Daphne odora 'Aureo-marginata'

The Daphne is in bloom. Actually, the first blossoms opened on Saturday. But today was the first time that I was knocked out by the perfume. I probably shouldn't be blogging about this plant--it might be bad karma. I've had such good luck with it. It graces the garden by my front door and the fragrance is intoxicating. My goal has been to have fragrance year-round in this garden. I'm still working on it. 

New Year's Walk -- Mimosa

Probably Acacia baileyana, this is one of the first blooms of the New Year. My neighbor called this mimosa. I love that name. I moved to California from the midwest, after a short stint in Boston, and this was a discovery for me. The bright, cheerful, fuzzy-looking balls were kind of magical. The foliage is a feathery, finely cut blue-grey. The blossoms are very fragrant and when we first moved here I would cut big bunches and bring it into the house. It seeds out and some find this plant weedy. It might be the California answer to Forsythia, which is not widely grown. 

The New Year's Walk

Rick and I took the New Year’s walk early to beat the rain forecast for today. Growing up at 96th and Madison in New York, Rick and his dad and brother would traditionally take a walk around a body of water on New Year’s day. The first walk was in 1954 in Central Park. He never misses--rain, snow, etc. I joined in on the tradition in 1976, in Berkeley, to and around Lake Temescal. Our traditional walk in Orinda is from our house to Lake Cascade, around and back.

We are bracing for the next storm to hit Northern California. Is this the Pineapple Express? The forecasters have been saying that the storms are stacked up all the way to the Philippines . When we went on our walk it was 54 degrees and the low last night wasn’t much colder. We awoke Saturday morning to water in our kitchen from a flooded patio from very heavy rains Friday night and Saturday morning. My rain gauge was full at 5-1/2". We were lucky. No power-outs. But the soil is saturated and the next storm is supposed to move through very quickly.

Cyclamen

Florist cyclamen can be planted out in my Sunset Zone 16 garden. What a good idea to protect the beautiful heart-shaped leaves from slugs. Too bad I didn't! The leaves alone make the plant a worthy object in the garden but I love the furled buds. I really should plan to plant some of the choice species. The small ones are so charming in my friend Janine's garden. C. cilium is said to be fragrant as is C. purpurescens. I think C. coum is available and C. hederifolium is said to be easy.

What was I thinking?

So, I celebrated my 57th birthday on December 24th and I got braces on my teeth on December 29th. Aside from the initial feeling that he had erroneously installed barbed-wire in my mouth and the fact that it is taking me 30 minutes to floss, all is well. Was it the ortho who said, "you look much younger" (yeah, like a teenager!)? I only have about 728 days to go, but who’s counting? Actually, this is something that I’ve wanted to do for years (and I wish now, that I would have just done it). I’m still a little anxious because two perfectly good teeth have to go but that’s next month. Happy New Year!

How can it be November already?

I seem to remember a time when I was always waiting for something special in the way distant future. Hmmm...that's a thought..

No time for thoughts. I don't know how those Artful Quilters do it. Blog, read blogs, make quilts, enter competitions, take care of themselves, take care of their families...

I have been occupied. I have a picture for the Simple Still Life and hope I haven't been drummed out of the group.

Surrender to the Dye: The Experiment Begins

That’s quoting Mrs. Mel. So I have just finished ironing my first batch. I read somewhere that painting fabric should be process-oriented, not product-oriented and I assumed that dyeing would be the same. This advice went something like this: don’t work with a specific project in mind, just have fun. Well, I did that, sort of. Cynthia Corbin’s supply list recommended the following for fabrics

Solids, mottled, hand dyes, "solid-ish" fabrics 1/2 yard to 1yard pieces; good range of colors; range of values dark to light (have some very light and some very dark).

Well, I don’t do hand-dyes. And I am way over my fabric budget. And hand-dyes are so precious. So I thought this was the perfect time to experiment.

I had been accumulating supplies and was typically indecisive about what fabric to use. The Kona turned out to be kind of "flabby" and I think I like the Pimatex the best. I now read in the Dharma catalog that the Kona is 60 x 60 ( 4.4 oz / sq. yd) and the Pimatex is 133 x 78 (3.7 oz/sq yd). Pimatex might be manufactured by Kaufman but I’m not sure. I have a small amount of something called Hoffman PFD that I will also try for my next experiment.

I dyed small pieces of silk (Habotai 8mm) in each batch and almost swooned over the pieces before they had dried but they are much better wet than dry. I’m still glad I tried this.

I was hoping for a mottled appearance so after adding the dye solution to the fabric, and scrunching the fabric around, I poured some extra solution into the plastic tubs and it pooled at the bottom. That was good. The "purple" sample is the most mottled. There are issues with how the red dye dissolved. I still love everything.

I ended up with 22 fat quarters and I’m thrilled with my results and can’t wait to play again. I think dyeing could be my next addiction. I don’t know how anyone could be depressed using yellow dyes.

I'm Dyeing

I’ve been dyeing. Everyone was getting in on the fun and I’ve succumbed. I’m having a blast. I’ve used the Lazy Dyer methods of Mrs. Mel . I’m a scientific sort so I’ve been trying this out on a small scale, with different PFD fabrics, keeping a log of what I’ve tried. The hardest bit is the record keeping.

I made my first trip to the shrine, Dharma Trading. I bought some of their Pimatex PFD cotton. I also gave myself permission to buy their Habotai 8mm silk, just for fun. I have no use for silk but it was irresistible and it was for science. I can buy Kona PFD at my job as that is what they carry and I used that too.

It feels so legitimate to be dyeing my own. What’s with that? Is it more art-like? Is it the hand-dyed thing? I still love commercial fabrics, honest.

I’m taking a class with Cynthia Corbin tomorrow. She is the speaker at EBHQ on Monday night. The class on Saturday is Abstract Forms – Getting It Together.

I hope to have some pictures to post on Sunday.

Rejection!

The e-mail came. 850 submissions. 225 acceptances. Kelp was not accepted. I am patting myself on the back for having the courage to submit a quilt, an art quilt. I had made a commitment to myself to finish it in time. I got that done. I brought it in to the Bedford Gallery (although I needed to ask my friend Susan to go with me!).

I just returned from picking up the quilt and had an interesting experience. Another woman, my age, arrived at the same time as me. She mentioned that she had received an e-mail that she hadn’t wanted to receive. She expressed many of the same feelings as I was having. This was her first time submitting work for an exhibition. She was disappointed–she had convinced herself that her work would be accepted. When they returned my quilt, the woman asked to see it and told me that she liked it!

Susan and I plan to go to the exhibit to see what was accepted. The question now is, why didn’t the juror select this piece? My friend Candice also submitted two quilts, neither of which were accepted. I still like what I did. I’m wondering about making it larger, suitable for my guild show.

I Can't Believe It

Kelp

I entered a quilt in a juried mixed-media show. My friend Susan told me about this show, Local Voices: Defining Community Through Art, at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek. This is the part I of the brochure that I liked: a dialog between community and visual artists who live in Contra Costa County, emerging artists...

So the deal was that today and yesterday they were accepting submissions (no photos, no slides–the actual works); they will be juried tomorrow; an email will be sent out on Friday. I brought in a new work that I’m calling Kelp. I finished it today. I took a poor quality picture of it but here it is. I was in a rush.

It is 12-1/2" by 31". I struggled with the picture: I must figure out how to photograph something that has high contrast.

I also struggled with finishing this. I had intended to do a "pillowcase" finish with no binding but I was afraid that all of the quilting had made it too stiff and I wouldn’t get a nice knife edge. On a prior piece I had used a very thin batt and hand quilted it. After squaring it up, I put a new "back" on and used Melody’s Escape Hatch method. On this one I bailed and put on an ever so skinny binding, so as to appear more arty than quilty. The other issue was that if I put another "back" on, the quilting would be covered and I really liked how the back looked.

And real artists don’t show the backs of the their work. Oh well...

And I almost forgot. Another major artist failure: When I was quilting it I forgot all about SIGNING THE FRONT. I left no room to sign it. Now they will know for sure that I am not an artist. I will have to continue to emerge...

But the major struggle was whether or not to offer it for sale. I think if I had finished it a week ago and had started on something new I wouldn’t have felt so attached to it. And I couldn’t come up with an amount. I felt very strongly that if I was a real artist, I would of course sell it. That’s what artists do, right?

Kelp: The back

Kelp back

More on the Simple Still Life

This is really just an attempt to get two posts in during the month of August. Where did the summer go?

I am so glad that I participated in the Simple Still Life Challenge. I really felt that I had no business starting something new but having the deadline really forced me to work on something. I really loved seeing everyones’ take on the same subject. It was good for me that most of the participants posted at or near the deadline so that I worked without too much influence as to what everyone else was doing.

I also really appreciated that others showed steps in their process. I will do that for the next challenge, if only for my own record.

I did use Photoshop Elements at the outset and it helped me to "see" the subject by eliminating detail. I was amazed at what so many of the others were able to do with Photoshop. And I’m thinking about further exploring what Elements can do. But I’m reminding myself that I want to work in fiber and that this is just one of my tools. It seems formidable to figure out all of that stuff.

Most of all, it was wonderful to receive so many encouraging comments.

Our guild, EBHQ, does not meet in July so tonite seems like the first meeting of the year. Doesn’t it always seem as if the year starts in September, when school starts? Elizabeth Barton is the speaker and I am really looking forward to the meeting.

Simple Still Life

simple still life 8/27

Well, it would be hard to get too much closer to the deadline.

Here is what I did. I tried fooling around with Deb’s photo in Photoshop. I really liked the negative space in the image I saw. I decided to make a small piece in fabric and everything is fused. I would ordinarily have pieced the background and appliqued the elements but this was fun. I had hoped to quilt it but haven’t gotten to it yet. It is about 10-1/2 inches square.

Thanks Deb!

Not Finished But Getting Somewhere

Originally Polka Dot Jersey (now without the polka dots) 9" x 10"

Maillot Jaune.

Maillot Jaune is really the second in the Tour de France series. It is about 17" x 17"

The first, Polka Dot Jersey, I have taken apart and reworked. It just wasn’t working.

Originally, PDJ had less of the dark "border", then an inner border of the "yellow" stripes and a fat outer border of the polka dots. I loooove the polka dots. But I think it was just too, too. So I took it apart and added more dark (actually dark blue) around the piecing, and I'm trying to figure out the borders. I’m having fun here. Still not finished but more than before. I’m thinking about hand quilting... But probably I should just do some ditch stitching and be done. And I am going to go for three and try again for the original border set-up.

New Ways to Avoid Making Art

Quick: Gotta post something before July runs out.

I admit it: I’ve been obsessed with the Tour de France.

I’m getting really nervous because the US Open is coming up. I think I could become a sports tv junkie.

I put the borders on the first quiltlet (Polka Dot Jersey) in what I hope will be a Tour de France series using solids and some crazy polka dot fabric inspired by Sandi Cummings’ Thinking Outside the Block book and her quilt at The Cotton Patch, Using Leftovers.

I feel as if I can’t post any pictures because nothing is finished (or close!). A convenient ruse?

I started this blog in the hopes that it would encourage me to finish things and hopefully get positive feedback. Instead, I just keep starting things and I haven’t been posting because I have nothing to show.

I’ve been thinking about the following quotes:

If you know where it’s going, it’s not worth doing. (Frank Gehry from an article in the New York Times how every movie and rock star wants to be a designer.)

And this from Sandi’s book:
The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. (Julia Cameron)

My goal this week is to finish something, anything, take a picture of it, and post it: throw caution to the winds.

Quilting at my house

Yesterday was Wednesday, the day my quilting group meets and I was the hostess. I knew I wanted to make a salad and trolled around epicurious.com for inspiration. I made an amalgam of a cajun grilled chicken salad and California Pizza Kitchen’s chopped salad with barbecued chicken. Here is my recipe

Quilter’s Chopped Salad with Grilled Chicken (serves 10)
The rub:
2 t. salt
½ t. garlic powder
½ t. onion powder
½ t. dried thyme
½ t. dried oregano
½ t. freshly ground black pepper
½ t. paprika
½ t. cayenne pepper

Mix all ingredients together to blend. Divide: 1-1/2 t. for salad dressing and remainder for chicken rub.

Salad dressing:
3/4 c. buttermilk
½ c. mayonnaise
2 T. chopped green onion
2T. chopped fresh italian parsley
1 T. apple cider vinegar
1 clove garlic, minced
½ t. grated lemon peel
1-1/2 t. seasoning from rub

Make salad dressing the night before.

Chicken: Rub remaining seasoning mixture on six boneless, skinless chicken breasts (that you have pounded so that they are flat-ish and about the same thickness) about 2 hours before grilling. Pour 1 c. buttermilk over chicken, turning to coat. (A 1-gal. ziplock bag would be good for this.) Refrigerate until 30 minutes before grilling, turning when you think of it. Grill over medium-high heat. These cook very quickly. Let rest at least 5 minutes before cutting into strips. I made the chicken early in the morning and served it at room temperature.

Chopped Salad
2 hearts of Romaine, chopped
jicama, cut into strips (1 lb.?)
2 c. black beans
2 c. corn
grape tomatoes, halved (1 pint)
1/3 lb. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, chopped
6 scallions, chopped
3 T. chopped fresh cilantro

I layered these ingredients, pretty much in this order, in my largest salad bowl and my guests served themselves. I served the salad undressed and passed the dressing in a sauce boat. One person thought it needed more salt; one person thought it was pretty spicy, so she took just a smidgen of dressing on the side. If you have the energy and the desire you could take corn tortillas, spray them with olive oil, slice them into thin (1/4-inch) strips and bake them (5 min. ?) as a topping. I didn’t this time, but I have.

Susan brought us each a perfect Blenheim apricot from her tree.

We had a plate of assorted fruits and chocolates.

Kathy brought a decadent Caramel Charlotte with nectarines that should have just been lunch.

What excess!

We gave the secret quilt to Kathy and I think she was surprised.

A good time was had by all.

What I've Been Up To

I’m amazed that my blog is still here. I was afraid it had been re-possessed. I’m not amazed at how long it’s been since I posted. Chaos. My life is chaos.
Andrew went back to Santa Barbara and started summer session. Steven is catching up on a year’s worth of lost sleep. He must be growing!
What have I been up to? I’m trying to clean up my "studio," lovely space that I took over when Steven left for school. Can you guess that he’s trying to re-claim it? It is upstairs, over the garage, in the trees, and is a perfect space for playing video games and watching movies with friends (in addition to being a perfect studio space). I will feel really good about organizing everything, when it’s done, even if I am giving it up temporarily.
I moved my quilting set-up into Andrew’s room: He probably won’t be home for six weeks. I picked up my new "table" from the plastic guy and it’s terrific. I had a piece of fin-ply (4' x 4') that we put on the carpeting when the boys were little and wanted a hard surface on which to build blocks and set up their Brio trains. I save everything! I had the plastic guy cut a hole in it for my sewing machine and then he put formica on it. It is heavy but lovely.
I had two pieces on my design wall and I pieced one of them last night, tentatively known as Kelp. My plan is to quilt a small piece, The Leftovers, as a kind of "practice" piece. Next in the queue is the Postcard Quilt, and then the new piece, Kelp.
I’ve been studying my camera and hope to post some new pictures.
Oh! And I said "No" twice this week. It was really good.

Survivors

The boys got home okay. So much energy. So much masculinity. I'm overwhelmed. No time to blog. My friend Anne sent me the following and I am passing it on.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s, and '70s:

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright-colored, lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick-up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were okay.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes! After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video-tape movies, no surround sound, no cellphones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chatrooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS, and we went outside and found them! (We have 6 TV stations, Erector sets, Chemistry sets, model planes and model rockets.)
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts, and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem-solvers, and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

School's Out!

I'm still sort of frantic here. The boys decided that they can fit all of Steven's stuff into Andrew's car so we did not drive down to Santa Barbara to pick up Steven. He just finished is freshman year at UC Santa Barbara. Andrew is going to be a SENIOR at UCSB! It's graduation weekend and everything is booked everywhere so I was relieved to put off the trip. We'll probably go down in a couple of weeks. Andrew will going to summer school at SB.

I've been trying to be virtuous. I've been cleaning out my closet. I'm delighted that both of them are coming home but I dread the influx of all of THEIR junk. And I haven't done my spring housecleaning yet. It has been such a cold, rainy spring that I haven't gotten around to getting the screens cleaned and up, etc. So I have a few hours before they arrive and I'm buzzing around here.

I've changed all of the beds and I have all the laundry caught up. The 'fridge is pretty clean and I'm holding off a big trip to Costco/Safeway until after they arrive. Who knows what they are eating these days but we've got milk.

Shhh! It's a SECRET

Here is a picture of the grandma quilt I've been working on. My Wednesday group and I made the blocks, and I put it together and quilted it.

Secret quilt

I really shouldn't be posting a picture of this but it is in the interest of technical research. I've been trying to figure out how to post more than one picture at a time and the glorious Melody, the superfantastic Sonji, and the divine Debra, have all helped. And besides, I've been so busy with this that it's all I've been doing besides working.





One block

I was thinking that maybe I should post this in my profile--I've got red hair, too!