The Bear

My husband gave me the silver medicine bear many years ago to protect me. I have worn it every day for ten years. The design is by Ray Tracey a Native American artist who makes beautiful jewelry. I look at the stars and see these constellations: Orion, The Hunter, Pleiades, the Seven Sisters and Ursa Major, the Great Bear. All of these constellations have appeared in my poems and I have memories of learning of them from my young father, the sailor, who could probably navigate by the stars. Maybe someday I will dig up the poems and share them here.
For the last few days as I was mentally preparing for the meeting we had today at the school, I put togeher these bear paw blocks. My plan is to make a quilt for me. I love the dark blue backround and the bear paw pattern has many layered meaning for me. I have a Roberta Horton book on Amish quilts on loan from the library and I am in love with the colors and the quilts. I have been buying beautiful hand dyed cottons and tucking them away for just such a project. But I was vascillating between a double nine patch and the bear paw and I guess I needed to borrow strength from the Great Bear.
And I got it. I was a bear today in the meeting and Katy is back in school as of tomorrow. We will still have home tutors in the afternoon so she can make up credits and next year she can attend the alternative school full time. So Mama Bear made an appearance and the day was good!

Job interview

Today I took my daughter for her tutoring session which ended up being at Starbucks by default. The library was on its late opening schedule, closed when we arrived, and the Starbucks is right next door.
Well It turns out that they were interviewing so on an impulse I filled in a application and interviewed. I have a pretty stacked resume- former aviation exec, kitchen deigner corporate facilitator vendor contract manager maintenance resource positioning manager housing commisoner blah blah. But I left all that behind because I did not want to sell my soul for a job and now when I want to get a job to have extra money for the cookie jar(and hand dyes and oil paint and beads and seeds....)(and shoes) and start a retirement fund(better late than never), I wonder if I can even get a job at Starbucks-which, by the way looks like a nice part time place to work if you like coffee- which I do. At least I will not be getting calls from grounded a/c crews looking for a part that can be delivered to a remote spot in the southern hemishere, like yesterday.
Funny though. Interviewing is a good way to re-look at your work history, which I have not done recently, since I had no intention of actually getting a real job. But having a real job has its advantages. As one former colleague put it"you can't spend money while you are working." And you get to talk to people whose only need from you is a latte and thank you very much have a great day.
Just yesterday I was thinking I should study for the LSATs and go to law school to become an advocate for disabled kids who are getting sidelined by out school systems which only want to extrude a bland mediocre plain old homoginized cheese product kind of kid. What abot the hot peppers? where is the blue cheese? no passion, no guts, no glory. Sad. I would be a great advocate. But I am not going to law school and I have to advocate for my very own hot pepper kid. Which is a job in and of itself and the only job for which I am truely irreplaceable.

Swaps

It occurs to me that three of the five tops that I have finished in the last couple of years have been made of swapped blocks. Two of them have grown up to become quilts. I have three other sets of swapped blocks that live in bins on my fabric shelf. If I am not mistaken this is not a phenomenon that happens in many other artistic communities.I consider fabric post cards an offshoot of the quilting community. And the internet has made the opportunity to swap fabric and finished blocks and postcards and artist trading cards much more widely practised. Cool, Huh?
And my daughter's wedding quilt will be made of swapped blocks as well. I have really loved being able to trade blocks with other quilters. I get to enjoy a wider variety of fabric. I get to have block combinations that I would never have thought of myself and I feel like I am part of a world wide community.
Right now I am participating on a siggie square block exchange with the Dear Jane internet list of quilters. I am sending out 122 blocks that I have made and stamped and signed and I will get back the same amount from quilters all over the globe, To me, this is thrilling!! And when I do get back my blocks from this third swap I have done I will have enough to make a quilt. And it will be a thing of beauty.
I am not involved in any other swaps right now. I am trying to focus on the works in progress that I have in my space. Th down side of swaps is that you can spend all your energy on these dear little blocks and forget to use them in any final project.

Quilt Show LIQS 2006

Well I am here to tell you I did need to get out and have some fun. The quilts were great and it was so much what I needed to see "the Girls". Linda and Claudia and Gay-I am so glad we did this and I hope to see you in Somers in May.
And I was weak. I did buy fabric. And I have to say it did feel like an injection of cheer to make up for recent days of disaster. But isn't it gorgeous? Now I will be back on the wagon. Maybe I need a 12 step group?
And I had a stowaway.
Gay's Applique in greens and lavendar was lovely.

The Round Robin's Gay's and Claudia's are divine, are they not? They are part of a round robin group that is doing red, green and cream and they are all so talented! (Linda aka Hersheybar is behind there somewhere.)
Altogether we did not harm our budgets too much. Claudia had to go paint her garage with her hubby, Gay had a long ride home and Linda had a job at one of the tables so I giddy yapped on outta there at about three. Still had a little cash in my pocket and did not abuse the plastic so I am content.

Blue paint

Today was a good day to paint. We had a tutor so I played some music (I am a Joni Mitchell fan from the seventies) the Blue album and squished some paint around a piece of plywood. I love paint. Soothes the soul.
This week was full of bad news for us. The school district will not allow my bi polar daughter to go to the alternative school until she is 16 or has the credits which they screwed her out of in the first place. They want her to be schooled at home by tutors until next year. And I had to wait three days to hear this. I told the principal that when I ran a million dollar business, I always returned phone calls. I hate the celebrity status these adminstrators give themselves. It is just a poor excuse for bad manners.
My daughter is crushed but she is bouncing back and has assured me they will get a piece of her mind next week when we have a meeting. I will let her, because I feel very angry myself and she does not deserve to be excluded from school. I have been told that I should sue, that they are out of compliance with state law and I have a good case but why should I have to go to all that energy and expense? I am thinkin on it. real hard.
But things could be worse eh? I am going to a quilt show tomorrow and a birthday party tomorrow night and I am going to spend some time sewing tonight and not think about any more educational issues til Monday.Today Mike got quesadillas for lunch and I bought Katy new sneakers. So I am actually doing ok here. And besides maybe Katy will become a lawyer and take up the cause for the disabled. It is a family tradition.

WOBQ Miriam Block - a photoset on Flickr

WOBQ Miriam Block - a photoset on Flickr
Here is how I made this block. I have received permission from Judy Mathiesonto share this technique.You can click on the title to go to the pictures.They are sort of out of order but I hope you can get a general idea.
I love to paper piece and using freezer paper makes it easy because you don't have to tear the paper off and pick the little pieces out of the stitching lines and seams. And it is re usable. People in my Women of the Bible group have been talking about different ways to do their blocks so I decided to try and photograph my process. Thanks to Judy for granting permission. She also said in her email that QNM has an article this month on this freezer paper foundation method.

semi contour

I did not like this picture at first but it grew on me. It was tucked away in my notebook and after it was out of sight for a while, I liked it better.

Bathroom Renovation

This project has been ongoing for a couple of years now. Mike has been doing it solo in his "spare time". It is so pretty that it makes the rest of the house looks seedy in comparison. Except for the kitchen which we also made beautiful. I used to think that making beautiful things and rooms was shallow and unimportant. I am happy to report that I am not so mean to myself any more and I think it is important to bring beauty into the world..
I am going to tackle our room next. I am going to make a walk in closet and get rid of the old dropped ceiling and indooroutdoor glued down brown carpet((????!!!)) and maybe a small skylight too. All in good time.

my hat

At least I amuse myself. It actually does look a little like my hat which is a soft brown knitted cap. I used a ball point pen and then added ink with a water brush and then changed the whole thing to sepia in my photo editing program.
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old/new project

Upon my wall is a compiliation of projects that have been waiting patiently in different parts of my sewing hiding places (some say storage, but I am hiding them from myself). So I have rescued them from their obsolescence and pinned them on the flannel which serves as my 'design wall'. In my mind, it is a sliding barndoor sized mechanical wonder. In reality it is a piece of white flannel stapled to the wall. (I even have an electronic staple gun. How cool is that? )It will do for now. I am contemplating this work in progress and I think for the next round I will make my first ever applique border. The flower will be borrowed from Connie Sue Haidle's BOM . To me it appears to be a Clematis, which is one of my favorite flowers. It is a late bloomer like me. Intensely blue, likes to stay in the same location and requires alot of patience.
Sometimes when I am at a point in a project which stumps me I abandon it and often do not re visit for years. Often I could skip a step and keep going but usually I just leave. So now I am at a point in this personal round robin and I am here to say I will finish it, with applique-which is my weak link-and so there it is.

Live Giraffe Cam at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Live Giraffe Cam at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
Bonnie posted this giraffe cam on her website and I was really looking forward to seeing those giraffes walking around but I think it was too cold for them to come out, see and be seen, so I drew the little guy on the left. I got my copy of Danny Gregory's "the Creative License" and one of the excersizes is contour drawing so I did it.Then I filled it in. I bought myself some colored pencils and a waterbrush to use with my watercolor pencils. I also tried to do a drawing of my sewing machine but it was not as much fun. The giraffe was more humorous.
Why does it feel silly to draw with no purpose? Silly is useless? Am I too old to play just for the sake of playing? I should be doing something more important, more momentous! serious literature or something, politcal commentary, deep cradling poem rocking the world to sleep on its rythyms, changing the world. Can't you see Rome is burning? Why are you doodling????

Journal quilt for Else

I made the cross stitch in the eighties, the linoleum print in the ninties and the journal quilt today! Just thought i would share:)
The cross stitch was from a design which was not mine but I can't remember where. It was a while ago. The linoleum print was made for a friend with a full heart! And the journal page is for my husband's mother Mike.
And I have to go and ice two cakes and hop in the shower and get ready for the birthday celebration!

pencil drawing

Ok this is my self portrait drawing for the EDM challenge. The original was done standing in front of my bathroom mirror with a number two pencil, however my scanner would not pick up the pencil marks very well so I played with it in Adobe Elements.There is a certain ironic likeness and I don't know if thats good or bad, lol! I also drew some bugs todayfor the Friday Illustration topic. Not very convincing but buggy nevertheless. The big guy looks hungry.

This is my Jen

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This is the bride to be, Jen. She says she is so glad that the internet has saved me from my argorophobia. I can talk to people all over the world with out going outside:)
No entirely true, I traveled alot, all over the world and love the city, NYC and Boston mostly, and going to Vermont and visiting with friends at Starbucks and artshows and quilt shows. But I do like to stay home. Yes I do. Home is where I sew and paint and read and draw and from whence I do draw my inspiration, such as it is.

This is Alex's graduation quilt. He will get his BA in Performance Arts in May.The design is from Bonnie Hunter's site. www.quiltville.com, in the leader ender section. The blocks were from a nine patch swap I did on the yahoo group DJretreats. I was short a few rows from the swap so I made a bunch at the end very randomly.The wonderful quilting was done by Becca Olson and Shiela Jaurez in Alaska. They quilted musical notes in the white squares! The hairy kid is my son, Alex.

My Katy

Modeling her bridesmaid dress for Jen's wedding.

Painting

I am so excited! I have done my first encaustic painting! I bought these paints two years ago and never even opened one up. This is from a picture that my daughter's therapist showed me of a place called Hermits Island. I sketched it in oils and then thought I would try some encaustics on top and then the encaustics took over!
I am reading a book by Eric Maisel called Fearless Creating. He said "get up right now and go and work on your project for a half hour." So I did. Feels great to make a painting. If Mark, Katy's therapist, likes it I will give it to him.
While painting I listened to Yo-Yo Ma play Schumann's Cello Concerto. Life is good!!
Of course I later felt compelled to go and change the entire thing. Never know when to stop. I like the second one, but I wish I had kept the first one as well. Someone needs to remind me tha I can have two canvases. I don't need to keep reworking the same one.

Sketching

I realize, of course that the way to get good at something is to do it over and over.It has been a mixed blessing for me that many things have been easy for me without effort. Sketching is not one of them and there is a part of me that feels angry because I am not good at it all the time every time. Since blogging has opened up the incredible windows into other people's work and art I have been yearning to do more and more and this is good because it circumvents my pique at not being good enough "right here right now."
That is a flashback to my ex husband's Auntie Betty from East Kilbride in Scotland. That was her way of calling you out for a confrontation. Let's do it, right here right now. She is in heaven now laughing. She knows what it is like to be ticked off because you cannot do exactly what you want when you want it. We understood each other.
This sketch is of Bailey doing her math homework. She was being very wiggly and insisted on moving every other second or so. I like the expression.

My border

This round is ready to be packed up and sent to the next person. There will be a couple of very slight seams in the next round but I think it will look good. I am not the most meticulous stitcher tho I do try. There is always a point that turns out blunt and a zig where I should have zagged. But I do like the way it turned out. I was hoping to make it so that the stars spun out from the center star and kept the whole thing in motion.
So I do hope it meets with the approval of the next stitchers. I always worry more about what the recipients think about the borders that I put on more than I care about what they are doing to mine. I will rise to the challenge though. I am learning with each new thing I try. The hardest thing to learn is to overcome the anxiety and go for it.
The block patterns are from the Dear Jane and Dear Hannah books by Branda Papadakis.

one last thing

It was forty degrees here today and very windy which made it seem so much colder.My husband could probably tell you which direction the wind came from but I don't listen long enough to the weather bimbos to get to that nautical part. I think they are over paid prompt readers and why can't people just look out of the window or read the freakin farmer's almanac. You would get better information. Any way they wind may or may not have been off the ocean which may or may not have made it colder.
In this kind of weather people come out if their houses dressed for all contingencies. Some runners in shorts and kid in hoodies and one lady in a huge fuscia down coat which was being blown off her body as she clutched at it desperately. I was mesmerized by the fuscia and it had a big diagonal yellow and black stripe. It was truely horrifying, and besides she was doubled parked next to me at the trian station and I had no choice but to stare at her big hypnotic coat because I could not get out of my parking spot
And then there were these two ladies both with big enthusiatically coifed ash blonde heads and matching-I kid you not- knee length, belted, mink trench coats. I nearly ran them over I was so stunned. And they were standing on the curb leaning out as though they were trying to hail a cab, holding on to each other for balance, and where oh where was the doorman when you needed him. I think they got off at the wrong train stop. Or the wrong paralell universe.
These were but two of my visual adventures as I drove my daughters around and around our lovely island to meet their social and medical obilgations.

Tea Leaves Illustration Friday

I just joined the Illustration Friday group about ten minutes ago and decided to post my first effort. Every week you illustrate a theme that someone has picked. This week's subject was Tea. hehehe...

Ten cents a dance

Today I played with dolls. I made her from a Gail Wilson kit. I have no idea why I feel the need to make tiny things. I find it soothing. I get to finish something.


I posed my model as a skater: a salutation to the Olympics which I have watched here and there during the week. I like watching the events but the hoo ha annoys me. So I only half watch while I am doing other stuff. If the announcing gets too dull I switch to Law and Order reruns.

To pipe or not to pipe

I thought that adding piping to my RR would break up the red and define the center but I am afraid that it cuts into the flying geese! What to do what to do!! I really like the faux piping! What to do!

Sprinter

I did make progress today on my round robin! Almost done if all goes together the way I hope it will.
My kids are on vacation all week so I may whine and moan more than usual.Why do teen age girls get so mean to their mothers? Sometimes I feel like a rung out rag always trying to set an example of how to communicate with out yelling. Well today I snapped and yelled as loud as I could and said" see this is me yelling!!!" and I hurt my throat but now maybe they will stop saying I 'always yell' at them because I hardly ever do. Hurts my throat.
I got my son's graduation quilt back from Becca and Shiela and it is gorgeous! I need to put on a binding and label and woo hoo a big finish! This weekend he is competing in the classical guitar competetion at Ithaca. He is very excited about it. I have a flannel binding all cut out. I may use it but maybe not since there is no flannel in the quilt.

This is my border for the February Chris Boehringer Snowman block. I still haven't stitched it down. I'm a sprinter, rather than a jogger, in sewing and other areas of my life. My challenge is to do a little daily instead of trying to do a marathon and then doing nothing for days. I am in the Wiproducers@yahoogroups.com group and that is a big concept there-one thread a day.
On my next post I hope to announce that I am finished with this round robin and awaiting the next one.

Valentines

Here is a variation on the Valentine I made Mike. Isn't it pretty? Is is a compilation of images from pictures and from a painting I did. The boat I made years ago and I altered it in Adobe. I spent hours playing with the layers in Adobe Elements last night. If anyone ever doubted the expanse of the human mind they need to delve into this Adobe program. Boggles. And I am only using a non pro version.
Any way Mike was pleased with his Valentine and I woke to flowers and coffee. I am making Lasagna for dinner at home and I even promised to move the printer off the dining room table. Temporarily of course.
Now I must do some blocks and carry on with my day. It is already past noon here! And I have things to sew!

Paper pleasures

Did I forget to mention that I love paper too?
The sail boat is folded and painted and gilded with artificial gold leaf.I made it after Mike and I visted the New York sea port in August 2001. It was a gift for him on Valentines day.
The one and half inch sushi box is made with guitar string wrappers(dia dario) and the accordion book is made with two 18 by 24 pieces of water color paper with folded cover sleeves made from hand made paper I found at artpaper.com. Warning-if you love paper and are on a tight budget, this is not a safe place for you.

How cool is that?

I got a bouquet of pink from www.batiksplus.com today. I will add them to the moda marbles I got from www.webfabrics.net for the quilt for Jen and Jason's wedding gift! See the Shoo Fly blocks from the nickelquilts swap? Will this be a cool quilt or what?
I am making progress on my Round Robin. I have all but two blocks made and I have begun to set the squares on the diagonal.I hope to have this complete by end of next week. Or sooner. Then it is on to the next one!
I have become blonde. In need of a change to mix things up a little. I like change.
I learned how to put links and buttons on my blog and I have joined a blog ring. It seems that you must know where to plunk the html code for links or it will not appear. Who knew?

small poem

11/25/05

I would
when I had hair like hers
toss my head
getting it out of my face
before resting on a pillow
like her

when I had hair not like hers
for mine is straight and always has been

before i knew that you can’t go back
not ever

before when finality was nothing more than a vague and impossibly distant abstraction
when days without number
dense and tangled like ancient forests
like names on a wall
or names of the gone in the ledgers of angels

before finality was a possibilty

when to defer meant later
not never

well what of it?

it is not then now
is it

Art quilt jounal quilt mini quilt

Here are my efforts at journal quilting. One will go to the Ami Simms initiative and I will keep two!! The hanger -triangle in the corner method- was described in Ami Simms web site. Cool Huh? They are all my original photographs altered on Adobe Photoshop and printed on Electric Quilt printable fabric.The writing layers are from a letter and a journal page. Two are beaded. I had a hard time sewing through this fabric due to its very tight weave and I think I will try another fabric next time. Someone has suggested using regular fabric ironed onto freezer paper. Since these journal quilts are not to be washed, I will risk it. BTW, I did use new sharp needles and rethreaded and cleaned out the lint in the bobbin case and tried three different threads. The one that finally worked was a Shmetz microtex sharp needle #11 and Sulky 30 wt premium cotton varegated. Phew that was a mouthful.
Warning:non quilty comments to follow..... A woman online was talking about her husband's risking his limb rather than going to the er and having himself treated. It is agreed that this may be a testosterone thing. My dh who fixes airplane engines on the night shift , once stood up on the platform(they are very high) and knocked himself starry eyed on an open engine cowling. He got up and kept right on working. I told him he was the only one I know who would have not taken the opportunity to stay flat on his back and get a week off. The knot on his wee bald head was the size of an egg-and a strange purple color.
We went to the casino in Connecticut yesterday and spent the day playing slots and eating and enjoying mindless entertainment. I broke even. I am not a big spender by any means and I am sure my five dollars surfeit will not hurt the casino.I have only ever gambled three times and I have always broken even so I consider myself very lucky. Now I think I shall desist altogether and not tempt fate!

Quilting for Reason

I am making a small quilt for Ami Simms Alzheimer Quilt Initiative. She is going to raffle them off and the proceeds are being donated to find a cure. If you don't already get her newsletter, I recommend it.
Ami Simms was teacher of the year in 2005 and she is also seen on QNN. Her site is really worth a visit , even if you just like to read about quilts and she how she is doing:)
Of course my sewing machine is behaving badly and I have an appointment this afternoon so I am tearing myself away from this project and will comtinue when I get back. I have a couple of friends who have lost parents to this disorder, and I am intimately aquainted with other mental malfuntions, so lets just say we all have a vested interest in finding cures for this and other related maladies. I hope to make one for Ami to auction and one for me to keep as a journal quilt.I have made one for practice and hope to make at least one that is good enough to donate. The picture above is one of the pages that I made in Adobe from a photo I shot on the boardwalk in the fog. The writing is from a letter I found from my mother from a million years ago.I will work on the embellishment and stitching tomorrow.

Where do we eat and other mysteries

Funny you should mention design walls...my problem is I have too
many things hanging on the wall and not enough walls. But I did
remove one painting which is now on the dining room table-along with
my printer and ironing stuff and computer!! ...and I hung some
flannel on the wall so I can play with the blocks I am making for my
round robin. It is not huge but it will 'do'.

I made an error calculating the size of my round robin border blocks
so I don't know what to do!! I will put a picture in the I am working
on it file and see what you guys think.I am thinking of putting the
blocks on point-that may work, or using different spacer blocks,
narrower.Or if I add another inch to the inner border... They did
look good in EQ5. Not to worry. I will figure something out.
So that is my story for today. You do not want to hear the one about
my vacuum! Bad words were said. I am not proud.

I did not finish my journal block due to my Photoshop disability, but
I have not lost hope! It is still in the running! I need to learn how to make a collage in photoshop. Perhaps I should refer to the book??? I promised myself that I would read the whole thing but I always end up looking up stuff as I need to.
I spent too much time last night trying to make my blog more interesting but I am not
that savvy. I could not make a links button so I guess I will have to
try again another day! It just takes too much time. I need to spend some time studying this as well. So much to learn- who could ever be bored?
bye for now
martha