where I've been

I've reconfirmed something I already knew

when I'm at a conference or a show most days I'm too exhausted either mentally or physically to write a blog post that is coherent enough to let anyone see!

Thursday, Friday and Saturday I was in the SAQA Visioning Conference

It was held in the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver

it is a very old, historic hotel

this is the atrium of the hotel -- open in the center from the lobby all the way up through the floors to the awesome glass ceiling















the ceiling is stained glass -- it was cloudy and rainy on Thursday afternoon when I took these pictures -- I'd like to know what is on the outside of this ceiling that keeps it from being destroyed by the hail that we frequently get in the summer

on the second floor, where the arch shaped structures are, each arch has pillars that are decorated like this

you can see here how thick the railings are that surround the open area








and this is what each of the metal panels looks like

I heard someone talking about these panels -- supposedly there are a few of them that are installed upside down

I'm thinking someone had WAY too much time on their hands if they had time to find that among all those floors!

and I'm pretty sure they were all installed properly when the hotel was originally built

but it's also pretty clear that these have been very carefully maintained, so that might have happened in a cleaning or maintenance operation

and the carpets! all of them bold patterns and beautiful colors



want to mail a postcard home? (I know, who does that any more, but just in case)

this is the mail slot

I wonder if any letters have gotten "stuck" in the works somewhere and are still waiting to be discovered and delivered

this was the crown molding around the ceiling of one of the class rooms that I took a workshop in

this is the wallpaper in the ladies room

the last time I was in this hotel was 40 years ago (ok, I confess, I was cutting school with a friend and we were exploring downtown)

back then the wall paper in the ladies room was red with FLOCKED patterns --- it was Victorian Bordello style --- hey, it was the 1960s!

much more sedate and elegant now





and this may well be the only place left where rotary phones are the norm

all of the "House Phones" look like this

and yes -- these work





this is the church that is right across the street from the hotel

this picture was taken from the "sky bridge" that runs between the hotel and the banquet rooms that are actually across the street (another direction) from the hotel

on Saturday morning, just as I got out of my car the carillon at the church began playing, so I had lovely music for my walk from the car to the hotel

(and that was after I had driven the highway from my daughter's into Denver and at one point been surrounded by about 2 dozen hot air balloons that were just taking off from the field along the highway -- they were so close I could actually see exactly how many people were in the baskets -- it was amazing!)

I have a whole bunch of pictures of the quilt exhibit that was on display on Thursday afternoon, but I need to get them ready before I can show them to you, so they'll be here in a day or so, and I'll be talking a bit about what I learned during the conference too

now I just need to get back into the routine --- got to get into the studio and do some work!!

a finished project!

the monkey toy is done!!

and I just love the little blue hoody (and kind of proud of myself for creating the pattern for that)

and my grandson likes it

(look out for flying monkeys!











and more happy dancing

I sold this piece of jewelry today

its been a very good week



more about the conference and other projects coming soon (I have a lot of pictures to download!)

happy dancing

yesterday I got the email

the one that has the words "Etsy Order Confirmation" in the subject line

heh! YEAH!!

so this piece (the one that didn't make the finals!) is on its way to someone that saw it and loved it and bought it

whoot whoot

I could get used to that

so this morning I'm getting my stuff together and finishing last minute things before I head off to the first of 3 days of meetings with the SAQA Visioning Conference

(hob nobbing with my fellow art quilting wizards!)

happy dance!

ruminating, designing and gratuitous cuteness

alpacas are ruminates

they are also really cute and soft and a wonderful fiber to work with

and this one looks like he's flying -- or at least trying to lift off

which is sort of how I feel right now

last week blogger crashed us and a long post that I had written on Thursday morning was one of the many that they took down in the rebuild

and even though things seem to have returned to normal, that post never reappeared in their "fix"

in addition to that, I've been "ruminating" about redoing my website and feeling sort of like I had no clue where to start (not to mention that I didn't want to spend all those many, many hours of "code crunching")

this week I was offered the opportunity to consider doing a complete overhaul of the website and transfer my daily postings to that domain as well -- every artist's dream -- complete control over my work!

so, I'm feeling like my feet are off the ground

I'm sure there will be some bumps along the way, but I'm really excited about the whole idea

and if you are thinking about doing this too, I highly recommend Carol to help you out -- you can find her at 2FishWeb.com
this week I've been thinking about doing some new jewelry pieces

one of the designs I've been fiddling with is a smaller version of the piece that made the finals of the Fire Mountain Gems competition

the other day the DH took a browse through the box of cabochons that I have on hand and told me there are still some pretty good pieces of stone in there

so probably next week (after we get paid) I'll be putting in an order for some bracelet cuffs and maybe some other stuff so I can make up some more stuff to put out on my Etsy store and maybe enter in a competition or two



and I'm hoping my daughter won't mind that I lifted this photo off of her page to show it off here

this is gratuitous cuteness if ever I saw it

makes me think of a John Lennon lyric

"beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy"

(and the mommy is no slouch either!!)



time for me to get busy!!

A Finished Christmas Project

it took me a couple of hours to tie off the fringing that runs all along both sides of this

then I spread it out on the dining room table so I could trim that fringe so it was all the same length

this is a Christmas gift for a friend's son -- but it's going to the State Fair in August first

I'm glad to have this finished now, before the weather actually gets warm enough that I just wouldn't want to work on it

which means there is more time to work on other things

like knitting a sweater for the monkey toy -- I finished up the body of that and started the sleeves last night

and yesterday afternoon, after all the laundry was done, I cut out dozens of aspen leaves for the trees project

time to get to work

stormy weather

that's what we've had for days

and it's what the Hawaii piece looks like too

the sky is mostly done, as is most of the water -- getting close to adding the mountain

nice


this week will be a whirl of activity -- lots of things to do here at home before I head off to the SAQA conference, then 3 busy days at the conference

today I'm trying to get all of the laundry done and if it clears off a bit, we have some plants we want to put in the ground, and the lawn needs to be mowed before we go -- and there is ironing to do, and packing, and, and

somewhere in there I hope to get some work done in the studio too

new associations and more monkey business

A while back I entered this piece in a competition

yesterday I got the letter telling me it didn't make the finals

I'm not totally surprised -- its just too "basic" a design -- it is an original design, but I'm sure other things that were entered were much more elaborate

never mind -- its a quality piece, and as soon as the letter arrived I went right to my Etsy store and listed it for sale (at a very reasonable price)
and speaking of Etsy, I am now a member of a team of beadweavers out there

after being an Etsy store owner for several years, I am finally figuring out how some of the finer points work -- its kind of exciting to open my email and find a note telling me someone has added me to a Treasury

the Beadweavers team runs a monthly challenge, and I'm looking forward to participating in some of those soon













"we're gonna monkey, monkey around"

heh -- I finished sewing him all together last night, and as much as I dislike the sock monkey toys, I like this little guy --- sooooo cute!

now I have a few days to get a little blue sweater made for him and I can take him to my grandson

this morning its cool and rainy -- no outdoor work today -- maybe I can get some more work done on things in the studio

returning to work

I'm trusting that eventually the last post I did here (on Thursday morning) will actually reappear out of whatever depths of cyberspace it went to when Blogger had it's "issue" -- fortunately one of the things I do every day just before I hit the "Publish Post" button is print out my post so I have a record!





One of the things that I needed to find out before I went very far on this piece that I wanted to do was find out how much it would cost me to get a mat cut for it

I made a visit to one of my local framing places and was pleased to find out that it wouldn't be too expensive to do, so I'm going to start working on the pieces for it
some of these pieces are actually well on their way

this pair of gazelles, for instance

they've already been stamped and I've done all of the Copic marker "embellishment"

so these guys are ready for me to do their background scene



the elephant has been stamped too

and I've just begun to do the embellishment on him (got as far as the end of his trunk before I got int erupted)

I would like to get everything to this stage before I move on to the next one












the giraffe and the zebras haven't been stamped yet -- these are just paper cutouts that I used as "place markers" so I could plan what I was going to do with the piece









and then there is the center block

the plan is to put the trunk of the tree in the center block and have the branches spread out over the mat across the whole top of the piece

somehow

it's pretty exciting!

these are the fabrics I was able to pick up this month at the guild meeting

the winter themed ones with a bit more added out of my personal stash should be enough to make one quilt top, and the floral is big enough to be part of more than one when put with some other fabrics -- neat

I've started working on the sky of the Hawaii piece, and it's moving right along

as is the quilting on the Hoffman piece -- I had a brief moment of "what am I doing here?", but after all the nice comments I got at the guild meeting (where I was again working on the curtain swirl quilting), I'm feeling better about it

today I hope to finish the monkey toy I've been knitting so I can move on to making his sweater, I have 6 rows left on the afghan, and the vest is moving along nicely too

meantime, I've been redesigning one necklace and looking for a source of materials for another one

things are definitely moving right along

and SAQA Visioning Conference begins on Thursday

whooooo hoooooo

quilting the curtain

one of the things that has been a big challenge in the Hoffman challenge piece I'm doing is what sort of a quilting pattern I could use that would accent the design without obscuring it

at one of my applique group meetings, someone suggested I quilt on all the swirls on the curtain fabric

at the time I thought "that's nuts!", but as I spent the hours and hours and HOURS stitching the feathers on the surface, I thought about that idea and in the end decided it wasn't so nuts after all

just so you can get an idea of how much more there is to quilt, here is a picture of the entire piece

and the part that has actually been quilted is that corner on the bottom left -- below the big hat and to the left of the little hat

this is very time consuming, but I really like the way its looking so far

and it means I've still got time to think about what sort of patterning I'll quilt in the corner at the top right

yesterday I went to the website for the State Fair and downloaded the information for the Fine Arts division

I have never entered anything in that division, but after the conversation I had with the curator last year, I'm seriously considering it this year

which means I need to get to it and finish the series that I started with this idea in mind, but have been side tracked into other projects since --- a deadline is a good thing -- it keeps me focused

after about a week of spending a couple of hours every day doing some kind of yard work, we're having a very cool, windy day today, so I'll be spending my time in the studio working on projects -- a good thing!

about 2 weeks ago I started my charity quilt top for this month then I hurt my back and couldn't sit at the sewing machine -- yesterday I was able to get back to it, and I plan to finish it today (a good thing, our guild meeting is tomorrow!)

and since that won't take too long, I hope to get started on the art pieces -- perhaps some pictures of them tomorrow!

monkeying around

heh, not really, but it's the only thing I have to show for the work I did yesterday

(somehow laundry and yard work just doesn't make the "take a picture" list!)


so, here are the legs of the monkey toy, and I'm part way through the tail -- cool


meantime, the stitching on the Hawaii piece and the quilting on the Hoffman piece continue, and I'm less than 20 rows away from finishing the afghan

I've been thinking about the Out of Africa series -- if I'm going to enter it in the fine arts division of the State Fair, I need to think about working on finishing the series -- and I need to decide if there's anything I should do differently

pondering, pondering

keeping dogs out

the gate has been hung

instead of buying a latch, we opted for the use of a piece of scrap wood with a long screw through it (its there on the left side of the picture)

after we got this up we decided a handle on the gate would be good, and we had a wood knob in the assorted items in the garage

I added some decorative markings -- fafa! (and I've threatened to go out and decorate the latch with zebra stripes)

when I was a child I watched my "Pappy" (my mother's father) do this sort of thing all the time -- I think he'd be proud

the water works on this piece are coming right along

so far I've stitched down 10 pieces (all of the white are individual pieces)

the fabric I'm stitching down right now is printed with waves -- it's perfect fabric for the look I needed here

one of the most difficult thing in creating any of these pieces for me is finding the fabric that looks like what I see in my head when I do the design - I'm very pleased with what I had on hand for this one

rube goldberg lives

this structure is for the beans to climb up -- or it will be as soon as we get some wire to run over it

as it currently stands, the top piece is tied to the uprights and the whole thing is tethered at each end to keep it from blowing over

and there are four rows of very closely planted beans (both green and wax) under it -- two rows on each side so they will be able to climb up the wire when they come up

shall we say the original design looked different than this -- and after fussing with it for almost 2 hours, this is where we ended up

(and I might add that 2 hours in the sun is way too long for me given my medications and my lack of tolerance for the sun)

I will be trying to not spend quite so much time outside today, but that's sort of in doubt -- the back yard needs mowing

it can be said I have a love/hate relationship with spring -- love the longer light and warmer weather -- hate the additional work

The first saturday in May

And it's run for the roses
As fast as you can
Your fate is delivered
Your moment's at hand
It's the chance of a lifetime
In a lifetime of chance
And it's high time you joined
In the dance
(Dan Folgelberg)

The picture with the horse in it was on the front page of the USA Today's sports section yesterday

I've been looking at that building for a while now

Through the windows of the "Running Roses Hat Shoppe" (the picture with the hats)

heh --- May has my two favorite sporting events -- the Kentucky Derby and the Indianapolis 500 --- we go from horses to horsepower!!
the vest is progressing

we're now 20% complete!!


yesterday afternoon we got another section of the garden ready to plant -- I have a little plastic container full of water and bean seeds getting ready to be planted today -- because we're rotating the crops in our little garden area, we will not be planting the beans against the fence, so the DH will be building a frame that we can put wire on to support them -- another small, inexpensive project and it's light enough that he can build it on the patio then we can carry it out and set it in place

time to get to it

New Projects!

the only thing that is even close to the excitement of doing well in a competition is starting a new project

at the beginning of any project I'm always excited about the possibilities of how it will turn out

and optimistic about my ability to successfully complete it

yesterday I started doing the stitching on the Hawaii piece that I've been preparing to do for several months

right now it doesn't look like a whole lot (and the picture isn't that great either), but it was really exciting to get three pieces stitched down and that fourth one pinned and ready

there are forty pieces to this one, so it won't take forever

neat!
monkey business continues!

these are the monkey's arms

one knit each of the last two evenings

now it's on to the legs



as I mentioned yesterday, the Visioning Conference is this month -- in fact, two weeks from today I'll be sitting in a room at the Brown Palace Hotel listening to someone talk about art quilts!

one of the things we'll be doing as a "getting to know you" is what has been billed as "artist speed dating"

we've been asked to bring 50 business cards or post cards for that activity

which meant I needed to get some current cards made

this is one of ten cards that I designed this morning -- each one has a different picture -- a way to have my art work and my name tied together in the hand of whom ever I give it to

I'm feeling pretty good about getting that done

now it's on to some other projects!

finished projects and major progress

over the last few weeks we've been tearing out a set of steps that went up to the second tier of the garden

last week, between the weather being pretty cold and my back hurting, we didn't get a whole lot done out there

yesterday it was a bit warmer and my back is actually feeling better, so the last bits of the old steps got cut into pieces (yup, I got to use the chain saw again!) and hauled out to the cans to be picked up today (nice timing!)

so this is a picture of what ISN'T there (makes me think of the poem my mother used to recite: "As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there, he wasn't there again today, I wish that he would stay away!")

next on the agenda is raking up all that rock, pulling up the plastic sheeting underneath it and running the tiller over this area so we can plant garden there

slowly - slowly - let's not get anyone hurt here

when we restring the fencing around that garden area, we'll need a gate

we had picked up lumber from the hardware store in the culls bin -- so the entire investment in the wood for this was about $3 -- nice

and the "wire" over it is what was left from the original fencing project last summer

the DH had built the frame in the garage, then yesterday we used the staple gun to add the "wire"

now he just needs to attach the hinges and we can hang this up in its appointed place -- yippee!!

I finally finished the fringe

since I hadn't done this for a while, I had forgotten how time consuming it was

(and I'm really glad I decided to just do straight fringe -- branched fringe takes even longer!!)

after this was finished, I took a bunch of pictures of it and of several other pieces of jewelry

it makes better sense to do this photography session stuff in batches then I have enough pictures to list stuff for a week or so

now that this is finished, I need to figure out if I'm going to start another piece of jewelry now or just concentrate on finishing some quilt pieces first -- I'm leaning toward finishing some stuff
last night I finished another section on the afghan -- it is now 90% complete

looking good


on the 19th, 20th and 21st of this month I'll be in a conference in Denver for the art quilt organization I belong to (SAQA)

during the 2 full day sessions, I get to take 4 mini classes -- one of which is titled "Promote Your Work Without Apologizing" -- yesterday I got an email from the teacher giving me the homework that needs to be done before the class -- COOL!

and I have to admit that until that arrived I hadn't focused clearly on the fact that this conference is THIS MONTH!!

ok, so now I'm starting to get excited

got to get busy!!

slowly progressing

I have managed to get half way across the bottom of this necklace adding the fringe

for some reason, this seems to be taking forever!

it looks really nice, however, so I think it will turn out to be worth the time I'm putting in to it


in the meantime, I've been adding other pieces to my Etsy store every day, so if you'd like to look at some of those, check out the right hand side of the blog page


yesterday I used those little water color flower pieces I had done to make up some Mother's Day cards -- playing with a different medium helps keep the brain moving

and this is the next completed piece of the monkey toy

this is his body

rolling along!

spring at last?

I had so much fun with the water color pencils on Sunday that yesterday afternoon I decided to do a few more drawings

they are primitives for sure, but it was kind of fun, and I may put them to use in making some greeting cards

I'm slogging along on all the other projects -- and did laundry and got groceries yesterday -- feeling sort of "stuck in a rut" just now

time to get to it

some play time

this was my first attempt at doing something with the water color pencils on actual water color paper

they look pretty good

like with every new medium, getting the feel of what the materials do is part of the learning curve

I did this one by drawing first then brushing carefully with water

I want to try brushing the paper with water first and drawing on the wet paper

we'll see how that goes

meantime, yesterday I spent lots of time in my chair with ice and heat, working on quilting and beading and knitting -- just not enough progress on anything to show you a picture yet

today we need to go get groceries! and of course there is the whole laundry issue

time to move

things to do while recovering

having my back tether me to my recliner did have some up sides - while I'm sitting with ice on me, I can do hand work

like this, for instance

the final feather on the hat is complete

and after I took this picture I sat at the table and pinned the layers together (back, bat, top) so it is now ready for the next step

let the quilting begin!
and there is this project

I'm knitting a vest for a friend as a Christmas gift

this is 10% done

and you can actually tell there is a cable up that front edge now

this pattern was written to be knit in pieces, but I hate sewing seams in knitwear, so I modified it and I'm doing the whole thing in one piece -- at least as far as the arm holes, so a row takes a while -- 240 stitches worth!
then there is the whole monkey business

love this pattern, and its coming right along!

on Friday I started the head piece and by the end of last evening I had the head, the nose and the ears all knit and ready to be stuffed and stitched

this is going to be a very cute monkey!


more rows got finished on the afghan for Christmas project too

and I found the beads that I need to do the fringe on that black necklace that I talked about yesterday

yup, even when I've been sidelined by the back pain, I have been able to get some things done
a couple of days ago the DH planted broccoli plants in the garden

they are cool weather plants, and under normal early spring conditions should have been fine

when the weather man announced yesterday afternoon that our temperatures could drop into the low 20s and TEENS (!) last night, we figured some sort of protection was in order even for those cool weather plants

we went out with cardboard boxes and some wood to weigh them down just in case of wind

today it is still very chilly, so we'll be leaving these little "incubators" out there until tomorrow

so now it's back to my recliner and the ice packs and the advil -- and I can say that its better, just I want it to be better faster!!