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Archive for January, 2009

Yes, We Did!

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

shep_large

I am sitting here on my sofa, awaiting the inauguration of Barack Obama. I am filled with hope and really proud to be an American — it has been too long.

As many of you know, I have been an Obama Mama from the beginning. I know some are worried that Obama will be turned into some sort of icon or idol and put on a pedestal. I don’t think he will allow that. His recent speeches show that he wants to tamp down the expectations.

I believe that he is the leader we need now. He constantly reminds us that it is not him — it is us. We are the change that we need. He is here to lead us. He is the no drama Obama, after all.

I have several of the stickers, seen above, from MoveOn.org. These commemorative stickers mark Barack Obama’s historic victory and were designed by groundbreaking artist Shepard Fairey—the same artist who designed the world-famous, iconic “Hope” poster for Obama.

I want to do another photo montage with all of you sharing your hope for our future, So for the first 35 people who send me their snail mail, I will send you a sticker. (USA residents only) All I ask is that you send me a photo with the sticker in it. I will set up a Flickr set with the photos.

I also hope that you will leave a brief message of your feelings on this auspicious day.

Oh, happy day.

OMG!!

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Tomorrow, Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the USA. I am so excited. Please come back tomorrow. If you live in the USA, I will have something to send a few of you in celebration of this event. YES, WE DID!!

I have been doing SDA conference database stuff. I have the bulk of the updates completed. In the meantime, about 12 new registrations have come in that I need to process. I think I am just about past the really time consuming work. From now on, it will be dribble, dribble.

I am in the throes of choosing paint colors for my office in the basement. It was a really dark room with dark bronze wainscoting and dull beige walls and a big ole dirty brick fireplace. It had exposed furnace duct work. Mr C got rid of the duct work, did the drywall work, primed the new drywall and bricks and painted the ceiling. Now, it is imperative that I make the color decisions for the woodwork, brick and walls.

I love the Divine Color paints that are sold at our local Miller paint stores. They have these little sample packets of paint to bring home to audition.

divinepaintsamples

We settled on a color that we liked for the wainscot and the bricks, but the green I had chosen, just didn’t work with it. Here are the brick paint samples. I like the top one which is a richer, more complex neutral. It is not quite as dark as the photo is showing. FYI, it is called Crunch and is from the Pacific Trail Mix collection.

bricksamplecolors

I went back to the store today and played with the paint samples and decided that I needed to go with a teal rather than the green. This color is Foam from the Ocean Tide Pools collection. Here are the wall paint samples.

wallpaintsamples

I even brought in another, brighter green, but it didn’t work with the neutral I had chosen. I think I am gonna like this. Here is the whole brick fireplace, primed. Makes the room look better already.

primedfireplace

Did you watch Oprah, coming from DC today? Will.i.am and several other artists debuted this song in honor of Obama’s inauguration. It is titled America’s Song. Enjoy! Tomorrow is “Celebration Time!”

You’ve Gotta Have Heart

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

I am slogging through life. I can’t seem to get my energy back. I think I might have a sinus infection. I did manage to get down to the studio and do some class samples for the fabric valentine collage class that I am teaching at the end of the month at the cathedral. I don’t really like to teach, but they wanted me to do something to tie in with my show.

To warm up, I played with some Angelina fibers and some cute flowers that I found at Michael’s.

angelinaflowers

I cut a piece which I glued to white organza using this fantastic valentine glitter glue.

valentineglue

I stamped some hearts on a blank card.

stampedhearts

I collaged some of the Angelina fibers and other Valentine ephemera and stamped and glittered, etc. I call this the Glitzy Valentine.

valentineglitzycollage

Here is a detail:

glitzdetail

Here is a more sedate Valentine postcard with vintage Japanese textiles and hand stitching.

kyotohearts

And this is my favorite that I call my Mod Valentine collage –

modvalentinecollage

This is hand stitched and mounted on velum Bristol board with gel medium.

moddetail

It sort of felt good to get back in the studio, but now I am feeling blah again. I did get to the paint store to select paint colors for my office. Mr C is done with the dry wall. We are going to paint the red brick fireplace and the wainscoting a lighter color and I selected a pretty green for the walls. He got the fireplace primed this afternoon.

Today is my darling Lisa’s birthday. I am so happy that she has a wonderful new lady friend in her life who is treating her very well today. Happy birthday, sweetie! I remember on the day she was born, it warmed up to 20° in Schenectady, NY. It had been 15 below for days.

I am off to make a salad for dinner. Mr C is picking up cracked crab and sour dough bread.

The View From the Deck…

Friday, January 16th, 2009

and some quilt content. Melody saw a quilt hanging on the wall, behind my studio mess and asked if it was a Sandi Cummings inspired quilt. I took a workshop with Sandi, way back in the early 2000s (heh) at Empty Spools at Asilomar. (I am a late bloomer.) It was a breakthrough experience for me. I learned about thermofax machines for making screens and so many other “out of the box” creative ideas.

Fast forward a year or so, my guild, at the time, did an annual challenge. That year, it was the wine country, where I happened to live. I did this quilt as an ode to Zinfandel, mt fave red wine at the time. I have moved on to Pinot Noir. Anyway, Melody wanted to see the quilt. Here it is.

zinquilt

This is about 46″ X 39″. Here is a detail showing my thermofax wine glass screens:

zinquiltdetail

In the other blocks, I printed stuff about zinfandel, using fabric that looked as if it had wine stains. This was the description of zin from a label. You can click on these to read them.

zindescriptiondetail

No wimpy wine!

nowimpywinedetail

Zin is red, zin is red, zin is red for those who order zinfandel and are surprised when it is not pink!! You can also see the little grape cluster applique that I added in various places.

zinisreddetail

I had a neighbor who had this as his license plate – a zin fan.

zinfandetail

So, there is some old quilt content done before my blogging days. Pretty bad quilting, but still something I treasure on my way to developing my own style.

We are having fog and sun with temperature inversions and poor air quality, but I am still loving the sunshine! Here is the view from the deck last night as the sun was setting out to the west.

sunsetfromdeck

This morning the same view was eerily foggy.

foggymorningfromdeck

A couple of  hours later, sunshine!

sunshinydayfromthedeck

I must get back to the laptop. I have taken a day off and now I have to get back to updating the SDA database. Ta!

. . .

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

oldwomanandcomputerjoke

Argh! This crud virus won’t go away. I managed to slog my way through much of the computer data stuff for the SDA conference registrations. I finished the online credit card authorizations late today. I still have to update the SDA database. But that is not as time sensitive as getting the money!!

I pulled myself together so that we could go to the theatre tonight. We saw “Portland, the Musical” performed by the Sunnyside School third graders. Mia had several roles — narrator, suffragette and Irish dancer. She did this drawing of a Blue Heron which was on the cover of the program — another budding artist!!

miasblueheron

The third graders of the Portland School District study Portland during the year. An incredibly sainted man, who happens to be a teacher’s spouse and a musician, has written this musical that traces important events from the Multnomah Indians to the flood of 1996. He goes to each school and plays the piano and directs the children. I learned a lot about the city tonight. Portland got its name by a flip of a coin. It was named after Portland, ME, it could have been Boston.

So that is all the excitement that I have to report. Tomorrow, I am going to the STASH meeting. We are going to plan our spring retreat  – yippee.

And, thank you so much for all the good thoughts and wishes. I just haven’t had time to answer e-mails or to post on blogs. Hope you all understand. You all rock!!