Home again, home again, jiggity jog

Got home from North Carolina on Monday night -- and here it is, Thursday night.  How did that happen?
Been catching up on sleep and staring into space during the day, recovering from the 10 hour drive/detours/power outages on the way home, and a few other adventures.  Oops!  Have also been packing and shipping supplies and quilts in addition to my large suitcase filled with paints, dyes, etc.
Haven't gotten to the small one yet with my clothes.

Last week's workshop was the usual fun and creativity, with most of the participants working quite differently from their norm. Here is Debby, holding a piece of her splendid work. She is standing next to an equally splendid work in progress which incorporates some of the hand-printed fabric she brought with her.  Isn't she versatile??

 

We kidded Katherine about being an over-achiever because she made two quilts in two days.  This is one of them.

 And here is one of the quilts she brought from home.  Katherine was productive because she is going to have a solo exhibit in the near future.  Again, you can see how different her other work is from what came out of her free-form experiment, above.

 

Lori M. loves the autumn colors and brought in a Strips That Sizzle quilt to show.   You can see how she is using the same colors in the free-form pieces on her wall, below. I can't wait to see what she ends up with. You can already see how different it will be from her other work.

 Here are the strips Lori R. sewed together and threw at the wall (ad hoc design).  She had a few different things going here, but eventually started editing and decided to work with the blue strips on the right (slow design).

 She just sent me a picture of her quilt, finished and quilted!! Another overachiever:-).

The strip sets on the wall with the yellow and red stripes are the starting point for another piece. Way to go, Lori!

'Nuff for now.  I was up till 3:am last night reading and I don't think I will make it that late tonight. nite!

quickie post

Ten hours on Route 95 and we are in Winterville, N.C., where we are enjoying the hospitality of our hosts, Lori and Dennis.  Tomorrow, the first of a two-day class in Washington, NC and I'm really looking forward to it. 

Tonight we had a lovely dinner that Lori prepared and then sat out in the backyard near the fire, while we listened to the frogs, watched the fish in the pond jumping for their dinner, and heard tales of wildlife adventures.  Oh, and we roasted marshmallows, which I have not done since I was a kid at camp.

Hopefully, more tomorrow night.
R.

ha ha - it's been so long that even Blogger doesn't know me

Where to begin? Maybe I should work backwards.

Right now, I am taking a break from packing for tomorrow's teaching trip to North Carolina. Dinner won't be for another hour so I am eating a small bowl of cold cucumber yogurt dill soup, which I made this morning. VERY low in calories and divine.

2 cups 1% yogurt (200 calories)
2 cukes (free)
2 cloves garlic (ditto)
bunch of dill
bunch of mint
1 tsp olive oil (why? -- but it's about 30 cal)
salt, pepper, lemon juice to taste


Tonight's dinner will be low fat shrimp scampi on a minimum of pasta and homemade coconut ice cream for dessert. (hey, you gotta have dessert).

It has been an interesting few weeks.
Yesterday morning, my beloved brother Jon left for home (Pittsburgh) after having been here to help me TRY and make a dent in our mother's apartment. We were there every day (almost) and it was by turns frustrating, exhausting, stressful, and hilarious.

Ma was truly a hoarder and we are dealing with the aftermath.  But she was a neat hoarder: all the STUFF was hidden away in drawers, closets, and her storage area in the building. We found an almost full case of bathroom tissue that she brought over in 1992 when she moved (and did not touch since).
Our father was in the wholesale contractors' supply business and since he also sold paper towels, kleenex, and t.p.to the contractors , we always had a carton of each (i.e. 96 rolls) in the basement.  Uh - the business closed 25 years ago.  This is the tip of the iceberg.

It isn't all bad: we found my grandparents engagement certificate, their ketubah (marriage certificate) from 1913, my great-grandparents' passports and green cards, and other wonderful papers, postcards in Polish and German from Europe in the early 20th C before they exterminated all our relatives who had sent them.

We know a lot about my mother's side of he family.  Our father's side is a mystery.  Our grandmother died when our father was five and we're not even sure what her maiden name was.  Ellis island records and other genealogy sites yield nothing because on her 4 childrens' birth certificates, her last name was spelled 4 different ways.  And there is a fifth spelling on my aunt's wedding certificate. We can find no record of her on the boat with any of those spellings.  We know when she was born and when she died -- but there is no record of anything else. We don't know whether our father's parents were married in NY or NJ, but eventually we will have to check NY's records.

On Sunday, Jon and I went to the cemetery to find our grandmother's grave.We found it, discovered her Hebrew first name, and were still clueless about anything else. Here we are, happy to be together.

 

I think I should get back to packing for tomorrow's 10 hour drive to the South.  I'm looking forward to teaching on Friday and Saturday.  After that, we go to Durham and on Sunday will pick up my quilts on exhibit in Chapel Hill.  Monday, we head for home.

blogging along

Honestly, don't know where the time has gone.  Oh, yes I do.  Spent the end of last week in The Apartment, throwing out STUFF.  Todd Gillman stopped by after he had been in NY covering a political event and we went out to lunch before he headed back to D.C.  We did not go to this restaurant. I sent the photo to Jessica for her "can you spot the error?" posts on Facebook.  LOL

Saturday we went to Princeton in the afternoon and discovered that it was reunion weekend at the university.  I wish I had photographed the often hilarious orange and black getups that people were wearing, but I didn't want to be rude.  Instead, I had to photograph this sculpture and one building that wasn't mobbed with tiger-garbed people.  We did have time to go to the Princeton art museum, which was a treat.

 Sunday we went to Brooklyn to see Miss Emma and the progress on Jess and Tommy's renovation.The afternoon included a horrible trip to an even worse Home Depot in Red Hook, where we didn't find the advertised product.  Afterwards, we headed to the famous Red Hook Lobster Pound for lobster rolls. The eatery has finally reopened after it was destroyed in Hurricane Sandy.  The Red Hook section of Brooklyn was under water for quite a while but is pretty much back to normal now.  Afterwards, headed to Baked, where Miss Emma enjoyed a cupcake -- or at least, the frosting.

My brother arrived from Pittsburgh on Monday to give me a hand or two with all of this stuff for the next week. I am so happy to have him here!!

This week has been taken up with doctors' appointments, attorney meetings, real estate people interviews, and more sorting/cleaning/clearing out.  Today we hit pay dirt in my mother's storage unit in the building:  an almost full carton of paper towels that she had brought from her house when she moved to the apartment in 1992, stored and forgotten. My back seat runneth over.

Tomorrow, bank stuff and more sorting.  Saturday, the kids come and tag what they want and next week, more meetings and appointments.   I have been sleeping well.