Tampa, Florida

Tampa is a "foot friendly" town. There is a system of trolley cars that get you all over the downtown area and points beyond. The line I need to get from my hotel to the Convention center is 25 cents! I wonder how something like this would work in Atlanta. We had dinner at the Columbia last night. On the way there the trolley was delayed by an accident on the line (cars challenge trolley cars and the trolleys bellow back and win) so my party all got off and hot footed it through the heat and humidity to make the 7pm reservation. My hip was aching so I opted to "wait & see" and possibly be there in time for dessert. After a few minutes the motorman got a signal to proceed a few blocks to the next station where an air-conditioned SUV was waiting to drive me directly to the restaurant. Friendly town! I had forgotten how much I like Sangria. After the wonderful fresh bread and appetizers I didn't really have room for dinner.

Hello Jelly

Colin is contemplated by a jellyfish at the Georgia Aquarium.

travelling

Tomorrow I leave early for Tampa Bay, Florida to spend a week working in the temporary HGA office that we will set up at the Tampa Convention Center serving all the people who are coming to Convergence '08 Tampa Bay - Textures in the Tropics I have not packed, not even done laundry and what is on my mind? What hand work to bring, as if I will have any time to work on anything. Then I fondly remember dragging this one around with me at the last Convergence in Grand Rapids and working on it mostly in the evenings when I could not fall asleep despite being exhausted. You know what exhausts me most? Being polite and diplomatic when the real me wants to grab someone, shake the crap out of them and lecture them at length on their incredible stupidity, disgusting self-involvement and low rate their mamas for good measure. Self restraint is tiring but it's integral to my job. I think my next job will be taking care of pigs or chickens. No emotional politics involved at all. Feed 'em, clean 'em, kill 'em, eat 'em. So here are some snippets of a piece that I will miss working on - it's right at that place where the free motion quilting becomes fleshing out the details of the places I want the eye to rest and absorb. Laying out the secret codes and signage. The jungle shot is looking out past the pool.It's been steamy here in Georgia. I killed the ivy on the tree looming closest to the pool on the advice of an arborist who was consulting for my next door neighbor. Now I spend my time dipping crisp brown leaves out of the pool instead of the steady rain of bugs.

what's afoot

This is the third in the Environmental Apocalypse series. No titles yet but lots about forgotten highways. America's love affair with the open road is in for rude awakening. Finally, the Three Blind Owlets can see! This one is a companion piece to "Freida Brings Home the Bacon" I've been following this Barn Owl family on a web cam from CA , not quite obsessively this year. Still, last night I dreamed this crew was experimenting with cigar smoking.

Clown College Graduation Day

(addendum up frontum - wiser birds that I have advised that I keep this one under my hat for a while. Since I don't plan on finishing it until some sanity returns, that's fairly easy to accomplish.) At least this one has a name. This has to come first under the "What the HELL was I Thinking" chapter.It's so big I can't even get a proper picture of it unless I stand on the picnic table and that's not likely to happen. All this because I liked the way two pieces of fabric looked snuggles together. Sheesh. I have to calm myself and remember that I had the same frustration and trepidations while I was making this piece which turned out well enough although I still wonder which me made it. They were both started with the same technique of making a discharged monoprint followed by lots of raw edge applique and hours and hours of painting to bring some sort of cohesion to the design. Talk about being seduced by details (and being blinded to the very messy whole!) -> I had better put this one away before it gets made into a doggie blanket.

blankets in Hell?

I must be nuts to be working on this one right now. It's so big I have to nearly wear it to machine stitch it and I keep having to move away from sweaty patches. Our air conditioning system is old and inadequate for this early heat wave so by 5 in the afternoon we just turn it off and open the house up to fans. With the rising costs of utilities, living without AC will be something we just have to get used to .

Highway Series

It feels good to have come to a conclusion about whether or not to enter Quilt National '09. The idea of taking three recent pieces out of existence (for all intents and purposes) for an extended period of time on the slim chance of getting accepted just grated on my last nerve. Simply deciding which three was giving me fits. Now that bit of anxiety is behind me and it feels good. There's plenty more in the pipe. I love working with these vintage damasks - bringing them from pale storage into blazing color with the dyes and then using them in ways the makers never imagined. Even though I'm not hand stitching these pieces I still feel like I'm working in the slow cloth lane by re-purposing the old cloth. These are both 40+ inches wide and ?? long. I suppose I'll finish #2 tomorrow and put a tape measure to them and get some decent photos while I think through what I want to name them. (I wonder if anyone noticed that I flipped this one on it's head since it was first posted? When I finished the stitching today I plodded over to the design wall and accidentally hung it upside down. What a happy mistake.)

history

Today is my 31st wedding anniversary and while I was rummaging around for a different wedding photo I came across this gem. Jake turned 23 on Monday so you get the idea of how long it's been since my first heady sip of success. That blue ribbon was from the first night of judging at the Putnam County Fair - by the last night I had two more blues and the Gold Overall in the Adult Needlework Division. There were some pretty pissed off ladies in the local guild, to which I did not belong. This was my second and last traditional quilt.

a frenzy of productivity

I've had an epiphany of sorts recently having much to do with the little profile description to the left. No quite one of those "what I want to be when I grow up" moments but truly a meditation on what is important to me, why and what to do about it. More as things ripen. I was rooting around in the stash for inspiration and came across two large pieces that somehow escaped my attention in the middle of Mobscene series. No matter where I set up shop the union inspector finds me and has something to say about my process. The piece Jinx is 'inspecting" is the fifth in the latest series, environmental apocolypse. My deck garden is getting lush. The second pot from the left is a gardenia bush that's all covered in buds about to bloom. Off camera to the left are two larger pots with pepper and tomato plants all in bloom. Store bought dirt in all the pots, of course. I have basil, catnip and lavender - all of life's essentials. This was another piece made back to mid '06. I'm sure I put it away because I had no idea where to find a 44"x80" piece of fabric to back it up. Imagine my amazement when a piece literally fell off the shelf this morning. All three pieces are backed, batted, pinned to death and waiting for stitching.

H2H finished

Here's a detail shot for now. I'm beginning to think about which pieces I want to enter in QN09 and closer scrutiny of the rules has me concerned: "Any work that has appeared after September 1, 2006, on an internet site other than your own." This wording does NOT differentiate between the website on the domain that I own and this little rent-free space on the web that I borrow from Blogger. I'm emailing the rulemakers about it and until I get clarification on this point, I'm not going to post any full pictures of work here, which sucks almost to the point where I might say "screw it" and do it anyway. More on this as I find out.

back in the studio

I fear the Kozmik Awareness is onto the fact that I haven't had a productive day in the studio in, oh, maybe a month, if you count all the time I spent in the Dyeworx diddling vintage damasks. The fourth piece in my environmental apocalypse series has been hanging on the design wall collecting cobwebs even longer so today I took it down, gave it a tumble in the dryer and got down to business finding and fitting an appropriate backing and committing to machine stitching. The preponderance of damask in this one is making for some wonkiness but it will work out as I even out the coverage. I've always been sucked in by that acid/poison green too, MarieZ. Jinx approves my FMQ technique but complains bitterly about the pins. This shot of "Clubbin'" was my goodbye before shipping it off to the Rose Gallery in Daytona. Does anyone else suffer from premature potential sales-separation anxiety? What if I never see it again in person? Oh Damn Well. Here it is May and I have only entered one juried opportunity so far this year. Note to self - get busy.

Home

I left NY late Friday afternoon and despite it being the starting gate of a holiday travel weekend, the whole trip went without a hitch. The flight was listed as "oversold" so I volunteered to take a bump but at the very last moment before boarding they told me there were two no-shows so all went as scheduled. Voodoo was particularly happy to see me because I cut big chunks catnip out of my potted herb garden when I noticed it trying to overwhelm the lavender and basil. Along horticultural lines, I found this four leaf clover in a neighbors yard up in NY while I was taking the cordless phone out to Rob who was cutting the grass across the street. It turned out to be lucky for him - a Sears technician gave him information over the phone that saved the cost of a house call and parts for one of his lawn tractors. Here is Rob, getting ready to ride his motorcycle to South Carolina for much needed and well deserved mini-vacation.

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."