Saturday Evening

Saturday evening, I attended Ashley's graduation (with honors). She received her Bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a Specialization in Elementary Education.

Not sure what was on my mind - ceremony started at 5:00, seemed like a 4:45 arrival time would be perfect - WRONG! OMG! Traffic was backed up onto the highway and just inched along. It took almost as long to travel the last mile as it took to travel the 45 miles from Garland to the school. Complaining aside, I was thrilled for Ashley and her family. We were her fan club, complete with a sign and flashing cameras. Mom and Dad, Monique and Gene, were there of course.

Aunts Toni and Dreama also flew in for the ceremony. It was so nice to see Ashley's family again and the next time I visit Monique in New Jersey, Dreama will drive up and we will have a pajama party.

Christmas Music

I heard this on the radio on the way in to work today. These guys are fantastic - Straight No Chaser - enjoy!


I've always wanted one but been too embarrassed to buy it. No brown paper wrappers and sneaking around in the dark to get it either. Instead, I stole it! That's right, in broad daylight and in front of at least 60 people, I stole it and got away with it - drum roll please...my very own Chia Bugs Bunny Handmade Decorative Planter!

Applause! Applause!

Dinner with the Twisted Stitchers

Tonight I met my friends Deborah, Tonya, Sharon, Judy and Carol aka Twisted Stitchers at LaMadeline in Lewisville. It was so great to see everyone.
Deborah is published in the latest edition of Somerset SEW; Tonya and Sharon showered us with gifts of fused glass jewelry and Christmas socks; Judy showed us an amusing presentation on how to photograph your quilts; Carol showed us some some photos from the 1990's of painted vests (woo hoo!) and all of them gave me suggestions on how to finish a piece I have been working on.

On Blogging...
Tonya has decided to take the blogging plunge, Deborah is celebrating her4 year blog anniversity, Carol has promised to blog more often in 2009, Judy has committed to blogging annually and we are going to work on Sharon. What a group!

Follow me...
I have added a Follow Me widget so go ahead and subscribe - please. It makes me feel good to know you are interested in what is going on in my world and I even promise to update more often.

Is it December already?

A lot has happened since my last update. The event I am happiest about is our new President-elect - Mr. Barack Obama. I truly believe the team who will do the most to help our country won the election. I still have nightmares when Palin's name creeps into my head (shudder). Obama and Biden have a daunting task ahead of them but I believe they can handle it. During this time of instant gratification, I hope we, the American people, understand that it took eight years to get into this mess and it will take time to climb out.

I went to Boston to visit with my daughter. Here she is looking a little rumpled.
She actually lives in Brighton but if you cross a street, you are in Boston. I really like Boston/Brighton, or whatever - all except for the parking. It stinks big time. What is it with 'Resident Only' parking? There is 'Visitors Parking' but that's like 6 spaces (okay, maybe 10)for an entire neighborhood and between the hours of 8:00 am and 6:00 pm you can only park in the same spot for 2 hours. It is worse than New York City because I had to go out in the cold every 2 hours to move the damn car. Sucks big time and yes, I got a ticket (or 2). I suppose it could be worse (how you ask) - she could live in Brookline - they have NO overnight parking for visitors. I have no idea how it works and don't really even care. We found out too late that you can get a temporary 'Resident' sticker - next time...


I took an interesting Nuno Felting class from DAFA member Suzanne Morgan. Here she is showing us a couple of her pieces for inspiration.




I invited my friend Linda, who is waiting for the next instruction
and coworker Lorraine, whose passion is knitting and spinning. She is a member of the Dallas Hand Knitters Guild.
Along with the usual suspects - Deborah
and Lu



and Michelle
we had alot of fun embedding silk into prefelts, rubbing, rolling and beating the hell out of our pieces.

I finished the graduation quilt I was making for Tessa. It's made from feedsack fabrics and it's a great quilt to wrap up in while watching television on those cold Seattle nights.
I cooked an awesome Thanksgiving dinner. Ashley, a friend of my daughter, joined me and we had a great time. She brought me a beautiful bouquet that one day will end up in a quilt.



My brother celebrated a birthday on Dec. 5th so I made him a birthday postcard using Grungeboard. It's a pretty interesting material to work with as you can sew and paint it. I used copper and bronze paints and orange foil to add texture and glimmer. I love this card! Happy birthday Mike.



Guess I will go put up the tree...

Damn Girl, Where Have You Been?

Good question. Where have I been?

Let's see, I can blame it on several things: jury duty and death penalties, New York City and Mom's 80th Birthday celebration, yoga, yoga, yoga and today - layoffs at work.

In July, we ended the penalty phase of the trial. What trial you may ask - I couldn't or rather, didn't want to talk about it. Ten hours of emotional deliberations later, we were unanimous in our decision. I served with twelve wonderful and fair people. I wish them all the best and that we never have to serve again. FYI - for added fun, I was called to serve on a Municipal jury - traffic; I suppose we are entitled to our day in court.

August 14, Mom celebrated her 80th birthday. My brother travelled to NY from CA and I from TX. We had a great time - dinner at Ruth Crist Steak House - delish! New York City sponsors many great events or 'happenings' to coin an old phrase. This summer, Park Avenue was closed to traffic from Central Park all the way down to 'I don't know where'. It became a pedestrian mall for walkers, skaters, bikers and you name it. We, as a family decided to take a walk and it turned out to be the longest walk of my life. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 17 miles - yeah, that's right -17 great miles. We started at 115th street, through Central Park to Park Ave., down Park Ave. through the Village, China Town and other parts of town I don't know the name of, across the Brooklyn Bridge and back (stopping to see the 'Fountains' art exhibit), to Ground Zero and up the waterfront back to 115th St. Along the way, we grew closer as a family, rubbed blisters on our feet and got a glimpse of Tom Cruise and what it is like to be stalked by photographers. I also set up a card shower for Mom, asking my friends and coworkers to send her a card in hopes of getting 80 cards. She was surprised and grateful - and my brother didn't think I could pull it off - ha! (I can do a lot of things you don't think I can do - from getting 80 men and women to send birthday cards to someone they don't know to walking 17 miles in a day.)

Sometime in June, I started practicing Dahn Yoga. I show up in my yoga clothes with my yoga mat and my yoga attitude only to find out that Dahn yoga was not what I was expecting. It's better - I will talk more about this later.

Today, there were big layoffs at my job. I was at home working off a headache so my friends contacted me. I am very sad about this. There have been rumors floating around for a few weeks and we expected something, but we all hoped there would be more of a warning and that it would be handled differently. In the past, we had different times to report to work and we were told our status then. Today, as I understand it, HR visited people in their offices and took them for meeting to give the bad news. There were a lot of surprises. I am nervous about tomorrow since I missed today - don't know if I will be able to sleep tonight. I am feeling anxious now so I better stop. I will post pics of Mom's great looking 80 year old legs and NYC later.

Deborah's Book

During my search for Omiyage: Handmade Gifts from Fabric in the Japanese Tradition by Kumiko Sudo, I came across a new book recently reviewed in some publication I read. I thumbed through the book and recognized a few pieces by my friend Deborah Boschert. Of course I have to have her autograph. (Deborah is the same person who picked my piece in the DAFA 'art swap'.) Congrats to Deborah! The name of the book is Creative Quilting with Beads I find it is a pretty good resource for creative use of embellishments and some fresh ideas for projects - the cover photo alone is intriguing.

Quick Update

I am really tired, drained and getting ready to hit the sack but wanted to update before I was too far behind.

Water Heater Woes: my neighbor got in touch with a friend of his who specializes in maintaining water heaters for the Garland ISD.

Frank came over, told me the obvious ' your heater is broken', took me to Home Depot and Lowes and showed me what to buy. Frank returned Sunday morning to install the heater - what a nice man. He saved me over $150 dollars - love him and my neighbor!

These are the hands of a hard working man.

Dallas Area Fiber Artist: April meeting featured Deanna Wood on Artist’s Books: Concept and Form.

She showed us many different types and forms of handmade books.

There was also a mini workshop where we made a concertina book. We learned how to cover a chipboard cover with flawless execution. Great workshop.

For the May meeting we had a potluck dinner and a fun 'art swap'. I made a 10 X 10 piece out of linen, transfer dyed panne velvet, beads and a little embossed metal piece. Deborah was the lucky person to pick my piece. I must say, this group is very talented and extremely supportive. I picked a couple of beautiful origami folded 'treasure boxes'. The workmanship is exquisite. I will have to find a creative was to display them.

New works: remember those repro fabrics I bought for the baby quilt I forgot to take a picture of? Well I had so much fabric left over, I had to buy some colorful fill-ins and I made a feed sack quilt. Here is a picture of it in progress.

It still needs its borders. I also made a magic wand and a second piece matching the 'art swap' piece. The bottom piece is the swap piece. I added a 'window' on the right hand side that looks pretty cool. I will keep the second piece for myself. I also have 2 pillows in progress using the same idea. I will display pictures as I develop them.

Here is a picture of my 'Magic Wand'. I needed something fun to do over the weekend, as I was stressed thinking about what I had in store for the rest of the week. It is pretty cool.

Here is an experimental piece featuring cowrie shells. I have had this cowrie shell thought for a few months and I decided to use a technique from Quilting Arts Magazine. This is a picture of the 'pieces'. It has since been developed a little more. I think it is a bit dark, so I will have to figure a way to lighten it up and the tea bag paper is more prominent than I hoped. The fabric is painted and the shells are drawn on tea bags and adhered with gel medium.


I have more pieces in work, just no pictures. - Yet.

Off topic: have you ever seen a purple yam? I have seen them in the Asian grocery stores and mentioned it to a coworker. Jane brought me 2 purple yams that she painstakingly picked from a stack of yams. They were perfectly pointed on one end and were the perfect size. They are not purple while raw, but after cooking them, they are purple! See...



They taste like sweet potatoes but the texture is denser. They are pretty good and are sweet so you do not need to add brown sugar.

Lastly... I finally met Linda's brother, Jeff Zachmann. We went to Fort Worth Main Street Art Festival and he had a booth with his kinetic sculptures. His work is amazing and I stood there with the children, mouth open and watched the little metal balls whirl around. I am going to start saving my money now cause I want one. I liked the one that is a sofa table - the sound of the balls traveling around has the same affect as a fountain. Here is Jeff and Linda - by the way - the Art Festival was awesome - I recommend attending next year.







Until next time....