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Archive for the ‘This and that’ Category

Searching for Periwinkle Blue

Monday, February 29th, 2016

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I have been on a quest to get a periwinkle blue fabric. This is the closest I have gotten. At least the darker piece is close to what I have been wanting. I added the tiniest bit of fuchsia to blue dye.

I also squirted a melange of dye on some cheesecloth, just to see what I would get. And, I love it.

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I am still feeling mopey and having good and bad days of pain. If I go to the studio and take a walk, it seems to be too much for my knee. I then have to spend the next day, doing as little as possible. I have gotten this much done on the sleeves for Paige’s Winnie the Pooh sweater.

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I am going to work on doing a stitched collaged, using some of the demo fabrics I did for our printing class at Trinity. I want to give the students an idea of how to use their fabrics. Maybe I will have something to show tomorrow. I spent leap year day doing very little.

 

This and That

Monday, February 22nd, 2016

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It has been an interesting few days since I last posted. I had all good intentions of celebrating my 11th blogiversary, but life got in the way. On Friday morning, Mr C had a TIA or mini-stroke and I spent a couple of days running back and forth from the ER and the hospital. It was minor and he recovered very quickly, but it was scary for a time.

Up above is a snippet of an old piece that I did for my Israel trip solo show, a few years ago. It is about the graffiti on the Palestinian side of the security wall. I thought it would work well for the SAQA turmoil show, but it was not quite big enough so I am mounting it on black dupioni silk. I quite like it. I think it gives it more presence.

Last night, Mr C and I had the fun experience of attending a chocolate tasting party with our friends who took a chocolate class at the London Cordon Bleu when they were living there. We had six different chocolates, 3 from France and 3 from Portland. They had varying amounts of cacao.

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We were given sheets to keep notes on aroma, taste, texture and finish.

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There was only one chocolate from Portland that we liked: Moonstruck. All of the French chocolates were divine.

After the tasting adventure, we got to dip our own truffles in tempered chocolate. Here is the tempering machine with the luscious chocolate.

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Here are my truffles. I like the little swirls I got on the tops.

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Cheryl packaged them up for us to take home.

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Paige wants a purple sweater with Winnie the Pooh. I found a pattern and picked up the yarn, yesterday.

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Fun With Color

Sunday, February 7th, 2016

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The last week of my basic dyeing for quilters is a test, in a sense, of what we have learned about mixing dyes. We are to pick a photo that is a color inspiration for us and then determine what the colors are. I used Photoshop Elements to help with the process. I have always loved the colors in this photo that I took on a trip to Seattle. I love the colors of this outdoor furniture display.

Here are the colors that I pulled out.

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Now, I have to go through my stash of hand-dyes to see what matches I have. Then, I will mix up some dyes and try to match the rest. I think this is going to be fun.

I had a busy few days and now I am paying for it. On Friday, my iPad died and then came back to life, but it has been working very slowly and has given me lots of problems. We went to the Apple store and I  bought a new one. Wow, what a difference. I love the retina display and of course it is very zippy.

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On Friday night, we went to a fun Mardi Gras cabaret at Trinity which was a fund raiser for the choir’s trip to England and France next year. They did an array of fun show tunes.

Last night, we went to the symphony and I did too much walking and am paying for it today. I can barely move, again. I only had a slight meltdown and I enjoyed watching the superbowl and especially the half-time show. And, I am getting closer to the fix for my knee.

 

Day 30

Wednesday, December 30th, 2015

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We left California yesterday, stayed over in Grants Pass and arrived home today. We cashed in our free night at the La Quinta Inn. Scooter is a tired boy because he went to Mt Hood and played in the snow with Lisa and Clay!

It was hard to say good-bye to Paige, but I think she was ready for calmer days, following the excitement of the holidays.

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We attended her swimming lesson at the Y. She is resistant to putting her face in the water, but I am sure she will get over it. She was having 4 days of lessons in a row. My son was responsible for taking her as Jayme was doing her pediatrician residency work. She looks so cure in her goggles!

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Here is a collage that she made while we were there.

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I want to say a few things about my knee. I was in excruciating pain most of the time we were there. It became difficult for me to stand from a sitting position and I had pain during the night while in bed. I had to use my cane all the time.

Then, miraculously, yesterday morning, I woke up without much pain and had slept well all night. I thought the pain I had been having was from sitting in the car for two days in a row, but I have arrived home feeling pretty good. I think the hustle and bustle of the holidays did me in, plus on Sunday, we went to the mall and I had a hard time keeping up with my long legged companions.

Anyway, I am going to try to pace myself. It was very difficult to feel so helpless and I had a several melt downs.

The drive home was very nice – cold, but no difficult road conditions. We did see lots of snow in Northern California and Southern Oregon.

Here is Mt. Shasta:

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And, Southern Oregon looked like a winter wonderland.

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We always enjoy seeing what I call the crayon trucks in Northern California.

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It was a mostly enjoyable trip and visit with the very busy Mark and Jayme and their whirling dervish, Paige.

 

Day 21

Monday, December 21st, 2015

Irene Latham winter solstice poem

Oops! I missed two days, but I have good excuses. First, I just had to say that I am always happy when the winter solstice rolls around. We even had some nice sunshine today.

I got a huge amount of SDA work to do on Saturday. We have many institutions, libraries, colleges, etc who have institution accounts with us through a subscription service. I was sent almost 100 of them on Saturday. Since we are coming up on the holidays and the end of the month, I had to get them done and it took all week-end long with some time off for riding the exercycle and walking with Scooter and Mr C. As I finished each one, I scribbled on it with a sharpie and threw it on the floor.

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On Saturday, when we took our walk, it was pretty cold and I mentioned that I would like a hat to match the teal scarf Mr C gave me for my birthday. So we went to the store where he bought it and I cam home with this:

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Today, we walked while it was still drizzling and stopped at the pet store and bought Scooter a raincoat. I think he looks quite dapper! And, he won’t be quite as wet after walking in the incessant rain that we have day after day after day.

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I did manage to get some more quilting done on the lost edges piece. I hope to finish it tomorrow.