Company's coming

I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and still Martha Stewart would stroke out! Poor thing. Colin's girlfriend, Raquel has arrived to stay with us a while until she can move into her new apartment. Her friend Lynn was kind enough to load all Raquel's worldly goods into her van and bring her to us from Gainseville, FL. So, how many of you can say you know someone who is an Aerialist, choreographer, dancer, clown, performer, producer, director, who is having fun and exploring the art of film. And in Lynn's spare time: See some of her current work here.

Visual Limbo

It seems like I wasted about two hours yesterday taking new pictures of a bunch of smaller pieces. Anyone who has taken digital photos of textile work has run into this problem. I hate it that I am beginning to doubt my Canon A95's capabilities - it's going on four years old now and gets used almost daily. The only difference in these two shots is that I turned the flash off for the second shot, with no other adjustments hoping (there's the key to my dilemma) that the morning light would be enough. I prefer natural light because any textures show up wonderfully but colors and values often suffer. So much depends on the weather, the time of day and other things all outside of my control. I guess the truth, as the human eye sees it, is somewhere in between. I'm going to try again later this overcast morning with more ambient light.

Hello Oakland. CA

My fascination with the geographical data that Sitemeter provides continues. Hello fan in Oakland, California. Do you have questions about my work? Fire away. In the meantime, I decided to clear off one whole design wall and get some of these small things ready to go off into the world. Some people have had better sales success when they got to the expense and trouble of having small things professionally framed. "Dirty Pool" 16"x16" Aside from not wanting to spend the money, I think frame and matting choices should be left to the person who will displaying the artwork. Any thoughts? I can't even make the "glass/no glass decision" either. They are textiles as in feely-ness in evidence. On another track, does anyone else have time travel dreams? The kind that take you way back to an completely insignificant time fully complemented with all the sense memories of that moment. Last night I remembered what Tangee lipstick smelled/tasted like. I think my mother let me buy it because it was supposed to let the wearer's lip color show through or something all appropriate for my first makeup. Unfortunately, on me it turned a pretty garish maroon if I didn't lick it all off in ten minutes. At 13 I still had no clue about such things. I used to keep it in a tiny clear plastic coin purse that had pastel colored straw flowers laminated into the plastic. Coins, lipstick and crayons. "Blues Flower" 8"x10"

Ear Candy

No pictures but lots of music. I just finished (but I'll never be really finished) adding a music gizmo to my sidebar. Dredging memory and finding music is highly addicting. I did the right thing and it won't start playing unless you tell it to by clicking on the arrow. There's nothing worse than someone else's idea of music blaring out at you unsuspected - I have slapped my monitor in the past. My list would be even more eclectic than it is - the search engine at Playlist.com has it's limitations but so far I'm loving it.

Looking for trouble.

The gold strip along the top of the black box is gone replaced by a dark red piece that doesn't show here. I want to hand stitch this badly - needle and thread goes through it all like butter but the series calls for machine stitching and I doubled the batting so the stitches will really furrow into the damask and show. When I do start stitching, I'm not going to want to stop until it's finished so I can't really start until Saturday. Other pieces are building on the opposite design wall to keep hasty mitts off this one.

new WIP at last

I can hear that music in my head "At last...." These two pieces of fabric have been nagging me for action since I made them over a month ago. It seems like all the fiddling around I've done since then has led me back to them. This new piece has been hatching in me head since then so it was no surprise that it's fallen together on the design wall so smoothly. Now I should let it hang there a few days to ripen and tell. I should have put the camera on the tripod but I'd be tripping over it ..

This one is about 60"x42"

old things become new

This was one of my first attempts at dye printing. A little fore thought would have gone a long way but it was a messy undertaking (the way I did it) and I remember feeling an urgency as if the images I was transferring with the sponge block were evaporating before I could transfer them to the cloth. I used too much alginate and as a result the colors were so pale that I over painted almost everything with and acrylic wash and then some metallics. This morning, I cut it up into the elements with the idea that I can rearrange them. For the moment, I did this instead:

warm up continued.

"Frida Brings Home the Bacon" Any of you who are addicted to watching the barn owl cams will appreciate this one. After the mayhem and cannibalism of last season I only peek in from time to time. Still, nature's ongoing drama is compelling. I've jumped up to a 12"x12" format playing with shapes and space. Still very aware that the details and patterns of the much of the fabric that I have just made will not translate or work for much larger pieces. I might have to (gasp) make some more fabric with just big stuff in mind but the trouble is, in the past those pieces have become whole cloth pieces as I am unable to break down the dye painted design elements. Start with smaller pieces of fabric?

Warm up pitches.

Once again, Jude at Spirit Cloth leads the way with something charming and thoughtful. I sat at the machine for the first time in weeks last night and then spent nine innings hand stitching this tidbit. Through Jude's post I tracked back to the latest at the Ragged Cloth Cafe which has given us much to think about - that which appeals to us visually is an evolutionary response to what's good for us. What I want to know is,what does this say about people like myself who have never had a single qualm about critters of any stripe. Did our ancestors survive because we ate better? Did our ancestors come from another planet?

Wrapping up the dyefest is this little piece that I pleated and machine stitched. Did I not recently swear that I would never do this again? How quickly we forget.

the naughty bits

Lest anyone thought I lost my tiny mind selling off all the fabrics I've been working on, here's a shot of the private stash - the stuff I'm keeping for my own work which I am itching to get on with. This one makes me laugh just to look at it. For now, I'm going to squirrel it away so nothing rash occurs. It needs to stay in one piece but that blue is so delicious looking.

Avalanche of Fabric

I've just finished shooting and posting 16 new pieces of fabric to Like Hotcakes. Making them was a whole lot more fun and there's a lot more to do. Take a look -> Of course I kept as least as much for my own stash. I'll post the pictures of that tasty stuff as they come into the palette for projects. It's wonderful to take a piece off the line, iron it and start daydreaming about how it will work with X, Y or Z who are waiting to get on with the work. I was rooting around in boxes in the ex- studio and found another damask tablecloth that had been dyed by some lunatic. It called out for soy wax and overdyeing so that's been added to the morning agenda.

Mudcats final

For the moment, this series of raw edge, hand stitched pieces has run it's course. Now I have to make myself finish them so they don't languish in UFO land. Too much fun to waste. I think I'm going to cover a large(30"x30") pillow with this one. Eeww, actually sewing? I have a ton of administrative work to get through; pieces to ship, new fabrics to post for sale, entries to finish and mail, and that power point presentation looming...all with Spring fever lulling me senseless. Yesterday afternoon I sat outside on the deck painting fabric and listening to the frogs and owls telling tales - a perfect day.

Rust Never Sleeps

Lately, neither do I for any extended period of time. You would think I would need a good night's sleep after yesterday. After I finished drying and folding all the new fabric, I decided it would be a sin to waste the beautiful weather ironing.Instead, I got busy with the annual Cleaning of the Pool, easily on a par with the Cleaning of the Aegean Stables.

This year I beat the tree frogs to their egglaying but they were not too busy to hang around on the walls of the pool kibbitzing as I worked. In the foreground, Jim's cast iron frying pans are hard at work rusting a couple of pieces of fabric that got left behind. The studio is in chaos with piles of fabric everywhere waiting to be worked on. Tomorrow.

Chag Sameach - Happy Passover !