every-single-day

Houston, We Have a Faucet!

You may be tired of sink updates, but I am not! The sink is fully functioning! I started moving into my studio today!

Every bit of space will be well utilized.
I feel really good about the prospect of moving in. Having all of my stuff available for creative impulses! Dreaminess.
I am going to mount a 60" wide piece of peg board behind the sink to help organized measuring cups, spoons, scissors, syringes and all the needed small items. I love peg board.

Monday my friend Pam and I went to the International Textile Fair help in Las Vegas Nevada. We shopped fabrics from about 100 vendors. It was awesome. There were some awesome tables, with great stuff. In particular the Indian importer had stuff you can't find just anywhere. hand dyed cloth with rough folksy appliquéd animals, people and chicken scratched embroidery floss back grounds. Her eyelet fabrics were stunning.
I was able to find sparkly black tulle. A replacement for tulle I found years ago in Taos, New Mexico. The original was bought as a 6" ribbon. I bought the whole roll. I have about 4 feet left. This new sparkly tulle isn't quite the same, but has sparkles. I now own 25 yards of it. Fine with me, I was fretting the loss of a staple product.

Today was my first day of being a tour guide. My first tour went really well. The next two were good, but I faltered a couple of times.

Now I sit with Arrow in my lap. My toes are cold but my Man is cooking and great smells are wafting up. A glass of red wine is in front of me and life is good.

Quilting Arts!!! Again!

I had another article published by Quilting Arts! I got my (advance) copies today. It is so amazing to see your work on glossy paper! Just incredible. I am in the process of creating a web page about the artwork in this article and its original inspiration seen below.

Check out the Table of Contents too! Look in the upper left hand corner! Happiness is a piece I made for Ang (I love you Trish! [whispered quietly]). When I made it I wasn't quite sold on it but I knew it was just right for Ang because of the color and off it went.
When I solicited the article, I sent a photo of Happiness as an indicator of the direction of my intent in writing the article. Pokie loved it and wanted to include it in the article. Ang let me borrow it right back. And gets a full page all to herself!
It really is an incredible little piece.

Meet Sheepins.
Sheepins is the newest member of the family and a mascot of sorts. You may know that we like our littles or smalls as JJ calls them. We have a collection of small stuffed animals that sometimes travel and are always avid adventurers. They look forward to trips where they can see the world and they talk with personalities all thier own.
Sheepins is a puppet, though she would question why you believed in such things. We found her when we went to Tucson a few weeks ago. She was in a children's store, called Kid's Center. A fantastic children’s store that did 40% of it's business in books!
Sheepins is a Folkmani puppet, a company that can do no wrong. I salivate at their stuff.
Sheepins has stated that she is a tap dancer and takes every opportunity to ask for a set of taps for her hoofs. When she gets nervous or talks in a direction that makes her uncomfortable, she will begin tapping a song.
while at her first home I bought a book called The Invention Of Hugo Cabret. I haven't read it yet but await my availability to do so with baited breath. It is an illustrated novel with less verbiage than illustrations!

Here is my new sink, as yet incomplete... but clearly on it's way! And so much like it's drawing... I think I can put architect on the resume now. I get a little bit of razzing about the weight of the sink I chose. But I don't care! She is sturdy, big and broad the way most women tend to be; at least the ones I like, anyway.
I am putting together a flyer for perspective classes right now!

Sink Dreams

I drew this up as my dream sink plans for the contractor. It seems that I will have a completed studio by the end of THIS week! Can you believe it?

I already want to give classes right here from my home. I have even started to make flyers up! I have also begun checking out rentable community space, because you know, I might have gads of students lined up when they see what I will be offering.
I will wait until the sink is actually installed before putting any flyers out. I wouldn't want to jinx fate or anything.
I do look forward to having a room of my own, all moved into and ready to rock and roll. I need it. I want it. I must have it.

So here are the pictures of the door between my sewing and dyeing rooms. Sewing and Dyeing room. Singular.The next thing to be worked on will be the slop sink, scroll down to see. So all the boxes you see in this photo will be moved to the left hand side, the sink will have a frame of 2x4's with a countertop extension along the right hand portion of this photo. You can't really tell from this photo how the room will be set up. I can see having a few students into the space!
All these boxes are not studio supplies. Until we get some of the doors we need hung, this room became the catch all. The place where we stored stuff so that we didn't have to sit among towering boxes.

I look forward to the day all of the boxes are unpacked. This flexible, elastic approach to life is incredibly tiring. I want normalty, comfort. The ability to play with dye if I am not in the mood to sew. I want to know where everything is.
There is some sort of elusive quality that I feel is lacking. I know that with time I/we will regain it, but boy is it hard to live without. Maybe it is simple as feeling grounded, in Connecticut I felt it. I knew all my friends were available to me, I could call them and it felt right, accesible, like I was just 20 minutes away from contact. I have some new friends, some fantastic people gathered round, no doubt about it. But we are still bonding.

I would love it if the growing pains would just stop. Just give me a break.

So anyway! I bet this sink weighs 150 pounds! Big and beautiful.

Faking it...

hello all!
It is time for me to reclaim this space and get back to sewing!
You may have followed my expoits moving across country at my other blog. Flagstuff. Right now we are settled in to the best of our abilities. The house we bought is going to have work done starting this week, the contractor started yesterday.

This really is a no account photo, isn't it? Wha? Where?
I don't know what you know about me or if you've been reading over at Flagstuff but I now have two rooms that are adjacent to one another. This wall will open them up to one another. In one half I will have my dye room, in the other, my sewing room.
I imagine I should make an awesome set of draperies in a brilliant red for when I would like to work in a smaller space. It could be my 'harem' style sewing space, plush and inviting. And a far cry from my old space.
I have not been sewing as much as I would like, it sometimes feels uncomfortable. But that needs to change too and really, I think I have to Fake It Till I Make It.
The fun stuff?
My father bought me a bird feeding set up that mounts to the windows just outside my sewing room. My machine sits just in front of this window and they have just begun to frequent the feeder. Pygmy and White Breasted Nuthatches, Swansons (?) Sparrows, finches and an infrequent woodpecker, so far.
My Man and I will be taking a beginners birding class beginning March 27th at the library.
I intend to volunteer at High Country Raptors.
So in an effort to break my creative dry spell, I have begun working on a "map" of our trip out here.

This really is just a start. It harkens back to this journal entry but will diviate.
I just a few short weeks my second magazine article will appear in the pages of Quilting Arts Magazine. I wrote it during the month of January, made the artwork just before we left Connecticut. I am amazed that I was able to pull it off. I am excited because this time it will be about quilting and will describe some techniques I use in sewing quilt art. No surface design techniques this time around.
And I pray that my web site doesn't crash and burn just as the article is published. Remember that period?