I awoke yesterday to find this sweet little garden bouquet and poem that my sweet hubby had put together for me. A great way to start the day. Later on I would receive a special hand-drawn card from M and a fun call from C. A lovely, lovely day.

I truly appreciate getting love and praise on this special day but I’d like to make a suggestion:
Can we change the name to Happy Nurturing Day?
[nur·ture

tr.v. nur·tured, nur·tur·ing, nur·tures

3. To help grow or develop; cultivate]

I’m all for giving praise to mothers but I’d also like to give praise to all of those women who provide love and guidance to youngsters in their community: aunts, sisters, grandmothers, neighbors, pastors, teachers, social workers,etc. Those women who go the extra mile to give love, comfort and cherished bits of wisdom to children who, for whatever reason, aren’t receiving enough of that nourishment.

So, Happy Nurturing Day and thanks for all you do!

…and there stood my neighbor wearing my Twinkle Twinkle Little Star apron design. She bought it to give as a wedding gift and wanted me to see it. She also brought along the matching tote bag she purchased for herself. I loved the quality of printing from Envelop.eu( so true to the original painting!).

After years of seeing my illustrations being printed on paper (magazines, books, ads,etc.) it’s fun to see my designs out walking around. Fun!

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The other day a friend said that she’d seen my star pillow (a.k.a. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) on envelop.eu and she wondered if I would put that same design on a tote bag and apron. I listened to her great suggestion and here they are!

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CopyrightKateBrennanHall

A great suggestion realized in wonderful 100% cotton items from envelop.eu!
Thanks Cindy M! So if you see one of my designs on a product at envelop. eu that you think should be applied to another one of their cotton products—shoot me a line and I’ll see what I can do. Suggestions can be sent to: kate (at) katebrennanhall.com Thanks!

Life Complexes on Itself from Symphony of the Soil on Vimeo.

I had the pleasure of viewing this film last night. The film maker took a very complex topic and broke it down into very visually compelling parts that gave the viewer a much better understanding of something we take for granted. And one of the take aways from the film is the importance of composting and how we can feed our gardens with this nutritious loop of life.
Which leads me to my next bit of news: I have a fun little way to help us remember what items we can put into our compost heaps. I wanted to put this design on something that would act as a “composting cheat sheet” so I applied it to an apron.

A cute functional pattern that can help us all remember what we can toss into our compost heaps. Enjoy!

We wanted to celebrate our friend Jen’s birthday so we had some fun decorating our table for the celebration. An IKEA ornament holder came in handy for a birthday greeting centerpiece.

And then I added a quickly made paper table cloth that would allow everyone to have some fun doodling before and after dinner. Here are some of the fun doodles:

We’ve got a burst of warm weather and I’ve got fresh vegies on my mind. Our soil has a very high clay content so we’re going to plant carrots in a large watering trough—we can create a sandy soil that will be just right for these beauties. I can almost taste them! Yum!

We planted these last year and they were great. They’re purple on the vine and they turn green when you cook them. Magic!

The clerk at Seed Savers said that these are very sweet and tasty. Can’t wait!

Two years ago I planted tomato plants from a big box store along with tomato plants I grew from seed from Seed Savers. Then tomato blight hit. Everything from Seed Savers was blight-free (and they were growing along side each other in my garden…) If this feels like a commercial for Seed Savers then so be it. I’m so thankful that they had the foresight to think about saving heirloom seeds for us. Thank you Seed Savers. Now go buy some!

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I’ve been busy setting up a dark room area so I can expose screens to begin printing Furrgo images on textiles and paper. Special thanks to J for helping me set up this new area. There’s nothing quite like mixing inks, testing the color and then gearing up to print. I love the process of hand pulling prints. It uses both sides of the brain—-the logical side that continually checks the printing process: keeping the printing table ink-free, making sure the open parts of the stencil aren’t clogging and keeping an eye out to make sure I have enough ink to last for the entire edition I’m printing. The creative side kicks in after I’ve washed out the screen. I give myself time to go over the prints to see if they capture the idea I’m trying to communicate. And all the while my little radio is humming with news on IPR. It’s a wonderful creative dance that I’m grateful to take part in.

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