rages outside, there's nothing more inspiring to me than sitting inside and knitting!  I go back and forth between wanting to knit in bright colors during winter and using nice winter whites.  This free pattern from Purl Bee would look good in either!  Instructions on their website are here and a free download on Ravelry is here.

Jasmine Scarf


Stay warm!

Happy Creating!  Deborah

2 comments:

  1. The Winter Dream shown above is great. Beautiful.

    The frost I can help you with and only because it's been discussed lately in a few of the machine embroidery groups on Yahoo that I belong to. I am over 50 yrs old and have never heard of this before, but evidently frost like that is called "Hoar Frost (or "hoarfrost" as some spell it as one word)"
    You can read a bit about it here http://www.weather.com/science/weather-explainers/news/hoarfrost-explained

    To add to that however, I just found an edu website at Cal Tech (link below) and there what your picture shows on their site is called Frost Flowers; another term I've never heard of before.
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/frost/frost.htm

    Whichever it is, it's VERY cool! Thanks for showing us

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    1. Thank you! Those frost flowers definitely look like what we found - and everything around here is definitely water logged!

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