various

First, I sent a scarf off to Australia this morning and contributed 50% (including the postage) to Cycle for Survival. Great way to start the day! I also sent off my quilt to Form Not Function and made a couple of phone calls I have been putting off. That was good.

 Then, off to the doctor with Marty this afternoon for his 6 month checkup.  On the way home, we hit some heavy snow flurries but the further north we went, the sunnier it got.  Very random - but I'm not complaining. Waiting for me at the front door was a carton I've been waiting for.  25 bags of Costa Rican coffee from Cafe Britt.  An indulgence - yes.  A necessity -absolutely!   Five different dark roast coffees, five bags each.  The last time I ordered 20 bags was 6 months ago, so I know this should last me.  Happiness is not worrying about whether you are going to run out of coffee.

Happiness is also about getting rid of STUFF. (de-accessioning, if you are a museum). We won't discuss whether I live in a museum, but I've got a box of wood printing blocks from India and Afghanistan, plus some copper tjaps.  I've put some of the wood blocks up on my page at the top of the sidebar. E-mail me if you want any of them.

Meantime, my left pinky finger aches so I have to stop typing. 'nite.

I was thinking...

as I walked out of Barnes & Noble this morning, that life is good.  I had just bought gift cards for my 4 grandsons for Chanukah (at the rate I'm going, it will be over before two of them get theirs -- maybe I can trade them in for Merry Christmas ones). 

Latkes.  Fortunately, Chanukah lasts for 8 days. We went to Hilary's tonight for a family celebration with her in-laws.  I made the latkes and while I was cooking, managed to eat a few of the broken pieces that escaped.  I do have one more potato at home, but I should probably bake it - LOL.  For Chanukah, the point is the oil -- it doesn't matter what you fry.  Many people (although I don't know any of them) make jelly donuts, which are supposedly traditional for the holiday - but not in MY family.  I'll stick with potato pancakes - or sweet potato/ginger pancakes...or zucchini pancakes.  All delicious and equally unhealthful.  But hey - it's only once a year.

Back to Barnes & Noble...While I was in the bookstore, I saw the "buy two, get one free" table and sauntered over.  "Hmm...," I thought, "that's what is missing from my life -- something good to read." I had no problem picking out the two I had to pay for, but it took me some time to find a third I wanted to read.  I have been reading/editing for months, but haven't read for pure escape. I came home with...(in no particular order)

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore ( a NYT best book of the year)

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (National Book Award winner)

and The Private Patient by P.D. James (Adam Dalgliesh - how can you go wrong?)

What have I been reading/editing? Jessica and her friend Meryl have written a book (in addition to their full-time jobs.)  Finally, it is at the printer and will be out January 20.   Published by Career Press, it already has good advance notices.  They have their own blog and are also posting career advice on the Forbes magazine website. I'm so excited and proud of her - and think I should take some of their advice when the book comes out and I can read it again. 

  

On another note - tonight I re-measured the quilt I had cut facing strips for and found a one inch difference from one end to the other.

Ick.  I HATE when that happens.  Then I realized I had not finished quilting it at the larger end: maybe that will help.  I guess that is tomorrow's job.  

Finally, my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to those of you who 

generously donated to Cycle for Survival to support Jessica's efforts. Your donations and mine (which is not posted because it went in the mail) have moved her toward the halfway mark of what she has pledged to contribute.  You have NO idea how grateful we are.

I have two scarves I was planning to keep but have decided to put them on my blog page and donate 50% of the proceeds to Cycle for Survival, in addition to what I have already given.  Click on Items for Sale at the top of my sidebar and you'll see them. Thanks and goodnight!

Cycle for Survival

This morning, up at the ungodly hour of 7:am (for a weekend, it's ungodly).  But I have accomplished some important things.

I have mailed out another sold scarf and also mailed my check to Sloan-Kettering to support Jessica Kleiman as she rides in Cycle for Survival to raise money for research on the rare cancer--soft tissue sarcoma -- that her friend Jen Goodman Linn has.   Jen founded Cycle for Survival, which is in its fifth year.  Jessica has pledged to raise $1,000 and is almost halfway there.

Some months ago I asked you to vote for Jen for the Energizer Bunny award and she won!  Unfortunately, she was back in the hospital and missed the awards ceremony.  She has had five or six surgeries and her tumors have come back and she is back on a strong chemo regimen again after having been in remission. Fingers x'd that this will work: so far, the report is good.  If you can find it in your heart to donate even $5 or $10 to support Jessica, who will be cycling for Jen's survival and for the survival of others who have this rare soft tissue sarcoma.  Thanks!

On another subject -- I have now completed this much more cheddar-y block to send off to Victoria for the NY Metro Modern Quilters group quilt. It goes out in Monday's mail.

 

The cheddar fabric is from Handloom Batik.  Usha's shop at 532 Warren St. in Hudson, NY will be open Sunday, Dec. 5 if you need her wonderful fabric, shirts, scarves, or yummy shawls for gifts and are within driving distance of the Hudson Valley - be sure to go.

Finally, I have cut some strips to face a quilt that has been waiting for me to finish it.  And the other night I went back to revisit a quilt I made a year or two ago that I have never been happy with. It has been critiqued by several luminaries, all of whom thought it was just fine.  I am the only one who finds it wanting - so I have to take it to the studio and fix it (if I can figure out how). Perhaps next week.

blocks and birds

NY Metro Modern Quilters is a group I joined earlier this year, when they were new. I got to two meetings and haven't been able to make any of the meetings since then, for various reasons. I am bummed because I love the enthusiasm, the young quilters who are having fun experimenting, and the break in my routine. They have already made a group quilt and this month, everybody was to bring a monochromatic block based on the color saffron or cheddar or whatever you want to call it.

Tonight, I sewed a block together and had a lovely time playing, but forgot about the monochromatic part.  So here is my therapy block that I am not sending because I need to make another one that IS monochromatic.

This is what happens when you are tired and don't pay attention. I think it may be the beginning of a quilt for Miss Emma, instead.

The wild turkeys are out in full force - although not as much force as those horrible black birds. A propos of this subject... I got an e-mail from Lynn Kunz suggesting that my fear of birds might be a good subject for some work.  Uh - no.  Actually, three years ago, when Jane Davila and Elin Waterston were writing a book, they invited me to participate in an exchange of blackbird blocks, some of which would go into the book.  My first instinct was to say NO.  But then I thought I should force myself to do it and express my feelings about birds. It didn't help, but here were the resulting little quilts.

It is after 1:am and I am too tired to write more, but when I am awake I will comment on Terry J-D's post about juried shows.  Interesting post. I should make a list of things I want to post about because by the time I get a round tuit, I've forgotten what I wanted to talk about.  'Nite.

Holiday Scarf Sale!!

I just uploaded some of my hand-printed, one-of-a-kind "graffiti" scarves to my website. I am running home to dye and print some more but in the meantime, this is all that is available now, and at a holiday blog-readers' gift discount.  Last week, they sold at a holiday open studio in my town for much more.

the birds

I couldn't grab my camera fast enough to shoot the black sky at 7:30 yesterday morning.  And I was afraid to go out on the deck, lest I be attacked. So traumatized I couldn't even blog till tonight.  Thousands of huge black birds flapping their wings, blocking out the sun.  They landed and I still couldn't get a picture that begins to show the scope of this horrible event. The black things are not leaves - they are BIRDS.

Finished in the back, they took off again, and flew across the street, darkening the sky once again. These are a fraction of the number.  Starlings. They must be starlings.Big, ugly, noisy, frightening - thousands of them, screaming.

When I say I hate birds, dead or alive, people laugh - but I am serious.  Starlings invaded my town when I was about 11 years old and there were so many of them, the sky was black and so was the ground. The cacaphony was deafening. There were dead birds everywhere you looked - on the sidewalk, in the street - big, black things you had to step over or around as you walked to and from school.

The town couldn't get rid of them and finally put owl recordings in the trees all over town, which eventually worked.  I have hated birds ever since.  And no, I never saw the movie; I didn't have to.

another Sunday

This time, for real.  I worked hard today. Finished cleaning the sewing room-- filled up a big trash bag, organized all of my commercial fabric in boxes and bins I tripped over every time I got near the sewing machine.  At least half the room is respectable; horizontal surfaces are visible. (but not for long, I am sure).

I made the back table into my ironing space and the other one into the cutting space.  Bins are stacked neatly, although I will admit that most of them have strips and bits dumped unceremoniously into them so I really don't know what is in each one till I look.  Little bits are too hard to sort and as long as it LOOKS neat, Ms. Closet may give me her seal of approval.  It's the most you can hope for, Ms. Closet!

All this sorting started because it is Jennifer's birthday tomorrow.  Jen is so thrilled with the quilt she is making that she is talking about making a "next one."  Since I have so much fabric, I picked out some scraps of various sizes and trimmed them.  Then I cut some 6" strips from larger pieces I had.

When I piled them up they looked rather unpreposessing (don't you love that word?) so I rolled them up into little bundles and tied them with ribbon; they are slightly better. Piled them into a gift bag along with an extra ruler I had, and an itty bitty cutting mat.  The only thing missing is a rotary cutter; maybe I have an extra in my studio.  I have to go there tomorrow, so I will look.

In the meantime, I am so exhausted from cleaning and sorting and cutting and rolling that I can't do what I need to do on these nice clean tables.  Oh, well.

Friday and Sat, my friends Bill and Lisa had open studios and I sold nearly half the scarves I had given them.  The rest will go up on my blog for holiday shopping, sometime in the next few days.

it feels like a Sunday

I don't know about everybody else - but in my house it is always like that after a holiday.  We had a lovely, low-key Thanksgiving yesterday: us, Jessica, Tommy & Emma, and my mother.The turkey breast was actually delicious (and you know how I feel about birds - alive or dead) - Ina Garten's recipe - the best I have ever had.   Raw beet salad (Mark Bittman), oven roasted sweet potatoes with olive oil and rosemary; asparagus.  Red, white, yellow, green - pretty!  And the requisite pecan and apple/cranberry pies with fresh whipped cream.

Jeremy, Anne Marie, David and Jake stopped by for drinks (for Jer and Anne, anyway) and amused themselves with Emma.  Here is David, having just finished giving Emma her afternoon snack.

 

Hilary and the boys stopped by today for the same reason and here is Josh, looking happy.

Nothing left from yesterday's meal but part of the pies, thanks to Marty who ate half the pecan pie on his own - LOL.  But I am doing my share tonight - we have to get them out of this house, after all!  I will wait a couple of days to weigh myself.

I drove the kids back to Brooklyn this afternoon and made the round trip in record time, since there was really no traffic to speak of.  

Tonight, I was all set to do some work but thought it might be a little difficult to get anything done.

I have just spent the last couple of hours sorting and ironing and sorting and ironing and ironing and sorting. I know it doesn't look like a big improvement, but trust me...it is major.

Now, of course, it is past midnight and too late to do anything else.  But at least I know where everything is.  And tomorrow, I can tackle the other table.  I have two quilt that need facings added and the cutting board is at the bottom of the pile.  I have something on the wall that I need to take down and forget about for a while; and one quilt I need to do something with because one element of it is bothering me.  It doesn't seem to bother anybody else, but that's not the point.

Hope you all had as happy a Thanksgiving as I did.

Yesterday I needed five things

that I can only buy at Whole Foods. Butterworks Farm  (the only yogurt I eat unless it is an emergency), organic this and that (Miss Emma is coming for T-giving and eats only organic food. Of course, my kosher turkey isn't organic - but close enough), organic meat for Marty and me because I don't want those hormones and god-knows what else, and Farmer Stoopnagel's local  organic, cage-free eggs that have a hand-written sell-by date on the egg carton.

To keep this art-related, here is my sketch of the yogurt carton. Now you know why I don't draw. I could have erased the unfortunate lines with a vintage Pink Pearl eraser but they are packed away because the painter is here.

I get home with 200 bags of stuff ( and find that Marty, bored without my presence, has gone to bed for the night).  So, martini and steak for me, all alone:-(

 But what about ice??? You know my ice situation -- and deciding on a new icemaker is another (boring) saga.  In desperation, I turned on the fridge icemaker - but I can't use those horrible, bulky big cubes in my drink. The blender doesn't chop ice very well, either.

Lightning Ice Cube Breaker to the rescue!!

I bought this somewhere a few years ago, before we redid the kitchen and put in the late icemaker. Used it for a while, then put it on the kitchen shelf with a few other vintage items. Last night, took it down again. There was apparently a square green Depression Glass ice-catcher, long gone. I use a glass.

In went the big, ugly ice cubes from the  freezer.

Works a treat, even if the ice tastes a bit rusty.

In went a couple of these wonderful lemon and garlic-soaked olives I had bought for Thanksgiving (will they last?)

Isn't it lovely?  Went great with the steak.  I was happy, despite eating alone.

I did go visit my mother yesterday and took her picture with my iPhone, which she was admiring and wondering if she should have one. (the answer was NO).  I showed her the picture on the phone and she was horrified at how she looked, but I thought it was a nice picture, considering. She looks a bit wistful.

On that note, I shall end Monday's recap of Sunday's non-adventures.  Now, breakfast and then to work!!

P.S.
I can't keep my blog art-related these days 'cause there isn't any art happening -but that will change, eventually.  Thanks for reading anyway - and remember - your comments make my day.

P.P.S - I urge you to spend some time reading Trav and Kacy Williams' compelling and moving posts about America's small farmers (the farms are small, not the farmers - but you know what I mean) on the blog I referenced at the top of this post. Trav and Kacy are young and beautiful and travel around the country finding these amazing people and interiewing them.You simply must go there -- even if you just read this post about Henry Young.

the sky is still blue

But as you can see above, my woods have turned monochromatic - when just 3 weeks ago they were vivid. Like a flame that burns brightest just before it goes out.

October 25, 2010 

 Autumn has always been my favorite time of year -- I associate it with beginnings instead of endings -- probably because it is always the beginning of the school year and of course, the Jewish New Year. A beginning and hope for a better year ahead. Hope springs eternal.

Yes, it gets dark at 4:00 in the afternoon, but that only lasts till just before Christmas -- so once we get over the winter solstice, I like to pretend that Spring is on its way.  (By pony express, in this part of the Northeast U.S. and a few other places, of course!)  Today, despite the barren trees, it was in the 50's F. degrees - still shirtsleeve weather as far as I am concerned.

After a couple of somewhat pithy posts, I think I have run out of pith (whatever that is - but I know you need a helmet for it - LOL).  Never mind - I will buy some more tomorrow when I go grocery shopping.

Well, tomorrow has turned into two days later and I still have not grocery shopped (had to finish this blog post first).  Oops.  Sorry.

I have been cleaning up the basement office alcove (aka former home print studio) - packing away such collectibles as 3 boxes of stocking with seams. (yes, these are burgundy - from Saks Fifth Ave).  Do you think they will ever come back in fashion?

There is a can of Flit (does anybody remember "Quick, Henry, the Flit"?) and untold items that have not been manufactured for 50 years or more.  This was in my father's store. Still has rubber samples on it - looks like it is from the 1920's.  What shall I do with it??  Are they going to put me on that Hoarder's TV show?  This is the tip of the iceberg.

I don't remember this packaging, so it must be verrrrry old.  I think I retrieved it from my father's store.

Make your own stamps, anybody? Who has eyes good enough to read this little print?

Advertising rulers.  The Glen Ridge Savings Bank was local (bought out by somebody large) and the wood is cheesy; the others are from the 1950's or earlier because the wood is heavy and they are varnished.

Where I got this box of erasers, I have no idea.  But aren't they lovely?  I guess I should use them, but I hate to.

This little gizmo is from the Billy Rose Music Hall, which opened in 1934 and probably closed in the 1950's, but I can't find any record of the closing.  A noisemaker - isn't it wonderful?? Very useful, too.

 This is so the contractor can paint the basement, which he has been working on this week.  The sheet rock is back up on the walls and ceiling and Monday, the paint comes out.  What a job!!

Finally, I have to update my website.  This is a nightmare, since I have a Mac and Homestead, which I dearly love, does not have software that works with Mac.  I have installed Parallels, but it is very slow and a pain you-know-where.  And I can't get my husband's PC (which he never uses anyway) to see my Mac, no matter what instructions I follow.  Since all my photos are on the Mac...  well, you get the picture.

Ok - off to the supermarket.  I promise not to post pictures of my groceries.

synchronicity

A RANT
This is another topic that comes up periodically - mostly under the topic heading "derivative."  Then there are the words stealing, appropriating, copying, and -- gasp -- counterfeit, that crop up in some of these on-line conversations about art quilts.

Sigh...blah blah blah blah- it just goes on and on: people accusing other people of copying someone else's style or worrying that they will be accused of same, just because they once took a class with someone and are using that person's method of construction or techinque of cutting.  It makes me tired.  Why are we so hung up on that word "derivative"?? Is this an art quilt obsession?? Is it because we are relatively new to making ART that we drive ourselves nuts about this stuff?.

There have always been artists who painted the same things in the same style at the same time because they were all experimenting with a new way of seeing. You would be hard put to tell the difference between work by X and Y.  And even Z's work got into the act. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now.

Ditto music: Beethoven's 6th has phrases in it that could easily have been written by Mendelssohn. Can you always tell the difference between Mozart and Hayden?  And Leonard Bernstein was clearly influenced by Aaron Copland and Gershwin -- you can HEAR it. So what? It is still Bernstein's music.
There are a million examples of this in every type of art.

I did start out with synchronicity, didn't I?  Yes, it happens - more than we think.  Many of us have experienced making work and then seeing a piece from clear across the planet that is strikingly similar in subject or even style, although neither of you could possibly have seen each other's work because they were being done at the same time and you didn't know each other, to boot.  There are two other artists whose work I relate to - and saw the first time with the shock of recognition because we both use one particular element in our work.  We developed separately, as did our work - and we did not know each other.  Parallel lines of interest and thought.

I like to call it "family resemblance."  Here are two pieces done by two artists who live 3000 miles from one another and who had never met.  This is my piece, X-Post Facto.

It was truly with the shock of recognition that I saw Karen Rips' piece, "Exhale" and somehow knew that we were kindred spirits. 

 

I sent her a picture of my piece and she couldn't get over it, either.  We finally met when I taught in California and it never occurred to either one of us that there had been anything but coincidence.

I had made mine a year or so before she made hers; hers was part of a series but mine was the only one I ever made like that, before or since. Either one of us could have made both pieces. SYCHRONICITY:
it happens.  Embrace it.

A possible idea for an exhibit.  Anybody want to curate a Synchronicity show?