Have a seat

When we moved to this house the plan was to build a studio for me, out in the trees, near the creek. That was before the economy did its freefall and before our old house refused to sell. The studio idea is still alive, but not happening right away. So this little bedroom, farthest outpost in the house, is my studio space. It has been a really big mess for nearly a year now, though I've carved out a little space in which to work, surrounded by boxes and bags of all my stuff. Little by little I am getting organized and making it workable.

It is still painted the icky baby blue that every single room in this house was originally painted. It still has the wallpaper border of ocean life circling the ceiling. It still has the pink carpet with the blue ink stain in the dead center of it. I have learned to block all those things out and work here. I have added shelves and storage and located my work table under the wall lamp that was here when we moved in. I have spent hours and hours standing at this table, cutting, painting, printing, drawing. At the end of the day my feet hurt and my back is stiff. After all these months it finally occurred to me that if I could find a stool the right height I wouldn't have to stand. I'm a little slow I guess.

Yesterday I went out to IKEA and sat on all the stools they have. My table is counter height and just right for me to work at standing, so I figured the right height stool would have to put me at pretty close to my standing height. I found a wall at IKEA with a shelf that was right at the height of my shoulder and I dragged each stool over next to the shelf to sit and see if, sitting, my shoulder still came to the level of the shelf. No one seemed to notice, or if they did, they acted like my behavior was perfectly reasonable. I found the one that seemed perfect and you can see it in the photo above. (I got the 29" one, in white) Now I need to remember to actually sit on it.

Fixing

Not all of the fabric that we made at our play day last week turned out great, but if I have learned anything from Rayna it is that you just keep working at it and trying something new.

My plan for this piece was to make a piece of fabric that I could make a bird from. I centered some leaves on the wings that I had marked on the fabric, but the print was smudgy and not clear, so they look like light blobs instead of leaves. So I carved a little leaf stamp to use over those blobs.

Better. I may add something more to this.

I decided to use the leaf stamp on another piece that was a total sunprint failure.

I wanted to make a group of overlapping leaves, so I started by stamping the first group of three leaves. I stamped one image on a piece of freezer paper and cut out several leaves from the freezer paper, which I ironed over the first stamped leaves. Then I stamped two more leaves that overlapped the original three. The freezer paper blocked the second set of leaves from the fabric where the first leaves were.

Then I moved the freezer paper leaves and stamped more, until I had this little collection of overlapping leaves.

This is a pretty slick trick. I think this piece of fabric will definitely get some more paint before it is ready to be used for anything.

Play day

Today our small art quilt group STASH (Second Thursday At Somebody's House) met. We decided to have several play/learn days this year and this was our first. We made sun prints on fabric.

Ray helped me set up our big canopy in the backyard so we could work out there and have some shade to work in. As it turned out the morning was pretty overcast. The process, in a nutshell, is to use fabric paint or acrylic paint, quite wet, on fabric, to lay down a background color. Then we put the wet fabric on a sheet of newspaper on the grass, and placed objects with interesting shapes on the wet, painted fabric. As the fabric dries, the uncovered part dries faster and wicks the paint out from under the covered areas, creating silhouettes on the fabric.

We spent the morning painting and "decorating" our fabric, then broke for lunch while the fabrics dried. I put together ingredients for a big salad and the rest of the group brought goodies to add to the salad. It tasted great and we enjoyed catching up on everyone's summer activities.

After lunch we cleared the stuff off our dried fabrics and admired the prints. Not everything turned out great, of course. If we had had more sun they would have dried faster and probably made crisper prints. We learned that very flat objects make the best prints and everything dries lighter than you think it will be. We got some great results, though. Reva's prints made using a bunch of stuff from her husband's stash of metal hardware were very interesting. I was especially happy with some of my fern prints and one I made using little metal stars and a piece of plastic needlepoint canvas. We admired and analyzed, and had a great time. The challenge, now, is to use the fabric we painted today.

So you think you can doodle

My guilty summer pleasure is the TV show, "So You Think You Can Dance". It really is about the only thing worth watching on TV this summer, though I am catching "True Blood" on HBO and saw the first episode of "Hung" which looks promising, if a bit risque! I like the dance show because these kids really can dance! It is always entertaining and sometimes quite thrilling. The judges are good, say intelligent things, don't bicker among themselves; the choreography is interesting and creative and the choreographers talk about what they are doing, which I find fascinating.

While I watch, I doodle. I put my pen down during the actual dancing, but doodle while I listen to the talky part. I am continuing the doodle style I showed awhile back. Here are the latest.

I find I am now seeing patterns to doodle everywhere I go. Even peapods in the garden.

This one (above) is not a favorite. I think the center turned out looking like a little quilt with a ruffle around it—or molars around it.

Ray dubbed this one a "Martian fruit".

There is something really quite satisfying about working in black and white. I saw the Escher exhibit at the Portland Art Museum this month, and Escher's prints are really wonderful and graphic. A lot of the detail really reminded me of my doodles. And the rediscovery of my old prints has gotten me thinking a lot about the simple and not so simple process of working with only one color. I think the universe might be trying to tell me something.

Bamboo

One of the things we have learned about our new house is that the deck is all but unusable in the late afternoon and early evening because of the sun, which beats in on it. The umbrella over the table does not provide shade in the right place as the sun is sinking in the west. We have discussed this and believe that a cover over the far end is probably the answer, but with a long list of projects and limited funds, it doesn't look like that will happen very soon. It occurred to me this week that if we planted bamboo just off the far end of the deck, we would eventually have shade, plus a little more privacy and the softness and rustly movement that I love about bamboo. I have had bamboo on my mind ever since and easily recruited Ray to my idea. He looked at bamboo at the garden center and came home to tell me that the pickin's were slim and what they had was really expensive. So I got on the internet and discovered this place not too far from us. Bamboo Garden Nursery sells bamboo all around the country. So we set out to find it.

It is located waaaaaay out in the boondocks. We followed the map through farm country for miles and into the forest. I began to get a little nervous when the pavement ended and the road became a gravel road, but it was just a bit farther and we were there, in an amazing bamboo forest. They grow all kinds of bamboo. There was the requisite crusty old guy who knows everything you would ever want to know about bamboo and he helped us determine that this was the bamboo for us.

A clumping bamboo called Fargesia robusta. Those scale-like things on the trunks fall off later in the season. Very pretty and hardy enough for our climate. We bought three little ones. I hope they grow fast!

This bunch of large bamboo, next to the parking lot was amazing. The trunks (stems?) are about 2" in diameter and very tall. The dense foliage creates a solid canopy

Inside one of the covered parts of the nursery there were all kinds of bamboos and mixed in among them a variety of flowers, including the bird of paradise—something you don't see in Oregon very often!

Hanging from the rafters was this huge ball woven from strips of bamboo. Near the parking lot was another structure woven from bamboo strips. You can see a car antenna in the lower left corner of the photo. This will give you an idea of its size.

Before we left with our bamboo babies, we drove through the grounds. Beautiful, amazing bamboo of all kinds. I have never seen bamboo as tall as these long-legged specimins, growing in a clearing. They rival the Douglas Firs.

Great discovery. If you have even the slightest interest in bamboo, go to their web site. It is fascinating, with a wealth of information and photos of some very impressive projects they have been involved with.

On our way home we stopped at the Cornelius Pass Road House for lunch out on the lawn. I was ready for a nap when we got home. It has been a nice day. Ray is about to put some steaks on the grill. Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Margarita

I just listed 8 new birds on my Etsy shop. I also listed 6 of the heavy glass coasters like the ones I made for my friends for Christmas this past year. I hate a lightweight coaster that sticks to your glass when you pick it up. These are nice and heavy and won't do that. Besides, they are like a little piece of tabletop art.

Yesterday was really hot. I was in my sewing room finishing up the last two birds and Ray was about to make dinner, but before he did, he presented me with a frosty margarita to reward my hard work and just because it was so darn hot. He set it down next to the bird I was just finishing up and the margarita and the bird were a near perfect match, colorwise! Since I was right up to the letter "M" in my naming process, it was a no-brainer. Meet Margarita, the bird. She and her friends are waiting to fly home with someone.

Colorful birds

I took the birds that I have finished this week outside to pose them in the sunshine. It was almost too bright for a good photo, but here they are. The yellow, black and red bird at the end of the line is the one I used some of my African fabrics for. I really love how he turned out. So much that I used some more of my African fabric stash for the one next to him. The gold and red fabrics seem quite typical of African fabrics, but the ones I used for the second bird, not so much. The two main fabrics are quite an unusual color scheme of chocolate brown, purply pink, coral and accents of metallic gold. As I've said before, choosing the fabrics is the best part of the process. The other part I really enjoy is watching the personalities of these birds emerge, without much control on my part. One will develop with his head slightly tilted to one side, much like a real bird, another will balance only if I stretch the legs a bit and make him stand up very tall. Some, like the blue one, seem just about to fly away.

Here is a closeup of the African fabric bird. I guess he is a special favorite of mine. I think he will be named Joseph. Remember the Paul Simon song "Under African Skies"? Have you figured out that I am naming them in alphabetical sequence? It will help me keep track of how many I have made and sold and is much better, in my opinion, than giving them numbers! I have to think a little bit about, not only names starting with the next letter, but which one suits the bird. This Joseph's face is not "black as the night" but perhaps he does carry a little spirit of Africa within him. And how do I know if the bird is male or female? Well, I just know.

P.S. Here is one of my favorite versions of the Paul Simon song—a duet with Miriam Makeba.