every-single-day

Getting my groove on

You might think I had stopped sewing all together, but it was a short hiatus.

I am slowly getting back into it. My web site doesn't reflect my two newest pieces, I am having the slides scanned so that I can create web pages for them. But those two pieces were created quickly and right on top of one another. Soon afterward I started the nude male. and as I got into him, I came to a full stop. So I began to play and experiment. I am not finished playing but it has done me good to give myself a creative breather.
As Caryl Bryer Fallert once said, when you are finished with a large piece, give yourself permission to make pot holders.

I have been picking up the man and sewing into him. I am not ready to pick him up and sew him exclusively, but I am getting into small easily finished sewn projects. What is a relief.

I can't expect much right now. I am packing and cleaning bits of my studio each day. There is alot on my plate right now. I need time to see friends and family, open post office boxes, purchase packing supplies and I don't know what else. I am having an adreniline rush just thinking about it.
We have been planning this move for the last 6 months and it is finally upon us. I feel giddy, unsettled, unsure, excited and sad all at once. I am in mourning at all I will be leaving behind and unable to see what I will gain. I get brief glimpses of gains which is good. I just want to experience all of these feelings as they occur, so they don't gang up on me later.

Firenze to the rescue!

Remember Firenze the centaur who saves Harry Potter from Voldemort? Well... my little guy isn't quite a centaur, but... I love the Harry Potter series and will take any opportunity to allude to it. So there.
I dressed the goat in cloth, drew wings in pen and ink on paper and tied/glued the outfit onto the goat before placing her in the decorated box and pouring two part epoxy atop the whole deal. Then I beaded the safety pins abd lock washer to create the arch above and cut some rasberry branches to create the doors. Blue beads create the feet that balances the whole altar.
I have just 4 more boxes to complete! :)
But in the meantime, I have begun to want to sew again...a novel idea!

My mom (!), with a bit of promting on my part, has kick started her blog! PLEASE go over there and leave a comment, it would make her day.

It seems... we will be moving quite soon. We are under contract and have found a rental in Flagstaff. I am an emotional, excited, manic, wreck about it. We have been planning this for a very long time. Now that the time is here, it feels different. I will miss the closeness of my mom and dad, being able to hop in the car and eat thier succulent food, see my nephews, watch the ocean. My true home.
I will miss crazy JJ. There are three links in that last sentence and more to be found by searching this blog.
And Angie, my sister in lost shakers of salt, mac and cheese, and one of my best advocates. Angela holds a special place in my heart. She is gentle and accepting and oh so mainstream! She is the most normal person I know. Though she has a ripping sense of humor that must have been gotten quite far and wide.
Not to mention a whole slew of other people.
And I know we will have fun, that Flagstaff is an awesome town. I even have a small group of fiber artists that are welcoming me into thier group...
But right now I mourn the losses I feel. I am easy to make cry and I have been doing that alot.
Even as I make odd, snappy, goat goddesses.

Mixed Media Frenzy

I don't have alot of time to post. But my studio has been mixed media central lately. And I must say, I want to work in a self leveling gel/epoxy into the mix. Can you imagine a level clear plastic layer on the mans body and face? I think it would make a great pin on a winter coat.

and these bottle caps need, just NEED layers of imagery in them. They've got beads, the red one has gold leaf on the edge (more need it). What more...

Ummm... Mom?

My mom and I had so much fun on Saturday! We went to Manattan, shopped, saw a Broadway show and ate and drank! Fabulous!

While there we decided to do a felt-along together and bought the yarn for it to boot. I will be knitting the Fiber Trends Clogs. And if I remember correctly, she will be crocheting the Fiber Trends Booties.
She hasn't emailed me to sy she started her project.
She even has a blog that could show the progress of her work but it is so dead over there. There is a sad entry from way back in April. It was fun back then... but it needs updating and slipper progress...

So we shopped for yarn, went to see The Drowsy Chaperone! Make sure your speakers are on before clicking over the the official show web site. I have been going over there just to hear the Man in Chair talk. I might have to buy the soundtrack, I like it so much.
Mom bought me a souviner t-shirt with the words 'Show Off' in glitter, you have to see the show to understand. I am quite excited to wear it.
She got herself a fun fabulous Swatch Watch, isn't it mod, fab and updated?
Then after much searching, my mom, who has an impeccable sense of direction, found Gaby's; the restaurant that we love to go to after a show. We both had the same dish... gnocci with roasted vegetables in a light cream tomato sauce and a great bottle of wine. It was that good!
We both got juiced up enough to be totally giddy and giggly over an Us Magazine on the train ride home. The rest of the train was soo tepid but we had it goin' on.
It was awesome.
And don't you know? I carried my camera all day and didn't take a single photo. Over dinner I remembered that I was carrying the camera while looking at my mother. I remember thinking, 'she looks so pretty right now, get your camera'. And then, as it so often happens, we probably laughed really hard and I forgot all about it.

Marzipan has come alive!

I named her Marzipan.
David and I woke at 5:45 this morning. He is preparing to go to a music workshop. Because of the house stress, we have been together but separate lately. You know how that is?
So I bustled into my studio and made this for him. It is inspired by Katie Kendrick's dolls. She of course had an article in that darn magazine Deborah got me into.
I didn't do like the article said and paint the face separately and then scan and print it onto cloth (i've never had luck with that). Instead I painted the face and glued it onto silk habotai with matte medium. The habotai is so thin that painting it with the matte medium is really easy.
I'd fallen so in love with the amorphous shape of Katie's dolls and there sincere little faces that I wasn't sure I would like what came together for me.
But!
I think I like my little sweet meat better. I mean, just look at her sweet face and little blue bird pal.

Boy, has this been a week of creative distractions! And I have needed them!

Now and again I feel like I am not painting enough, when I was working I was around paint all the time and covert paintings would somehow slip into my back pocket or be quickly glued into my journal. But now that I no longer work is NO REASON for me not to paint!
JJ and I created a space just so I could paint and not disturb my fiber art. Because my fiber art depends so much on the sketches, drawings and paintings in my journal, I can't let it slip.
Remember Emma and I traded for this hand made book? I have been daydreaming about being able to move into it. But I don't two time my journals; I am a one journal at a time sort of woman. I have many more pages to go too.

Hey! Check out Jodi Green! Were we one the same wave length or what!?! Like she said in the comments! Great minds think alike.

Journaling Shoulds.

Journaling Shoulds are keeping me afloat.
Because I found a Western Bluebird feather at the Grand Canyon a few weeks back (and also saw a bunch fly by), I thought I would keep the excitement alive. So yesterday, I took out all my birding magazines and identification books and drew some blue birds as well as a woodpecker in my journal.
Then I promptly went to the copy shop so that I could try xerographic techniques (a la Claudine Hellmuth) with the drawings. It worked...

But being a collage artist by nature, I couldn't pass up the little painty dirty bits of used xeroxes when I was done. So I glued this drawing back into my book and started painting a new page.
Am I insane?
Through the house selling stress, I am creating fabulous bits of fun in my journal, in mixed media art pieces and in cloth!
Whoda thunk.

And now I need to go research Samowood and Aristocoat...

Huh?

I guess I do have a propensity toward mixed media art. But recently it has been exacerbated by a certain magazine, that a certain fellow blogger brought to my attention. Damn it.
And then of course there is my re-emerging love of thrift store shopping, and that is where I found these odd metal nestling boxes. These boxes have been sitting on my painting table for months. I'd been thinking of creating bird saint altars with them and still am.
But somehow these animals have been asking to be dressed up. This is an early photo of my days work yesterday, so you can't tell that a fierce little plastic bear
is now wearing a cape tied with embroidery floss and a belt with a fabulous button sewed on to show he has won many battles of strength and perseverance.
But you can see that a small metal leaf sculpture has made its way into the artistic cut. I hope Kristine is OK with this. I love Kristine and her work (she has two blogs so click here to get to the other one). She makes metal wire look like cloth. and because I have been given a few little pieces (I am slated to use them in rusting some fabric), I understand that sculpting this metal must be hard on the hands!
I wish I lived in her same town because I would leave fabric scraps on her doorstep and tie bells onto her mailbox.
So yesterday was filled with self love and acceptance. Thank you Great Goddess.

As you know,

I love to be creative publicly. I bead in public, paint, sew bindings, read and even play publicly. This journal page started its existence in Flagstaff Arizona, where I'd fallen head over heels for a certain 5 year old boy. He wouldn't stay still long enough to actually draw him, so this is a fib-and-a-fudge type drawing.
Today, in an effort to release all things 'house sale oriented', I treated myself to coffee and painting at StarChucks (you know what I mean). And this is what came about.
Journaling is something I feel I should focus on right now. Small tid bits of time away from the crazy feelings that I call my life right now. This isn't a "should" sort of should, it is a comfort sort of should.
Am I making any sense?

It lives quite near us...

Praying mantis' are really magical insects. I mean most bugs have power just because they are so incredibly foriegn and for myself at least, hard to understand. But Praying mantids are so big and gentle, that they command attention, respect and awe.

This one lives near our house. I suppose in the bush in the front yard.
When I took the first photo in this post, it had been sitting on our front stoop, I encouraged it to the bush so that it would stay out of harms way. When I approached it with the camera, I was amazed to see how fully its head followed the motion of the camera. Apparently they have excellent eyesight and are one of the few bugs who can turn thier heads.

Today we went to the movies, the first time we have left the house to see a movie in months! We saw The Illusionist. We loved it. Great love story, great fun. Good costumes.

The next movie on my list is The Science of Sleep; not least because Baptiste Ibars artwork can be seen in it. He is local and I know him. The link may not work, I bet since the movie came out that his bandwidth has been inundated. But I love his work!

I am one of 7.27%

Drumroll please...
Repose was accepted into Quilt National '07! I took her off my web site so that nothing could jinx her entry!

Here is a thumbnail detail of her...

I still feel a bit superstitious about this! But it is real. When I got the initial acceptance on Sunday afternoon, I checked and rechecked the email. It didn't say which piece had gotten in; instead it said I would be getting an additional email with further instructions.
I checked to make sure it wasn't a hoax email!
Then I didn't want to announce until I knew which piece was accepted.
I am so excited! Today I sewed a sleeve onto the bottom back of the piece so that that it will hang as flatly as possible when they photograph and hang the work. I also filled out all the paperwork, many, many pages!
I feel famous and rarefied. And as my good friend Lisa Chipetine pointed out, I am one of 7.27%; 545 artists submitted 1151 works and 86 were chosen, myself among them.

Dianna in Maui asked if the lettering in the man piece says something... No; those are faux Asian letters! My Man doodles a similar lettering when he is on the phone or otherwise mentally occupied and he inspired me to do the same. The letters in the new art piece are some of my own doodles.

You Might Think...

...I had fallen off the face of the earth. But I haven't. I went to Flagstaff, a whirlwind tour. Came home, saw my Man for a single day and went on retreat-where this photo was taken.
I am hone now and continuing to work on this new piece. I am tired and need time to myself. The last night I was in Flagstaff I got food poisoning while at the same time catching a cold that I had been exposed to. I feared that I wouldn't be able to fly home and see my Man. I love time away and cherish small moments of self care when I do so. Like Monday night (while in Flagstaff) I went to the Beaver Street Brewery and ordered a pizza with an R&R Stout- which was SOo0o good, it tasted like chocolate. But this was quite the work related visit, I toured homes ofr sale in our price range, checked out a few rentals and felt the need to be 'on top of my game'.
I did take a morning to go to the Grand Canyon, though. That was totally satisfying.
I flew home as scheduled and was able to see David. I missed him and still do. It is good to have such a good mate, husband and friend.
Then I went on retreat for two nights and three days. This was a short retreat, some in the past have seemed quite a bit longer... This is will be my last consecutive retreat. I doubt I will be able to attend this retreat often from now on. I cried on Sunday morning.