Don't ask!

Yes, I have been away from the computer.  I had great difficulty blogging from my iPad - especially with ios7, which I made the mistake of downloading.  I hate it but there is no going back.  So, I gave up.  THEN, the server which hosts my website and my Studio78 email was down so frequently and for so long that I did not get emails and had trouble sending, as well.  As a result, I have been taking a rest from blogging while I changed servers.  All is ok now, but geesh!!!!!!!!!!

So here is the post I first wrote what seems like eons ago.  Do you even care, by now??

This was such fun.  What I discovered (I learn something new every time I teach) was that this UFO workshop not only lets people give new life to old dogs and frees them up to play, they actually learn composition as they decide how the newly invented blocks should go together. I really think this is my favorite class to teach.

Here are a few before and afters, although I did not get them all and Blogger has been so recalcitrant that I gave up trying to post.

 Enough for now and time to move on.  

I am looking forward to leaving for London and Paris for a REAL vacation. Can't remember the last time I took two weeks away from everything.  Last time I was in England was in 2010 and it was a working vacation -- with the poignancy of a sick husband ticking off the next-to-last thing on his bucket list and then teaching at FoQ in Birmingham.  This will be different: a visit with friends and family in England and my French branch of the family on my mother's side, in Paris.  

I will try to blog while I am there, but if Blogger on the iPad with ios 7 gives me grief you will know that is why you are not seeing posts. Honestly, I would advise you not to  download this new OS that got such raves from the tech critics. Bleh.

P.S. If you are in the New York area, you should know that the international artist, noted author and teacher Cécile Trentini, is having an exhibit of her amazing work at the Art Quilt Gallery on 25th St. in Chelsea on Monday, November 11 from 6-7:30.  Not only that, she is teaching at City Quilter over the weekend, November 9-10 and there are still a couple of spaces left if you hurry.  

I'll be at her opening and hope to see you there, too!
xo 
Rayna

Fearless color

What an amazing day! Even the people who said they had no hang ups or problems with selecting colors, amazed themselves with their results.  I can't tell you what the limits  I gave them were, but I can let the outcomes speak for themselves,  one very happy group of happy campers who were working entirely out of their color comfort zones. 

These next few used an image for color inspiration.

Ignore the advertising logo at the top and focus on the rest of the page.

There was much more, but this is a taste.  Tomorrow is another day and another class. Can't wait!

Meet me in St.Louis

 Arrived here today and so far, I am impressed.  My host Wendy and I headed over to the gorgeous art museum this afternoon and spent an hour with the contemporary art.  Some of it, honestly, was a hoot and can only have been created with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

On the other hand, there were some very cool works, only a few of which I was able to capture.  The two following are opposite edges of the same canvas.u

And the next one needs no introduction, despite my rather crooked photo of those famous edges.  Can they ever be done in cloth?

Tonight I spoke at the guild meeting and for the next two days, I teach.  So enough blogging for now.

'Nite.

Mostly lazy

With all good intentions to go and do and accomplish, I stayed and don't ask what I did not do.  The list is too long.

On the other hand, I listened to an interesting teleconference call, one of a series sponsored by Morna McEver Golletz. (don't ask me why this is suddenly speaking in italics - I am typing on my Zagg bluetooth keyboard and it has suddenly decided to reformat my life- ok, fixed).  This teleconference was great but right in the middle of the day is the worst time for me.  I listened to the first two afterwards but decided that I should listen live today.  It didn't make any difference, except that I had to move 20 things so I could close the door to my sewing room to block out the vacuum cleaner.  I will go back to my original schedule of tuning in to replays.

After the teleconference, I went back to the website redesign I have been plodding through and after wasting too much time, decided I need to outsource this job.  Closed the laptop and went over to the sewing machine to finish stitching the three year old Ohio Star UFO.  THAT was my big accomplishment for the day,since I am teaching Reinventing the UFO next week and I can take this quirky piece as an example.  Maybe tonight I will face it while I read a book. It is 27x30 and It needs a name.

\

A little before 5:00 I had an errand to run, and for the second day in a row I left the car in the driveway and walked the half-mile to my destination (and back).  Weather gorgeous -- milder than yesterday (when I also walked to my errands) and a perfect autumn day.  I don't live far from the banks, the jeweler, the craft gallery, and the CVS -- but mostly, in the name of efficiency I stop on the way to somewhere else as I am driving wherever else I am going.  Today I was not being efficient (although I am multitasking now because I am blogging while I am eating dinner.  AHA - dinner!

I live alone, for the most part. And yes, I am lazy. But not too lazy to make sure I eat well.  Earlier this week I roasted some beets, cut them up, added some wine vinegar and dill and ate a few.  They were fine, but how many times in a row can you eat beets?  Yesterday, I put on the grill and threw on an eggplant that had been languising too long in the fridge.  Roasted it, put it into the food processor with garlic, salt, lemon juice, cilantro a bit of tahini and a dash of plain yogurt.  Nice snack with pita or crackers.  

Tonight, as part of my lazy day, I didn't want to cook (and didn't have anything to cook, anyway). But I have a dozen cans of tuna in my pantry, thanks to a trip to Costco.  Now, I am not a big fan of tuna.

But I do love the Italian tuna in olive oil, which is far superior to the dry white stuff you get in water.

So, I opened the elegant Italian tuna, scrounged around, and here was my dinner.

Elegant and delicious.  Feta cheese, tuna, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, the eggplant salad, olives, anchovies and a green onion.I love making something from nothing, don't you?

 Now what, you may ask, is that pink stuff?  Well, I was reading the NYTimes food section earlier and there was a small article about vegetable yogurts (instead of fruit yogurts). AHA!  I dumped the leftover beets into the food processor, added some yogurt and more dill, and oh my, it tasted like borscht.  Then I boiled a couple of small potatoes (I never have potatoes in the house, but just happened to buy some the other day) and threw them into the borscht puree. FAB.

And I have more left for tomorrow.

So that's my story of a delinquent day.  I have to go sew the facings on the other two sides of that quilt and then I will curl up with a mystery while I sew.  

Tomorrow, I'll do what I didn't do today. Maybe.

Thank goodness it's Tuesday

Technically, it is.  But since I am up late Monday night, it is still Monday in my head.  Glad this day is over.  I had my 13th annual life-saving procedure this morning and did pretty much nothing for the rest of the day.  

Tonight, struck with a sudden case of second wind, I got busy stitching a piece that has been sitting around here for about 3 years, partly done.  Remember the Ohio Star block challenge from 2010?  I cut up the ugly quilt and sent some blocks out to my readers to reinvent.  Got back some wonderful pix, a few of which ended up in my book.

I sliced up a block, made some random units, and started to make a sample.  It has been sitting around, annoying me. So this weekend, with nothing to do but fast, I finally decided to finish the damn thing.

I laid it on a background and when I went to iron it to my fusible batting and the back, I realized that my 5 year old Panasonic iron with the titanium plate had died.  Nothing to do but plug in my American Beauty iron from the 1940's or thereabouts.  Remember when irons had no steam and you had to sprinkle the clothes with water?  Remember when irons were so hot that you could burn yourself by looking at them?  When I put this on low, it was about as hot as my modern irons are when they are on the hottest setting. What a pleasure!  But I digress...

I added a couple of rooftops that I had sitting around (leftover log cabin blocks cut on the diag) and started stitching.  Here it is, about half-done. Maybe I'll finish it by the end
of this week.

My string blocks are on the wall and I haven't gotten around to making any more -- but I will probably alternate them with stitching this baby.  We shall see.

out the door

Have been in the house all week tending to paperwork and chores -- and last night I actually did some sewing. (really???)  

During the week I put a sleeve on Emma's quilt because Jessica wants to hang it on her wall now that they have moved and Emma has a big bed.   Till I put the sleeve on it I hadn't realized that it was larger than most of the art pieces I make.  Well, maybe it is now an art piece, since it it going on the wall.

I had another quilt that could qualify as a baby quilt that I was going to give as a gift, but have not finished it yet.

Last night, as I was packing my supply suitcase for the color class I am teaching, I was musing about how so many quilters are worried about colors "going together." You all know how I feel about THAT! So, after I tripped over the 5 gal plastic bag of nothing but strips, I decided to return to my roots.

Even before I took a class and made an actual quilt, a friend of my mother's showed me how to make string blocks by sewing strips to squares of newspaper.  It wasn't till years later that I learned to make a quilt the official way - by hand.  Over the years, I have made a number of string quilts that ended up as baby quilts.  Every so often I would sit and sew (I guess an early version of "therapy" sewing) and when somebody had a baby, I pulled out a bunch, assembled them, et voilà.

So last night, when my brain was so shut down I couldn't even make a phone call, I cut a bunch of 6-1/2" squares of newspaper and started sewing.  Got as far as 4 blocks, which I threw at the wall before I went to bed. They are not sewn together, nor will they be for quite some time.  Maybe tonight I will make a few more.  The hardest part is tearing off the newspaper from the back after the strips have all been sewn on and trimmed to size.
But I can't figure out how else to do this.

In the meantime, I did say I was out the door, didn't I?  Wanted to post  before I left to do a million errands - bank, a few gifts, and the dreaded visit to my mother's apartment to see call some dealers and see what I can haul out of there, or at least organize. OMG.  

Before I close, I want to let you know that I am delighted to be one of Terry Jarrard-Dimond's guests on her thread nest site:-).  Go over to the sidebar, click on the image at the top and take a look at my thread nest.  Then check out the others - it's fun and interesting to see how different they are!

Ok - enough avoidance!  

art and rugelach

You are all the best!  Thank you for being there.  I didn't get to respond to every one of you before the day was over because Comcast gave me grief and told me their server did not recognize me.  Don't ask how many hours I spent with an idiot who could not help me.  I finally got it to work through trial and error -- better errors than the Comcast customer service person made. So far, so good.

ART

The whole week has gone by and I haven't posted any pix from our day in NY over the weekend.  Sunday, we went into the city to spend the day with friends and we came back on Labor Day.  Between the Monday and the Wed-Thurs holidays, it has been a deliciously short week.

Sunday noon we headed over to MOMA, where there were a couple of exhibits we wanted to see.   One was American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe. This was one of my favorite paintings and it was by someone whose name was not familiar to me (and which I cannot now remember).

Then we spent some time at the Mies Van der rohe architectural exhibit. Fascinating, but overwhelming.  As we left the museum and looked up, we saw this skyscraper and crane across the street, looming over us.  With the history of cranes falling in NY city, we thought we should high-tail it out of there.

 As we left, I spotted this mural on a wall outside the museum and wished I could take it home with me.  Isn't it wonderful? 

 RUGELACH 

If you don't bake or don't care - feel free to skip this part.  I got this recipe when my ex-husband came home with a box of these beauties that his student teacher had baked. They were to-die-for and she generously shared the recipe with me.  This was probably 40 years ago and they are just as wonderful as they ever were.

The Dough

Divide into 4 balls and refrigerate overnight. 

1/2 lb butter

2 cups flour

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup orange juice (or a little less)

The Other Stuff

3/4 cup cinnamon sugar

filling - chopped walnuts, raisins, chocolate chips

Process

Next morning, roll out each ball of dough into a circle  on a generous amount of cinnamon sugar.  Cut into 8 wedges, sprinkle with chopped walnuts, raisins, choc chips and roll up toward the point.  Shape into a crescent. Place on cookie sheet and bake at 350, 15-20 min.

**Disclaimer

To get more/but smaller rugelach, I divide into 8 balls, roll them out smaller.  Also, you can use any kind of chopped nuts: hazelnuts or almonds are fine, too.

That's the story.  Enjoy!

 

it's that time of year again

A couple of weeks ago after I posted about something-or-other, I received an email from an irate person who said "I thought your blog was supposed to be about ART." I wrote back and told her that art and life are inseparable.  The next day I got a notice that she had unsubscribed to my blog.

I've been too busy dealing with a family crisis to post about boring blogs, or even to worry about my own blog being boring --but so be it.  Nobody can be thrilling all he time...and I find it difficult to write about my art if I have not been making any.  Perhaps I should invent something.

In the meantime, on another subject --

Rosh Hashanah is upon us - the Jewish New Year is early this year, coming on the heels of Labor Day! Good grief - summer has hardly ended and here we are!  Even worse, Chanukah is so early this year that it falls on Thanksgiving!  As we say - the Jewish holidays are either early or late -- they are never on time.  

Early or not, I've been cooking and baking for tomorrow night's family dinner to usher in the year 5774.  This was tonight's activity - making ruglach, which I do once a year. I made the dough last night and put it in the fridge. Tonight, I rolled i out and filled it with raisins, choclate chips and nuts.

Then I rolled hem up into these little crescents and baked for 20 min or so.

They are so flaky and wonderful -- these are the last few before I put them into an airtight container.

I looked to see if I had ever posted the recipe and couldn't find it.  If I get any requests, I'll get around to it. If not, I won't.  Tonight, after spending almost all day in the kitchen, I think I am ready to rest up for tomorrow's houseful of kids and grands

For those of you who celebrate, I wish you a sweet year ahead.  In fact, I wish everybody a sweet year, no matter when it begins.

Eastern time warp

Still working on getting back to east coast time - not very successfully.  It is almost 2:am here and I am just thinking  I should get to bed because my body thinks it is 11:pm.

I could have sworn the sun was out by the time I finally woke up this morning, but it disappeared mid-morning under a tropical downpour that lasted for several hours.  So much for my intended food shopping expedition: I did not leave the house till my 4:pm trudge up to the mailbox.

BUT - just as well, because I was forced to continue cleaning off the dining room table for the whole day. Progress, sort of.

 

I've been throwing out pictures of scenery, people either I don't know or that my children (who will inherit this stuff) don't know, and all the blurry pictures of unidentifiable objects and persons.

I have been filling 9x12 envelopes for friends and relatives, of people whose faces they would like to have: ancestors; deceased parents, and the like. 

This past weekend in the East Bay, I handed my friend Michael pictures of his parents who were close friends of my own parents.  Tomorrow, I am having lunch with a friend I haven't seen in years so I can give her some photos of her late mother. I have tracked down the daughter of my mother's first cousin because I have pictures of her parents and her grandparents that I suspect she has never seen because they belonged to my grandmother and when she died, my mother took them.  But what about the people whose offspring have died or moved or married or live in foreign countries and I don't know who/what/where they are?  What do I do with the pictures of my grandfather's sister's grandchildren in Israel or Argentina, whose names I don't know - but whose parents(no doubt dead) I have pictures of?

All of this requires decision-making: there are duplicates and triplicates of photos I already own.  What do I do with them?  There are five billion pictures of baby Rayna (aren't there always of the first kid?) - Rayna in the carriage; in blonde curls, in braids as she grew, and then after the braids were cut off in 3rd grade.  Oh, yes - and what do I do with the braids, which are still in virgin condition, wrapped in tissue paper? And the curl from my first haircut?  REALLY!

The last straw was this photo. This vicious-looking creature was in our backyard at a picnic.  We never owned a dog; none of our guests owned a dog. What was this?

And why, when I turned the picture over, had my mother written "Decoration Day, 1959."
Why on earth would she keep a picture of a random animal?  But why not? She kept everything else. Trust me, I am not keeping it.

Sigh...I am off to bed.

Sunday-Monday in the East Bay

Day off on Sunday to catch my breath between classes.  What a lovely idea!  Time to catch up with friends.  

Carol Larson and I got together for a lunch and gabfest, which was great.  We went to brunch at the elegant restaurant, Gather.  The bar was so beautiful that I couldn't resist taking this photo.  

Afterwards, we went our separate ways: Carol to an art opening, and I back to the house to rest up for an evening out with my childhood friend, Michael.

 This morning (Monday) , this is the scene from my host's window. If you look really hard you can see the Golden Gate Bridge -- but it's hard to see how red it looked.  Gorgeous!

Then it was back to class -- this time, a day of using those hard-to-use fabrics that have been sitting around because you couldn't figure out how to use them.  For the students who printed on Saturday, it as a chance to cut into their masterpieces and force themselves to be creative with them.

Remember the orange print from yesterday's post?  Here it is, in process.

There were lots of others in process, too - and I can't wait to see the pictures of the finished pieces.

My students did Show and Tell  with their in-progress pieces after I finished my talk.  And at the end of the evening, the requisite celebrity shot with Roberta Horton & Mary Mashuta. What fun!

Meantime, I'm flying home tomorrow and look forward to coming back here in the (relatively) near future.

feet still up

Here I was yesterday, after a wonderful day of teaching surface design to a creative bunch of East Bay quilters.  Too tired to even charge my phone, I rested till it was time to go out to dinner.  Truthfully, this was a class that energized me; it just didn't energize my feet.

Being in Berkeley again after about five years is really a joy!  It is beautiful here and probably ties with Boulder as one of the places I'd love to live if I wanted to leave New Jersey.  But hey - too much beauty would make me feel deprived.

Of course, there was plenty of beauty in the printed fabrics that emerged at the end of yesterday's class, Can this Fabric be Saved?  Students brought in their ugly and/or blotchy fabrics, or ones they just didn't like any more and went to work on them.

These were just a few.  Tomorrow, we'll see how they will be used.  Meantime, I am still resting my feet, getting ready for a Sunday with two old friends (in succession).   Enjoy your own Sunday!