Leap Year

 The Sunday song and rhyme challenge poem for this time is chosen by me. This year is a leap year, so at the end of this month we get an extra day.

“Leap years are years where an extra day is added to the end of the shortest month, February. This so-called intercalary day, February 29, is commonly referred to as leap day.

Leap years have 366 days instead of the usual 365 days and occur almost every four years.” (https://www.timeanddate.com/date/leapyear.html)

I came across this rhyme by Brian Bilston, in his book Days Like These which rings very true;

Bilston is a modern poet born in 1970 and his rhymes are very relatable.

I chose this particular rhyme as my challenge falls over Feb 29th, I thought it very clever and so true, a whole 24 hours extra, it feels like we should be able to do so much with that time, but in fact it just becomes another day and we don’t feel any benefit to it.

When it actually came to creating something with a link to the rhyme I realised it was going to be harder than I had thought! I thought about a canoe, an Oscar, a Cello, but ended up taking the relatively easy option and using Bees.

The pattern is from Stitching cards, mounted on black card on Adorable Scorable Bee card depicting bees, honey comb and flowers.

My next challenge in mid May so already trying to find inspiration, so many songs and rhymes to chose from.

Snowdrops

 The Outlawz Sunday song and rhyme challenge starting February 4th is To the Thawing Wind, by appropriately named Robert Frost, published in 1913;

Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snowbank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate’er you do tonight,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit’s crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o’er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.

On first reading the poem I thought of the snowdrops, poking through thawing snow inspired by the line “Give the buried flower a dream”, thawing snow is often accompanied by rain as in the the line “Come with rain” and you slowly begin to see the ground beneath the snow as in “Find the brown beneath the white” and “Melt the glass and leave the sticks.” I think this is more a memory of winters and snow when I was younger. We get very little snow now and what we get seems to come and go so fast. We has the first snow of winter yesterday and it has all gone by this morning.

In the card I tried to represent the wind and rain with the blue and grey background in a swirling pattern, with the paper behind that showing emerging brown and sticks. The snowdrop being the emerging flower. I always worry that I have misunderstood the rhyme, but as it is an interpretation, I believe there is no right or wrong and it is interesting to see how others interpret the same rhyme.

The snowdrop was cut on my Cricut Joy Extra, the wind and rain are printed papers, cut with a die and mounted on flower backing paper.

I have just joined another Outlawz challenge group and will be part of the design team for Tuesday colour from beginning of March. I enjoy making cards to a theme, so will be interesting to be part of the colour group.

The cards I make for these challenges are available to buy via my Facebook page