home
about the artist
gallery
blog
links
contact

Archive for the ‘Just for Fun’ Category

Thursday This and That

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

I am starting with a bit of a rant, tonight. At 9 pm EDT, what were you doing? I was not watching our pig-headed president once again try to scare us into believing that leaving our troops in harm’s way is a good thing. Mr C and I could not bear to listen and so we watched an HGTV re-run. Does anyone believe the report that was given to Congress? I feel so sad for the Iraqis who have been killed and who now live in terror — captives in their homes, if they have not fled where they now live as refugees in another country. Most of the time I just don’t want to deal with this. I want to pretend that this chaos is not continuing in the name of operation Iraqi Freedom. Is it best to sit idly, waiting for the end of Bush’s term? Or should we start hitting the streets, as we did during the Vietnam war?

Next on my list is a report in on my weight. I lost almost a pound during the last two weeks. I missed a weigh-in last week because I was partying with Mr C. It is slow, but going in the right direction.

I am so behind in answering e-mails and comments on my blog. I have had a very busy week. I also am having a major sinus allergy attack this week.

This morning was STASH, the small group that I meet with once a month. We met at Reva’s, and she made us an incredible lunch of grilled veggies, a garbanzo/kidney bean salad and a pasta salad with shrimp. This was finished off with a plum crisp , made with plums from the tree in her backyard.

In between meetings and other things, I have been working away on the Journal Quilt. I was so depressed with it last night when I went to bed. This morning, I came down to pack up stuff to take to the meeting and thought maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. My quilty friends gave it a thumbs up and made me feel a little better about it.

Tonight, I finished the quilting and I think that has helped pull the piece together. Here are a couple of more sneak peaks. I was looking through some of my fabrics and found some grids that I had screen printed in Rayna’s class. I thought they referenced the high rise windows in the skyline of Seattle.

screenedwindows.jpg

Here is the reflection of the space needle in a high rise, printed on organza and quilted. I love how it looks.

spaceneedlequilting.jpg

Tomorrow, I am going to work the show at the Japanese Garden in the afternoon. Congrats to Terry who had sold two pieces as of yesterday. I am going to try to sneak some photos of the show. We are not supposed to take photos of the work, but I think some long shots will be ok.

Making Progress

Saturday, September 8th, 2007

I finally got the big Epson printer to work. This printer takes 7 ink cartridges. When I print on fabric, I like to use the matte black instead of the photo black. Sometimes, the printer does not get the message that I have made a change and that I wanted to make a change. It will not recognize the new cartridge and keeps telling me that I have to change the settings, which I have already done. It finally worked and then I didn’t like the result and had to start over.

I can not show you the final journal quilt, which has to be 17 X 22 inches. But I will show you the parts! The theme is architectural grids – particularly, Seattle. I am using this discharged fabric and the other fabric is a painted fabric.

seattlegridfabric.jpg

I took a photo of the skyline of Seattle from the ferry which I played with in Photoshop and printed on fabric. The first print was too washed out so I printed it again on a tighter weave cotton and pumped up the color saturation.

seattleskyline.jpg

I had a photo of the space needle reflected in a high rise which I took on our trip last summer. I played with the color of this and printed it on organza.

spaceneedleorganza.jpg

Last summer when we were in Seattle, we toured the new library. I love the grids in the architecture and took some photos with plans to create some thermofax screens. Here is the original photo.

233220396_48b0c0d44c.jpg

I made a screen of this and I am not totally happy with it. Maybe because of my attempt to screen on copper mesh!

copperscreenprint.jpg

Well, that is all I can share with you. I had to take some time out today to run down to Trinity with some tablecloths and stuff to set up the Arts Commission tables for sampler Sunday, tomorrow. I might get a little bit of work time tomorrow, but I have a few things to finish for the Japanese Garden show. Then I have to get everything ready to take up to the Garden for set up on Monday morning. Then it is back home to get ready for our EFM group to come for a dinner get-together to kick off our fall season.

Today, I remembered to take my camera when I took Maggie for a walk. These were taken on the Reed College campus. This is an installation with large hot pin letters on the front lawn.

edificecomplex.jpg

This is the second time and the second place that I have seen this bunny — wonder what this is about?

reedbunny.jpg

A Little Drinking, A Little Eating, A Whole Lot of Fun

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

After a drive through sporadic rain, we arrived in Woodlinville, WA, yesterday afternoon. Woodlinville is kind of bucolic spot in the midst of the suburbs of Seattle. It is north of Redmond. There are wineries here, but no vineyards. They are all over on the other side of the state where is is warmer.

After checking in, we visited a couple of wineries, Chateau St. Michelle and Columbia Winery. We tasted some ok wine. The syrahs were the best.

csmcask.jpg

We had dinner at a little bistro in the village of Woodlinville. The Willows Lodge is a first rate place to stay. It is ranked 12th best hotel in the country by Travel & Leisure magazine. We have a mid ranked room. It is quite luxurious, with a jetted tub, walk in shower room, patio outside, king bed with luxurious linens. We slept very well. The hotel gave us a nice bottle of wine for our anniversary.

This morning we went for a nice long walk along the Sammamish river Trail, which is adjacent to the Lodge.

riverwalkreflection.jpg

This is my favorite photo from the end of our walk.

landscapepainter.jpg

This is the logo of the Willow Lodge, which you see every place. I really like it.

willowslogo.jpg

After our walk, we took a little drive and ended up in Bothell, where we had a nice lunch in a little cafe. Then we drove down to Redmond, hoping to see Bill Gates so that I could tell him how much I hate everything Microsoft. I did see this sign. Thought it was quite funny!

thegatesofredmond.jpg

We came back to the room so that Mr C could rest his bum leg. Of course, he fell asleep. I woke him up to take the last tour of the day at the Red Hook brewery, which is on the other side of the Lodge.

For a $1, we got a little glass, 5 ale tastes and a tour. The best bargain of our trip!!

redhookbeer.jpg

One of the draws at the Willows Lodge is the gastronomic delight, The Herb Farm restaurant. Unfortunately for us, it was not open while we are here. Here is one of the photos I took of the real herb garden, however.

herbgarden4.jpg

So, we had dinner at the other restaurant, The Barking Frog. We had the tasting menu which was 5 courses, accompanied by a wine taste. It was really fabulous. Here is a synopsis of our menu

  • Mixed Berry Grey Goose Shooter
  • Roasted chanterelles & hericot Verts Salad – sparkling rose
  • Heirloom Tomato Croque madame – Washington sangiovese
  • Grilled Pesto Prawn, Sweet Corn & Polenta Tamale – Rose
  • Intermezzo – Peach & Champagne sorbet
  • Oregonzola Crusted Kobe Beef Ribeye, Maine Lobster Bread Pudding – claret
  • Blackberry Clafoutis, Sweet Corn & Cocoa Nib Gelato – Muscat

It was all delicious. Each course was quite petite and lovely. I felt as if I was a judge on Top Chef.

I took lots of pictures of dandelions on our walk this morning.

dandelionfluff2.jpg

My friend, Diane Hock, had organized a challenge group. We are 12 artists, creating 12 X 12 challenge pieces. Our first theme is dandelion. You can keep track of us here.

As usual, you can see all my photos of this trip on my Flickr site.

Happiness is

Friday, August 31st, 2007
  • finding this on my walk yesterday.

constructionfence.jpg

I have been looking for my own piece of construction fence for improvisational screen printing. I had seen a lot of it around a new section of sidewalk and thought about asking the owner of the house for a piece when he was finished. Well, there it was, yesterday. They were dismantling it and I just asked for piece and it was mine!!

  • spending the afternoon with M & M. I served a lunch of macaroni and cheese, hot dogs and watermelon. We dined on the deck and I taught them to say al fresco, which they thought was quite amusing.

It was quite hot yesterday and the siblings are getting a little testy with each other after a summer of togetherness. I finally suggested setting up a little installation of their little things on the back slope of our yard. It was a miracle. They suddenly were cooperating and having a great time.

milohillside.jpg

miahillside.jpg

They also made some chalk drawings on my studio patio. Here is Mia’s self-portrait.

miachalk.jpg

Milo did these drawings of weapons. He is fascinated with knights and vikings and pirates.

milochalk.jpg

But, look, isn’t he just Mr Cute?

mrcute.jpg

Tomorrow Mr C and I are going to work the food pantry at Trinity in the morning and then go out to lunch and take in Art in the Pearl. I will try to remember my camera. Labor day week-end is always a special time for us. We were married on this week-end, 43 years ago. Our actual anniversary is the 5th. Mr C has made reservations at the Willows Lodge in Washington State wine country. We will drive up on Tuesday and come home on Thursday. I am a lucky lady!!

A Happy Fourth of July

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

Hope you are all having a happy day, celebrating our Democracy. We must never take it for granted, as we are now finding out. That is my itty bitty rant for today.

I am having such a good day. Time to relax, make some food for a dinner on the deck with Lisa, the anticipation of M & M returning to Portland tonight, with their Mom and Dad, and seeing all my work from the discharge class on the design wall.

dischargebodyofwork.jpg

I am so inspired by this cloth and can’t wait to work with it.

Here are some close-ups of the work that I had to bring home to finish. The first is the construction fence resist discharge. Next to it is the second skinny tape on the silk screen piece.

constfencedischarge1.jpg

The next two photos show the pieces that were done with the linear pieces of tape on the silk screen. I just love how that ugly piece of brown discharged.

silkscreendischarge2.jpg

These two pieces are silk that has been over-dyed – also the piece on the right in the above photo. The fabric on the right below was gift from Jeannie who comments often on my blog.

silkscreensilkdischarge.jpg

This piece had torn masking tape on the fabric so where the tape was, it is darker.

tapeonfabricdischarge.jpg

The next piece had squished discharge paste the first time around so I added new elements, using turquoise dye in the paste.

turquoisedyedischarge.jpg

These are samplers using turquoise dye in the paste.

turquoisedischarge2.jpg

These are silk pieces that had been over dyed. The piece on the right was from Jeannie. The bottom piece is cotton. The silk on the left is raw silk that has been over-dyed. These all used found objects.

dischargesamplers.jpg

This piece was done using a couple of thermofax screens.

thermofaxdisccharge.jpg

And Just For Fun! I saw Deb R’s Simpson’s persona on her blog and had to try it. Go here to create your own. This looks scarily like me!!

gramma-g.jpg

Hope you are having a great day, too!

PS: I lost 4.4 pounds. I had to weigh yesterday because they were closed today. Yeah!