A visit to Wakulla Springs with friends... ...a view of the Wakulla River

...turtles enjoying the sun

...alligators everywhere we looked

...baby herons in their nest

Here are some pictures of what these things look like half-way felted with french knots or beads added. You can see that the stuff I added sticks out from the surface.

And here's what they look like after another couple spins through the washing machine. Can you see the difference? The french knots get kinda sucked into the felt -- I'm not sure if I like it or not. Maybe I need to play with combinations of pre- and post-felting additions.

I've been using polyfill to stuff these things, thinking I could go back and pull it out later if I wanted to. It turns out that the polyfil doesn't really want to come out! Here's a photo of a ball I chopped open and turned inside-out, after an intensive trim. I assume that french knots probably made the polyfil stick to the wool a bit more, but what a mess!

Felted crochet. Kinda like rocks, kinda like eggs at the same time. Not sure what they are or what they'll become yet, but they satisfy me. It feels good to make these soft/solid things when I take a break from writing and researching.

My research interests include making and meaning -- I've been thinking about what these things are and their significance. More on this later.

I took the weekend off and stayed at the Watercolor Inn, right next to SeaSide, Florida. Pricey but beautiful. This photo reminds me of Amsterdam.

Some little paintings I've been doing of stuff that grows near my apartment. I think the top one is my favorite -- I've done about 12 of these so far, and I think of them sorta like a little deck of tarot cards...each one is a little representation of the feeling of a place or a time.

There's some weird stuff in the trees down here in Tallahassee. Ferns, moss, even cactus grow in these old live oak trees in my neighborhood. The birds are anhingas -- they swim in the water with just their heads sticking out. They're like ducks, but I've never seen a duck in a tree before.

Some pictures of Maclay Gardens.

More little paintings of things I find on my walks. Little overlooked things growing and changing each time I visit the lakes in my neighborhood. I collect a little piece of something (like moss hanging from a tree -- the top painting), draw it on a scrap of watercolor painting, then I use tinted gesso to paint the negative space. These paintings are only about 5" x 7" and because they're small, painting around the little details can be trance-inducing.