Liner Notes: August - Foo Fighters/The Sky Is a Neighborhood/Concrete & Gold

Let's start with a song.

Concrete and Gold is my second favorite Foo Fighters album; Sonic Highways is my favorite and Skin and Bones rounds out my top three. I'm going to get to the other two this month along with my favorite Foo Fighters song, but I decided to start with Concrete and Gold and the song "The Sky Is a Neighborhood." This particular song and album has inspired several other pieces on this blog and an entire section of my 2022 stitch journal. It's such a great song and serves as the inspiration for this month's Liner Notes. 

Concrete and Gold was released in 2017 and it quickly became a favorite album of mine. I've enjoyed the Foo Fighters since the beginning, but mostly I enjoyed the singles off earlier albums not an entire album. My top three favorite albums of theirs are all albums I enjoy listening to in their entirety, and yes, I know Skin and Bones is an album that contains most of their early hits and a few extras, but again, it's about the combination of those songs on that album that make me keep listening to it. Anyway, I remember listening to Concrete and Gold in my car over and over again just like I had done with Sonic Highways and how much it improved my mood to listen to it while navigating DMV traffic. And then I'd put it on at home while cooking or just sitting around the house and I would just hit play again after the album was done. This album is a perfect example of the theme of Liner Notes - it's the music I go back to over and over again. 

This album is also responsible for one of my favorite road trips of all time. Until 2018, I had never seen Foo Fighters live. Neither had my brother, and we really wanted to. At some point in the Concrete and Gold tour, new dates got announced but not in the DC area. So my brother texts me and asks where I want to go see them. We decided to go to Memphis, a city neither of us had ever been to and combine the concert with a bucket list item for me, touring Graceland. I wrote about the concert and our Graceland experience on my other blog if you want all the details. My brother is a fantastic road trip companion and he's also very open to new music and trying things. Big Star, one of my all-time favorite bands, was also from Memphis so he listened to them in the car on the drive and helped me look for their musical note on Beale Street. He also humored me and went to see the Peabody ducks the first morning we were in town. We had a great trip and the Foo Fighters concert was fantastic. It's easily in my top ten favorite concerts. 

My first time using "The Sky Is a Neighborhood" as an inspiration for embroidery was during my 2022 stitch journal. That year's journal was one large piece that I added to every day. Taylor Hawkins died in March 2022, and embroidered a few tributes to him in that piece including a piece inspired by "Sunday Rain," one of my other favorite songs from Concrete and Gold that he happens to sing. I could legit listen to this song all day. 

There's something about "The Sky Is a Neighborhood" that sticks in my brain even if I haven't heard the song recently. The song was inspired by Dave Groh's lifelong hobby of stargazing and by the Neil DeGrasse Tyson video The Most Astounding Fact. Grohl explained his inspiration, "One night I was lying out looking up at the stars. Just imagining all these stars as places that have life on them as well, and I decided that the sky is a neighborhood, that we need to keep our shit together in order to survive this universe full of life."

And that is what inspired this month's Liner Notes. I'm using the colors of the sky, from blues to pinks to oranges to purples, to create sky neighborhoods out of fabric and thread. This week, I created the blue neighborhood. I used a combination of upholstery fabric samples, a blue velvet fabric, and several different threads from the MLM collection and my own collection. The design changed a bit as I was working on the piece, which ended up working out better in the end. I'm still playing around with the idea of using some white fabric (see the August 1 picture) as cloud borders, but I haven't decided if that's going to happen. That's the last step, so I'll wait to see what all four parts look like before making that decision.

Next week: the Pink Neighborhood.

Here's the Blue Neighborhood:

I made pattern pieces

The fabric piles.

August 1 - the initial design. This changed completely after I started embroidering.

August 2

August 3

August 4

August 5

August 6

August 7

August 8

The Sky Is a Neighborhood - the Blue Neighborhood

WIPs, Office Whimsy, Bea Turns 4, and Other Small Joys

I made a little more progress on the Johnathan Adler bargello piece this week. I started a new docuseries on HBOMax called Monsters of God and have decided I'll work on this piece while I watch the new episode each week. The series is directed by the same guy who directed the Tiger Kings shows and Chimp Crazy. Reptile people are wild. 

As I continue my first month back at work, I decided that my job when I'm physically in the office is to bring as much office-based whimsy to the place as I can. This week's office whimsy included a thrift store dress in a toucan pattern and bringing my Lego botanicals in as decor. 

Bea had quite the week. She turned 4 on Thursday and was a very good girl at her dermatologist appointment yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised by how good she was at the vet; they moved super slow with her and I think that helped a lot. She even allowed them to draw blood for her allergy test without growling or hissing. She was purr-itoed at the time, so there's that. She has to take an allergy pill twice a day for now, which she's also doing like it's no big thing. I'll find out in a few weeks if she needs additional medicine or not. Maybe turning 4 has made her more agreeable and grown up. 

New thing: hiding under the mushroom bed while her laser toy is on. I guess she's trying to be a stealthy hunter. Probably. Maybe.

If you like cherries and shop at Costco, go buy some cherries right now! They have a 2 pound container for $7.99 currently. You can't buy cherries for that cheap ever, so go get some. I bought a container last week and made a fantastic cherry cake with some of the cherries. I used the rest with yogurt during the week. I may go buy another container this weekend and freeze them since I didn't get to make cherry almond scones, which is my normal cherry season baked good. 

And don't let anyone tell you that you need a cherry pitter. Use a straw. It works the same and means you have one less gadget in your kitchen that you'll only use once a year but takes up space. Trust me on this.

See? A straw works.

Recipe - yes, those are chocolate dipped cherries on top. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips because that's what I had.

Look at that distribution of cherries! I thought wasn't sure how it was going to work when I was putting the cake together, but it turned out beautifully. Remember to toss cherries and berries in flour before baking with them. It keeps them from sinking and absorbs additional moisture that can mess with a recipe.

Happy weekend and remember to stay weird!

If you've been meaning to get a Jimothy shirt, get this one from Fleurty Girl. Proceeds from the shirt are being donated to New Disabled South.