I promised an update on what has been going on in my life. First of all, lots of good things. Mr C and I got to take a preview ride on the new Orange light rail line that crosses the Willamette on a brand new bridge and goes out through our old neighborhood. We watched it all being built for the last few years. So that was fun.

My art quilt daughter, Kristin La Flamme and her family, have made the move to Portland. I am so excited to have them here. There worldly goods are not arriving until the end of this week and so I had them over for dinner in our air conditioned condo on a 100° plus day. The highlight was the homemade peach ice cream that I made.

We also had a double date with Lisa and Clay and saw the very funny Amy Schumer movie, Train Wreck.

Icing on the cake was a visit with my long time interwebs friend, Mary Manahan from Philadelphia, whose daughter is starting law school at Lewis and Clark.

My disappointment last week was not getting into the High Fiber Diet Making Our Mark show. It is the first time I have not had a piece in the annual show. Such a bummer. I was really despondent and had a crisis of confidence regarding my work. Here are thumbnails of the the two entries:

I will be interested to see the pieces that did make it in. Some were given alternate status, meaning they would get an airing when the venue was large enough. I’m sure glad I am not an alternate – that would tie up two pieces for over a year with no guarantee of being in an exhibit.

I did, get great news a couple of days ago. Ode to a Tree made it into the Oregon SAQA show and if I had a choice of shows to be in, it would be this one. They have quite a few venues lined up already. Here is a thumbnail of Ode to a Tree:

There was one other fail which I can’t discuss at this point. I might show the piece at some point.

The piece up at the top is almost finished for my July master class – late because I had a heck of a busy end of July. The theme was rhythm. I have to finish quilting it when I get home. I really like it

I am currently on the coast in Lincoln City in a cabin with Mr C and Scooter. We arrived last night.We are staying in a cabin at this funky motel on a cliff looking out over the Pacific Ocean.

We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning.

Today was day one of a mixed media/encaustic/fiber workshop with Lorraine Glessner at the Sitka Art and Ecology Center. It was awesome. I felt so refreshed and relaxed and happy when I came back to the cabin tonight.

Here is Lorraine getting ready to lecture.

Our first task was to learn about how she rusts fabric and do some of our own. Here is a sample of her rusted silk.

Here is my salt water soaked fabric with rusty bits doing their thing. I have a piece of dyed cheese cloth that and a couple of pieces of cotton.

Here are some of the goodies that we are working with.

We started out just learning how to use the wax and to scrape it to expose layers. She made us get up and move to another persons piece and add a mark and some wax and we kept moving around the room. It was very liberating to leave our precious piece to others and to them work on someone else’s piece. I really liked what had happened to mine when I came back to it.

Here it is:

Here is how I left it tonight: (iPhone photo is a quite blurry, but I really love it.)

So, there we go. I have such a great life. I have to move on and not let one disappointment take me down.

Just took this at the end of our street.