"Life isn't long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege even to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is.
Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!"--Tasha Tudor



Monday, July 9, 2007

Tasha Tudor's Garden


Last weekend I had the rare privilege of touring Tasha Tudor's lovely garden with some kindred spirit friends (13 of us!) I brought my friends Sandi Eaton and Cyndi Rusakovitch with me. Oh my, did we have fun. Tasha is the reason I got 'into' Corgis in the first place. She inspires me in so many ways. Tasha's garden is a lovely and magical place. Her Corgi, Megan is a cutie pie. One gets the sense of being in another world when walking the lovely paths and discovering all of the secret gardens that have been the subject of much of Tasha's art. Would that even a teeny bit of her talent rub off on me, I would be extremely grateful!

While Tasha does not allow photos taken inside her garden, here is a photo of all of us together outside the rookery. Well, almost all of us. Poor Kristen (doll maker extraordinaire!) fell in the road while picking up LaVonne and Linda at the airport. They flew in for our Gathering all the way from Montana and Oregon. Kristen ended up spending 5 hours in knee surgery! Ouch! We were all so sad; but then who should walk in to the hotel the next day but Kristen! Crutches and all, straight from being discharged from the hospital! She and Suzanne had arranged for us to have a conference room where we had tea (and yummy treats using Tasha's recipes or 'receipts' as she calls them) and did some serious crafting.

I brought one of my Santa and Corgi eggs for Tasha. I believe LaVonne brought some of her wonderful wool for her. Oh, do let me tell you about LaVonne's wool. She raises sheep and the wool she has is just lovely! You can see some of her wares at www.montanacountrypickins.com Do tell her I sent you! I will need to order some more wool to create more of these little creatures, and perhaps to knit a scarf!
LaVonne brought some wool roving which she dyed to a perfect Corgi color! We made felted Corgis with her! The felting needle is barbed and every now and then you would hear an 'ouch' when someone pricked their finger! We made cut wool animals with Suzanne. Bless her husband's heart, he cut out some wood templates for us to wind the wool around. We had feathers from LaVonne's chickens and bunny whiskers from her horses. LaVonne really brought so much great stuff for us all the way from Montana to Vermont! Everyone went to bed, but Sandi, Cyndi and I hung out to finish our little creatures and then did this late night 'photo shoot' about midnight! (click photos to enlarge) Left to right: my owl, Sandi's Corgi, Sandi's bunny, my Corgi (sleeping on its back), Cyndi's bunny on the box and Cyndi's Corgi. On the way home (well, sort of) Sandi and I stopped at Yankee Candle. I made the mistake of persuading her to follow me into the Christmas shoppe. There was a room full of twinkling Christmas trees with 'stars' overhead and a nifty little machine that 'snowed' every 4 minutes. We didn't care that it was artificial snow. It was beautiful. We both had the same evil thought at the same time. Bending to pretend looking at an ornament close to the ground, we both scooped up a big handful of snow and threw it at each other. Of course, this resulted in two grown women having a snow fight in the middle of Yankee Candle. We laughed so hard that I inhaled some snow. Blah! Yuck! We were covered. Snow in places it should never be. I have 'big' hair...just right for catching fake snow. Good Lord, what a sight! The other customers we passed were simply speechless....CS ^..^

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