Tub Thumping Time

There's nothing like a sale to pick up one's spirits. "Atavistic Inclinations" will shortly be on it's way to a new home. I'm going to miss all those little intent faces. Thank goodness for digital photography.

Self Indulgence

Now that it's too late to buy anything online and hope to get it in time for gift giving, I found a few pennies left in my PP account and decided to get myself a treat. I went grubbing about in my Shopping bookmarks and found a link to a product that I have loved for years. Long ago these little clay pots were filled with fragrant cremes from Nadina's Cremes. The scents made me dizzy and the cremes were all-purpose wonderful. I have cherished this trio of empty pots for so long - it was time to bring some new ones into the fold filled with magic potion! The paperweight is a one-of-a-kind original by Josh Simpson, glass artist extraordinaire, who I just happened to have gone to high school with back when the Ark was launched . We re-connected briefly over the web over some old photos that I scanned and passed along to him and he most graciously sent this beautiful example of his art.

Holiday Stampede

Like everyone else in blogland I've been busy trying to do all the last minute stuff required for giving a civilized nod to the Holidays. They have never been my Holy days - my Mom used to live for Christmas - thanks to her, I have fond, old-fashioned childhood memories that I perpetuated in my own now grown children so I go through the motions every year. We give and receive generously and gratefully all year so this forced hoopla once a year bugs me as much as I will let it. Is there a country/culture in the whole world that doesn't DO Christmas? I guess that says more about the power of the United States of Advertising than the power of Christendom but there you have it. If I could find this place and go there (on someone else's American Express card) from Nov.1 until Jan. 2, I would be gone. Time to say goodbye to this postcard. I'm tossing it into the tide of Christmas mail and crossing my fingers that it reaches it's destination. Now I just want to go back to the WIP which is coming along like a sweet song. Some rough patches coming up and scary decisions to commit to but, all & all, a nasty throwaway is blooming magic and it feels good.

Sewing Again

Seems like a long time but it's going well. "Mopery..." is under the needle and making me very happy even though I really don't gravitate to reds, especially the bluish reds, but there you have it. Up close, there are many other little color things going on that I plan to accentuate with stitching. Machine stitching- so you know I haven't gone totally round the bend. I've added a Work In Progress link to the sidebar and created a non-Blogger place to keep better track of work in progress so I don't have to scramble all over for information once I decide to add the piece to the main gallery. Also (whispering) I don't trust this new Beta Blogger all that much. I must publicly thank Shoshana for featuring me in the sidebar of her blog with Senator Barak Obama and Knit Tits. What an honor! She also asked aloud about what folks do when they become creatively adrift or stale. Beside cleaning, I go digging about in my old digital files. I'm a fiendish collector of bizarre miscellaneous digitalia specializing in round things. Go figger. Here's a few I dug up:

Mopery in Progress

I have been having great e-converse with the Empress of Dirt (don't I hang out with the nicest crowd?), author of Fabric Dyeing 101 a wonderful and generous resource for folks who want to take a crack at dyeing their own fabric. I was reading through her take on the whole process and occasionally giving myself the old "Palm to Old Forehead, Sharply" gesture - the way you do when you know you are screwing up even as you do it...like ironing the wrong side of the fusible crap. Damn I hate that stuff but it's the only way I can think of to close up the birthing slot left when I pillowcase a backing...(who else but another art quilter would know what the hell I was talking about.) So I took a moment to tell her about Table Moppers, but she'll elaborate on that. Anyway, to finish off the discharging session I started last night, there was this one piece of fabric left on the kitchen table, one of nastiest Table Moppers from the last dyefest.I got rather caught up in the thing and before I knew it, there were seams and batting and backing and birthing and "3 to 5 for Mopery" was hatched, another whole-cloth monster just begging for lots of paint & stitching. It's just amazing what can happen when there's a clean place to work and you (mostly) know where all your stuff is. Just a lazy eyed jump from mopper to mopery, the title refers to a family joke around here. If one of the boys was sulking about and had the nerve to utter the phrase "I'm bored" they would be convicted of Mopery, something I had a nodding acquaintance with as a teenager. Somewhere on my permanent record it must say "suspected of mopery with intent to creep", not convicted mind you, just suspected.