Spring Has Sprung

What a beautiful day we've had. I spent a few hours this morning in the studio, and this afternoon, we went to the Oregon Garden in Silverton with my son, Josh, and daughter-in-law, Lori.

Here are some photos from the garden:




This is me, surrounded by clematis flowers and bees!
Yikes!






Here's the rest of the gang: Josh, Lori and Jim.




This is the gate leading in to the children's garden. I love it! It's made from all sorts of found objects.

The palm prints are from kids whose parents bought a tile as a donation when the garden was first starting. The prints and names were fired onto the tiles, so they'll be there a long time.





Turtle stepping stones through the garden.













The Weird Plants Garden truly lives up to its name.


What a fine time! Blue sky. Warm sun. Family. It just doesn't get any better than that.

For the Love of Books

Today, I meet with my book club. We meet once a month, rotating to each other's houses for lunch and a discussion of the month's book. It's been eye-opening because I've discovered some books I've loved, and a few...not so much, that I probably wouldn't have chosen had I not been in this group of bookie women.

Here's a brief list of some of my favorite books (most not from the book club):
The Djinn in the Nightengale's Eye
by A.S. Byatt
Possession
by A.S. Byatt

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
by Mark Haddon

The year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
Mr. White's Confession
by Robert Clark

Tortilla Curtain
by T.C. Boyle

Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
Music for Torching
by A. M. Homes

Housekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson

... just to name a few.

And here's a link to a really great, unbiased magazine full of reviews of newly published and older books, divided by genre:

Bookmarks Magazine

How Much is Enough?

First, some photos of my studio. As you can see, I have threads in tons of colors. I have bins full of fabric. I have boo-coo books.

And I love and appreciate all that I have.

So why does it often seem like it's not quite enough? Like one more addition would make it better?




























I inevitably perk up when I hear about a great fabric sale or get a new thread brochure from Superior Threads.

And books? Wow! Do I ever love books! Lately, there's been a discussion on the Quilt Art list about books on design and color theory. I have to go to Amazon each time and take a look at people's suggestions. And I want every one...really...all of them.

Today, I've been giving a lot of thought to "what is enough?" Can't I be satisfied with what I have? Why am I so drawn to things that might be only slightly different from what I already have? I think we're conditioned by advertising and television and movies and magazines to want things without giving them much thought.

From now on (let's see how long this lasts!), I plan to try appreciate the beauty or usefulness of things, without feeling that I need to own them.

There's No Place Like Home

It's hard to believe I've been home a week. I've done lots of sleeping, getting the garden ready for planting, and various other necessary activities, so that means no posts here. Ah well...I'll try to be more consistent.

I want to show you some of my favorite things that make coming home the best!

Here's Phoebe. She's the greatest cat I've ever lived with...by far! She's smart and talks a lot. And I think she's beautiful.












I bought this embroidered panel when I was in Peru a few years ago. It's a burial cloth, and it hangs in a little alcove by our stairwell. Parts of it are very old, but some of it is restored with the original threads from some other relics, and some newer threads.


















I made this quilt several years ago out of silk. It hangs on the other side of our stairwell. If you click on the photo, you'll get a better look.

One Last Photo

Here's a picture of Carolyn with her final project.

She decided to interpret her folded black and white into a blown up version in color. I think it's incredible.

Home Again Home Again

Yesterday was a long travel day home, but it's great to be back to the rainy Northwest.

I'll probably say more about my weeks with Nancy Crow later on in my blog, but for now, I thought I'd share a few more photos.

This is Nancy and John's basket collection. It is on a wall in the barn's dining room.














These two are projects from the "Tin Can Man's" class that was going on downstairs in the barn.
















At the end of the day Friday, we all went around the room seeing and commenting on each other's final projects, black and white compositions, and small compositions. The variety of artistic aesthetics was really fascinating to me, and I was stunned by the caliber of everyone's work.

Here's Nancy listening to someone's final presentation.
















Here's Polly talking about her work. I love the subtle value shifts she created, though they don't show up too well in this photo.
This is Louise by her pieces. Pretty darned beautiful, I'd say.

I became very fond of her and her sidekick, Marama, during the two weeks. They let me ride with them from the hotel to Nancy's every day, and we went to the Amish country together during the middle weekend.












And here's Marama doing her final presentation. She's one of the funniest people I've ever met, and she and Louise (above) have been best friends for over 50 years!

I love her final color piece. Sorry I snapped this when she was in front of it.

The Pressure's Off!

Today, we got our final project assignment to have ready for critique tomorrow. It's been an intensely mad scramble of a day to get our "fabric vocabulary" pieces restructured into new pieces to use in our final composition.

Here's a picture of Debra trying to get her ducks in a row to make new fabrics. Debra is the self-described "Olfa lady" who sells and demonstrates Olfa products all over America. She actually gave each person in the class a rotary cutter. I got the silver anniversary edition of a midsize cutter, and it's actually silver. Very fetching indeed, and it goes with my hair color.










Here's Marama working on her black and white piece. I think she plans to do a version of it in color for her final project.
Okay...here's my final piece all put together and completely sewn. Tomorrow I get to skate into the critique, no problems. Yippee!




I really have loved my time here, but Saturday I'll head home, and I'm so ready. This has been a great experience, and I feel like I've learned more than I thought my brain could hold. And I have enough new ideas and techniques to work on for a very long time.

I do hope to come back here for some more workshops some day. The atmosphere and artistic energy are like getting an intravenous booster of creative joy.

My next post will likely be after I return to Oregon. Jim tells me things are starting to bloom around our house, so I'm wild to get started in the garden.

Send More Fabric!!!

Today, Nancy had us cutting and piecing strips of fabrics into new pieces that we'll use in our final project. That'll start tomorrow. Here's a picture of my wall of "fabric vocabularies" that I managed to get done today.


This is Diane, madly working on her pieces.





Marama is putting together some beauties.





These are a couple of mine. The left one is a composition she simply instructed as "stacatto," and we were to decide for ourselves what that meant in fabric. The right one's directive was just "spare." I didn't frame this photo very well. The "spare piece is just the strip of blue with the pink and turquoise insert. Ignore the orange bit.

Fabric, Fabric and More Fabric

Well, today was another day of fun and torture.

Here's a picture of my black and white piece in progress. It's not completely sewn together in this photo, but I did manage to get it mostly done. I must not have photographed the completed version before it was time to move on to bigger and better things in living color, because I don't find such a photo in my camera.
Today, Nancy had us making more "fabric vocabularies", all cut freehand, with some parameters stipulated by her. We're supposed to have twelve of these things ready by 9 a.m. I was working on number seven when it was time to leave (9:30) to come back to the hotel. We're planning to get back to the studio at 7:30 a.m. in the hopes of getting them done by 9 a.m. when we'll get another batch of exercises.

Here are a couple of my today-compositions:

Day One of Week Two

Day one of week two was a bit tough for me. We're starting out with a large composition in black and white, and I managed to design something that is absolute hell to sew together. Geeez...will I ever learn?

The class downstairs this week is taught by a man who makes stuff out of tin cans. Doesn't sound too exciting, but after dinner, he gave a slide show of his work, and the things he makes are incredible. He's quite an eccentric and looks like Santa Claus in a worn flannel shirt.

We're going to the barn studio at 6:30 this morning (in an hour) so we can try to finish our black and white pieces by 9 a.m. when we get a new exercise.

I read my friend Robin's blog this morning, and she had posted this photo of me with my final piece last week. Robin, I hope it's okay that I stole it. I promise not to use it to make a bunch of money.

A Few More Photos

Happy Easter to any believers, and happy day to anyone who doesn't.

Today is the first day of the second class. We'll gather for supper at six after everyone gets all set up for tomorrow. Then it's early to bed and off to the barn again for "Piecing and Restructuring" class.

In the meantime, I'll add a few photos from last week:

Here are Nancy's cats....Spot and Spot. Not really. Only one is named Spot. I don't know about the whiter one.

Here's Carolyn working on her pieces. She sits right next to me at the barn, and she's amazing in choosing beautiful colors together.











Now a couple of photos showing more of Nathaniel's incredible wire sculptures. I have commissioned him to make one for outside my new studio door. It'll be a fish with found objects dangling inside, sort of like the one hanging in the window.

This is a photo of Nancy and John's carved spoon collection from South Africa. They hang in the dining area of the barn along with several other beautiful collections (baskets, carved gourds, carved fish).

We're off to see the Amish!

Today, four of us from the class got up at the crack of dawn to drive out to Amish country. We laughed, ate, and shopped to our heart's content, and the people and area are really wonderful.



Below is the sunrise through the windshield. See? It truly was the crack of dawn.





We stopped in the town of Charm, Ohio, where horses and buggies clopped along right next to the speeding cars.

Then we stopped in a fabric shop (of course) and this fresh-faced and lovely girl cheerfully cut yards and yards of fabric for us. The Amish normally don't want their faces photographed, but she said she didn't mind at all. I was so glad because she looked so very Amish. Sweet and beautiful.


See all the bolts of solid color cottons on the counter? Yes, those were for us. The fabric was inexpensive and wonderful.







Now for a couple of photos from last week:



This is one of Nancy's husband John's beautiful wire sculptures. If you click on this little image, you'll get a better look.






Here's a small composition I made using bitty strips.