Busy Days

Hello Dear Ladies,

I have missed coming here and always hope to make more time to post. 

Lately I have been trying to paint a page a day in this worn-out Bible, placing pictures on the coordinating verses. The nice thing about the pages being worn is the paper not slick and is easier to paint on it.

The boat on the left is painted on the verses that tell about the men who left the ship to follow Jesus. Can you believe I am a fisherman's daughter and I never learned to draw a ship? By looking at it, you 

would know that.   The candle is painted over the verses that tak about lighting a candle and being the light of the world, which is a figure of speech referring to our influence.  On the right is the road with one and two-mile markers, over the verses about going the second mile.

I have been busy helping get ready for the area-wide singing and celebration of the church's first fifty years here (that we know of). Some sources say it was here in the  late 1880's but there is no written record of it.  We do have bulletins, pictures, receipts and letters recording a fifty year history.

These photos are all copyright protected, so you are not permitted to place them anywhere else. Please do not even put them in your computer files.

There were 125 singers, from 10 comgregations, and we all sang together. If you have never heard a large crowd of all ages of people singing acapella, you are in for a treat. Since this was mostly small congregations gathered in one place, we finally got to hear how songs sounded with lots of men's bass voices, lots of tenor and alto as well as the melody of soprano.  The floor and ceiling seemed to vibrate with all that wonderful volume.  I will list the songs we sang at the end of the post. 

Here is what one of the songs sounded like

  That is me in the pink dress I made especially for the occasion, and next to me is one of the grandchildren in a matching dress. Her mother was taking the pictures, so I did not get one of all of us, but I am painting a picture of all three of the dresses. 

For obvious reasons I can't show the entire photo but the painting will show them in full.

Here is the first sketch...

...and here it is again...I drew this for making a copy in case I did not like my first attempt at painting the colors.

...but as the light is fading here and I do not paint well in artificial light, I may have to finish it in the morning.  This is all I can show you for now but there is always a chance I will finish it and get it posted sooner, so please do not lose hope.

The ladies called out song numbers and one of the men wrote the list on that old chalkboard. Then the men took turns leading two songs each. That's my extraordinarily handsome husband leading a song, but of course, all the men here were handsome  and all the ladies were lovely.

This only shows half the crowd, as there were chairs added and a lot of people were standing. 

This is the butterfly fabric I used for the matching special occasion dresses.

People ages one to ninety-one were singing and what a joyous noise it was.  I think the Angels sat on the roof to hold it down :-)

It took a lot of planning, and the members of the church had to clean the hall,  arrange flowers prepare food for the meal afterward, repair things, paint,  get the history book printed for everyone, and look up the songs we wanted to be listed.  It took me two days to get my energy back but it was worth it to hear those people sing.  Events like this gives small churches a chance to experience having all the seats filled and hearing how singing sounds when there are a lot of people.

Another stage of the painting of the handmade dresses.

As I did not want to make a separate post for this painting, I am including it here since I made the garments for this occasion.

I guess I will be using the copy I made, as I am wanting a different color pink, and I am not at all happy with this rendition, and want to re-do the faces too, so please check back for another version at the end of this post.

I used the 1995 patterns, below.

Here's another version: