Sunday, April 27, 2008

Sunshine

NOTE: I've replaced the original photo with this PhotoShopped version. After reading this post, my friend Bunny emailed me that her husband Joe also has a hobby, and it's photography. So I sent them the photo and he was able to work some magic and get a much better image. Thank you!! Here's the orignal post with the improved image:
This is a terribly overexposed photo, but I don't know enough about photography to get rid of the excess light and still capture the crucial image. We came home about 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon and for a split second I thought the tree in our front yard was on fire. Both edges of the trunk were glowing, radiating, shining, shimmering with a blazing red-orange light. It really did look like fire, it was that bright. I've never seen anything like it.

The tree is a paper bark maple, and the bark is always peeling off the tree. The sun was hitting the trunk at just the right angle and the hanging pieces of bark were glowing red orange. You can see that the hanging bark in front, where the sun doesn't hit it, is just dull brown. Amazing! I took lots of photos, but all of them have too much sunlight. Still, I think you can see the effect in this closeup. A few minutes later the fire was gone, but what a blaze of glory for a moment.

I've been working on another small word quilt while I wait for the background fabric to arrive for my Stroop quilt. My niece Laurel commented that a small wall quilt with a child's name in Tonya's wonky letters would make a great baby gift. Good idea! A former grad student where I used to work recently had a baby girl she named Sruti, and I thought this would be perfect to send her.
I was playing here. I've decided to change out the 'u' and 't' for small letters rather than capitals, hope to do that tomorrow, and then to dot the 'i' with a heart, which so far is all I've done for the 'i', but I may want the heart bigger). Now that I can make these pretty quickly, it's not a problem to see whether something works and toss it in the parts pile if it doesn't.

My husband has a hobby, too, though he doesn't indulge it as often as I do my quilting. He bakes bread. Good bread. Great bread. He uses a baker's stone in the oven and spritzes the dough with water for the first ten minutes to get a crispy crust. The smell drove us crazy while this 7-grain loaf was baking, and we had heavenly warm bread just after I snapped this photo.
Nature does wonders during the spring, but sometimes nothing can compete with good oven-spring!

14 comments:

Vicki W said...

That's an awesome photo!

Elaine Adair said...

The 'fire' photo IS amazing!

Wish my DH would bake bread, dinner, cookies, coffee ... ANYTHING! That bread DOES look really good! I am pretending to smell it here!

My brothers went to school in Champaign - yep, both engineers.

Clare said...

Wow - that is amazing.

I've got to start thinking about a baby quilt and not too sure what to do. Thought of a sort of I Spy/Alphabet Sampler with different fabrics for each letter. The mum to be wants either baby blue or pink, depending! Now, you know as well as I do that those are not my colours!

Clare said...

Wow - that is amazing.

I've got to start thinking about a baby quilt and not too sure what to do. Thought of a sort of I Spy/Alphabet Sampler with different fabrics for each letter. The mum to be wants either baby blue or pink, depending! Now, you know as well as I do that those are not my colours!

Lisa said...

Cool photo! Your husbands bread baking sounds divine. We are just going into autumn so I've made a couple of pots of soup lately, and there's nothing better than fresh bread with soup. My DH had a short spurt of enthusiasm about baking bread - I will have to get him interested again.

Rosalyn Manesse said...

Great picture of the tree "on fire." And I can almost smell the bread. sometime soon, I must get started on the pieced letters.

Paula, the quilter said...

I love home baked bread but my DH only likes the purchased kind that are mainly air. Blech. If I make bread I will pig out on it since I'm the only one eating it because I just can't see throwing it out after all that effort. Therefore, I rarely make bread.

Joyce said...

The tree looks amazingly like it's on fire. Great that you got a picture of it. I bake bread all the time so we also had fresh bread yesterday. I make multi-grain but I do six loaves and freeze them so I don't have to do it so often.

Tonya Ricucci said...

That bread looks amazing. mmmm. That baby quilt is going to be loads of fun - I love the tiny heart.

Hope you're saving all those letters you're not using - you know someone who'd love to have them if you decide not to use them yourself!

Anonymous said...

mmmmmmmmmmm...I can almost smell the hot bread!
Fire tree picture was great.

Pattie said...

Talk about being in the right place at the right time, eh? That tree is amazing!

Mmmm... Ask you hubby if he'll come over here and practice his hobby, will you? There's nothing better than the smell of bread baking!

Mrs. Goodneedle said...

MMmm.... yummy, I can just smell that warm bread! The "fire" tree shot is amazing. Love those wonkies.

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

The tree picture is amazing. Luckily you looked out at the right time.

Do you have a setting in your camera for sunset? I have been trying some of the different settings in my camera and it really makes a difference.

jillytacy said...

The tree on fire photo is very cool! The bread looks delicious, I could gobble it up!
Your word quilt is great but I think I'd have a hard time sewing the letters. That's a project to try after I get some more quilting experience.