setback

Ugh. Early tuesday morning I decided the trash cans weren't tidy up to the curb as I was leaving for work. I got out of the car, planted my feet and grabbed hold of one can fully intending to have it do my bidding with one pull only to discover that the can weighed more than I did (we missed the trash pickup last week) and I felt my right elbow joint and shoulder momentarily disassemble and then realign (mostly) themselves. Pain bloomed and I realized that I HAD DONE MYSELF AN INJURY! *&$!@&** *#@!* and more along those lines. Pirates woulda blushed. So I got back into the car and limped off to the office with my right fist curled into an involuntary ball. I have new wrinkles between my eyebrows from going "OW" every 30 or 40 seconds. The fingers work okay but the arm just refuses to answer the helm to varying degrees depending on what I ask of it. Brushing my hair is quite an adventure as were other personal care issues. I almost choked myself with the toothbrush. Left handed eating slows things down considerable - not bad to consider. Rest, Ice, Drugs, more ice, more drugs and it gets better each day. Thank goodness I won't have to pitch in the playoffs (sniff sniff). I can't crochet but I can paint. Tomorrow will see what happens at the sewing machine.

WIP

Summer's End?

In New York summers end was the first day you got up and smelled Fall. Summer's end is a little sneakier here in GA. I had the feeling that yesterday may have been my last pool day for the season - the temperature is supposed to drop and skies cloud over for the rest of this week. Indian Summer? Please.

Stamping? @ the L'ville Frankenstein Dyeworx

Smells like fall today as I use up the last of the 400M from Testfabric. These sponges were packing from some electronic gadget. Makes me wonder just how much dye paste made it onto the fabric. You can see in this next picture that a lot of the vibrancy of these pieces faded away as they dried. That reminds me, I'm going to go upstairs right now and "wet" one of them with acrylic medium to see if the color depth comes back.

Handworking

This piece is machine constructed and quilted, then painted with acrylics and hand quilted. I keep a glass fishbowl on my work table where I hoard exceptional scraps. Every once in a while I will dump the bowl out and puzzle the bits and pieces together. Both of these pieces, each about 10"x10" come from the bowl. My hands have been killing me lately. Of course my solution to that it work 'em harder - and take OTC drugs. Most of the trouble has been brought on by crocheting that recycled silk thread and a lot more than usual keyboarding. DragonSpeak is beginning to look like a worthwhile investment.

Sidetracked on a Sidetrip

I'm rather proud of this little departure. My son Colin makes music with the computer. That's his pseudonym, Izo - his graffiti, my computer alteration of same and the website I built for the whole thing.

An Open Letter to My Bedbugs

Please don't leak when you read this. Pepsi out the nose really smarts!

Last minute art

Jimmy will be home tomorrow for the first time since the beginning of July (he's working in NJ) and I made all sorts of wild promises of lasagna and such. I did the shopping for it this morning but I just had to take a break and make use of this gorgeous day - the first we've had in a week of dreary, rainy weather. The alginate had gotten pretty gloppy in the fridge so I loosened it up with urea water per something I read in Ann Johnston's "Color By Design". Now to keep my mitts off of these pieces until they just dry up on their own - then I'll run a wash load of jeans, heh heh heh. Email brought me good news "Passing Through" was juried into Art Quilts XI: Stages, Cycles & Fits. The snail mail produced my slides created from digital images by G. Armour Van Horn - Stellar service!

UFOs

When I first pulled this one out of the washer I thought "screwed this one up good" and I flung it in the dryer with the rest of the laundry. I have a unique laundry system here. I'll run it through the washer and the dryer but that's were my involvement usually ends, so we have baskets and baskets of laundry all over the upstairs (at least). It's a good day when 5 out of 6 of those baskets are full of Clean things and a cat. This was in one of them and now it's up on the design wall making demands. It's going to need something special, something cohesive and for now I'm just pondering it.

More results

Jan Thompson, my dye partner, came up with some equally exciting results. These pieces are about 42 inches square.

New Hand Dyes

A great dye in the dye-patch. We mixed up a batch of alginate to carry the dye this time and did a bunch of experiments - painting directly onto the fabric and then laying the dye glop down on the vinyl table cover and dropping the fabric down on the paint. Some very strange stuff that will be nagging me from the stash shortly. "Use me, use me". I need to finish a few things before I start anything new.

Hurdles

Entering shows feels like timed trials with hurdles. Hoops of fire sometimes. If it weren't for digital cameras and electronic entries my work might never be seen anywhere. Last night I finally completed all the necessaries around entering three recent pieces in Art Quilts XI: Stages, Cycles & Fits. It's interesting that this show called for "Works that illustrate arrival at a new point in life, whether for better or worse. Pieces that fall together from a fit of passion and evolution." Evolution being inevitable, these new things represent three distinct directions for me. Sunny Jim is a nod to my quilters roots - making blankets out of whatever is a hand, most often stuff that other quilters would turn their noses up at all the while keeping my own storytelling style. Although these quilts are intended to be used, abused, washed and whatever, I got carried away with this one and put in a lot of hours hand quilting it. THAT won't happen again anytime soon. Just the thought of handquilting the other tops in this series feels like a sentence. They will go under big J's needle soon. Passing Through and Atavistic Inclinations both illustrate my delight and interest in finding out what comes of discharging my hand dyes. Deconstructing the color. That circular, cellular design element throws back to something deep and elemental because when I doodle, it's very often "cells". I'm keeping the sly cartoon thing going too - I like a good grin and shudder with my art from time to time. Swooning over beautiful color and design over and over is boring. We'll see what the jury thinks.

Foot Trouble

Thanks to everyone from around the world who responded to my hissy fit - I have a whole slew of fallback options now including a Viking darning foot and the new one from the Janome 6600. In the meantime, I remembered that just before I retired my 30 year old Kenmore, I bought it a gadget. It took a bit of rooting around in the studio but I found it and it turns out that the high shank BigFoot fits the Janome 6500 perfectly. They are even color co-ordinated. Huzzah, the weekend is saved. My Goodman is eternally grateful that I am so easily amused. I miss you darlin'.

ARRRRRGH!!! &*&#$!$)@*

That's "Pirate" for what you say when you are steaming along at a good clip quilting a piece that's turning out nicely and the darned FM foot breaks in half!! I KNEW that effing thing wasn't long for this world! It's had a funny (bad funny) looking crack in it from day one. Here it is day 600 and something and it implodes on me. ARRRRGHRGHRH!! I repeat. Sent an urgent email to a local shop reported to be a Janome dealer with fingers crossed that they have a spare hanging around just waiting to be sold at a scalpers price to a desperado like me. This has to be the Karmic payoff for keeping a second presser foot (that probably belonged to the dealer ) that was in the box when I opened it. Does anyone know of a different free motion foot - preferably with a closed ring and METAL - that works on the Janome 6500?

Candy Bowl Panic

Thanks to DebR for a clue. Debra said... Ya know I really love this one, and I thought fingers instead of dildos till you wrote that. So maybe this "could" be Candy Bowl.. as it sure looks like people trying to get those last few M&Ms... 10:39 AM "Candy Bowl Panic" is under the needle right now.

Another New Bad Habit

Someone (reveal yourself here) recently talked about expanding their blog reading away from strictly artquilt blogs. That set me on a quest. Clicking on the little "Next Blog" button can be akin to suffering a black-out drunk. You sit a the computer, start clicking and the next thing you know, six hours have gone by, there's drool on your chin and you've the beginnings of a nasty bladder infection. Well, OK, it hasn't gotten that bad - I do have a life even thought the ants in my kitchen don't think I have anything else to do all day but kill them one by one. Will someone please pass the word that I did all the dishes and wiped all the countertops and locked all available food up in plastic tombs!! Back to blog surfing. There is an incredible amount of wretched drek out there but, without benefit of search results I stumbles across this hilarity. I have to write and see if they'll let me play even though I am a complete knitting failure. I can crochet like crazy. Very crazy.

Searching for a title

Still wondering about a good name for this one. Every time I dwell on it I start to get the grins. It looks like a party to me.
The YLI variegated cotton machine quilting thread I ordered from Red Rock Threads came yesterday and I am loving stitching this one. Big J is co-operating nicely even when I switch to metallic threads.

New fabric, New Technique

Nothing else gets me out of bed faster on a Saturday morning than hand dyed fabric waiting to be washed out! This is a piece of the 400M pfd I just got from Testfabric and I loved it before I even put the dye on it. Delicate yet strong. We had some dye leftover from over three weeks ago that I stashed in the little beer fridge out on my deck. (It is SO NASTY in there - I put a root beer in the freeze compartment by mistake and it exploded). I wanted to paint directly on the fabric with the dye so I gave it a quick dip in soda ash solution and spread it out on plastic covered picnic table. I read the directions on the alginate thickener but of course, I didn't believe them when they said "a little goes a long way". Instantly I had two pots of clumpy cream of wheat. Dumped the now room temperature dyes in and blended them in as best I could with a whisk which I bent. Gave up on getting smooth thickened dyes to use brushes with and dived right in to grab up handfuls of dye glop and finger/hand paint. It looked like a violent crime scene when I was finished. Covered it over with a sheet of light plastic that barely touched it just to keep the cats off it. It was tough to hand wash the clumps of dye/alginate out but I didn't want to put that stuff through my aging washing machine. Cool results I'm thinking.

Day Off

Laundy? Cleaning? Cooking? You must be joking! I spent the morning taking new pictures of my Ornamental Innards series so I could get them posted up on my Etsy store and see if the buying public is ready to do a brisk business in faux guts. And now that I have finally gotten the pool pump working properly and the chemistry straightened out in My Blue Heaven, Aliens have come to roost here. I held extensive interviews with them throughout the morning and have determined that they are here on vacation with benign intentions and have welcomed them on behalf of the Earth. Somebody has to be nice. I wonder if they like chili?

New on the design wall

I've been doodling and dreaming with this group of fabrics since I got back from NY. So much so that they talked me into re-washing, drying and ironing them today as a group. What's up with that? So far they are hanging quiet on the design wall (the pale blue of which is really starting to aggravate me) but it's not quite stone quiet. There's a low hum happening. Yes, Debra, that is my voice muttering about keeping the skull blinking and camera rolling all at the same time. I sound like a bratty kid. The moment I clicked on Publish Post, this cold bugger leaped under the desk onto my foot and then up into the bookcase with Voodoo in hot pursuit. Note the dust bunnys stuck to his chin. He was released unharmed, but I suspect he has a deal with the catz that they bring him in over and over again without any wear and tear.