Fine Arts Festival

My sister-in-law and I attended an arts festival at Oakwood Resort in Syracuse, Indiana, Saturday August 27th. When we arrived, we cruised thru the closest parking lot, and God provided us with the single vacant spot. That came in handy when we left for lunch.

Good thing we took our umbrellas because shortly after arriving it poured rain for about 40 minutes. Instead of eating at the festival, we went to a nearby restaurant. While eating, a gent came in from the charter boat docked at the pier. He carried some floral centerpieces left from an event the night before. He gave us each one, and went to get some more for other diners.

This sits in a glass cube that came with the flowers. Very pretty.

Oakwood is a nice venue, but a few more vendors would have been better. It was supposedly a juried show, but I saw no ribbons/recognitions displayed nor any instructions of a special exhibit of winners.The quality of the products was excellent though. Mostly paintings/prints, woodworking, pottery, fiber arts, and jewelry.

There was special music and children’s activities (balloon animals, painting, pony rides for a charge, face painting). They finally took the ponies to shelter during the thunderstorm, but one vendor had alpacas on display along with products made from the wool. After the storm, I attempted to view the wares, but the stinky wet animals were too much. I hurriedly moved on.

On the way home, we stopped at Tangibles where I had purchased my mirror. My sister-in-law purchased a very attractive wall art picture.

It was a nice opportunity to chat on the trip and during lunch though I purchased nothing.

God’s Instruments

I mentioned previously about a knitting project to serve elderly women in the Ukraine. The Marcel Fund is supervised by Debbie Sutton, the daughter of a couple in our church. Her church in Indianapolis works in partnership with the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary. These poor women often do not have the means to heat their homes in winter, a situation exacerbated by the government instability of the country which is dealing with military aggression. They do not receive their small pension stipend on time if at all.

Women in my church have been knitting, crocheting, and sewing scarves, hats, mittens, lap robes, etc. as part of a special project. We are a small church, however. One lady in our church mentioned at a Bible study she attends outside of our church about this project. Another lady responded that she would try to get her knitting club involved. God used these knitters in a wonderful way. Last Sunday the fruit of their hands was displayed in the vestibule of our church. The idea is that by providing handmade items the babushkas will not only be kept warm but realize women in the United States care about them and send love. Praise God for His work thru these women.

Hydrangea Experiment

 

My back-door neighbor has been inviting me all summer to take some of her hydrangea blooms. Friday she moved into an assisted-living apartment; today I went over and cut some fresh blooms since she won’t be looking at them thru her condo window anymore. I like the Annabelle hydrangeas when they first bloom and are fluffy and white. They turn a lime green as they mature.

I did harvest two green blooms a few weeks ago. I wanted to experiment with drying them. I think I may have done OK. There is varying advice about drying, but those who have done quite a bit of it say the real key is picking the blooms at the right time. August through October is prime picking time, but assessing whether the bloom is ready is an art.

The green blooms which I placed in a vase of water now feel papery. I am using the method where one places the blooms with all leaves stripped off in a few inches of water and puts the vase out of sunlight. I probably used too much water so it is taking fairly long to evaporate, but the blooms seem to be doing what I wanted.

Today I picked fluffy white blooms to enjoy, a new crop finally. They won’t be fit to dry since I picked them when they were too moist. However, I picked a green bloom with tinges of pink from the vacant house to the west of me; we can barely see the blooms through our bedroom window and most others cannot see them at all unless they sit on the adjoining patio. It still feels a little springy though, so I am not sure how it will turn out. Right now I have it combined with the fluffy white ones for a few days. I am going to wait about a week and pick the only other bloom on the bush when it it drier. Then I can compare. By next year new neighbors will be in both of these residences so I may have no blooms unless my new neighbor shares. Grace Village planted 3 hydrangea bushes next to my west wall. They each had one puny pinkish bloom this year, but maybe next autumn I will have some hydrangea blooms of my own and know how to dry them. That’s the idea anyway.

I will try arranging the green blooms with the pee gee hydrangeas I bought online last year.

After lots of humidity and heat, we now have beautiful cooler weather for a few days. It was 56 when I got up this morning.

My week has very few items on the calendar. My sister-in-law sold her house yesterday for a cash offer above the listing price. God is so good. After this week, I will offer to help her pack up some things, especially a full curio cabinet of fragile items. We made $193 on our garage sale, part of a community-wide sale Friday and Saturday. I took our few remaining things to Good Will store yesterday afternoon. I am looking forward to a relaxing week.

 

 

 

I’ve Got Tomatoes Now

 

My sister-in-law gave me some nice small cherry tomatoes from her garden. I guess it is a good thing I didn’t find any to buy Saturday at the Farmers’ Market or I might have too many. Though I don’t think you can really have too many of these little tomatoes. They make nice snacks besides being eaten at meals.

A funny thing happened on Facebook this morning. I was looking for a photo that I used on my nephew’s birthday previously and when I called up the pictures, FB suggested that I tag 3 people in 3 different photos. One was my sister-in-law who asked me to remove tags of her on previous occasions; one was me but it wanted me to tag it as my twin sister; one was of our neighbor Ivan at the open house of the workshop. Except it suggested tagging it as one of my husband’s sisters! So much for the accuracy of facial recognition software.