family fun

My whole family in New York are big American Idol fans while in Georgia I pretty much watch it by myself so it was lots of fun to be with my Dad, Rob and Kitty last night watching the season finale to see David Cook snatch the crown. We were all happily taken by surprise too. I wonder if the producers realize the folks in my Dad's age group (and mine for that matter) have fond memories of the golden age of TV which had lots of musical variety programs. On the stitching front, I've started to build a couple new 12x12s with an eye toward donating them to the SAQA auction.Much depends on how attached I get to them. And I'd like to bring your attention to a new contibutor to the blogshere, Elizabeth Barton. I had the privilege of taking a few classes with her since I've moved to Georgia (she's almost a neighbor) and count her work and attitudes about fiber art as a major influence on my own developement as an artist. When I saw her one-woman show at the Gwinnett Fine Arts Center a few years back I remember saying to myself "This is what I want to be doing."

my New York nature

The black soil of my home state is why I despair of ever being any kind of gardener in Georgia. I used to fling seeds to the ground in the springtime and yell "good luck!" and, lo and behold, flowers and vegetables with hardly a drop of sweat. My family's home is on a pond that feeds into the New York City reservoir system so there are a lot of rules and regulations about what can happen around this little pond. I have read about the disappearance of amphibians all around the world to either or both climate change and pollution so I was happy to see this whopper lurking in the weeds. Over the next few days I will pay more attention as I walk the property and see if the numbers seem down from what I remember. I wonder if the fairly recent invasion of Canadian geese affected the frog folk. The pond (which used to be a lake) used to be ringed with giant willow trees. I spent a good portion of my childhood about 40 feet up in one of those trees. One by one they are dying. My dad says for the most part, from natural causes as it's been 50 or 60 years since they were planted. Even trees have a life span.

new pocket patch

I only brought a small bag of scraps with me. Just enough to redo the patches I sewed over some tired corporate logos over the pockets of my favorite denim shirts. There are a few ink stains that will get a similar treatment when I get a minute. I'm headed up to the nursing home to spend the day with my Mom. We will commandeer the day room, put the ball game on the big screen TV, have pizza and beer and I will use the big conference table to spread out the leftover scraps and maybe lay out a couple of 12x12s. We will see what Mom is up to. We took advantage of a gorgeous spring day rolling the grounds of the home, pillaged the lilacs, ate pastries (forgoing the pizza & beer) and then spent an couple hours in the community room where I constructed a little "hand bone" for Mom's arthritic hand. A good time was had by all.

working in strange places

The folks at the TSA in Atlanta enjoyed my refurbished carry on - it earned me a wand treatment to start my trip to NY. Do they train pilots on the job? My plane needed training wheels as we waddled, wallowed and bounced into White Plains Airport...I'm queasy just typing about it.

I love YouTube

Neil Diamond has been all over the place promoting his latest album. This morning Jimmy reminded me of this performance during the Grammy awards so many years ago. I was watching it, he was trying to sleep beside me. As Neil and Barbra started to sing I nudged him "Wake up...psstt. Lookit this.This is HOT...they are way more than just friends...pssst". You Tube is getting to be my memory keeper.