Tuesday ToDo

still no bag found by United.


1. Stop at City Hall for building permit. update. OK, I hate city hall. For a simple shade structure over part of my deck, they want me to provide detailed engineering drawings, a complete materials list, and show that a shade cover can withstand 80 MPH winds and a 4.0 earthquake. And pay them the privilege of $100 for ok'ing the project. think we will be doing this one illegally. fuck 'em.

2. Pick up glasses. done

3. Call on lost bag. Regularly. done.

4. Work on Eucalyptus leaves. 5 done. upteehundredand 11 to go.

5. Straighten up studio. I wish it was done.

48 hours

And no bag yet.

I'm taking getting this bag back into my own hands.

I'm doing the laundry without the dirty clothes in the bag. The minute the last load enters the rinse cycle, I'm confident the bag will hit our entryway.

UNITED. Are you listening??

An update. United hasn't even located it yet. But it is on a "priority search" of all airline terminals.

Fortunately, it's a green case... not the ubiquitutous black. So it's a bit easier to look for. And Steve is learning his lesson. He put the recharger cord for his corporate computer in there, so no juicy for THAT computer.

Unfortunately, if it is lost... we bought it in Singapore.

Ok. One more thing....

Steve is home. His bag is not. United lost it somewhere... probably because he got to the airport 4.5 hours before his flight.

Anyway, he packed my digital in his bag (along with computer parts for his work computer). I tell him not to do this, but does he listen??

So no pictures until United gets their act in gear.

crosses fingers....

OK, I'm chatty today...

But I think I'm taking the next few days off for the holidays.

I had a little adventure yesterday... and I sent Steve an email about it. Now, for those who travel, I've got ask: do you WANT to hear about problems at home when you are on the road? Or would you rather wait and hear it about it when you're home, but well after the fact?

Ok, let me give you the details.

I walked the dogs around the neighborhood yesterday afternoon, came home, walked them up the right hand side of the car, through the garage and into the house. Then I gathered up all the indoor trash, carried it out to the cans, and started taking them out to the curb for collection today.

There, between my car's left back tire and the front shrub bed was a juvenile rattle snake. It wasn't moving much; infact I rolled the trash can over it and it still didn't move. At that point, I figured it was a good gopher snake. But I looked closely and it definately was a rattler.

I called the fire department, and the whole bunch came out (big fire truck, little pick up truck, and fire chief). The chief thought he would be lecturing me on how to tell the difference between the gopher snake he thought I had and a rattler. Then he confirmed my identified. And 2 other firemen killed it with shovel. And threw it into my garbage can.

Now I wrote Steve when everything was done. I was unharmed, the dogs were safe. All the have as way of memory are some blood stains on the driveway. He answered back asking me a bunch of detailed questioned...

So if your hubby or kid had had my experience... would you have wanted to know?

BTW, I think my neighbor's young adult son stole the snake out of my garbage. Why??? Who knows.

Nobody Likes Me...

Seven comments in seven days?? Just Seven.

Are you reading and leaving without saying "hey"?? Or are you not reading?

Am I not scintillating? Are my pictures not bright and cheerful enough??

Is something broked??

Excuse me while I eat some worms....

A tour of my yard...

Since I still don't have my camera back from Illinois (along with the spouse), I'm sharing these pictures of my yard.

This is my front yard. Except that it isn't really. We live in a wedge shaped lot, and the only thing that faces the street is our driveway. This is next to the house. Takes about 10 minutes to mow. The flagstone surrounds our spa.

Problem with a wedge shaped lot? As you can see.. I'm always looking at some part of neighbor's house except from straight back of my house.



This is my garden. It's behind the spa. It drops about 15' from the level of the lawn. I can look down on all the levels from the deck. The decking showing is part of the stairs heading below my deck.



This is the yard below the deck (and Jake). The dogs go out here, and I hang the laundry here. We do not water it, so although it's filled with green weeds, in another couple weeks it will be brown and stubbly.



Our house faces south with no protection from the sun. Without some external shade it is 10-15 degrees hotter at the windows than the center of rooms in the summer. So I hang shade curtains outside for the summer. Ugly, but life's more comfortable, and cool breezes do move through this.



The other end of the deck. The wind pushes everything to this end all summer, so I usually just keep it here. And spend most mornings put it back where it belongs. Next week 2 guys are going to build one of those covers over this side of the deck (trellis, portico, open roof, what are these called??). I can then decide to hang shades from the sides if I need more shade control. And we will hang our porch swing from the supports. I hope this works.

Thursday To Do

Steve has the camera, so no pictures of the newly painted fabrics.. or the little quiltlet I worked on while watching LOST.

Today I'm meeting some friends at a hardware store. We are being given a dollar limit, and the challenge of finding stuff that can be used for embellishments/encrustations in fiber art and altered books. We will show and share our finds over lunch at (what a surprise)... a Thai restaurant.

This afternoon, quilting.

Then later I walk with my friend Linda.

I have a couple DVDs to watch: Being Julia and Hotel Rwanda.

Wednesday To Dos

Nothing scheduled with the outside world today.

I'm watching the morning news talking about moderation in the legislature... and I hope this is a trend that catches on. The end of my political ranting for a long while. (is that moderate enough of me??)

So today I plan to paint up a lot of fabric.

Dick Blick's had a big sale on paints, so I had ordered up a number of the GOLDEN FLUID ACRYLIC PAINTS. Today I'm going to play with these so I can compare them to the seta color and liquitex fluid acrylics I've used already. I've got several odd pieces of fabrics with unknown fiber content.. and I want to paint these up too. Each has really great texture to it but very boring colors.

When the fabric is painted and drying, I'll hopefully finish quilting on Euc.

I visited Gerrie's art quilt group yesterday and they confirmed my feelings for the next step. (sorry, I'm not sharing until I've decided which way to go with this.)

Walk the dogs this evening, then settle down to enjoy LOST.

Tuesday

Steve is on his way to Chicago for the rest of the week. At first I was not happy that he booked this trip without first asking me if I wanted to join him. I imagined myself hopping on the "el" and heading downtown, to walk around the museums and revel in the architecture. Not to be.

But Steve explained that he's working in Aurora a good bit west of the airport and it's kind not convenient to much of anything. I probably would have been stuck out there not having much fun.

Today I'm heading up to Santa Rosa to attend a gathering of Gerrie's mini group.

When I get home, I need to finish quilting eucalyptus. I've got an idea for the next piece that I really want to get to work on (OK, actually I have started doing some hand work on one part). Ya know how it is... something isn't quite done (but past the real challenges part), and you're eager to get on to the next exciting thing.

And walk the dogs (though not nearly as fun a walk as Pt. Isobel is).

Then get set up to do some serious fabric painting on Wednesday.

Pt. Isobel Dog Park Walk

Hide your dog's eyes!! This is a trip to the Pt. Isobel Dog Park on the Richmond/Berkeley border. We start where we end at the hose spigot off Rydin Rd.


We skipped this whole part of the walk. It's a nice long section with great lawns for dogs to chase balls on. But my goofs have their minds set on swimming today.


And they're off! I'll see them in about 10 minutes when I catch up.



There's Jake waiting for me in the water.


Katy happily heading in with her ball.


After their swim, there is time to make new friends.


Rolling in the grass. I'd call it guilty pleasure, but dogs seldom feel guilty.


At the point of the park, you can picnic along the bay, with San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge behind you. It's a bit too hazy today to see.


The other side of the inlet. Follow this path to a parking lot and Mud Puppies. A cafe, store and bath site. As you can see, lots of people spend their lunchtime walking their dogs here.


The tennis ball lawns. and the riprap walls.


After the walk, a stop for a drink and a hosing off before heading home. I promised them discretion enough that I did not show them getting their bath. The dogs do have some pride.


Clean, exercised and back in the car. We're off to get my glasses adjusted, and finish running our errands.

Ok, taking a picture of the actually gear/feather quilting wasn't working. So I drew it out.


In the traditional feather, you begin at the bottom, curve the spine upward, and make the feathers. The feathers either are shaped like ears, 1/2 hearts, or little fingers. They might be large or small... and all those differences tend to make each person's unique. After a while, your shape is stuck... and it's hard to make it finer, or larger or more or less elegant.

Anyway, I started the "gear/feather" similar to the stuff on the right: trying to keep the angle of the gear/feather perpendicular to the spine. It's hard to do, and require a lot of manipulating the fabric. Plus it just ended up looking a bit sloppy.

My new and improved gear/feather is made with the undulating spine. Then the gears are all drawn as straight lines perpendicular to the lines of the quilt. I use the edge of darning foot to make sure things are fairly straight. But, because I really like the look, I didn't try to make the gear/feathers all the same size and shape. The only requirement was that they had to have that very perpendicular look. Sorry that the picture seems so light.

TO DO FOR MONDAY:

1. Dub a tape of THE LADY AND THE UNICORN for Cathy in Colorado. Think about going to the library and finding some classical and JP Sousa cds to dub for Steve. (all his CDs and the changer were stolen from his car). I know, violation of copyright and all that. but screw it.

2. Get glasses adjusted/pick up 2nd pair. These are cute but they don't fit right. And my right ear is sore.

3. Continue quilting on Euc. Please try to finish this quilting up today.

4. Greek salad and tiropitas for supper if it's hot. Stuffed peppers and a side salad if it's not.

5. The dogs need a good swim. Check the tide chart and head down to Pt. Isobel if the timing works. Take pictures so everyone on the blogring can show them to their dogs and make them jealous.

Observations

This past week, I spent time watching:

-a mockingbird. If you don't know, male mockers sing in the spring (day and night). The females choose to mate with the mocker with the most impressive song. So the birds learn to imitate everything around them.

He was going through his entire repetoire... I recognized gold finch, hummingbird, and squirrel among his songs. He was quite good... would sing a tone six times then move on to the next.. and every once in a while would rise up and fly a little, then settle back down on his chimney. At one point another male settled in nearby... hoping to learn some of his sounds. And suddenly the first mocker almost stopped... making only the most feeble of singing noises.

-a young mule deer grazing behind the house. He looked up as I walked outside, waggled an ear, then put his head back down to graze.

-a snake crawling across the street. A woman walking by stopped short to watch it. Or to stay out of it's way. I'm not sure if it was a gopher snake or a rattler.

My lost picture

For some reason, Blogger would not upload this picture for the longest time. I'm having a remarkbly fun time quilting this piece. And, remarkably, I'm holding myself to a standard. If the thread color or the technique is wrong, I tear it out and start again. I swear it's the positive feedback I've gotten from all you over the past months. You encourage me to work, and I respond by encouraging my best work.

This is a rather Welsh design... a simplified leaf form. On the left, there is garnet stitch inside the leaf and echo stitching outside, on the right that pattern is reversed.

Eucalyptus I

Ok, One picture before I start writing, just to whet your whistle... Here's a detail on one square of the quilt. People have been emailing me about the progress being made. I'm about 1/2 done with the quilting.

The sandstone piece had leaf shapes quilted in, then the background filled. It's quite rich in person.


I painted up the fabric for the binding in the middle of the week. It IMMEDIATELY began to rain for the next 2 days making it really hard to hang it up outside to dry. The sink in my laundry room is never going to recover. When we go to sell this house, I will have to put a new sink in there. Or convince a buyer that a multi-color utility sink is an object de arte.


OK. One more picture...


The red has a rectangular version of a feathered swag running through it (it's a long story)...


My last house in Ohio was in an Amish area. And my favorite fabric store had this older Amish woman (Ginny) working there. She helped me figure out feathers. The best advice she gave me was to just keep doing them, and one day I'd find "MY FEATHER" And I did.

I used to have a long-arm machine and did some quilting for others. And I would stitch a quilt full of feathers at the drop of a needle. Put me in front of a long arm today, I'll do the same thing. But my long arm feather was hard for me to do on my home machine. I couldn't get that rhythm. So today I'm making these pieces and quilting along. Thinking to myself that this motif is a bit derivative of something that Melody does. But then, as I continued along, the pattern altered slightly... and felt as comfortable as an old pair of jeans. I had translated my long art feather into this geometric gear kind of feather. I must admit it made me very happy.

Enough chatting. Another picture.

The green has a very Klimpt-like pattern in it. The arrow helps me remember where I want to the top to be. The tan one in the bottom has a leaf and impromptu crosshatching.



Hey, wait a minute... there a picture missing!!

Guess I'll save that for tomorrow...

Blogroll. Is it working for you???

OK, if anyone wants to tell me why blogroll isn't updating most people's blogs... I'd truly appreciate it. It keep telling me that almost nobody has updated since Monday. Then I click on their blogs, and there are all these new things.

And, NO.... the regional theater hasn't done Mama Mia yet... nor Wicked. But if a good regional theater near you is ever doing CHILDREN OF EDEN... don't hesitate to see it.

Regional Theater is a Good Thing

Wednesday night we attended our second play of the year, JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG. It was a very serious drama, so hard to be riotously enthusiastic about it. But the cast was superb, the play thoughtful, and the sets made me want to come home and paint fabric. But the play was well enough performed that I didn't linger on that thought for long.

Before the play began, the theater director came out with his traditional yammer... history of the play, a trivia question that wins one person a pen. And the bestest announcement ever:

Next year is the 30th season of the WILLOWS theater. In that time, this group has presented over 150 different plays, including 7 world premieres, and 22 regional premieres. So, to celebrate next year, they are asking the patrons to vote for their greatest hits.

Unfortunately, we've only been members for the last 3 years. And even though some of those plays were fabulous, it's a bit too soon to see them again. So I'm going to have to just play it on instinct.

We get to pick one drama, 2 comedies and 3 musicals. This theater has a wonderful juvenile section, so I'll feel comfortable selecting plays which require strong children's roles (kids were in 4 of the 5 plays I saw last year).

I'm pretty sure that my drama will be TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Can you go wrong with this? I don't think so.

The comedies are challenge. Do I go with a classic like Taming of the Shrew? Arsenic and Old Lace? (that sounds like a winner)...

Then the musicals. I'm pretty sure I'll pick the original NunSense for one. But then something familiar like Music Man? Or an unknown? Annie Warbucks? (only if they get the Daddy Warbucks they had last winter...).

Oh, the decisions!! It's like having to pick one from column A, 2 from column B... at a really good Chinese restaurant when you want the whole menu.

This is going to be fun.

Some simple stitching

Some simple stitching...

Hand-painted fabric, machine stitched on a grid, then hand stitched.

It's odd. When I was doing the grid quilting on this as hard as I tried to do it perfectly, there were small irregularities. For some reason it got me thinking about genetics. How nature will try to reproduce something perfectly time and again, yet even there there are small irregularities. We call them mutations when we see them.

I'm thinking I want to do a piece where I follow the stitching "mutations" and see where they go in a larger piece. But the piece needs more than just the interesting mutated stitching.

This is a very small piece (maybe 10"x12"). I don't know what I will do with it now. I may turn it into fabric postcards, I may add it to another piece.

 

Wednesday ToDo

1. Oh, Poo!! This is housework Wednesday. It's stinky, I know, but the agreement is I take the place of the housecleaner we used to have and I get to keep what I paid her. Three and a half hours every other week. And this is Housework Wednesday. So, 8 am to 11:30 am is housecleaning. D could do 2 bathrooms, the bedroom, the kitchen and the first floor living space completely in this time. I usually don't get that much done.. but most of it.

Anyway, yesterday I bought myself an MP3 player, so I can slip that on and listen to Ngaio Marsh while I work.

2. My new glasses are ready for pickup, so if it's not raining (oh, did I mention IT'S STILL RAINING!!???!!), I'll walk the dogs at Hilltop, then let them rest up while I get my new glasses. (there may be pictures later. then again, there may not).

3. home to continue the quilting on euc. for a couple hours.

4. We are season ticket holders for a regional theater, and tonight is second play this year. Although they usually produce great musicals and comedies, tonight is a real drama: Judgement at Nuremburg. It's gotten good reviews. Supper out first.

Tree of my Life

I was born and lived the first 46 years of my life in and around Cleveland, Ohio. What you might not know is that Cleveland is called (among other things) The Forest City. It was cleared from climax oak/maple forest (as was all the Western Reserve).

What this means is that there is no natural place in the region where you can stand and spit without hitting a tree. They grow thick and tall.

Now this fact by itself doesnt' mean a thing, except for one thing. As long as I can remember one of my doodle images has a tree. A single tree. Infact, a single tree on a hill. Not a thing you see normally in Cleveland.

Now, this doodle tree is very specific. I doodle it while waiting on the phone; I've doodled it while taking tests in elementary school. I've doodled this tree since I was about 6.

In 1998 we moved to the bay area when Chevron made my spouse an offer we couldn't refuse. He flew out here on January 2nd, to start his job and find a new house for us to live in. I stayed behind to get everything finalized in Cleveland, and get the old house sold. Talk about trust. I trusted Steve to buy a house I would like. And he did. A brand new house that we closed on in 21 days... with an agreement that some repairs would be done after we moved in. (like replace almost all the exterior doors atleast once).

We purchased a house in a newer community. Actually, Hercules is over 150 years old.. but it spent most of that time as an explosives plant and company town. When the plant closed after WWII, the land was ignored until the Bay area population started exploding. (yeah, it's fun to make exploding jokes about our town...). They began to build homes in late 70s-early 80s, and the town has grown to about 20,000 now.

But the point is, when I growing up and first doodling my tree, this place didn't exist.

February 15th, the dogs and I flew out here. It was a Sunday. The moving truck and the fridge from Sears both arrived on monday. Steve took off on a business trip on Tuesday. I was in fog those first few days.

That first week, one day when Steve was still gone, I happened to look out our back windows... and this is what I saw. (see the photo below).

Yep, it's a wide tree exactly the right distance down from the top of the hill...
standing there alone. This tree that has been in my psyche all my life is now living in my backyard. I knew when I saw that this was meant to be. (when steve told me about applying for his job, I knew he would get it.)

And I don't doodle it anymore.

Now I still doodle a derby hat, a left eye, an apple and the letter "L". If anyone has insights into these items, I'd appreciate knowing them. In the mean time, I'm keeping a lookout for them in my life.

my doodle tree. 

ToDo, Monday

A weekend of inspirations. Now to throw some design ideas on the wall and see what sticks.

A day of chores. Hopefully some creative work gets done inbetween things.

It's lunchtime, so I'm updating.

1. Oil changed in the pupmobile 9am. Although the milage is way too low, it's time for her 2 year birthday servicing. (two years old, 12,600 miles.. and I drive almost day!! Can you tell they are a lot of short drives?). (do I need to pick anything up at Michael's or Hancock's fabric?)DONE. Picked up some white muslin and tapestry needles.

1A. TOOK THE DOGS FOR A 2 MILE WALK.

2.Should be home by 11 to get some quilting done on euc.

3. Appt. at 2 to firm up plans for the cover (trellis/portico/whatever. SHADE PRODUCER) over 1/3 of the deck. Remember to confirm that structure will hold the porch swing.

4. Finish up 10 leaves for euc. Draw out 20 more. These are the sewing equivalent of eating potato chips when drawn and cut out... once I start working on them, it's hard to stop.

5. Take a picture of "my tree" and write up that story for a later blog.

6. Walk the dogs.

working on the creative self

I found some great "self help" sites courtesy of Mary Beth Goodman's blog.

The first are STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM. 12 suggestions for become a more self-confident you. I am STILL working on #1: Free yourself of "shoulds".

Secondly, The Occupational Adventure begins with a list of 13 SELF-DEFEATING TIPS. My favorite: 7. Assume often and negatively, making yourself as miserable as possible. This is a list I should send to my hubby. He needs it, but he'd hate getting it from me.

Thirdly, (and new for this blogring, I think) is How to Stay Focused. The three main keys to staying focused are Planning, Questioning and Removing Distractions.

I do the first pretty well, making a to do list for the next day each evening. I try to keep the list to 5 things that should be done. Too long a list is just self-defeating.

Questioning my actions and removing distractions... that I need work on. As I sit here writing on my blog during those precious daylight hours when I could be sewing.

Hm.. question: am I focusing on my objective? No.

What distractions could I remove from my immediate environment? uhm... the computer on my lap??

Oh well...

This is really frustrating.

For the last couple days, as I've been productively doing other things, I've been mentally writing great blogs. Interesting descriptions of the things I've seen on walks, a fascinating post explaining why, as an almost perfect classic Republican current political activities would now define me as a Democrat. (really...). Interesting discussions on life.

Then I sit down here to write some of it down...

And all I come up with is my to do list.

hmmph.

Thursday ToDo

Well, I got the thread but ... when I laid down the quilt to admire the work so far... it just stinks. So I'm ripping out all the quilting and starting over again. Phooey. Guess I'm glad I bought a new spool.

To Do today:

1. make soup for supper (the spouser has a coloscopy on Friday). well, we had BLATs instead... STeve a sandwich, me a salad. (Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado and Tomato). DONE.
2. Finish ripping out the quilt, and hopefully restart the stitching. Ripping done, the stitching in the ditch begun.
3. walk with Linda after supper. Actually, we walked in the afternoon.
4. grocery shop. Better make this #1. DONE.

Also picked up stamps and a building permit.

To Do Wednesday

1. Walk the dogs twice around HillTop pond. DONE
2. Get dog food. DONE
3. JoAnne's: one small spool dark brown Guterman thread, and 5 yds. of WU. DONE
4. Cook roast for pulled pork. DONE
5. Finish quilting on Euc.
6. Catch the CUBS at 11 am. DOING
7. Find out why my blog disappeared.DONE.

It's only 11:30 and I've accomplished most of my tasks. That leaves me the afternoon to quilt the top and finish supper. And figure out how to fix the broken screen door.

While on our walk, I saw a bright orange-red dragonfly/damselfly (I didn't get close to distinguish), and some blooming Chinese Houses (stacked white and pink wildflowers). At PetSmart, Katy and Jake checked the dogfood aisles for kibble dropped on the floor, then sat and waited for their treats from the cashier. You'd think they were starving; their Large Breed LITE dogfood would dispute this.

Tuesday To-Do

Get up, drink coffee and read normal emails and webpages. Shower, breakfast and start to work:

1. Walk the dogs. 2.5 miles. (DONE. UP AND DOWN HILL)
2. Vacuum. (DONE. TOOK ALMOST AN HOUR. 2 SHEDDING DOGS IN SPRING. UGLY).
3. Machine quilt bark details on Euc. (2 hours worth until I ran out of thread).
4. Cook pork for BBQ tomorrow night. OOPS. DANG Blogger for losing my blog.
5. Press painted fabrics, and fuse to WU. OOPS. Out of WU.
6. What's for supper tonight??? (beef and gravy over brown rice)
7. Spend time looking at my world. done. It was filled with dog fur.

This past weekend I was blessed to watch a scrub jay hunting worms in my veggie garden. I saw a sliver of moon set behind the hills.
I watched storms roll over the hills, across the bay and total miss me.

We watched a nice old movie this weekend: Witness for the Prosecution. A Billy Wilder adaptation of an Agatha Christie play. Why can't they make movies today that have plot, character development, intelligence, humor and wit and surprise?

Who knew???

REading everyone's blogs over the weekend, I was struck with one thing. Who knew that art quilters are so fascinated with SHOES??? We have pictures of shoes on feet, shoes on tables, shoes online... flat shoes, high heeled shoes, and cute medallion shoes.

Seriously, would you have guessed this??

going to shop for shoes at Zappos...

BlueStar Mother's Day.

I wrote a long ugly rant about Mother's day, then kindly decided to trash it before I posted it.

Just wanted to remind you that the original intent of Mother's Day was to honor those women who had lost a child in a war. (I believe it was the Spanish-American war, but I could be wrong). Merchants would give these women special gifts: a free flower, a free beverage at the soda counter, a complimentary dessert with their sunday meal. It was the community sympathizing with these women for their loss.

Although I detest what Mother's Day has become (along with all the commerically artificial holidays), I do support this original intent of the day. If you know any women who are Blue Star Moms, spend some time today thanking them.

I understand now.

I WILL sign up for that class. It just sounds so fun.

I will NOT sign up for that class right now. I've just spent too much money on 2 pairs of new glasses, an oil change for my car, and other life necessities. I need to wait until the billing cycle of my credit card to sign up. I also want to wait until I get my membership information back from joining this group.

So the fear I was feeling wasn't fear about the activity, or even fear about the cost (i just figured it out... it's $150 for 30 hours instruction and a possible additional 30 hours of open studio time... that's SO INEXPENSIVE.). It's just the timing.

So you can all relax and wait for the show and tell.

watercolor painting on fabric

This a class that is just CALLING OUT TO ME to take. It scares me just a little... I haven't done any watercolor since 8th grade... many decades ago. But it's painting on fabric.. and I do so love that.

And, if part of the goal of doing all this work is having things to sell, it's conceivable that I could learn to make things fairly unique that someone would even want to buy. (ok, that's my material side coming out. it doesn't happen often, but it is a fact of life).

So why am I hestitating? Someone smack me upside the head so I will make the call and sign up.

Best Laid Plans

Wednesday was the regional SAQA meeting. It was held down at New Pieces in Berkeley. A wonderful shop with the most bubbly owner I've ever known. I love Sharona. We sat in the shop gallery surrounded by quilts by Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran.

The shop is about 20 minutes from my home in good traffic, but that stretch of I-80 is the worse stretch of commute traffic in the bay area. In really bad traffic it can take me 1.5 hours to travel these 8 miles. When the local news kept mentioning that the traffic was slow, I decided to leave early for the meeting. It started at 10:30 am... I left the house at 9:15.

So at 9:38 I was sitting in a nice parking space along one of the side streets, AND I REALLY NEEDED TO PEE. Nothing would be open yet, so I distracted myself by drawing the architectural details of the houses nearby until it was reasonable to walk over to Solano. I tried to take notes on where my car was parked so I could find it again later.

I sat with another new member, Bobby Edelson. If that sounds familiar at all, her quilt won BEST OF SHOW at Chicago recently. Both she and I are interested in a small kind of crit/support group... and her daughter lives in my town... so we will be talking again soon.

Our program was on African American Quilts. The presenter's main concept is that African American quilts do not follow a theme, or have a certain look... they are simply quilts made by African Americans. I still wonder why, then, label them as anything other than just quilts? What is the point of labeling something as different in some way from other quilts.. if the only difference is the ethnicity of the creator? I really don't like labels that seem to unnecessarily segregate things.

anyway...

Show and tell was FABULOUS. Liz Berg showed a lot of her new work... I'd seen it on her blog, but it's better in person...

AFterward, I walked back to where I thought I parked and spent 5 minutes trying to figure out where my car was. I walked another half block down each street... but I had parked on a corner!! Where was the darned thing? It should be right here!!

And it was.

Every time I stopped at the corner to look at the other 3 corners for my car... I had stopped right in front of my car.

Hmm... VW basically makes 12 version of gray car. Maybe I shouldn't have gone for quite so "invisible" a gray...

Router problems...

We are wireless in the Roby household. We have a DSL modem and a nifty Linksys router that's run through a donated old computer running Windows ME. And we were having a problem.

The modem, it works perfectly. If I plug a computer right into the modem, I can connect. Wirelessly, our network didn't exist. And hasn't, we think, for over a month. I called Earthlink, and they direct me to attach the server and type an address into the computer.

The address wants a user name and password. And NONE of my passwords work. And I never remember using any unique password... if I did, I would have written it down.

In the meantime... our new neighbors are also wireless. And they (bless their soulds) opted not to password lock their system. So I have been using it without their knowledge. I will really need to make them a nice surprise present for unknowingly helping me out.

Yesterday I finally got through to a live person by phone. After being switched twice, I connected with someone who helped me out. The password I needed to enter? admin. Now why didn't the FIRST tech support guy tell me that??

After entering the mystery password, Adrian (not his real name, unless Adrian is a popular name in India) walked me through the steps to get my router back on line.

And I'm comforted knowing that our neighbors are always an acceptable fallback.

The final Painted Piece

Painted fabric "inspired" from a photo fragment of one of Melody's Mexico photos:

You remember this piece. But you have to take my word that this inspired the piece above.

A close up one section. I really like this section, and will do more of this technique in the next few weeks. 

Blogring get togethers???

Ok, this is early in the year for me... but it's too late for Chicago or Paducah... so maybe it's NOT too late to plant the idea.

Anyone interested in planning/attending a face-to-face get together for blogring members at major events? Just meeting for drink before dinner... or a breakfast before a long day begins??

The only "big" events I know I will attending this year are PIQF and AQT.. both in the fall. But there are so many things happening in the next few months..

On another note completely. In the past I bemoaned my lack of "connection" to others in real life. Other artists, people who I could "network" with... people in general. I have taken two proactive steps recently.

#1. I joined SAQA. My first meeting is this Wednesday. I'm sure I will see some of you there.

#2. I joined a regional art center near me. And, given the choice of spending $40 as an individual, or $50 as an artist, I chose to "declare" myself and joined as an artist.

small steps... but steps nonetheless.

Serenity

Last week, Deb L. mentioned the apple I-tunes movie trailer site on the QA mailing list.

I went there, saw the trailer for SERENITY, the Firefly movie. I found out that Deb L., DebR and I are all fans.

Who else will step up and admit being a fan of this too quickly cancelled show?