What we need & when we need it.

Is it my imagination or is a certain famous brand of crayons seriously lacking in pigment these days? Maybe it's the smoothness of the paper in my Picadilly but there are three or four layers of color here trying to reach for the kind of intensity I like best. Still, this one was enough to ring the bell and remind me that life is short and since when did ever I wait for perfect anything, especially when it comes to dyeing fabric. The first load is in the washer getting prepped with Dawn and tomorrow it will go into the soda ash solution for at least a 24 hour soak. Saturday, I'll go with the colors on hand, fresh mixed and if it's not warm enough I'll be bagging stuff into a black trash bag greenhouse. I almost forgot, "Hope Rising" is home safe from the exhibit and I have a page in this book.

scribble Wednesday

I keep dreaming about great floating drifts of fabric on the wind. Great flags of fiber flapping and snapping. Elizabeth has recently written about knowing one's own taste in art. Her posts always provoke me into paying attention to my thinking (or lack thereof) about my work and I traced my notion of motion series back to my very first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I came around a corner and was knocked flat by "The Horse Fair" by Rosa Bonheur. I almost hesitate to link to it because nothing you can see here on a computer can compare to the incredible reality of it. Over 16 feet wide, it's a river of motion and vigor.I might have been 12 years old at the time and I think I've been looking to capture the motion of life in my art ever since. It's a wonder I didn't become a sports photographer. In place of getting Zone A work into play, I'm lucky to have the time, materials and headspace for the Zone B stuff like crocheted scrap rugs and free pieced lap quilts in simple, MARKETABLE color schemes all set for some Art fair someplace in the future when folks are out stimulating the economy, buying local and appreciating slow cloth (well, slower than store bought) and hand made by artists.

still fiber going on

Yes, I'm still farting around with these little make believes but that's just how it's going to have to be for a while. I don't think I have a piece of hand dyed fabric that's big enough to wrap a grapefruit anymore. Until I can rev up the wet studio, I'll be composing with scraps...hey, just remembered that's how I got started with fiber in the first place. Some excitement - this piece that I made for an early Quilt Art Challenge has been requested for a Day of the Dead exhibit planned for later this year at the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science and Art in Scranton, PA Guess I better get busy and finish the edges somehow and get a sleeve on it. And tack it down a few places on the skull. Finish the thing for it's public appearance.

The Bicycle

Back before people were asking "What would Jesus do?" or "What would Buddha do?" I was asking my self "What would Jiminy Cricket do?". I am part of an entire subset of Baby Boomers who relied on the Disney insect for their common sense training and the development of a healthy sense of self-preservation. Even before it was trendy, I has a suspicion that my parents were clueless but I would listen carefully to the bug. That being said, here's my new-to-me beach cruiser and me with no beach. Still, I'll wear out the neighborhood and my knees on it now that we can step outside without drowning. Nifty, eh?

The song may be "I'm no Fool" but that was the card that fell from the deck in the full moonlight last night and I find it happily appropriate.

still Babu to me

Here he is, Dallas , the star of the show and serene in the love and protection of his family. Mom  and Dad  are doing fine.