Barbara S Fernald Jewelry

It was a rainy Sunday, so it was also a fine day to be indoors looking at the work of several island artists and their various birds.  My friend Jim Bright sold all but one of his bird carvings. I didn’t check with Rick before I left, to see how his paintings were selling. They sure looked beautiful.

Several people would have bought this woodcock carving. Unfortunately NFS

Potential buyers eyeing Rick’s paintings:

Our very own island postmaster, Joy Sprague, had some fabulous photographs, taken right from her window at the P.O.

Karen Smallwood sold almost all of her paintings. Sweet little acrylics, mounted on birchbark and easels. I snagged one right away!

I had a fun time thinking about birds and finding ways to make bird beads. The silver flat beads were a familiar technique for me, though I had not made them in a bird shape before.

It was the decision to make bird beads from bronze and copper clay that stretched my creativity a little more and re-familiarized me with the base metal clays. The bronze birds came out of the kiln in that fun green color.

I polished them to see how they would change, and because I happen to really like their golden bronze color. I like how the green patina stayed inside the eyes, though.

I think I had the most fun putting the little copper birds in a nest made of a domed silver disc and coiled bronze wire with a needle felted inner nest. Perhaps not too practical for earrings, but all of these guys could be taken apart and used differently. As far as what I would wear of these, it would be the simplest pair. The bronze birds without any markings other than the patterns from my fingerprints.

I sold 2 necklaces, saw a whole lot of friends, more than I could get a chance to talk to, and then left early because I had an appointment for a massage. Tra la la!

I almost forgot. What is a bird show without bird cookies as part of the refreshments?

Bruce helped me decorate them.

Post massage, and after dinner, I was once again in the kitchen making bread and muffins to donate to the Islesford Fair tomorrow. So much activity for such a tiny place.

Yikes, summer is very very busy on a little island in Maine. Just as I was thinking of finally getting around to writing something, I noticed that my friend and neighbor, Ted, is of a similar mind. I’ve been squeezing in studio time and all manner of other things, whenever I can. It is hard to convey  just what it feels like to live on an island where so many friends, from so many places, arrive for a finite number of vacation days.

If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, then all work and all play makes Jack a year round resident of the Cranberry Isles. It is exhilarating and exhausting to try to keep up with it all, and yet we do it every year.

Here’s just a fragment of what I’ve been doing in the last 2 weeks:

Giving a bread making lesson to my famous brother. (More about that in a future blog. His fame, not the bread.)

Dinners at the Islesford Dock Restaurant where stupendous sunsets are part of the menu.

Dinner on a rainy evening with a view from a different side of the island.

Meeting up with cousins who arrived on the day of the July Maypole festivities in the Town Field.

Getting to the beach one afternoon, so far.

Buying plants at Surry Gardens, for three different projects, with my friend Susie. We literally could not fit one more plant in her Volvo.

Replanting this garden with hydrangeas and rose bushes from the trip.

(In September, my son Robin and his fiancee Stephanie will be married in the front yard of this house. Plans for the wedding are keeping all of us busy.)

Learning just how helpful these little wire ties are if you want to make your own trellis for an enthusiastic mandevilla plant.

And,  fitting in time to tend my own garden of perennials and vegetables.

Tomorrow is my mother’s 86th birthday. I’m taking her lobster salad for lunch and I just finished making chocolate mousse to take for dessert. Who has time to blog?