Tuesday, September 30, 2014

feels like Sunday


It's amazing just how vulnerable I am to external influences like the weather and the new big one - baby love.

It's a super perfect late summer day.  I got to put in a hot mile at the park and came back with some very strong revisions for the novel and a better wrap up. Oh! the Violence!

There was food shopping, housework, time  for a nap even !! There is still an eight hour shift coming up for the day job, but now that my commitment to watching Charlie has doubled (due to another family member's inability to participate) days like this one become even more precious.
Tomorrow Charlie and I will be discovering Miles Davis and I wouldn't have it any other way. The job is too important!



Friday, September 26, 2014

details, details

A slew of details and one still cannot perceive the whole.

The plan was a couple of quick and dirty macro shots of Karma I.

Well, you get what you pay for. If the light permits tomorrow, I'm going to work at getting some better pictures of these.

Life has been upended and my "free" time has been cut in half.  I've always done my best work under the gun, so what the hell. Bring it on.


Wednesday, September 24, 2014

more changes

No matter which way the Wheel of Fortune throws you, it's impossible to try and change it, so you might as well try to live with it. If a crisis seems inevitable, recall that in every crisis lies opportunity. When you've been swept in a new direction, know that every path leads somewhere, even if you don't know where it is. 

When times are bad, or when times are good, always keep in mind that they won't last forever. Such events are just out of your control, and if you can accept that then the ride gets a lot easier. If you struggle against the Wheel it will crush you. So roll along with it!  (James Rioux)

No kidding!  



Look. The angels are all reading a book!                              

Friday, September 19, 2014

spoiled (not him, me)

Yep. This it how it went today and I can expect there will be many more days like this  when nothing else will do but loving arms.

He zonked out because we spent the morning finding out what kind of music he likes and he has great taste.
He likes everything from  Springsteen to Chopin with a lot of 50's era jazz.



This one got looped..Ashokan Farewell, by Jay Ungar performed by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra



Thursday, September 18, 2014

A sea change

I should probably bite my tongue for saying so, but my grandson looks like he's going to be an easy keeper.

It's my own time management that's going to need some re-adjustment. For some time now I've been luxuriating in having all the time I needed to do most of the things I wanted to. That time has just been cut in half, but I'll just find a different way of getting things done. I've always done better under the gun.

I'm going to stock the river basket with this and hang a few more stars in the sky.

Charlie,  gives a master class in power-napping and I was right there with him and still got a few pages of notes typed up and read for a while.

I know this easy-to-please and portable phase of babyhood is brief so I'm going to take full advantage.


It was cloudy here so I missed the last supermoon. Here's my version. The moon flower bloom lasts about twenty hours. I stood inches from this one and stoned my self breathing in it's fragrance until I was dizzy.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

day one

Feels like the first day of school! It was still dark out when I started the car and the sun was only just thinking about rising as I parked at Jake & Missy's house. Charlie has grown and changed since I saw him last.  It feels good to be needed for this important job.

Shhh..he's sleeping. I have studying to do.

ps . I didn't think to do it last night, but as soon as I get the chance, I'm going to inventory and repack the river basket.  Stitching seems right again.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Boro & Lavender

Sounds like a song writing team.

I just can't bear to let this old nightie go to the rag bin so I took it outside to the deck this afternoon and cobbled it back together with scraps of this and that while listening to the ball game on the radio. It was hard to tell it was September.

I'm starting to bring the plants inside,  but I think I'll have to get wheels for this pot of lavender; it's gone shrub on me over the summer.

hand magic




Since my website had its issues last week, I decided to migrate it over here to Blogger.  Let's hope the old name "Like Hotcakes" is prophetic.

That was the easy part. The hard part will be updating the gallery with work newer than 2008. You read right. 2008. So, I have to go back in the archives and find out what I was doing when and hope that I documented stuff properly. It feels like a rainy day task. Like a week of rainy days.


About the magic hand - there have been questions. Once upon a time I had a job that involved spending eight hours a night staring at unchanging data flowing through several monitors.. A sort of "fire watch in Antartica " kind of job.
 I brought in some unauthorized software and taught myself a lot of things in those long hours. Animated GIFS seemed like magic until you learned the tricks.

Friday, September 12, 2014

the transistion


The group show "Fierce Fibers" opened last night at the Art Place in Marietta, GA.  It looks terrific from what I have seen. My time was totally co-opted yesterday and the Honda still down for the count, so I was not able to attend.

Between scheduled obligations, I was able to squeeze in one more day of water time, although I was getting pretty cold in short order. And notice that advancing tinge of green as the algae gets a toehold.  Today started out looking like crap all day, but the sun is baking down.  I may put a toe or two in again.    

 

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

laundry








This was supposed to be "Modern Quilt with Hummingbirds" but they were faster than the camera.

Monday, September 08, 2014

the ether and the real world

just breathe with it
There's nothing like a few real world issues to get me to stop fussing about nonsense that goes on here, in the ether.

Sometime over the weekend, nefarious individuals did something invasive and potentially infectious to my website so my host, Dreamhost, disabled it until I could pick the cooties out of the code, which I was able to do. Glad they had my back.

The trouble is, something about the existing structure was changed by the host in this effort and direct access to the old site no longer works.  Talk about an omen!

I taught myself hand coding back when the internet was invented and pretty much finished my education on the subject when I got to where I wanted the site to be. Since then it's been 'patch this' and 'link that' and the code looks like baby swiss.

Times have changed and I'm pretty certain I'm not going to be able to fix it this time. I barely understood the instructions from the techs at DH. A new approach with some new technology is called for and because I have neither the patience or inclination to expand that particular set of gray cells, I'm going to cheat and go the WYSIWYG route.

Is anyone  happy with their super user friendly, build your own thing, website and care to make a recommendation? I took a look at Weebly once and was mowed over at too many options. Simple and Clean are going to be my watchwords here. Oh, and don't forget Free.

Oh! and those real world concerns? The roof is leaking.

Thursday, September 04, 2014

Season's end

It rained most of yesterday afternoon and into the night. The sun joked with me for a few minutes after I got in  and found the water temperature still bearable. The storm cleanup was minimal thanks to Colin's fine leaf dipping work.

I hate to think that this might be the last swim, but unless we get some sun soon,  it may be back to the public pool, a very different vibe but not to be sneered at come November.  I'm not as hardy as I was when the Mass. and RI coastal waters were my playground.

This piece of dyed and discharged damask was lying around looking forlorn, so I took it out to play.  It looked like whale shark skin under the water...something I did in cloth long ago.

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

the karma


This is one of the pieces that I'll be taking to the installation next Tuesday and I have decided that I want to change the orientation ninety degrees to the right of what you see here.

I'll be picking off the sleeve, resizing it and putting back on ..Real needlework.


Monday, September 01, 2014

Going to a hangin'

There is a show coming up next week and yesterday I scurried around looking for a few specific pieces.

They were right where I left them, cocooned in the closet with another dozen or so pieces that have not seen the light of day since they were born. Some pretty impressive stuff in that closet.  I wish I could find the feel for it all, but it escapes me still..

I'm going to have to look into different ways of getting this stuff out into the public eye.

If you live in the Metro ATL area, you should come by and see us in the flesh.