Sunday Sundry 8-2-20

Perfect is the Enemy of Good

Oh, the posts I write in my head that never make it to Blogger!  I'll see something interesting, think about exploring this or that idea, and on and on...but it's all subject to a not-so-magical disappearing act all the same.  What was I going to write about?  Poof, it's gone.  Does that happen to you?  I bet I'm in good company.

Well, this week I started jotting down some of those ideas.  I probably won't cover a lot of them, but for today I'm resurrecting my old Sunday Sundry theme and we'll see if we can tick a few off the list.  Random things, in no particular order.

For the Birds

I love watching birds, ever since I was a little girl.  Listening to their songs, seeing and touching their feathers (dad was a hunter, and we had parakeets), marveling as our neighbor painted them on canvas or crafted decoys.

Two birdie highlights this week:

1) We have a pair of hawks hanging around in the yard.  They appear to be juveniles, maybe hatched from the same nest.  At first I thought they were Cooper's hawks or maybe sharp-shinned hawks, but their call is what sets them apart.  They sound like a kitten mewing!

It's different sounding than the catbird that we regularly hear in the mulberry tree.  We've seen the hawks flying from tree to tree and followed their calls as they perched in the branches.  They're skittish and wary, so getting a good photo isn't easy.  I tried.

From what I can gather doing a little research, I think they're red-shouldered hawks.  You can hear how they sound HERE.  I don't know how long they'll hang around, but I think it's very cool that they're visiting!

2) We took a walk on a nature trail around a local marsh early one morning this  week.  While there wasn't much doing on the water, at a certain point along the trail my gaze was drawn upwards where a group of about 50 pelicans were circling in the sky directly overhead.  Happily gliding on thermals, glimmering white bodies in the morning sun, black-tipped wings outstretched, around and around like slow-motion figure eights.  Absolutely mesmerizing!  Of course, that's the day I didn't have a camera, but it made my heart happy!

Strange Materials

We visited the Museum of Wisconsin Art recently.  We have an annual membership and usually get there a couple times a year, but like most places they'd been closed during the early months of the pandemic.  It was a nice little getaway from home, and it wasn't at all crowded (and we wore masks, of course).  This exhibit looked like a neat pattern on the wall around a large painting, but on closer examination, it was something else!

All the pattern work is done with cicadas!  The bell jars have other insects posed in interesting vignettes.  Quite creepy-cool!

Here's the blurb that went with the exhibit, if you're wondering how or why.

In case you need a palate cleanser after that, there was some interesting fiber art and mixed media as well. 

I especially enjoyed Chrystal Denise Gillon's whimsical collage series on sardine cans called "Mama Says."  I could relate to a lot these!

From "Mama Said" series by Chrystal Dillon

Okay, I think that's going to be it for today.  Not perfect, but good enough.  I'll leave you with a little mini I made after sorting through the scrap drawers. 

I've started a string quilt, which I'll talk about another time soon.  Found some tiny yellow squares among the strings, just itching to be something, so I made this little mug rug. 

Here's the back.

How about you?  Tell me something from the past week or two that hasn't made it to a blog or social media post.