After the electric company came through and cleared trees under the wires, we took the opportunity to clean up along our driveway. I've been identifying the type of plants with the free Seek app (iNature), and many are unfortunately invasive, though pretty. One such plant is a crafting favorite, bittersweet. American Bittersweet is ok to have, but Oriental Bittersweet will choke out other vegetation. After spending 3 half days looking at this stuff, I have bittersweet on my mind.
- bittersweet* \ ˈbi-tər-ˌswēt \ n 1 : something that is bittersweet; esp : pleasure accompanied by suffering or regret
I don't own a bittersweet stamp, and after looking around at various stem/berry images, I decided to go with an accurate digi stamp from Power Poppy. The image was originally an intertwining of bittersweet and chinese lanterns, so I had to import the image into Photoshop and massage it.
Here's this week's colors and my inspiration. Use a minimum of 3 colors and a neutral of your choice.
Stamps: Chinese Lantern by Power Poppy, Genuine Gems; Paper: Poppy Parade, Pretty Peacock, Very Vanilla, Whisper White, Come to Gather DSP; Ink: Poppy Parade, Crushed Curry, Old Olive, Pretty Peacock, Versamark; Accessories: Crushed Curry Baker's Twine, White Embossing Powder, Aquapainter, Watercolor Brush, Rectangle Stitched Dies, Die-Cutting Machine, Adobe Photoshop, Printer.
*There's a lot of symbolism in the word bittersweet. It is a word that is embraced by the promoters of the Rasputitsa bike race, a gravel road race in snowy, muddy northern Vermont at the end of April. One of their mottos is "Get comfortable with being uncomfortable." When I trained for this race with my trusty biking friend Ralph, we had a lot of bittersweet rides. Many chats, talks, and smiles, lots of miles seen, and also some wind-chilled cheeks and frozen toes as well. And lots of climbing. This is a topic, an idea, that I often try to instill in my daughter. With all the technology these days, heated seats, programmable thermostats, answers to any question at our fingertips with smartphones, I want her to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Whether it be taking care of the farm or pushing pass her mental limits in swimming and cross-country. This may be too philosophical for a stamping blog, but this subject hits home, represents a lot of my life motto for the past 5 or 10 years. I don't want to pay $40 for a stainless steel double-walled water bottle that has a mouth wide enough for ice cubes. Single-walled and room temperature is just fine, thank you very much, filtered out of the tap. I'm constantly trying to teach her how not to be soft (and fight becoming soft myself). It's a battle against society, marketing convenience and comfort to her, while I train her that she/we don't need it. I hope some of the lessons of discomfort and hard work stick with her going forward.
