what else is new?

Good question. I'm back again, trying to post something about nothing. Some people are great at this...like Del Thomas. But for me, it is really a reach. I have lots of things to say but they are either too private or too quirky or too boring. So you'll have to make do. Here is a picture of me, last weekend, with my close, quirky, and(far from boring) beloved friends who are still in my life and in my heart. They are both on Facebook so I guess they shouldn't mind if I post this picture on my blog. On another topic... There is something I would like to share with you that I think is not only very important but fascinating - and it has nothing to do with health care reform. http://www.skinquiltproject.com/. This will be a revelation to many of you and I hope you will watch all the videos on the site. My friend, Sherry Shine, sent me the link today and I spent part of the afternoon watching and listening to the wonderful videos. Did I have anything better to do? I thought so before I watched, but I was so moved that I donated to this quilters' project. On more mundane topics... 1)The weather: Cold, raw, rainy. What I would call November weather - but we're not there yet. A little further west in NJ they had 2" of snow. Brrrrrr. I left the house today only to mail the bills in the cluster mailbox up the street (the vicissitudes of living in a condo development). And then, when Marty came home, we went to happy hour and bar food a mile away. I am, indeed, happier than I was before we went. 2) My sewing room: Still neat, considering that I have been cutting and sewing strips today.( no pix - it looks the same as last week...almost.) 3) My mother: I have to visit her tomorrow, since I am leaving for Houston at the crack of dawn on Saturday and will be gone till Wed. She doesn't look bad for 92, does she?(she didn't want me to take her picture, can you tell?) 4) My daughter Jessica: on bed rest, working from home as of today, for the next 16-19 weeks. Glad we had our day out a couple of weeks ago!5) Houston and Art Cloth Network: I have a list of people to call and to see on the floor at Festival (or for coffee or drinks). Having dinner with Jane Aldoretta (and maybe other people - who knows?) on Saturday night. Jane is in Houston now and I can't wait to catch up with her. I plan to see Iris at MistyFuse, have coffee with a few other people I've put in my cell phone, and am really excited to be going. And I will post pix, of course. 6)New book shipment: I was completely sold out of books and luckily, when a couple of orders for signed copies came in last week, I still had two left. I now have a few dozen here if you still want a personally autographed copy. 7) Silk scarves en route: Totally out of scarves, too - and by popular demand I have ordered several dozen that I will be dyeing and printing in he next month or so: just in time for holiday gifts. I'll keep you posted. I was hoping to make this list get to 10 but I don't think so. Need to get back to cutting/sewing and don't have the imagination to make up three things.

what's new?

new biz cards While this looks grey on my monitor, it is a lovely, glossy white with black type. Was out of cards and didn't want to use VistaPrint again. GotPrint did our open studio postcards, so I gave them a try. new source I took the jpg I'd shot for my blog and designed the card in a few minutes on GotPrint. Ordered a rush print job & 3 day mail so I'd have them in time for Houston (in fact, they came in time for my reunion last weekend)ms;" >and they still cost almost nothing.couldn't be happier! Next stop, postcards. new quilts I finished sewing down facings on the quilts I am sending off tomorrow for an article. Nothing like last minute! This m.o. is not new. new workshop I'm so excited to be teaching "Can this Fabric be Saved?" Sept 1,2,3, at Fabrications Retreat in Michigan next year! If you were there this year, you may already have signed up for next year's classes. If not, you should know that registration for everybody else opens this Thurs, October 15 and classes will fill quickly since some are already half-full from this year's attendees. new looks Rifling through my fabrics today I found this before and after of a yucky piece of dyed fabric I had printed on. Then, of course, the famous designer-who-shall-not-be-named fabric I transformed. It always makes me laugh and I still can't think how this got into my stash.I have quite a few more examples of fabrics to which I have given facelifts. I wouldn't mind it if somebody would do the same for me, but failing that, perhaps a good night's sleep will help.

still out to lunch

The weekend was heaven and I am not ready to come back from being a 17 year old. Lots of people brought pictures from the various elementary schools, including this one from 4th or 5th grade that I brought. I can name every kid except one -- and some of us still have our same faces. Can you find me? Testimony to the fact that my head was elsewhere: I spilled a container of liquid red dye all over the carpet in my studio today. The rug is wool and the dye did not have soda ash in it, but it still stained. Oh, well. I cleaned up as much as I could and then came home to upload the few pix I took over the weekend. Too busy talking and hugging. My house guest and I stayed up till 3:am talking for 3 nights in a row, so I am turning in early tonight. Maybe after a good night's sleep I will be ready to return to grownup-hood.

Thanks for all your amusing comments on my cleaning frenzy yesterday. My housekeeper is coming tomorrow and will faint with astonishment because I don't normally let her in here. It is so neat and peaceful in here that all I want to do is sit and stare into space. This is hard if you are hand-sewing and need to look down, but I am managing. This room is now suitable for meditation. Spurred on by all of this neatness, I spent a few hours in the studio today filling trash bags and neatening up the place. I also took a long piece of silk broadcloth that I had waxed, dyed, discharged, and was now a hideous, blotchy mess of green and yellow and some unidentifiable dark color. Realizing that I have no art cloth to take to the Art Cloth Network meeting in Houston, I decided this was a candidate for something. Out came the wax pot and some red dye and I went to work. Here is what it looked like when I ironed out the wax at home tonight. You can see the green and yellow underneath the waxed part. Quite a bit of the scarlet came out of the silk in the wash, so here is what I have now. That blotchy green simply won't go away (a turq. that wouldn't discharge) so I will either take this as a WIP or will have to put another couple of layers on it. Don't know if I'll have time, though. H.S. reunion this weekend. It started tonight,actually - but I didn't go to the "meet and greet." There will be endless ops to do that, starting tomorrow. Two of my lifelong friends (one since 7th grade, the other since high school) will be staying here. I'm picking Bob up at the airport tomorrow afternoon and he will stay in the house. Bill will arrive and sleep in his camper in the little parking area across the street from my house. Tomorrow night, the jeans and bar scene - probably the best part of the weekend. Marty may go for a drink but he'll take his own car because I am not leaving early and he will want to. Sat night the dinner dance. I don't love to dance - but I might be persuaded if they play some romantic '50's music and the right person asks me...although the person I would most like to dance with will not be there. Marty has opted out, although he attended all the other reunions with me and had a good time. In anticipation of the festivities and the guests, I baked cookies tonight. Tried a new recipe from Maida Heatter's cookie book (the one I own - she wrote so many). I stowed half of them in the freezer or they'll all be gone by tomorrow. They look like oatmeal cookies, but that's because they are. 2 sticks of butter (ouch! - I almost didn't make them), flour, brown sugar, walnuts, raisins, dried cranberries, and a secret ingredient: potato chips!-- well, not so secret now. I forced myself to have two of them with a cup of tea a little while ago and I have to admit they are delicious. I halved the sugar - every cookie recipe on earth is too sweet for me. I will see if Marty can figure out the potato chips. I have gotten less than one side of the facing on one quilt sewn down: I guess I will do some tomorrow morning and then it's good to do while I am sitting up late with the "boys" and catching up. Sweet dreams,

what I did today

Stayed home. Exercised. Made soup. Got my Bernina 1020 working again. A year or more ago, my Bernina was making noise and the wheel didn't want to turn easily, so I bought Pam Morris' Janome 6500 and have been using it happily ever since. I kept meaning to take the Bernina in for service but never got around to it, so it has been sitting on the floor near the sewing room door for that same year or more (is it possible?). This morning, I picked it up, dusted it off, cleaned the bobbin thingie, oiled it, plugged it in - and it purred. I guess it just needed a vacation. Of course, what do I need with multiple good machines? The Viking 210 I bought in 1994 (the only new machine I have ever bought) is in my studio...and is very quiet and lovely but I don't do any serious sewing (i.e., free motion stitching) with it. I could, but I don't. In the unlikely event I need a sewing machine to travel with, it's great because it weighs only 13 or 15 lbs. Then, I have a wonderful old Singer 99 which I bought for a song at a house sale and have used (not lately) on occasion. It's heavy and has a carrying case. Nice straight stitch. My mother's old sewing machine is downstairs in the guest room: it's the first machine I ever sewed on. Finally, the treadle - which is in front hall and in the event of a power failure, I could light a candle and use it. I spent the afternoon attaching facings to 3 quilts and now I only have to sew them down by hand. Tomorrow. For the past week the room has looked as if Genghis Khan's marauding hordes came through and ransacked the place looking for gold. How can I work in such a mess, you ask? Ha! I cannot reveal my secret.

But this is what it looks like now. You can see how I spent my evening.

This was probably the biggest accomplishment of the day. With a few tweaks it should stay this way through the weekend.

full day, late night

This is my week for seeing friends -- all of whom are part of my fiber crit group, Studio Six. Yesterday, Rachel. Late this afternoon was Diane Savona's solo show in the beautiful gallery at Georgian Court College. I got to see Diane, Joan Dreyer and Joanie San Chirico, whom I have not seen in eons. Joanie is up to her ears in commissions, Joan is teaching college art classes and Diane has been traveling and working on pieces for this exhibition.Joan, Joanie and I met for dinner and then went over to the show. Here are all 3 of them chatting. Diane's work is highly original: domestic archaeology layered with memory and meaning -- and it is all stitched by hand. Her presentation is an integral part of her work. Here are a few of the pieces in this wonderful exhibition. My photos don't begin to do her work justice but you can go to her website where the photos are better and there is lots of work. Tomorrow morning I shall probably sleep in and then finish the facings on my 3 quilts. I am totally out of books -- the last two sold this past week. So a carton is on its way to me now. And I am out of business cards - new ones from GotPrint should be here before I leave for Houston. Good night (or should I say good morning?)

printing on the press

Rachel came over to the studio today and as promised, we played around with relief inks, monoprints, collagraphs, paper, fabric, and the press. It has been a while since I have printed and we plunged right in, making a few uglies along the way. Here she is, turning the wheel on my tabletop Blick press. I had purchased the four basic colors for starters, thinking I would mix my own colors because these Akua-Kolor paints are not inexpensive. We just worked with red, yellow and black and by the time the day was over we were SO done with those three colors. However, we had to use up what we had taken out of the jars, so we kept at it. This was the first print of the day, on mulberry paper. On the way in this morning, I grabbed a few leaves and here they are - wherever they landed on the plate. Later, we made more prints with leaves. I don't have a picture of the one I made on paper but here is the plate, and here is the resulting print (on fabric). The press picks up a lot of detail, much the way a gelatin print does. But the effect is not quite the same. Most people use a press for paper, of course...but the late Karen Berkenfeld taught me about putting fabric on a press. I love paper but I keep going back to the cloth....maybe out of habit. After playing with monotypes for a while, I turned Rachel loose to make a collagraph plate. and here she is with the first print of what turned out to be an edition of sorts.It is her self-portrait, and no, she is not holding it upside down. These are a couple of things I printed with a collagraph plate I had made last winter with glue. Enough for tonight! Another trip to the dentist in the morning and late in the day an art opening and dinner out. I will need to nap in the afternoon!

warm and sunday

It took me less than an hour to get to Brooklyn and find a parking spot across the street from Jess & Tommy's apartment. This includes a horrible detour on the way to the Holland Tunnel, and the time it took me to interrupt a cop who was reading his newspaper, to ask him where I was.
Fast forward to Red Hook, Brooklyn (this is a fascinating site) - a gritty-being gentrified-section of the city with cobblestone streets and no subway. You can get there on foot, by bike, car or bus - but not by train.  There was a hope to bring back the trolleys, or even to establish a trolley museum - but oh, dear. Here they sit - sadly rusting away.

an interior shot

The building you see behind them used to be a  dilapidated warehouse - Van Brunt Stores.  Wasn't it beautiful? My kind of building.

Today, I don't know what is on the upper floors but the first floor is a to-die-for Fairway market.  The most gorgeous selection of fish, meat, cheeses, coffee, organic and regular produce, and groceries from every part of the world. 

 The building has all these wonderful shutters that we couldn't figure out - except maybe they were hurricane shutters because the building is right on the water?  A mystery. Here it is from the back.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  After Jess and I shared a delicious IKEA 99 cent breakfast of bacon, eggs, and home fries  (biggest bargain on planewe spent a couple of hours looking at kitchen cabinets, etc. and got a lot of good ideas.   We finally got out of there and headed for Fairway, where we had lunch outside on the water.  After lunch, pictures.

 Lady Liberty

the mother

the daughter

                                 the tugboat with the Verrazzano Bridge

The Waterfront Museum barge

and that's all she wrote.  It was a gorgeous day, well spent. Tomorrow, the studio (hooray!). Rachel and I are going to try our hands at my new Akua-Kolor relief inks, paper, and the press - and see what happens.

another little quilt

And another on-line class. My deconstructed screen printing on-line class is open for registration on L-Quilt. If you have my book and haven't tried DSP yet on your own, this gives you an added dimension for seeing how it's done. As usual, I make a fool of myself on camera -- but it's fun. Next weekend is my high school reunion and if I couldn't get skinny, at least I could get my toes done. So, off I went this afternoon for a relaxing few hours at the nail salon cum day spa and ended up with the works. Lemme tell you - it would be worth being rich just to do all this beautifying monthly. What a treat! This gave me the energy I needed to make another quilt tonight to send off to C&T for their booth at Houston. After dinner, I headed downstairs to use the last of the Liquitex soft acrylic paints they had sent me to test out, printed some fabric, and brought it back upstairs. I cut it in half, put this piece aside, and used the rest for the quiltlet (approx 12x12). Had no clue how it would end up, but started cutting and sewing and before I knew it, I had this thing made of strips. I fused it to the background,did a quickie (don't look too closely) job of quilting. I even fused the facing - not something I like to do - but time was of the essence. Amazing what you can do when you don't stop to think. It's done. What a relief! Now I can go to bed, get a few hours of sleep, and be on my way to Brooklyn bright and early. (remind me to get gas before I leave New Jersey - land of the $2.31 gallon they put in your tank for you. This doesn't quite make up for the highest property taxes in the nation but I'll take what I can get.) Taking Jessica to IKEA in Red Hook tomorrow to look at kitchens. What fun!! And I can relax, knowing both my quilts will go out FedEx overnight on Monday.

October sneaked up on me

when I wasn't looking. I've had my head in the fabrics and my feet in the sewing machine for a couple of weeks and will come up for air tomorrow. I had to make a piece for the C&T booth at Market and discovered that I had made one that was too big. It might have helped if I had read the instructions they sent me. Fortunately, I had a smaller one partly completed and I spent the last couple of days finishing it. Tomorrow, it needs to go off in the mail. Today I was out and it was a pretty pleasant day. My mother took me to lunch at Panera. (well, I took her but she insisted on paying - which meant I put it on her credit card). I took the receipt, but you know how they put a slip on your tray listing what you ordered? Well, my mother looked at her slip and exclaimed,"what a bargain!" Of course: no prices. Then we went to look at a different assisted living place because she has been packed and ready to leave where she is --although she has nowhere to go but to another assisted living. The other place is beautiful and elegant and big and we had a nice tour. But I had the distinct feeling when I dropped her off where she lives that she might have been relieved to be in a smaller place where she knows what's what. LOL - we'll see. But I think it was a good strategy to take her elsewhere. Will she unpack? I wouldn't bet on it. Here she is with Josh last Monday night. He will be 11 (!!!) in March and is just about as tall as my mother (which isn't saying a great deal, since she is not exactly a giant.) Nevertheless, my own kids, growing up, always measured themselves against Nana. I remember how excited Jessica was when she finally surpassed her.I've had two crit group meetings in the last couple of days: on Thursday - Studio Six (the usual suspects - Rachel Cochran, Judy Langille, Hollie Heller, Kerr Grabowski, et al) and last night at my house, my art crit group. There are 8 in the Studio Montclair group but 4 people couldn't come. It was lovely - we all showed work, ate, went through a bottle of wine, and talked about art and artists. Very stimulating. I showed them this piece, which, thanks to Eva, I have named "Letter from Genghis". Thanks, Eva! On that note, I shall say good night, although technically, it is morning.