Round poppy table, playing with options..

Poppy's progress

 I've been working on the round poppies table, to sit next to the grill... I finally got the side and edge pieces on and started adding poppies. They are not perfect but I'm pretty pleased with them; I just need one more.

My initial thought was to create an army of leaf shapes and to fill the complete background with that. I still haven't decided if that's how it's going to go or not... but I do want some type of gradient for the background as opposed to 2-4 shades of green put in willy-nilly. I've been thinking a lot about this, and finally decided I needed to mock it up, but how?

After looking at several drawing type programs which were much more complicated than I needed, I landed on just using the markup function from the photos app on my iPad. It won't give me a lot of detail, but right now I'm looking for an overall feel for the piece and I think I can get that with markups. Here's the current three candidates.

I wondered if dark or light was better around the poppies? I don't think I like the dark, it looks like orange flowers on a bush. All of the color fields would be mixed and the edges blended...

The concept here was more mixed, but fading from a light center to a darker perimeter.

The third was  pretty much opposite of the first.

Of the three, I don't care for the first; the second is my favorite; but I haven't ruled out the 3rd, although it'll be hard for me to get the dark center round enough to look right... 

I've got some decisions to make on color and and andemento and hopefully will start on the background later this week! I'm hoping to have the table done as the grilling season fades into the rainy season... Bad timing, I know, but at least I'll be ready for next year!

In other news, I'm 15 inches or so away from finishing the rugs, 1/3 of the way through weaving the ikat scarf from the Mary Z class, working my way through the Shiny sweater, and have carved the lino block but not test printed the "linked figures" ("dancing women"). The sheep shirt is stalled, I was confused about setting in the sleeve but I think I'm good to proceed now.

G&M visited as well and brought a Barbera that G had crafted; it won a Gold medal at a local prestigious competition. The Internet told me the best pairing would be wild boar ragu; I "hunted" some down (finally found some in Dittmer's freezer, labeled both wild boar and feral swine) and used a NYT recipe... served with a simple green salad and polenta. It was excellent. The wine was incredible. The pairing was solid. And such a joy to see G&M.