The Avant Garden

and extra minds and hands would be welcome -- I have about six projects in various stages of completion.
This was a pretty cool thing to stumble across the other day:

It's the morning shadow of this stack:

whom I have decided to just call "Rollins." After messing with other names, I have decided that anything with that basic design that stands in that spot will be called "Rollins."

One day a while back, Rob put this old piece of lead left over from the old sewer line on the Disintegrating Rock:
In old-timey days, they used lead to seal between sewer pipes. Now it's on a pedestal.

Disintegrating Rock is interesting in that that is all he does -- sit and fall apart in the elements. There is a little rubble pile at his base for measuring his crumblage. Cool sculpture. Cheap, too.

This rusty red caught my easily-caught eye:
The shadows are "Texas Star" hibiscus seedpods ...

It's on a stone in the "Permanent Collection" (ha-ha).

It's Minnesota outside, so I am feeding the sewing machine today. I have a Friday off work, which almost never happens. Stop by. We'll do something strange.

and if our old friend Bea Groene were here, she'd say, "Ooh la la."  She's from Louisiana. Anyway, Erin was gracious enough to take the skirt home and play dress-up. She sent the following pictures:

Makes me wanna say "Ooh la la" and I am not from Lousiana. 

The in-the-dark shot.

I think she looks great. Most all of the people (and all of the guys) who comment mention how  pretty she is.

I plan on  making another one (blue) this weekend. Anyone can get lucky and make one that turns out; duplication is often much tougher.

The aforementioned Ghost of Ethel Bledsoe is going to get a change of clothes today, as I bot five more yards of that "fiber content unknown" dollar-a-yard material at Wal-Mart this morning.

in local news, there is another version of the Rollins Concept standing:
How many calories did I burn stacking these rocks?

I call it FridayStack for some reason. I guess because it's Friday. 

 Rob came over and we fixed up Three Legged Arch, which is more difficult to do than you'd think. Here's a closeup of the keystone:

No leg touches another leg ...

 The weather looks to be good this weekend and I have no sewing projects on the machine, so you can probably find me in the Avant Garden somewhere, be it in Bent Creek, Rob's house, or the Avant Garden Proper, which is a fancy name for "floodplain over sewerline." If you come over, bring coffee, ideas or rocks, please. I value all three.

I spent almost the entire weekend either behind the sewing machine or scratching my head about what was on the sewing machine, but in the end, the garment that emerged was worth it. Using a string of solar Christmas lights, I made what I think is the world's first wearable solar-powered skirt. Erin, a friend from work-work, came over to model:
Erin is tall and thin has a very nice model-type body. Great facial features, too. 

With the lights on, it's not a bad skirt. With a black top and a splash of red on a hat, perhaps, it looks OK. It does not look good with this top, but it was just a year-old-something I pulled off the Rack of Shame for Erin to try on.

With the lights off:

I think poor Barbie realizes she no longer has the best outfit in the room. She looks panic-stricken. She is wearing a Nick Verreos dress.the photovoltaic cell signals for the lights to come on and it takes on a whole new look. I forgot to leave space without lights on the backside where Erin's sitting apparatus meets the seat, so have some adjusting to do there. You couldn't wear it somewhere and stand all night for fear of sitting and breaking one of the bulbs, though those LEDs are pretty tough. But otherwise, it turned out more betterly (ha-ha) than I expected.

We had a good time with Erin; the Avant Children even voted her "Best Guest in a While."

In other news, the thing that tried to replace Rollins:
It made it a week. Coulda been worse.

is now an arch and a pile of nondescript rubble. The upper rocks all fell off. T'wasn't a windy day, but gravity doesn't always need wind to do its dirty work. I'll tussle with gravity some more tomorrow and get something standing there again.   

We change the clocks on March 9 this year. That's less than a month from today. Pitchers and catchers are reporting for spring training, and teams are having media days. But it snowed a wee bit today and an arctic wind is howling, so I flipped through last Spring's pics and decided to post this one for the same reason crows exist -- just caws:
The critics said, "It looks like garbage left over from the Floods of '04." Ouch. Ethel was hurt.

That's "The Ghost of Ethel Bledsoe" hanging out over the River behind Rob's house. She was wild that day. She has since moved to a spot closer to Rob's very nice and clean house. I drove by the other day and spied her from across the River and she was flying high.

And here's an old one I have never posted here:

I love my camera, a gift from my father-in-law.

These are the migrating arches that come every year to these waters.  They're rare. We'll see a revival of them this Spring, no doubt.