I guess there's a theme going on here this week.
(Maybe I just need a vacation.)
Click the photo for more!
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{ where are you going? }
Showing posts with label fernweh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fernweh. Show all posts
It's no secret that I'm in love with the open road.
So when LittleGrayFox offered up her newest Crafty Challenge theme, "someday you'll ache like I ache," my mind immediately heard one word: fernweh.
photo from one of my trips across the country...i no longer recall which one
Fernweh is an old German word, for which there is no direct equivalent in English. When I first discovered it, it was defined:
"a longing for, a desire to return to, a place you've never been."
Wiki has an alternate definition which places it more clearly in the context of this challenge theme:
"an ache for the distance."
So this is where my mind went when the challenge was proposed. I've recently become interested in embroidery, so I decided to attempt to translate the above photograph into a stitched piece.
I left a lot of the details out, and tried to boil the photo down to the just the essence of what Fernweh means to me. A lonely road to nowhere is sort of iconic in my mental encyclopedia.
After stitching, I placed the muslin in a kind of gothic-y frame.
It's a little "emo-crafty" but hey, it seems to work.
Some close ups of the stitchery. I tried to stick to a simple gray scale, which was a bit harder than I'd originally anticipated.
I am SO not a stitch-y expert. I am just really enjoying messing about with embroidery these days.
In the end, it looks a good deal different then the photograph, but hopefully still captures the spirit.
Be sure to visit LittleGrayFox tomorrow to see all the entries. I am so curious to see how everyone else intrepreted the challenge.
{ do you ever feel a little 'fernweh' ? }
Pssssssssst! oh. em. gee. tomorrow is the Virtual Fashion Show!
Thank you to all who submitted photos -- I am soo excited!!
It's one of those mornings that can only be described as "moody" outside. Dense fog swirls between stoic pine trees. Traffic and people everywhere, but still seeming...quiet.
Today I am feeling...
Wistful.
"Le voyage print 8x8" by teconlene
Cheerful.
"Lucy the Owl" by StitchnSpoon
Hopeful.
"Be Most Excellent to Each Other No. 1" by OhHelloThere
Curious.
"The Search" by LilPetite
Hungry.
"Side Plate - Hand Painted - Hungry Bear in Fez" by jimbobart
{ how are you feeling? }
On Sunday the hubbers and I decided to continue our adventures in the woods near our new home. Since we've moved back to wa-wa land, we've been determined to become "outdoor people." This is not something that comes naturally (to me at least), having grown up smack dab in the middle of suburbia, and then moving to the big, bad City for college. Nonetheless, serious hiking boots were purchased, various jerkied meats were packed, and in March, we began.
Our first few hikes went surprisingly well, with no recorded injuries and trails properly followed. We saw the beautiful, if hideously overcrowded, Twin Falls and Rattlesnake Ridge (where I seem to have developed an entirely new condition I have since dubbed "trail rage"). We even saw two big, healthy bald eagles near Tiger Mountain (actually viewed from inside the 'unwanted accelerator' on Highway 18, before we even parked at the trail head).
It was with confidence in our new found abilities that we headed east on I-90, and into Snoqualmie National Forest, in search of the Iron Horse Trail. Miles and miles of bumpy, flooded "road" later, we determined that we had no idea where the heck fire we were, and opted instead to back track a couple exits and try the well-marked Olallie State Park instead. It turns out we had hiked very close to this point our first trip out, when we decided to go beyond the waterfalls, to escape some of the crowds.
What followed was a lackadaisical meander through a gorgeous and unpopulated stretch. We periodically ducked in and out of little offshoot paths, stumbling across waterfall, after waterfall, and then into one of the most beautiful little secret spots I've seen. I couldn't help but shoot photo after photo, mindlessly trying to capture this FEELING that I was having. Suffice it to say, I ended up with mentally bookmarking this location to revisit many, many times, and with a dozen or so really pretty shots.
I guess sometimes the very best finds, are the things you were never searching for in the first place.
Oh, and if it looks like it's covered in either sap, tar, or creosote:
{ don't sit on it. }
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