Button Porn

If you've been following my blog for a while, you might remember that my Mom passed away over seven years ago in 2008.  Since then my Dad has continued to live in Naples, Florida...a place that has grown very dear to us since my parents moved there almost twenty years ago.

That phase of our life is closing as all of the friends that my father had in Naples have either died or moved away.  Rather than live alone, it's time for him to move back home to Baltimore to be with his family and friends here.  So Jim and I just returned from a trip to Florida where we began the process of helping Dad to get his house ready to sell.

Though we did a lot of work while we were there, we found time to have a little fun.  Well, for me...a LOT of fun.

That's because we had read about a flea market early last Saturday morning and decided to wake up to get there when it first opened.  When the alarm clock sounded, Jim moaned and started to beg off the whole venture.  Not me.  I was determined to go.  "Well, I'm going", I said, and I threw back the covers and leapt out of bed.  He groaned again but followed me out...what a love.  My Dad was up and came too.

Poor blokes.  They didn't find much except for newspapers and coffee.

But me?  Well, I never made it past the first stall.

It happened to be run by Silvia, a seventy year old woman whose 1988 four-door sedan had one dusty box of buttons after another.

Honestly, I couldn't believe my luck.  SOOO many beautiful buttons...



 And all for 50 cents to one dollar apiece she said.

Sorry I have no picture of the stall...it was too early and I didn't even think to bring a camera.  If I had known the treasure hoard I was going to encounter, I would have saved my pennies and arrived before dawn with an entire news crew!

Next to Silvia's tables, I was lucky to find these two little brass mirrored boxes for five bucks so I had something to hold my choices.



They cleaned up beautifully when I got home.  And so did the buttons.  I loved washing them in a bowl of soapy water and brushing them with Jack's old baby tooth brush.

There were so many buttons at Silvia's stall that I had no choice but to focus my efforts.  I didn't have a ton of money or time, so I went for my one of my current loves...smokey gray carved mother of pearl...



*sigh*

They were all so lovely that I was inspired to photograph them by families.  I just couldn't resist.   I should have been embroidering the last six goldwork honeysuckle leaves on my Japanese embroidery sake ladle but the buttons were far more seductive.

This group of celluloid and metal against a vintage piece of beaded net just makes me swoon...



And these steels, metals and glass stand up better when paired with an old embroidered shoe fragment...



And oh...the astounding beauty of pearly white, carved mother of pearl...



See.  You wouldn't have done your Japanese embroidery either.

Jim was happy to have a task so he dug through all the pearl buttons to pull this collection together...



They are all over 1.25 inches and I plan to send them to my friend Gerry of Older Rose who paints them with the most lovely birds, bees, flowers and cottages and sells them in her Etsy shop.

She even paints haunted houses on the smokey gray pearls.  Makes me want to do a Halloween block.

And speaking of Halloween...

She had two HUGE wooden boxes of just butterscotch bakelite!  But I just ran out of time...

Probably my greatest pleasure was discovering the quaint charm of buffed celluloid.  

Buffed celluloid is a plastic button popular in the 1930s.  I only own a couple so when I saw them all together in a big wooden box, I couldn't resist purchasing enough of them to make an instant collection...

When Silvia saw the caliber of gems that I had pulled from her hoard, the price per button jumped up a bit.  That was OK with me.  It was still a phenomenal deal.  She says that she had a great day because of me...sometimes she only sells a button here or a button there.  As if on cue, an older gentleman walked up and bought one button to put on his pants.  I told Silvia she should be selling them online but she says she's too old to start all that now.  She didn't even know what Etsy was.  Sorry folks, I tried.

Today I am back to the Japanese embroidery frame. I'll update my progress there next time. Thanks to all of you for stopping by and commenting on my Winter Wonderbird last post. It was the perfect welcome party.   It feels good to be home.

The Blue Butterfly

A few weeks after my mother died, I received a card in the mail from one of her friends, Nancy.

Nancy wrote how her mother Anna shared my mom's love of the color blue and how her mother was close to butterflies.   After her own mother's passing, Nancy found great comfort when she would see a butterfly and could feel her mother's goodness and blessings in those moments.

Inside the note she had tucked a handkerchief of her mother's.  It was embroidered with a blue butterfly, intended to wipe my tears and to remind me that there would be many times in my life that I would, once again, feel my mother's grace.

I kept it out for a long time until one day it seemed time to put it away in a treasure box for safekeeping.  And it stayed there, out-of-sight, out-of-mind...

Until two years ago.

On Labor Day in 2012, I was vacationing at the beach with my family when I had a seizure.

It happened early in the morning while I was getting a drink of water.  I had never had one before and the men were all asleep when Jim heard me hit the bathroom floor.  I'm pretty sure I frightened the heck out of Jim, Jack and my Dad that morning...what a way to wake up!  They did what any right-minded men would do...and got me to the closest regional urgent care center.

Jim stayed with me for hours while I was evaluated and slept.   I was dreadfully tired and felt like my brain had run a marathon.  After four hours of observation and tests, they found nothing immediately wrong and discharged me, instructing me to follow up with my physician when I got home.

It was midday when Jim and I walked back through the waiting room, my arm tucked through his elbow for support.  The waiting area was completely empty except for the sound of our feet crossing the linoleum floor.  

How strange it felt to see an empty emergency room...it's almost an oxymoron: empty emergency room...and it added to the surrealism of my already fuzzy brain.

We stepped slowly toward the automatic door, Jim taking great care with his wife who seemed to be more fragile than he might have thought just 24 hours before.  The door opened for us and we began to walk through but pulled up short when we saw what was on the ground in front of our feet.

There on the sidewalk, smack dab in the middle of our path was a black and blue butterfly. 

Quite still and gently pulsing its wings, it seemed to be waiting for us.  

We might have stepped on it if we'd been moving at our normal pace but this day we were walking more slowly to match the cadence of my tired brain.

It was so strange to see a butterfly surrounded by all that concrete and asphalt...so out of place that we did nothing but pause and take it all in.   "Wow." Jim said.

Like a sunbeam, it warmed us and its beauty and glory were part of our world.  

It wasn't frightened by our presence and sat long enough for the event to be remarkable in our memory.

Then it started to flit about like a flower on the wind, dancing around and around the two of us and kissing me on the shoulder before it flew away. We watched it go until it was no more.

When we finally turned to look at one another, a knowing passed between us.  It was her.  My mother.  Come to tell us everything was alright.  

The butterfly displayed her favorite shade of blue and the visit was too extraordinary to be anything different.  

I never told anyone until today.  I thought no one would believe it...and I'm not sure we would have believed it either had we not been there together.   

When I got home, I looked up what type of butterfly it had been, not recognizing it as one that I had seen very often.  

Papilio Troilus...

The Spicebush Swallowtail...

As time went on, I put that story away too, until my BNF (blogging needle friend), Gerry Krueger, asked me to embroider a butterfly for her.

See, Gerry is heading to the International Quilt Festival in Houston where her quilt, It's a Man's World Unless Women Vote!, is a finalist in the 2014 IQA fall judged show, Quilts: A World of Beauty. Woot!! Woot!!

I had the honor of watching Gerry's quilt come to life on her blog, Older Rose over the course of the past year or so and it is a brilliant piece of work.



As is Gerry!

She's a naturalist, a bird lover, quilter, a teacher, a humorist, a dog lover, an embroiderer, and a conservationist and the list goes on and on!

This woman who has a rich and accomplished history herself created a quilt to honor all the suffragettes who fought for our right to vote.



And she is headed to Houston in a few weeks to see her quilt hang in a juried show.  It's a big event for anyone but for Gerry it's monumental.  And for me too. 

Because she's taking me with her!

Gerry is making a Vest of Resplendence, a Coat of Many Colors, a garment worthy of a grand occasion...and she's piecing it and embroidering it with all the motifs that are important to her...and that is where I fit in.  

I will not be in her suitcase but I will be there in the spirit of this blue butterfly who will light on her vest.  And I will see her quilt hanging there and I will dance when she dances and bring all the beauty and glory to the moment that only this spicy swallowtail can bring.

And she will be glorious.  

Not just because of her quilt or her garment, although they're pretty glorious.  

But because of all the women who made it possible...all those who suffered and fought and cried and fought some more...and all the women who honor them...and all the women who bring us to this moment...our prededessors,  the pioneers, our mothers...They will all be there.

As will my mother, my mother's friend Nancy and her mother Anna...the women who helped me make a blue butterfly, a Spicebush Swallowtail, to dance for Gerry and her quilt.

Bravo Gerry!!

P.S.  As for the seizure thing, I'm fine.  Evidently, there's a 1 in 10 chance that a person will have one seizure in their lifetime.  I've had mine.

The Ospreys of Pelican Bay

In visiting Pelican Bay, one of the greatest treasures found on the beach was not brought in by the sea.

But by air...



Situated on a platform placed upon the mangroves that border the beach...



An osprey pair were raising their young.

There had been three eggs originally but by the time we had arrived, fellow birders reported that the most frail nestling hadn't made it.  Osprey eggs don't hatch all at once, with up to five days passing between hatchings.  The siblings are very competitive and dominance is often established by the first born who tends to win in all the struggles for food.

The remaining two appeared quite strong...



All week long as we visited the beach, my book remained unopened in my bag.

Reading couldn't hold my attention like the drama that I saw unfolding on the beach as I watched the male hawk as he repeatedly soared over my head to fish at the water's edge.



I found myself rooting for him every time he went out.

Ospreys can only dive three feet into the water so they tend to fish in shallow waters or in deeper waters where fish school near the surface.



Every time the babies saw their papa they would squawk in earnest, urging him to bring them FOOD.

I was feeling the pressure for him as his family grew bigger and were eating more and more.

I watched him fly out time and time again, day after day...



And bring back the fish...



I started taking my camera to the beach during the magic hour, a time that happened to coincide with happy hour.

And happy hour it was!   Luckily for me, I was able to photograph one of the moments when the hawk brought back a fish.

Ospreys are unusual among hawks in possessing a reversible outer toe that allows them to grasp with two toes in front and two behind.  Barbed pads on the soles of the birds' feet help them grip slippery fish.  When flying with prey, an Osprey lines up its catch head first for less wind resistance.  (source: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

I watched him hold the fish and wait until it had ceased struggling.

He knew I was there and in a moment of pure cockiness...he flipped the fish out to the side to give me a clear shot of his catch...

A Florida Pompano.  Its like he knew I would publishing this shot on my blog and the word of his prowess would spread out into the world.

He stayed close and allowed me to continue to record his food prep techniques, consuming the cheek and head of the fish...

Before taking off again...

To deliver the fish to his waiting family.

The female then breaks off small, bite-size pieces to feed to her young.

Like many mothers who are raising their young, I could commiserate with the female who remained on the nest for most of the day keeping watch over her brood. I could feel her muscles and feathers tire of being in the same position, stuck on the same spot.  (It reminded me of my bead journal project a few years ago, Flight Delay)

Day after day she sat on the nest while the male hunted and fetched.

She would leave briefly to go to the water's edge to get a drink...

And on one particularly hot day (90 degrees or so), I observed her lifting her wings and spreading them  in the wind.  I wasn't sure what she was doing at first until I saw her repeat the behavior in the hottest times of the day.

She was cooling off!

This posture reminded me of my Mom when she was having hot flashes.   

It was winter and I caught my Mom with her bedroom window wide open, standing in front of it with her arms outstretched in a similar way while the freezing winter air gave her some relief.  She was wearing a sheer, sleeveless summer negligee while my Dad was shivering under a pile of six blankets on his side of the bed.  I had seen this behavior before!

Sometimes the heat would drive her to the waters edge to catch the cooler breeze down by the sea...

But always she returned to the nest.

The birds will hang around the nest until they become adept at flying and fishing and the nest no longer seems necessary.  I'm not sure if these ospreys stay here all year round but many parents will leave their young and migrate South.  After all, the kids are about the same size as their parents by that point.

The kids will eventually make their way South and hang out in the tropics for a year and a half before returning North in their third year, when their eyes have typically changed from the orange of their youth, to the gold of their parents.

And now you know why this was our story for the week.  

Many thanks to the Osprey family that allowed me to photograph a week in their life.  I'll never forget it.

You can check out the family on this Osprey Cam that Pelican Bay has set up near their nest.

Happy Happy Monday everyone!

Spring's Blush

Nature is all a-blush with the exuberance of spring.

Her passion, having welled up from too long a winter, bursts forth...

And we are under her spell.

Our pulses race at the sight of her show...

And the whole world is colored with optimism...

Her beauty energizes our spirits and, by her side, anything seems possible.

Head over heels we tumble about in the sweet scent of the wind...

Accompanied by the best performances that the birds have to offer.

They're singing their hearts out...to create new life...to fill their nests...

It lasts only a few days...

This blush...

Until the petals wither and fly away and the leaves come forth to cover her naked beauty.  

The explosion of colors that follows competes for our senses, never wielding quite the same magic as those petals that ushered us into spring.

The first blush is like love when it is new.  

It's fresh, it's exciting and we open ourselves most fully in its embrace.

Happy Spring.

Happy Opening...

Iced In