Rabbits and Eggs

Here are the dozen eggs I dyed this afternoon. I think they are pretty! Tomorrow morning Uncle Andy will hide them in the yard for Sofia and Marco to find. After they find them, I think Sofia will decorate them further with stickers and such. The family is coming over for brunch tomorrow morning. It will be our Easter celebration, but also our family celebration for my birthday, which was Thursday.

I got out a few Easter decorations for the table.

 Somewhat pitiful and really, is that rabbit a little creepy, or is it just me?

Odd that our American celebration of Easter is so much about eggs and rabbits. Have you thought about this?

The first time we went to Ecuador to visit Emily in 1999 we were going to be there just before Easter. I knew we would be visiting families and friends of Emily's and I wanted to take some small gifts. At a shop here I found some beautiful egg-shaped candles that were decorated to look like Easter eggs. I bought a whole lot of them and wrapped each in colored tissue to take as little gifts. The first two I presented were to Emily's host mother and her daughter. They opened them and looked at them quizzically and then politely thanked me for the pretty candles that looked like eggs. "Easter eggs" I explained. Emily translated. The mother frowned a little and looked confused. "The Easter Rabbit brings them," I continued. Emily translated. The mother and daughter looked at each other. Their eyes said, " what on earth is this woman talking about??" Emily did her best to explain, but we could tell it sounded ludicrous to these people. Seems the Easter Bunny is unknown in South America, and eggs are not decorated or connected to Easter in any way.

In Catholic South America Easter is much more about Holy Week, or Semana Santa, which follows Christ's last days, including the last supper, his carrying the cross through the city, the crucifixion and at midnight on Saturday night mass is celebrated with great joy for his resurrection. It is a somber week of mourning and ritual and commemoration, with a joyful ending. Sunday morning is business as usual. No bunny. No eggs.

While I felt somewhat mortified by my choice of gifts, I continued to present them to people we met. We just started out by explaining this crazy American custom we observe at Easter time, even telling them the rabbit part, which we chuckled at ourselves once we saw the humor in the whole deal. And in return we learned that the most famous Ecuadorean custom that happens during Holy Week in Ecuador is the eating of Fanesca, a special soup served only during Holy week. Bean and salt cod soup may not sound too festive, but people who let rabbits hide eggs in their yards do not judge. (We ate it. It was, um, interesting.)

Have a lovely day, whether you are celebrating Easter, Passover, somebody's birthday or just the beauty of the season.

:: :: :: :: ::

P.S. If you have the time and want to read an entertaining article, Calvin Trillin wrote, in the New Yorker, about traveling to Cuenca, Ecuador (the very city where we were visiting Emily) during Holy Week specifically to eat as much fanesca as he could find. The article is archived online here.

Fire

Finished the campfire piece today. Actually, I thought I had it finished yesterday. It looked like this:

I don't know if you can see what I changed. The bottom foreground wasn't quite working for me. Those rocks around the fire looked too tight and somehow unnatural. And the ground itself wasn't "grounding." I added a couple more rocks and some deep shadow, which seem like an improvement to me. And then I added more sparks. Seemed like it needed those.

This piece will be submitted for our next High Fiber Diet show, "The Elements." If I can get them done in time, I hope to complete all four elements to submit. I started with "fire" because it seemed the most challenging, but now I am having a hard time coming up with any ideas for earth, air and water!

The size of this is 15" x 35". I kind of wish I had made it larger.

What I saw today

Gauguin at the Seattle Art Museum. It was a long day, but oh, so worth the drive.

Old Friends

Four years ago today I stopped by my friend Paula's house to drop off a birthday present for her. It was a planter planted with spring flowers and I knew she would be at work so I planned to leave it on her front porch with a card. I rang the bell on the off chance someone was home and she answered, looking pale and shaky. "Don't come in—I have the flu." I left the flowers and wished her a speedy recovery and left. She has no memory of the flowers or the day or our short conversation. By the next day she was in ICU fighting for her life against a virus that was attacking her brain. This was followed by a near fatal drug reaction and weeks and months of recovery.  She recovered and today is celebrating another birthday. Happy Birthday, Paula!

This is me (left) and Paula (right) as we appeared in our High School yearbook, senior year. By then we thought we had been friends forever—8 years! We met in fourth grade when we were vying for the same boyfriend. We were in different classes, but managed to make each other quite miserable competing for this cute boy and ended up in a conflict that our teachers finally had to resolve. I still remember Paula's teacher saying, "You are both nice girls who should be friends and should not be so angry toward one another." The teachers determined that we should be made to eat lunch together for a week and get to know one another. At the end of the week we were buddies. Neither of us knows what happened to the boy we both adored. We have been friends since—through college, marriage, children and grandchildren. We started together in Pocatello, Idaho, then after college we each moved away, but always stayed in touch. In 1993 I moved to Portland where Paula lived. Today we live about 3 miles apart and see each other weekly. We have been friends for 56 years. I love her dearly and am so grateful that she is here.

The older I get the more I realize what great fortune I have in my friends.

Today I learned that another old friend, from college, died yesterday. I have not seen, nor been in touch with him for many years, but the news brought back a flood of memories of a talented, creative soul and sweet and generous friend and I am sad to know that he is gone.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, 

they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  

—Marcel Proust

My two cents worth on the subject.

Pinterest. That's the subject.

Have you discovered the wildly popular online pin board service yet? When I first heard about it some months back it seemed like such a great idea—a place to "pin" all those wonderful, interesting, inspiring things that one runs across while surfing the net. Stuff you want to keep track of—somehow. I used the "bookmark" feature on my browser, of course, but a long, unsorted list of urls is pretty unwieldy. Then I just started creating folders that had photos I wanted to keep for reference, and urls of ideas and tutorials I might someday want to look at again. Then along came Pinterest and made it all so easy and organized and with a visual interface that showed you exactly what you had saved. Perfect. So, I saw it as helping us all do what we were already doing, but in a really well designed way. And—since it was all stored online, instead of on one's own hard drive, you can share it.

But it is blowing up, maybe. There is a lot of talk and opinion about what the copyright ramifications are. Some see it as clear copyright infringement. Some people are now saying that even though they have posted their photos online, for anyone to see, they do not want them pinned onto a Pinterest account. In case you're not familiar with Pinterest, this is what a Pinterest page looks like. This is mine.

Each of those squares is a category "board" and you can see one large and several small thumbnails of photos "pinned" on the board. I don't pin a lot of things. You can see that three of my boards have nothing on them. If you want to see it closer up, I think you can look just by clicking this link .

It may, indeed, be a copyright infringement to re-post other people's photos. I guess that remains to be seen. For me, it seems that re-posting on Pinterest is harmless. The photo is already on the internet. By pinning, you are posting it on the internet. Same/same? Seems like it to me, but not to everyone. People are starting to put notices on their blogs saying they do not wish their photos to be pinned. And I will certainly respect that. For the record you may not re-post my photos and say that they are yours. You may not take my photos and print them on T-shirts (or coffee mugs, or, or, or...) and sell them without my permission. You may not make a quilt identical to one of mine and enter it into a show or sell it and say it was your original design. (If you want to copy for your own enjoyment, knock yourself out...) But, if you want to pin it to your Pinterest board, that's fine with me. I do hope you'll give me credit and link it back to my blog.

Interestingly, it is possible to search and see who has pinned my photos. Fascinating. It is informative to see just what seems to grab people. Here is one screen of images pinned from my blog onto other people's Pinterest boards.

This tells me that my recent quilt with the hearts resonated with several people. Also my "Deep in the Forest" tree and my other tree, the "Sheltering Tree" piece. Just in the past week two people have pinned the beginnings of my campfire quilt. I wanted to leave a message and say, "not yet! It isn't finished!"

Scrolling back a bit I see  the deep forest tree was still popular and several people picked up on my little folded gift box tutorial and were interested in the finger lights I bought in Houston.

This is great information! It is also gratifying and flattering.

Maybe I am missing the big threat. Maybe I am just too trusting of people's motives, but until someone explains it to me in terms that make sense, or someone rips me off in some unexpected way by means of Pinterest, I remain a fan. I hope Pinterest can survive the critics and the legal questions. I think it is a brilliant idea.

Those tabs up there

Have you ever noticed those tabs at the top of this blog, just under the banner? Blogger added the ability to create "pages" awhile back and I have been slowly adding some content in separate pages. I just, this week, added the "resume" tab and the "current work" tab. Tonight I updated the "studio" tab with some more recent photos.

I don't have a web site, so this seems like a good alternative, but I wonder if anyone ever notices the tabs are there, and then if anyone ever looks at them. I am thinking of adding another tab that would contain some of the tutorial type posts from the blog. I am interested in your feedback. Are those tabs even noticed?

More on the road trip

After we checked out the studio and cabin where Jeri was staying during her residency, she took us on a little tour of the premises at Caldera.

We hiked, through the snow to Blue Lake. This is the only picture I took of Jeri, leading the way, with Ray close behind. She does not like having her photo taken.

What a beautiful little lake. We could see on the far side, how close the forest fires of a couple years ago had come to Caldera. Along the way we saw an arrangement of natural bits and objects made by one of the artists. It was covered by the recent snow, but slowly revealed itself as the snow melted.

 This is a fish ladder constructed to allow fish swimming upstream toward Blue Lake to bypass the small dam where power is generated by an old wooden water wheel.

We ended at the beautiful big Hearth Building where community gatherings. performances and weekly dinners take place.  Art is all around.

After a fun lunch in the little town of Sisters, we bid Jeri farewell and sent her back to her studio work. The drive home was as beautiful as the drive out. We love a good road trip and this was a good one. It is always good to have musical accompaniment on a road trip. The Decemberists set a good mood for the drive.
 

Perfect day for a road trip

Yesterday was a gorgeous day and Ray and I drove over to Central Oregon to visit our friend, Jeri Flom at the Caldera Conference Center near Sisters, Oregon. In the summer Caldera is an arts camp for children and young people. In the winter they offer month long artists residencies. Jeri is one of the resident artists for March. We were unable to attend the open house that was held on Saturday, so we decided to go for a visit yesterday.

It was about a three hour drive from Portland and a day that filled my heart with memories of bright, clear, sunny high desert winter days of my youth. The mountains glowed, the snow was dazzling, the sky was the bluest of blue. We found our way to Caldera, parked and entered the huge and beautiful Hearth building, which is the first thing you encounter. Out the back we followed the pathway to the studios.

We quickly found Jeri puttering away in her huge, light-filled studio.

Jeri's work is extremely painstaking, consisting of threads, blended and stitched heavily, creating a mat of shaded color and layered texture. She rented a van to transport her supplies and equipment to the studio. Her assortment of thread, alone, is mind-boggling.

Much of the work she is doing is experimenting with different thread combinations and creating small samples for future reference. These are sky samples using different threads and background materials.

More samples. Using a photo for inspiration.

At the right in the photo above is the start of a new piece. She was a little disappointed that she has not created more large work in her three weeks, so far. I was pretty impressed with all the samples. These will be reference material for her work for years to come.

The resident artists are each provided a large studio in which to work and a small A-frame cabin where they live for the month. Jeri's cabin was cozy, with a wood stove and view of the creek.

I was totally taken with everything I saw here. What a treat it would be to spend a month just taking in the beauty and creating. Tomorrow I will post more about the facility. To see more of Jeri's work and her thoughts on the residency experience, visit her blog here.

Studio time

Worked on the campfire piece again today. This is the part I am excited about. It will either work, or it won't. My idea is to use all these little squares of fabric to create the fire, then do a lot of machine stitching in my crazy stitching technique to try to give the impression of flames that are partially transparent, partially not.

Keep in mind that I am not attempting to create realistic flames (or sky or ground, or trees!) What I am after is that impression of the way the flames dance and swirl into the sky. Still a long way to go.

Yesterday Ray and I decided to make a quick trip out to Ikea and get a futon to put in the studio loft. It will serve as extra seating up there and can be a place for overnight guests as well.

I think I could host our STASH group here. Certainly have guests. Wanna come for a visit?

More of this process

I started actually cutting fabric and working for real on the campfire piece. I find it works well to work from back to front, ie, starting with a background and moving forward. I started with a very simple background of strippy sky and ground, then added the basic campfire and some tree-ish shapes.

Too small, I think. The great thing about a campfire, both real and imagined, is that you can start small and make it bigger!

So this is a basis. Now comes the part that will make or break. The fire needs to become so much more. I have a vision in my head, but only trying a few things will tell me whether it will really work. Those stones around the fire look pretty flat, don't they? Need to think about that.

Spring Snow

Last night as I was heading for bed I stopped to look out the front window and saw that the off-and-on rain-to-sleet-to-snow of yesterday had turned to real snow. It was falling softly and blanketing the daffodils and budding bushes out front. The sky was a lovely pink color. Enchanting.

I have memories of beautiful snowfalls like this. They are very special. I remember being in Boston in 1969, working for my sorority, when a heavy snowfall brought the city to a halt. The streetcar that ran past the apartment where I was staying could not run. There were no cars on the streets. We sat in a second floor window and watched the snow softly fall past the streetlight. Suddenly the group of guys who lived in the apartment below were in the street throwing snowballs up at our window. We joined them in the street, building a snowman, laughing loudly and flinging ourselves, like little kids, into deep drifts of snow until we were exhausted. The lights came on in a little bar down the block, as the owner finally shoveled out the walks and doorway and we all encamped to the bar for beers and french fries, Motown on the jukebox and dart games. Crazy how vivid that memory is 40+ years later.

This morning the sun came out and the snow is melting in big, wet, ploppy globs falling from the trees and sliding down the roof.

Since my daughter's school is at a higher elevation than most of the city, there is still a lot of snow and icy roads, so school was cancelled for the day. A gift. Today is my granddaughter, Sofia's birthday and she gets to spend it with her Mom. They called this morning to tell me they were heading up Cooper Mountain to play in the snow. I wonder how many times in Sofia's life she will play in the snow on her spring birthday. I remember the one time it snowed on my birthday (April 5) when I was a child. It made it an extra special day.

Today is a good day. I am grateful for the gift of the snow, grateful that it is melting fast and causing few problems, and especially grateful for the little girl who made me a grandmother. She is a five-year-old best friend and sunshine on the darkest days.

Thinking about fire

I am ready to start on something new. High Fiber Diet, the Art Quilt Group I belong to is having a show with the theme of the four elements: earth, air, water and fire. I want to make something for this show and as I think of these four elements it is fire that always seems the odd guy out to me, at least visually. The other three all suggest nature themes. Fire seems like it would be very harsh mixed with earthy, natural subjects and colors, though it is also a force of nature. So my initial resistance to the idea of fire has been wiggling itself around in my brain. I am trying to think of how to depict fire in a way that is not screaming red and orange. One of my first thoughts was a memory of visiting Yellowstone Park in the winter several years after massive wild fires destroyed thousands of acres of forest. We skied through large tracts of burned forest like this, except in winter it seemed even more stark, with the snow on the ground. While it would not address fire, it would be about the aftermath of fire.

Then I thought about campfires. How much I love campfires. I have such wonderful memories of campfires at the Girl Scout camp where I went for years, as a camper, and then worked at as a counselor. There is something hypnotic and magical about sitting around a blazing fire and listening to the hiss and crackle and watching those small explosions that send showers of sparks into the night sky to mingle with the stars. So difficult, I think, to capture that feeling and that sense of deep, rich warmth and light against a velvety dark sky.

I looked at photos. Google images is always a wealth of inspiration.

I started work on some sketches. So hard to draw fire without it looking like a cartoon. I need to think of an abstracted way to present the impression of fire. Not sure I can do it satisfactorily. I think I need to pull some fabrics and make some little samples. Black and white doesn't cut it.

Still, these little sketches do help me work out composition and one of the coolest tools is Photoshop. Just by scanning my drawing and using some of the distortion tools in Photoshop I think I am already honing in on a better composition.

Lots of work left to do before I even decide if this is a workable idea, but it is growing on me.

The nesting instinct

It is strong in me. As much as I say my studio is just a workplace—a place of utility—I keep zhoozhing it up. Prettifying. Cozifying. It is a curse. Or maybe a gift. Well, whatever. It makes me happy. I finally got the loft all organized and stuff stored in the under-the-roof storage space, which looked organized yet chaotic when I finished. I needed to get it out of sight.

When planning the space I was thinking there would be doors on those storage spaces, but doors seem so heavy and so demanding of space. I considered curtains, roll-up blinds, shoji screens and finally landed on something really simple. They are simple, white fabric panels, hung on hooks. I made the panels and put three grommets at the top of each.  When I want to get into storage I can simply push part of a panel aside, or unhook part or all of a panel depending on how much space I need to work with. I rather like the simplicity of it. There are six panels all together, extending down one entire wall of the loft.

Then I recovered the cushion on my old wicker rocker with some fabric I bought at an estate sale awhile back.

And I made a pillow for the back. (It needs one) The pillow was made from a tee shirt my daughter and son-in-law brought to me from Ecuador. I don't really wear tee shirts and this one was a touch snug anyway, but I loved the graphic design! It says, in Spanish, "my Quito has a huge sun and starry nights".

Here is the shirt before I cut into it. I cut both the front and back of the shirt and used both thicknesses to give the front of the pillow more opacity and body. The back and the piping are navy blue linen. I think it makes a fabulous pillow. And it reminds me of Quito—a very happy place for me. I have another tee shirt from Ecuador that will likely become a second pillow.

My reading corner needs a light of some kind and maybe a little table. I think I need a trip to Ikea.

"To sleep, perchance to dream..."

I have never been a good sleeper. My mother said I was a terrible baby who cried a lot and never slept. As a child I would be sent to bed at eight o'clock and lay awake for hours, hearing the television or my parents talking in the other room, then they would go off to bed and the house would be quiet and I would toss and turn and watch the moon out the window. At the other end, waking up was torture. I could sleep until noon given the chance.

I still find it so difficult to get to sleep. I always read until I am nodding off, dropping my book, etc.  Even then, once the lights go off I am often awake again, thrashing for an hour or more. Once asleep I never feel deeply asleep. I wake up periodically. I find 4:15 is an oddly common time to look at the clock. Sometimes I am too hot. Sometimes my mind is racing with ideas or worries, mostly irrational. Then I go to sleep and dream exhausting dreams. They usually involve travel or a big project where nothing is what I planned and luggage is lost or deadlines are looming and I have forgotten crucial details. Last night I was in charge of planning a wedding for a friend. Just as the ceremony was about to start I realized I had forgotten to decorate for the reception or order a cake. I spent frantic, frustrating hours, it seemed, running back and forth, baking and decorating a cake, losing my shoes, watching my car roll into a river and apologizing endlessly. At last I fought my way out of the dream and woke up with a headache and feeling in need of a nap. The start of daylight savings time last weekend seemed to double the impact of my sleep problems. I am so tired. So. Tired. I fall asleep in my chair or in front of the TV, but not in bed. Last night I took melatonin. It had no effect. Tonight I took a Benadryl, which I am beginning to feel. I hate to take pills, but I feel desperate.

The piece above is small quilt I made several years ago for the Journal Quilt project. Ray was working in Colorado. When I would go to Colorado I would sleep.  I would imagine the snow outside softly, quietly piling up around me as I fell into deep, satisfying sleep. I would sleep during the day and then fall into bed every night. It was crazy. All I wanted to do was sleep. I am a high altitude sleeper living near sea level. That's a theory...

So, here it is bedtime again. Off I go. Wish me luck.

The red rug

I seem to have made it over some kind of hump and have really been making progress in getting the studio loft organized. It is getting kind of exciting now and I am anxious to get it done.

Awhile back my friends, Norm and Paula offered me a nice red rug that they were getting rid of. It had one problem—an unsightly worn spot. Not a hole. The rug was still basically viable, but it appears to be woven from jute that is wrapped in a red fiber, possibly wool. The red fiber had worn off in one area only, leaving the jute exposed. I considered painting the exposed jute red, but decided to see if I could repair it in a way with a bit more integrity. I found a yarn that is close to the color, but not perfect. You know, you can never really perfectly match these things. I took a big needle and started wrapping the yarn around the exposed areas.

Up close it is easy to see the repair, about half done here, but when you stand back it is barely noticeable.

It is the slightly darker area just below the center of the rug on the right side. I think it will be fine and add a nice bit of warmth to my "reading corner" in the loft.

I feel so smart and virtuous!

Gotta get it together

So, the loft in the studio has been a mess since—forever. It has never not been a mess. When I moved all my stuff to the studio last fall everything that I did not know what to do with went to the loft. I have made a few feeble attempts at organizing and got it to this point. Sad, eh? That shelf unit sat unpainted for a couple of months. Getting it painted was progress.

It has been here for awhile. Today I spent a good two hours upstairs putting stuff in categories, then in containers, then on shelves. This is how it looks now.

I can see the difference, but I know to the untrained eye it still looks impossible. Really I am getting things done. I have those great storage spaces under the roof there and am trying to get most everything situated in that space, then I will hang fabric panels in front of it all. I have a vision. It will be neat and tidy and quite wonderful, actually. I just need to keep at it. Gah.

I keep finding things in all those bags and boxes and tubs. I found the little quilted banner from my long ago quilt shop, Scrap Peddlers of Ashland. I hung this at quilt shows where I was vending. It is quite faded, but I thought it needed a place of honor in the studio.

Chubby moth is hanging below it. Del asked about the size. This should give you an idea.

A good day

Today was a day to just get to some things. Get them taken care of.

First thing I did was clean out the refrigerator. Ugh. Why do I let my refrig get so icky? Probably because I just hate the job of pulling everything out and deciding what is worth keeping. If you let it go long enough, there is little doubt! No photos. Count yourselves lucky.

Next I photographed my entry for the "Rituals" invitational.  This is "Friendship Ritual".

This commemorates my yearly ritual of designing, making and sending Valentines. I described the stitched pattern connecting all these hearts as a network of connection that becomes more important to me as the years go by. It is really about friendship and what it means in a life. This is the third year I have been invited to submit to the Dinner at Eight show. The previous entries have both been accepted. I hope this one is. It is, by far, my favorite of the three. I sent the entry off this afternoon.

Have you seen this blog? I am enchanted by Mr. Finch's moths. I keep thinking about them and today made myself a moth.

I purposely did not go back to look at Mr. Finch's moths and made myself come up with my own design. Kind of hilariously chubby and awkward compared to his elegant creatures. Anyway, I kind of like my porky little moth and I got it out of my system.

Like the moth that urged me to make it, I found a recipe online that has been nagging me. Senegalese peanut soup. I made it for dinner tonight. Very, very delicious. Mmmm. Warm and flavorful and spicy. So satisfying.

The recipe can be found here.

All right then. I had a good Saturday, and have tasty, leftover soup for yet another day.

Perspective

In the evenings I sit and this is my view, TV on the right. Tonight out of nowhere Ray said, "I love our house." And  I agreed. Not for its size. Not, certainly, for its luxuriousness. It is definitely a work in progress. And it occurred to me that this is probably our last house. I hope to be here a long time. But still, a sobering thought. The journey of my life has led me here. It makes me think I might have considered things more carefully, but then I—we—(I include Ray in this) have always been a bit impulsive. We never planned to be here, in this spot, but I'm not sure there is anywhere else I would rather be. Today's sunshine has made things pretty much right in my world.

I have known for several weeks that there was something wrong with my sewing machine, but I have pushed it through, babying it and avoiding stressing it too much. Yesterday it lurched into a shuddering spasm, swallowed a big gulp of thread and then vomited it out. I cleaned it. I talked soothingly, but it continued to gulp thread instead of stitching, so it went off to the repair shop today.

I think of it as my "new" machine, though it has probably been ten years ago that I brought it home. I hope it can be repaired. I think it can, but they say it will be at least three weeks before the repairman, who is currently doing good works in New Mexico (repairing Hopi sewing machines?? I don't know...), will be back and make his way through the backlog to my machine. Meanwhile, I pulled out my old machine (which was my "new" machine for the twenty years prior to the purchase of the new "new" machine) and it seems to run OK. I will reacquaint myself with it. It is like changing cars. Everything is in the wrong place. Deadlines are looming, but this is a test. If all else fails there is the treadle. There is still money in the drawer.