And it Continues...

One thing I noticed about Natasha's studio is that there was a little bit of everything there. Works in progress. Works for sale. Supplies to make more things: paints, dyes, yarns, toothbrushes, (toothbrushes??) groups of this and that. Groupings, that would be key.



Balls
Baskets of yarns.

Boxes of rocks.

I took a workshop with Natasha several years ago, maybe even 10 years, and I remember her journals. Places where she keeps pictures from magazines or books that have some sort of meaning or will be used as fodder for ideas. I immediately started my own and now have a good dozen on my shelf. It's fun to look back on them, but how much more fun would it be to have it in front of you for instant inspiration?

I came home with so many ideas for my own new studio. Someday.

Frayed Edges Goes on a Field Trip

'Tis the season, right? When I was in Boston last week, having a wonderful, extended retirement party, the school buses just kept rolling in with hundreds of kids , HUNDREDS, enjoying the spring day and not being in school. So, in keeping with this particular rite of spring, Hannah arranged for us to go visit the studio of artist Natasha Kempers-Cullen.

We drove up to this. The door to her studio. And I knew we were in for a treat. Even before I saw these:

...or these incredible, irresistible, (at least for an artist and lover of color) "garden girls":

...and a closeup:

She uses wood frames that she's hand painted and from them hangs all sorts of found (saved) items. I'm pretty sure she hasn't thrown anything away since 1972. Whimsical garden art. She has empty spools wrapped with metallic foil, bells, beads, slinkees and golf tees of all colors for hair, too, too many things to mention. Needless to say, I was jazzed before I even got through the beautiful yellow door. Please check out her website for an address and if you're in Maine this summer on vacation, this is a MUST STOP studio.

Here is a little taste of the inside for you. This is just one little corner of her studio with Kate in the middle.

She has books and bead jewelry and art from friends everywhere! So much to see. More tomorrow.

Endings

Today is my last day of work at the same job I've had for the past 21 years. I started when our oldest was getting close to college age, and didn't mean to stick with it so long after the fact. But I ended up being one of the lucky ones that loved what they did. And the women I worked with. (nine women in one office and for the most part, all got along!) Which is probably the saddest part of leaving. I know there are big things afoot in the office today. There'll be balloons and cake for the patients, and well wishes and despite the fact that I'm very happy to be retiring, it will be sad. I spent yesterday making these little pins for each of my co-workers, taking into consideration their distinct personalities. It was a little hard to decide on words for each because with some of them I had to remember they MAY wear these in public so I had to be nice!

I had ordered some legs from Artgirlz, but unfortunately they didn't arrive in time. My fault for waiting till the last minute, so I had to improvise with beads and charms. They look good so I'm happy. And no one is expecting a surprise from me, so bonus!

We leave for Boston after work...for a planned meeting and for the real part of my retirement party. I know we're going to a very nice restaurant, and I heard something about going out to a bar/club/Dick's Last Resort???!!! after. One last fling on the boss!

Happy Memorial Day!!!

And what a beautiful one it is in our part of the country. We've been feeding Laddie carrots. He's never had so many carrots.

We've been fishing. Doesn't even matter we didn't catch anything.

And paddling in the "Kiboat".

Next is the parade and more family fun! Nothing like a holiday weekend! Hope yours is as nice as ours.

Spring in Maine

I haven't had much to say lately. I feel guilty about that because I feel when you have a blog you have a responsibility to anyone who may wander by on a regular basis to have something semi-interesting for them to read. I will try harder in the future for sure. There's always fun things going on in the summer.

But I do have a beautiful picture to share. I love pansies for the first taste of COLOR after the grays of winter. It's been an incredible spring here in Maine and I've been spending as much time outside enjoying every minute of it. I've been one of the ones in the past that is the loudest to complain about "what happened to spring??" so this year I'm thankful and uncomplaining. And enjoying. I have peas coming up in my garden. As well as lettuce and spinach. The orioles and hummingbirds are back and at my feeders. Life is GOOD.

I can't believe I just spent 40 minutes crafting a very clever post about the joys of Audible.com and of holding the perfect pen in your hand, and now it's gone. Very loud grumbling here. I haven't had this kind of trouble in a long time. And even though it says it "autosaves", I'd like to know WHERE! Tomorrow I'll be more positive.

Project for a very Rainy day

It poured so hard yesterday that an old woodpecker tree became so waterlogged and heavy it just toppled over on my newly raked, almost green lawn. It rained so hard that when I went out to put the chickens to bed, I sank up to above my ankles in mud. So I spent yesterday indoors working on some little cards i intend to sell to some ladies I'm doing a trunk show for. My studio was it's usual cluttered creative mess...always right in from of my working space.

The cards are no bigger than 3" by 5", some even smaller than that. I have 12 different designs, but just a few are embellished at this point.

I apologize for the colors. The pictures were taken in less than ideal light, and some are not as focused as they could be. But you get the idea.
These are REALLY the prettiest purple beads in natural light. Now to figure how much to charge for them. Everyone has this dilemma, I know. I want to sell them, but I don't want to give them away either. To buy a birthday card, a regular birthday card is at least $3.99 these days, and sometimes almost $10 for some of the fancy singing and dancing ones. So, a unique, handmade, framable work of art should sell for somewhere over ten...

one more bowl

This is my favorite.

Felted Bowls

I'm NOT allowing myself my first cup of coffee until I get this written, as penance for not posting for so long! I don't know what happens to time between one post and another. It just zooms at warp speed. I think it's called life. And lots going on in my life these days now that the weather is finally warm enough to go out without mittens. Still need boots sometimes because of the mud, not snow.

I planted peas, lettuce and beets the other day. Our ground is soft enough to work though the ice isn't out on the lake yet. Today, I'll bet. It's so close. So, working in my garden. Next, I have decided to leave my day job of hte last 21 years and retire. Starting May 29th. Whew. Glad that the decision part is behind me and now I can look forward to more time to play with fabric and paint. And last, FELTED BOWLS. These are so much fun to make. And quick. Love that little white one. Can't you just see daffodils coming out of that? Soon.

I spent most of my day yesterday beading. I have a green 'bead soup' that I'm using to create a curving path through the trees on my current project. While I was working on it I had my computer beside me and I was watching the Quilting Arts TV series. Anyone see it on TV? I very rarely watch tv so I don't even know if we get it on our local PBS channel. But it's very interesting seeing Pokey over and over; checking out her outfits, watching her relax into her role as she puts more shows behind her, say 'go ahead' again (we all have our own speech patterns, don't we). I'm finding the segments within the show are too rushed, except for the ones I'm not interested in of course. I'm hot to try some felted bowls after one episode, and some of the digital transfers methods are interesting. Mostly, though, it's a really good way to make a boring job bearable. And completed.

And the other part of my day was spent cleaning away the fall/winter leftovers from my gardens. As the snow recedes from one area, I clean it up and wait for another one to appear! It's not so overwhelming that way and I feel like I'm finally doing something positive to get ready for the gardening season. We still have a lot of snow in our backyard, but with temps in the 50's today we should lose a lot of it. And the lake, well, that will be a while yet before ice out. But as they say, "we've broken the back of old man winter!!!" Hooray for spring!

Altered Books

I've joined a new library in Rockport, the town where we'll be building our new house in a couple of years. I guess I'm not starting out on the right foot because I went away on vacation and forgot to renew my books so I ended up returning them two days late. I love libraries. And this one has the feel of a small town library but is up to date, well organized and exciting just to be in. For instance, right now they have an exhibit of 'Altered Books' called Out Of Bounds.
I have taken a few pictures but if you're interested in seeing more you can link to the site. Such a variety; it's hard to choose one favorite. This one, though, was sitting on the desk and I really thought it was a warning to patrons to be careful of your books around pets.

The books were interspersed with the regular books, displayed in little spaces on the shelves or around the corner on a table. Coming upon one was a treat for the eyes.

HOME

I love going on vacation, especially somewhere warm and green where I can leave the cold and snow far, far behind. I look forward to it for weeks and this year had my suitcase packed well before departure time. Then you come home. In a blizzard. But I am sustained with enough warm, green thoughts to get me through all of April and into May when hopefully I can start gardening, or playing in the dirt at least.

I've also come back with creative energies recharged and lots of ideas for art quilts. Whether they get from head to fabric is another story, but I'm OPEN and ready to rock and roll. We did a lot of art galleries in Key West where the employees are trained to get you into the 'black room' with whatever painting you happen to be studying. We learned quickly not to linger too long in front of any of them, though some did beg for a closer look. And I was able to make some quick sketches from memory of those I found most inspiring. Then proceeded to lose my journal. C'est la vie!

Funny Faces

Last fall I was asked by a friend of mine to come into her kindergarten classroom and talk about fabric. It was just as general as that. Oh, and there were two classrooms. And I would have 30 minutes in each. That's all. One half hour. So I thought about just doing a project, but that wouldn't really teach them anything and I did want to do that. So I put four different fabrics together on a safety pin, enough for each child. I had wool, cotton, silk, and polar fleece. Then I printed out large photos of sheep, a silkworm, a cotton plant and a pile of plastic bottles., and we had a very short discussion of what they felt like and where they came from. From there we went to our project which was making funny faces. I had the bases all fused to the backgrounds and lots of fused shapes which they placed where they wanted them and I ironed down. It was really fun and didn't take long, yet they could let their creativity take over.

I apologize for the terrible photoshopped pictures, but of course I couldn't show you all the darling kids holding up their work. They were the best part.

Work in Progress

This has gone together pretty quickly and I've only used two fabrics that I didn't paint the other day. I 've made this the correct dimensions in case i decide to use it in our guild challenge.The theme is "place", interpreted broadly, and if not a real place, you must be able to describe it. This is a garden in my winter mind, maybe not a real place, but certainly deliciously describable!
I'm working on some embroidered "wind" blowing through the sky right now and I'm really liking the look. More pictures soon.

Snow DAY!!

This is what I did today. Painted fabric and hung it to dry by the cookstove. It took about ten minutes tops. I was happy to be doing something creative and NOT WORKING! A free day, one where the whole world seems to be canceled. You jump out of bed with so much more energy.


And then when it was dry I actually started to sew it. And what colors show up on a dark and dreary day? Garden colors. Bright! Spring! The blue fabric on top of the pinkish is actually fusible interfacing. It sucked up the color beautifully. Tomorrow I'll have pictures.

Summer dreaming....

Every summer we rent a cottage on the coast and our whole family, brothers, sisters, kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews of all ages enjoy playing together. Part of my enjoyment on these long, cold winter days is thinking up things to do. Whether we ever do them or not doesn't matter, but it certainly gets me through these snow filled days. I have made these little journals for anyone that wants one. The idea came from the beautiful little thank you card I received from my friend Deborah on which she had sewn two simple little leaves to a piece of white card stock. Of course I had to try it, too. I just added many pages of colored paper and called it a book.





So it's called: "hot sticky buns and journal drawing at our cottage every morning". The fresh out-of-the-oven sticky buns will be the lure for some ( I have a great overnight cinnamon rolls recipe) and the paints and colored pencils will do it for others. It's a way to get the kids involved in the creative side of life before they head off for their very active swimming/gaming/biking/whatever day!

The Importance of Hands

I study hands. A lot. I never knew I did this until recently. When I think of a person and imagine their face I can also see their hands. For instance, I can remember my best friend Kathy Crosby's hands from our high school days. The way they looked and the way they moved. Put a bunch of hands in a room and I can tell you who they belong to. My sister's hands. Long delicate fingers. My kids hands, Sean's calloused from playing the drums and Sarah's well manicured. And, oh yes, then there are Keith's very distinct hands:). Double jointed or is it triple jointed?!

My hands have aged and changed these past few years. They have age spots and my skin, when pinched, takes a few more seconds each year to relax back to normal. I would spend hours watching my mother's hands go about her chores, teaching me to knit or sew, so it was with sadness I held them in her last years...long fingers, nails that were kept trimmed for her, bones covered with transparent skin. My grandmother's chubby soft hands that went along with the rest of her body. Slightly curved fingers from a touch of arthritis. I was completely taken with my husbands hands when we first started dating. Just right. I watch hands when someone holds a cup of coffee. I secretly study them. Weird. My father's hands. Delicate dark hairs, on shortish fingers, hands a little shaky these days, and then there's my intake of breath when I first notice the new wedding ring. Not the beautiful simple smooth piece of gold he had worn for the last 50+ years, the one that left an indentation in his finger when he took it off, but a new, edgy, thing. Square edges. It looks like an art deco door placed on a beautiful antique center chimney cape.

I'm just sayin'.

Happy Valentine's Day

Painted Fabric....

...wonder what for?

Woke up this morning, glanced at the thermometer and my heart momentarily did a jig...48degrees!! Oops, 4 POINT 8.

A Long Time Ago...

I recceived my latest issue of Quilting Arts yesterday and was especially taken with Mary Hettmansperger's collaged fabric panels. I love the way she's used every kind of flotsam and jetsom and made it all work. The shapes are interesting and everything is blended. And it reminded me of this piece I did 35 years ago, when I had no idea what I was doing and it shows. Which is why it's been hanging in the basement all these years. I guess I liked it (or what it stood for) enough not to throw it away, and now seeing Mary's work , I can define what it is about mine that kept it hidden. Brown yarn?! What was I thinking. Everything just thrown on top willy nilly. But I loved the nubby fabric and the shells. Maybe I'll clean it up and hang it for inspiration, of what not to do!

I Made This...

In her new book "Living the Creative Life" by Rice Freeman -Zachary (which looks beautiful and feels so good to touch) she asks the question, 'What does creativity mean to you?' and follows with several artists giving their answers. All different, all valid. It's writing. Drawing. Arranging a vase of flowers. It's looking at everything as being full of possibilities. Instead of seeing what is, look for what could be. Instead of just making a cake, make it an artistic adventure! So, when we were invited to a 'dead of winter we need a break Mexican party', I saw an opportunity to try something new and impress my new friends. Not sure about the impress part but they sure did clean up this cake:

Tres Leches Cake

According to my friend Brenda, who knows all about things south of the border, this is a traditional dessert. It's dense white cake to begin with and when it's cooled you pour sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and whole milk mixed together all over the top and let it soak in. Then you cover the whole thing with whipped cream and decorate if you like. Straighter lines of fruit next time. Nevertheless, at the end of the day I felt creatively fulfilled! Sweet tooth satisfied, too.

Dog Days of Winter

I know, it's really the dog days of summer, Sirius the Dog Star rising and all, but as I was wandering around my clean house, looking at my very organized shelves and wondering what else I could do, I thought to myself "what's going on?" I could go work on the chickadees, but I needed one of those distance days from them. You know, overworking them and needing a break. I could go walking, but I already did an hour aerobic class and a 2 mile walk and the wind chill was dropping significantly. Where did all this TIME come from? Winter. Snowed in. No outside chores save shoveling. So, I've been lighting a fire in the afternoon and curling up with gardening catalogs and books. I have finished 3 I picked up at the library, (nothing great) and will soon start Loving Frank, a story about the woman who loved Frank Lloyd Wright (I think),
on loan from my sister. Next, from the newly formed China Village Book Group will be Three Cups of Tea.
and of course after having read Deborah's blog about The Invention of Hugo Cabrey and hearing the cheers from the audience when it won the Caldecott Medal I had to check it out. Winter stimulation. Hibernation. All good.

Chickadees

Take this:

and this:
and this:

put them all together, and that's what I've been working on. Things just magically come together during the creative process. They start to 'gel' without you consciously knowing what's happening. The pieces, like a puzzle, start to fit together and before you know it you're mind is saying, "hmmmmmmm". That's why I think the artist date is so important. And shopping. When I shop, it's not so much to buy things as to mine new ideas.

So, it started with a walk in the woods. You may remember this picture from a previous post.

The rows of trees, the solitude, the quiet, all made me wonder about where all the birds and other animals were hiding. Nothing moved, except me. Those trees stayed in my mind for days. And then I read an article about those little chickadees that make their way to my feeder at the same time every day for breakfast lunch and dinner. They must be constantly active during the day to maintain their body heat because every night they can lose up to 15% of their body weight. And they survive the long cold nights by bundling together. What a sight that would be. "Hmmmm."

The background is painted with acrylics, as are the little chickadees. As of now, I'm not sure enough about the whole composition so I don't want to put it out there quite yet. But at least
my mind is working again! Hooray for that!

Sorry, no blogging...

Lately I've been dealing with a lot of emotional stuff that's been a little overwhelming, as it can be, so any creative thoughts I may have had have been pushed out of the way. BUT, I still have enough energy left to appreciate the beauty and humor surrounding me. And I do see a light at the end of the tunnel...figuratively speaking, of course.

And what a little pig this pine grosbeak is, hanging upside down to eat! You should have seen all the apple parts he had covering his beak.

A Little...

I did manage to do a little crafting over the holidays. I saw these sweet owls on someone's blog, (sorry I can't remember who) but figured out how to put them together with some hand dyed wool I had in my stash.

Snowshoe-ing

It's what you do during winter in Maine when there's already 2 feet of snow on the ground. If you can't beat 'em and all that...

...and of course there's the beauty to enjoy. Happy New Year everyone.