T.A.S.T. Week 3: Detached Chain

When thinking about what I was going to do with this weeks stitch, I immediately thought about leaves. I seem to be doing a lot of plants lately. I guess my master's degree in botany might come in handy after all. Won't my mother be pleased. Anyway, I free handed some stems and began adding leaves. As I was working the leaves, a memory from my childhood played in my mind. Maybe it was the fact that I mixed green and brown for the stems. Maybe it is simply that I am sick of bleak, dreary, cold, rainy, dark winter days here in the Big Easy.

When I was growing up, outside my bedroom window was a huge old Wisteria. My window faced the corner of the front yard, so there was a fence leading to the back and then a wooden fence from next door. Tendrils covered both fences and the ground. They climbed up the old oak tree that was there at the corner. One of the first signs of spring was the hundreds of blooms that covered the branches. Their weight pulled the branches down to the ground and made the fences almost invisible. I remember lying in bed with my window open in the morning letting the sweet fragrance fill my room. It was one of the first signs that spring was oh so close.

Now I know that by the time the leaves appeared, the flowers were long gone, long since replaced by long, thick, fuzzy green seed pods. So I took some artistic licence with my memory. So my depiction is not perfect, but neither are my memories.

My one hope now is that next weeks stitch is not the French knot. It is going to take me a little while to get over doing the hundred or so I did on this piece and it's not even finished!