early summer in NJ

The trees are still bare but that didn't prevent the temperature from soaring into the 80's today. Beautiful weather for walking, which is what I did this morning before it got too hot.. I had the a/c on in the car today, at least intermittently. But it is too early for that! Tomorrow is supposed to break a record for the date - but we'll see. Yesterday I decided that my studio needs a makeover. I want a 4x8 surface for printing and just want the place to feel less cluttered, as it has slowly become in the 2 years I have been there. So I headed for Home Depot to buy sawhorses and scout out whatever else I thought I would need. As I went through the lumber dep't it occurred to me that a piece of plywood would be too heavy for me to carry up all those stairs (no elevator, remember?) and then I'd have to put padding on top of it anyway. So my brilliant idea when I found a 48 sheet of foam insulation was to use that for a tabletop. You can pin right into it. How perfect is THAT? Well, we shall find out. Today, after doing a few other errands and going to visit my mother, we went back to the HD near my studio and, to make a very long story short, brought the foam insulation back to the studio and up the stairs. I think I will need another horse to support the middle of the 8 foot piece of foam, so I will take care of that first thing tomorrow. The studio is a disaster area right now but I expect it will get better. I'll take pictures tomorrow. Meanwhile, back at the house, I am filling a trash bag with hopeless things and starting to iron fabric. I am thinking of cutting it and packing up the pieces in little baggies for sale, but I'm not sure till I see what I have. More fabric than I will ever use in 30 lifetimes. Why do I keep printing more????? Rember this photo of the Aspens I took last week? I made it into a screen and printed it on white fabric. It was too stark for me, so I overdyed it and then cut it up. Here it is on my wall at home, cut up and reconstituted. It looks less ominous to me but I am not sure what I will end up doing with it. Then, as I was going through the random pieces of fabric on my table, I ironed this one and turned it in all 4 directions. Here is how I stuck it on the wall

And here is the orientation I prefer.

It was, I think, a workshop demo piece for printing with found objects and it looks industrial to me. I have to think about whether I should cut it up or whether it becomes part of another piece. Tomorrow, back to the studio to start reonfiguring and reorganizing.