Busy Weekend

We had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Wanna hear what we did?

Friday night my brilliant friend, Anne-of-the-green-thumb, helped me pick out plants for the front of our house. Saturday (the only day it didn't rain) was spent digging.



Saturday night Jeff and I enjoyed a rare "date night." Sushi and a movie. The Longest Yard. It was pretty good. I'd give the sushi a B+ and the movie a B-. And the company an A+.

Sunday we squeezed in a bit more digging and another movie: Madagascar. Also good. I'll give it a B- (it's not nearly as good as Shrek, Incredibles, Nemo or Monsters Inc.).

Just so you don't worry that we aren't particiapting fully in the movie block buster season, I'll have you know that Jeff went to see Star Wars last weekend.

Monday morning Jeff surprised us by bringing coffee and donuts from "the double D." That's Dunkin Donuts for you non-New Englanders. (We have about eight Dunkin Donuts in a five mile radius. Though sometimes I drive by several to get me some Starbucks.)

Then we went off to enjoy the classic small town Memorial Day parade.



After the parade, we went to Portland. Jeff and the kids went to Chuck E. Cheese while I ran errands (ALONE!).

Claire received a gift certificate to Build A Bear for her birthday. So we trekked over to the mall. It's really great fun. The kids get to pick out an unstuffed animal, then they help stuff it.



As much as her father tried to dissuade her, Claire picked the "Sassy Kitty." Kids also get to pick a little stuffed heart, then they are instructed to warm it up, make a wish on it, and give it a kiss before it gets buried inside the stuffing.

Then there is brushing and fluffing...



Of course, Benjamin picked the GREEN frog.

Here are my little monkeys with their new friends.



I got some new shoes! Remember the floral skirt from the earlier "What should I wear?" vote? Won't these shoes be so much more super fantastic than the clunky black sandals? No?



I also couldn't resist this book. (It's from the dreaded scrapbooking trendy section. But it has some great multi-media ideas.) Isn't it clever how the edge looks like it's been cut with pinking shears?



I also got some new blades and rubber to recarve the ladyslipper stamp. I won't let the letterboxing terrorists win!

And of course, I said many prayers and thought fondly and gratefully of those who have died in service to our country and to all humanity. Especially those who I knew and loved.

So Glad You Liked It

I thought you might like some explanation of this photo. It was titled just "test" earlier. Debra commented that "I passed." Well... thank you! I always pride myself on being a good student.



I was trying some different configurations with Hello to see if it would post. Blogger and Hello are definitely fickle. Anyway, it worked. This piece is called Mossy Shadows. It's about 35 inches long and 14 inches wide. It has that wonky shape because I suck at making 90 degree angles resulting in a "square" quilt. Also because I think the shape is a bit arty.

Those are sticks and rocks sewn on. Most of them have been replaced. This quilt suffered a bit in moving from one show to another. I couldn't find a perfect stick, so now it has just rocks. But they look fine. It's now hanging at our show at The Little Dog Coffee Shop. I'd be delighted to sell it, but also am looking forward to having it hanging back home in our office.

Also, this piece is going to be published in the upcoming issue of Artella. More about that later. It should be arriving in my mailbox soon.

I Finally Got Hello to Respond

You remember I told you it's been raining? I may not have also mentioned my itch to make something "traditional." You know, chain pieced, regular shaped blocks, commercial fabric -- maybe even from a line of coordinating designs, quilting that is just to hold it together and not necessarily artistic.

So, those desires combined with the fact that I planned to be watching several hours of garbage on tv inspired me to pull out these blocks.

I started them when I was pregnant with Benjamin. I took a class teaching methods from Jan Mullen's Cut Loose Quilts. That was before I realized that taking classes directly out of books is kind of a waste of time, unless I'm just paying for the luxery of several hours of uninterrupted time, a place to quilt and social interaction. (Which is not such a bad thing to spend money on.)

I ended up with the following blocks. Four large wonky blocks and 10 smaller. How to set them?



And this is what I came up with. Inspired by the fact that a real picnic is an impossiblity given 40 days and 40 nights of rain in Maine.



It really did make me feel brighter! I think it's coming along well. I pieced all this during the Tuesday night American Idol which reminded me that I much prefer listening to cover songs rather than originals and I can't imagine buying either Bo or Carrie's albums, but I might like to see them perform on the Today Show during their summer concert series.

Then also on Tuesday, I loved every minute of "Rob and Amber Get Married." I'm a sucker for that stuff. Thankfully they didn't stretch it out over several weeks like they did Trista and Ryan. (If you don't know who they are, it's not even worth finishing this paragraph. Just skip ahead.) How funny that Rob was weepy about the giant painting of the Red Sox signed by all the players that Amber gave him, but shed not a tear during the actual ceremony. They are young and beautiful and true publicity whores, but I still think they have a chance at a nice, long, happy marriage.

I continued to finish the machine button hole stitch around the plates and utensils on Wednesday during the Idol finale. But I did no sewing during the Alias finale. That needed my full attention. Yum... Michael Vartan, even if he is a bad guy.

Now, I'm making 12 more smaller blocks to add to the previously constucted ones that will be a 6 inch pieced border. I added some more fabrics for these blocks. I hope they all look ok together. Actually, it doesn't matter. This is a utilitarian project. Just get it done.

I'm not sure I'll actually use it as a picnic quilt. I think I might give it to Benjamin's teacher at the end of the year. He goes to a wonderful preschool in an old barn and farm house. It would be a great pretend play quilt.

I did make another complete quilt with techniques from that same book. It was Benjamin's baby quilt and still rests on his bed. It turned out really great. Maybe I'll post pix. That would be a bit retro. But, over all Mullen's technique takes more time and more fabric to make your blocks look wonky than if you measured and rotary cut and put them together straight. So, I guess that's not really an endorsement.

Growl

I have been trying for nearly two days to upload some pictures through Hello. Do you think that the fact that we recently updated our firewall has something to do with this? I'm going to waste away more time today trying to figure it out and possibly checking out Flickr which other bloggers seem to have success with. (What's up with the silly spelling?)

Oh and by the way, it's still raining. I tried googling "ark blue prints" but had no luck.

Reasons to Love Several Consecutive Weeks of Rain

1. Natural conversations with complete strangers about the weather. An opportunity to make new friends.
2. It's great weather for soup. I love soup. Which reminds me, I must ask Kate for that delish African peanut soup recipe.
3. No need to get a pedicure since I'm not wearing my cute springy sandals.
4. We're still using our fireplace. I love reading a bit by the fire before Claire's bus brings her home in the afternoons.
5. No pressure to do yard work. I don't love yard work and I'm not very good at it.
6. I'm getting my money's worth out of my gym membership since I can't go roller blading down a charming path followed by a bbq with friends.
7. I don't have to put the screens back on the upstairs windows yet. The downstairs windows got done several weeks ago when we opened the windows for one afternoon of good weather.
8. An opportunity to investigate an interesting indoor destination for a Memorial Day outing. (Yes, the forecast predicts rain.) Suggestions welcome.
9. It's easy to dress the kids in the morning since there are only a few items left from the season that they have not outgrown or destroyed.
10. No need to really do my hair since it will flatten in the rain. This leaves more time for watching Matt and Katie.

Goose Egg

Apparently the wall just jumped out in front of him.


I need to add frozen peas to my shopping list. I think they would work better than crushed ice in a zip loc bag.

Maybe some day I'll post one of the pictures I took after he tumbled down the entire flight of stairs and knocked out two teeth.

Ah... the joys of parenthood.

This and That

I have been thinking that I should post something fresh, but I have been totally uninspired. Let's see if this goes anywhere.

I did think of posting pictures from the show at Claire's school last week. It was so great. Her class sang songs, danced and read poetry. It was right in their classroom and was attended by lots of parents plus the other kindergarten class and all their "reading buddies." It was crowded. All the pictures had lots of other kids in them and I just don't feel like I should post pix out in the wide open with out permission. Anyway, you can assume they are all super cute in the very best 6-year-old way of missing teeth, bed headed hair, dishelved clothes and innocent nose picking.

I don't have any new art to post. I'm sewing lots of embellishments on the rock quilt. Rusty keys, washers, clock faces, etc. It's looking cool.

A couple of you posted about my quiliting designs and how I managed to spread the motifs out across the design of the quilt rather than staying within the seams. I used to be much more rigid too -- but that was when I was just using a walking foot. Now I love quilting that meanders throughout the quilt and enhances or contrasts with the pattern -- depending on a thousand factors. I think my design style changed along with improving my free motion quilting. I sometimes think of my quilts as three layers that compliment each other. Not the top, batting, backing three layers... but the compostion, the quilting and the embellishments as the three layers. Of course, it's also neccessary that the quilting covers the raw edges of any pieces that have been fused down, especially if they are commercial fabrics which are less stable when fused than hand dyed fabrics. So that means the quilting has to meander a bit.

I've been trying to develop some of my own favorite quilting motifs. Most of what I used is from the wonderful Robbi Eklow article in Quilting Arts issues #11 and #12. But I also do a pretty good job with my rippling water pattern, my flames and my grasses.

I was looking at some Klimpt paintings today and thinking that some of his motifs would make great quilting patterns. It almost made me what to do a whole cloth experiment. Or test pieces, like That Logan Chick calls them.

Stay tuned.

Rolling Stone?

Rock quilt in progress


A few embellishments


Hmmm. I see I forgot to rotate that detail shot. You get the idea though. These pictures are not great. My apologies. I'll be doing some more beading tonight while I watch Jennifer Garner kick some bad spy ass!

In My Backyard

When we moved from Florida to Maine in the fall of 2003, I was struck by lots of differences. Obviously. I've posted a bit about my fascination with the beauty of the rocks up here. (And to make this quilt related I will say I'm working on a rock quilt. More of that later.) We also have this charming plant that inhabits our woods at the moment. They are called "fiddle heads." You can see why. But the fiddle doesn't last for long and then they're just ferns. Apparently they are tasty sauteed in olive oil and garlic. (Most stuff is...)

Fiddle heads in our woods


We also have this interesting natural phenomenon. I was alarmed that my friend Kate (who's husband is the state ecologist) hasn't visited The Desert of Maine. I told her I'd post some pix so so she could get a feel for it. She said she thought it was kind of kitchy and that's why they hadn't gone. It's definitely kitchy. You can buy plastic camels and other crap, but it's pretty cool too.

The Desert of Maine, taken on our visit last summer. They give the kids pails and buckets to play with while the adults can listen to the tour guide's spiel while driving around in that little tram. Pretty fun.


Here's a blurb for the Desert of Maine website.

"In 1797 the Tuttle family moved to the 300 acre farm that once covered the Desert of Maine where they successfully raised crops of potatoes and hay for several years. Failure to rotate crops thereafter, combined with massive land - clearing and overgrazing resulted in severe soil erosion that exposed this hidden Desert. As the spreading sand grew uncontrollable, the Tuttles surrendered, leaving the Desert to it's destiny."

It's not really sand, it's glacial silt. Finer than sand... and expansive.

You're Certainly Not the First to Say...

they look like martinis. But they're NOT!

I was really thinking "tree."

But the assignment was to make something that was just a design -- not anything in particular. So I cheated there a bit.

I would have prefered to make the blocks like this.


But adding those two side "branches" would have slowed the assembly line way down since I made more than 40 blocks.

I don't particularly care if people think they are martinis. Especially if someone says, "Oh my gosh, I've been looking for some fabulous martini art. Can I buy them all!?"

But I do intend to add some quilting and embellishing which might take a bit more into the tree realm. Suggestions?

Fun Day in Maine

You can read more details and see more fantabulous pictures of ROCKS on Mel's blog. You remember my interesting in rocks, right? More on that soon.

Melody, me and Kate at the Little Dog Coffee shop in "Brunswick" Maine.


Melody's favorite color: RED!

Look What I Made in Melody's Workshop

The pictures are a bit washed out and there is still lots of constuction, quilting, embellishing and finishing to do... but I'm excited!

Latest Trend

I joined in the latest trend... making fabric postcards. I wanted to send something "nice" for my sister's birthday and Mother's Day, but didn't have a chance to shop and there isn't really anything especially nice or personal at Hallmark anyway, right.

So I made these. It was really fun. Gerrie gave me some good tips. She just sews cardstock on the back so they are easy to address and write a message. I figured if I was going to do this "fabric" thing, that the novelty of it is that it's FABRIC, so I did fabric on the back. But, if I did it again, I'd eschew the purist in me and use cardstock.

I had them hand cancelled. The post man said they were lovely and didn't bat an eye about posting them.

And they all arrived fine.

Birthday post card for my sister


Mother's Day postcard (for my delightful mother-in-law)


Another Mother's Day postcard (for my delightful mother)


Mom hand dyed all this delicious fabric from a kit she bought at the World Quilt Expo from ProChem. She dyed 30 fat eights and shared several with me. I'm very lucky. She even shared some of the fat eigths that were already fused! Instant art.

Guess What I'm Doing This Weekend

Taking a class from Melody all day Friday. Yippee!
Going to the state guild meeting and hearing Melody's lecture on Saturday. Yippee!
Taking Melody to our show at the Little Dog Coffee Shop and out to dinner on Saturday night. Yippee!

Pictures and report to come.

Great Frayed Edges Get Together

Frayed Edges met yesterday. We had such a great day. I've mastered my "moka" and purchased a milk frother so I can make the real deal cappuccino. Kate brought an amazing African peanut soup. Kathy brought Irish soda bread. (Aren't we international!?) And Sarah brought brownies and chocolate chip cookies. Delish.

I shared my in progress rock quilt. Pix soon.

Sarah shared her wonderful "Flying Toast." And her "red quilt" which is on it way to Scotland in an exchange with another fiber artist.

We swapped some yarn, ribbons and other fibers and chatted about general goings on!

Last time we met, we swapped note book covers. I can't believe I didn't photograph them last time. But here they are now. Aren't they fun!? I especially love art that is also utilitarian.



And here's one I made for Sonji.


Here's what it looks like opened up. A 5 x 7 notebook just slides in. Sarah even found 5 x 7 notebooks in a grid and another with blank pages. So much better than LINES.


And here's a close up of the one I made for Sonji.


We also painted paper towels and made some collages ala the workshop article in the recent Cloth Paper Scissors. Mine turned out pretty well. I'm not sure what I'll do with it. I mean, it is still paper towels. Pix of that later too.

Oh and we also decided to do a round robin book project. I think we all agreed to make some kind of "bones" for our personal books and pick a theme. Then we'll pass the project each month and we'll each make pages to fit into the "bones" that each person created. Jazzed up three ring binders basically.

More Info About Letterboxing

It's all right here really. But here's my take on Letterboxing.

A letterbox is generally a smallish tupperware type container hidden in an inconspicuos space at in interesting location. Most are in wonderful natural settings -- parks, hikes, scenic overlooks, etc. But some are in urban settings. In the letterbox is a stamp (sometimes hand carved) and a small journal. Sometimes there is also a stamp pad and pen or pencil. All letterboxers have their own personal journal and stamp.

So, when we find a letterbox, we pull out our personal journal and stamp the stamp from the letterbox in our journal. I make a note of the date and location. It's a bit like a passport. Then we stamp our personal stamps in the journal that was in the box so when others find it, they can see that we've been there. Sometimes we write a comment about the day or the location or the stamp or whatever. We also puts our names, where we are from and the date.

Most letterboxes and the clues to find them are listed on the main letterboxing site. Some clues are easy and obvious, some are complicated and obscure. There are more than 15,000 boxes listed on that site.

I don't know why exactly it's called "letterboxing," since there isn't really a "letter" involved. At least not specifically. One time I was listening in to Claire telling one of her friends about letterboxing. She said, "Do you know what a letterbox is?" The friend replied, "Sure, we have one for our cat."

The thing I love most about letterboxing is that it gets us out to places we might not have discovered without the "mission" of boxing. Go out and box!

Letterbox Bandit

My family and I love to go Letterboxing. We've beening "boxing" for about two years and we've found 39 boxes in five states. Letterboxing is a combination of treasure hunting, hiking and exploring.

We even planted one letterbox. But here is where the sad sad story comes in. It was hard to decide where to plant the box. Even harder to pick a "theme" and hand carve a stamp. (Something I've never done before... but should certainly consider doing more often since they would be wonderful for fabric design...) Finally, we decided to make a box to recognize the very rare wild flower: The Lady's Slipper.

When I was a child, I remember my mom talking about seeing Lady's Slippers with her dad when she was a child. But she hadn't seen any since. When we moved to Maine one of the neighbors said, "There's lots of Lady's Slippers in the woods right around here. They bloom in June."

She was right. Hundreds and hundreds just behind our home and up the path into the woods to Claire's school. I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to draw boxers to this area to see the flowers. We planted the box in August and I posted the clues inviting people to find the box anytime -- of course. But that if they came in June they'd have the pleasure of the real thing in addition to the stamp.

Here's my hand carved Lady's Slipper stamp.


Sadly, Lady's Slipper Letterbox has disappeared. Boo Hoo. I got an email from someone who tried to find in on Friday. As soon as I got her email I walked up the hill to confirm. It was true. Totally gone. The box didn't even make it to lady's slipper season.

Why would someone take it? Not even really worth wondering. Stuff happens.

I can probably recarve and rehide a new box before June. But I'm not happy about it.

My Baby is Six!

Claire's Birth Day! May 5, 1999


Claire's Birthday! May 5, 2005


We had a wonderful day. Daddy and Claire started out the day with a bike ride/run, then a trip to Friendly's for breakfast. Benjamin and I brought a giant pizza cookie to Claire's classroom in the afternoon. We also brought the alka-seltzer rocket which the kids enjoyed out on the playground. Swimming lessons in the afternoon. Pizza at Romeo's for dinner (where the above picture was taken). Cold Stone Creamery for dessert! And lots of presents to open at home.

Jeff and I gave Claire a "boom box." That's what we used to call portable cd/radios. Do they still call them that? Claire's has really enjoyed listening to music lately. Jeff had rigged up a portable cd player with old speakers from the computer. That worked great, but it was a bit fragile. Claire will be able to operate this one all on her own and choose which music she wants to listen to. We also got her a Disney Classics cd with great tunes from Mulan, Hercules, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, etc. We are avoiding Brittany Spears, Jessica Simpson and all other pop princesses for as long as possible!

What I'm Reading

Not much lately really. I go in waves of reading. Lately it's been low tide. Which is fine with me. I think the last book that I read and really enjoyed was The Secret Life of Bees. I have Sue Monk Kidd's new book on request at the library.

But for now, I'm actually reading these...



My friend Helen invited me and several others to read Julia Cameron's book The Sound of Paper and have an online discussion of the book. We kicked off the first chapter and exercise today. I have The Artist's Way on my bookshelf, but haven't even opened it. (Hanging head in shame.) (Not really.) I think it's going to be good. The exercise was to make a collage. She suggested using 20 magazines and a giant piece of poster board. (Puhleeze.) I used about 6 and an old kleenex box. I think we were supposed to be picking images that "spoke to our soul" in some way. Hmmm. I mostly just chose things that had some interesting design. Or were loosely inspirational. I think you might be able to make out the chocolate chip cookies and the cup of coffee on the side facing out in the picture. Make your own assumptions about those choices.

And I'm also reading Anne Lamott's new book. Her earlier book Traveling Mercies is one of my all time favorites and I think this will be equally funny, thoughtful, and inspiring... if I can get past all the blather about "the illegal war." (You should not read anything into that about whether I'm for or against the war. No one is for war. But I get tired of extremism on either side.)

The first chapter is titled, "Ham of God." She writes about winning a ham at the grocery store. "What on earth am I going to do with 10 pounds of salty pink eraser?" she asks. She runs into an old friend in the parking lot who is crying and at wit's end and with no money for gas or groceries. Of course, Anne hands over the ham. God works through people.

I also read an interesting interview in Allure magazine (while I was at the gym on the cross trainer) with Naomi Wolf about her new book. I have not read any of her other books about feminism, eating disorders and body image, the state of obstetrics and gynecology and motherhood or sexuality, nor do I intend to read her new book titled, The Treehouse : Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See. (At least not unless I can get it from the library and they don't have it yet. I checked.) But it was a great interview. Apparently she is finding some balance between writing about big important stuff and being involved in grass roots activism and just following her own personal passion to write poetry even if it has no measurable effect on the world.

You mean it might be ok to just make art and not worry about the other stuff?

I Wore the Orange Jacket!

Wow. We really had a fun time tonight at our "meet the artists" event.

I must thank each an every one of you for your comments on my wardrobe. As you can see below, I chose the orange jacket and felt faboo! I think Mel is right about the shoulders. They are a bit weird. Possibly that was the reason for the 95 cent price tag. And I made it to the bead store and bought three chunky beads that I strung on black leather and two coordinating beads which I turned into earrings.

Four Fabulous Frayed Edges!

Sarah debuted her "frayed edges" vest made with Kathy's hand dyed fabric, green fabric Kate brought us from New Mexico and my fabric beads. Kate bought her super funky shirt off the "retro chic" rack at Goodwill and is eager to hear Sonji's review of this choice. Kathy had a bunch of friends and family in attendance so we got to meet her delightful husband, Bruce! And that's me. Kate made those nametags for us... don't we look "professional?"

Frayed Feet

I love me some purple nail polish! Kate went with a little kitten heel. Oh la la!

I think we had between 30 and 40 people stop by. Including lots of kids which was delightful. I sold one of my fiber collages and after clearing up some confusion on the part of the owner about our selling arrangements, he wrote me a check. Yippee!