oh, goodness

Glad you all like the 90 day idea - I thought it would be more viable than these resolution things. Helen asked about the other five things; I'd just as soon ignore them, but here they are: 6. Pick a model: somebody ho has done hat you ant to do and follo the trail they left. (oh, good grief, my dubbleU doesn't ork. Crumbs, no doubt. Or peanut butter. 7. Create a map rite don the actions you decide to take and follo them. (ARGH) 8. Be consistent (ha ha) 9. Schedule a future action (I'd just as soon ait till I get the first one done) 10. Maintain and celebrate. See hat I mean? I give up and am going to bed. Maybe the keyboard ill be better tomorro.

a day late and a dollar short

This is the post I never got around to writing yesterday. Everybody was posting about their goals and I couldn't really focus on the idea. But in yesterday's NJ paper there were a ten suggestions that appealed to me: I might even adopt the first five. 1. Ninety days Choose something that you would like to accomplish or change within the next 90 days. It's a more manageable length of time than a year and then you can do it again. 2. What to subtract What is in your life that you would be willing to commit to not being there 90 days from now? (ha, I could think of a whole list) 3. What to add What is currently not in your life that you would be willilng to commit to having in your life 90 days from now? 4. Choose one Whether it is something to remove from or add to you life, pick just one thing to focus on. 5. Write it down There is power in writing things down because it reminds you of where you want to go. New Year's Eve we went to our friends' house for dinner: their grandkids were visiting from Baltimore so we stayed in. The power went out just as Rosalie was about to put the roast beef in the oven. I suggested they put on the gas grill (in 20 degree weather) and that's what they did. We sat in the dark till their 8 year old grandson suggested they put on the gas fireplace so we'd have light. Duh. Leave it to a kid! Two hours later, just as the roast beef was done, the power went back on. Late last night, I put this down on a piece of batting and will get around to backing it so it can wait in line to be stitched. Needs a name. What would you name it if it were yours?If you haven't seen Eva's pictures of eisblumen, they are wonderful. Go take a look! I am off to read her blog and then will go to the studio to go back into my Quake entry for the Art Cloth Network exhibit.

Looking back & back

It seems so corny to to this, but I'll do it anyway, starting with yesterday and then taking a look at the other good things about 2008. Here is my #1 grandson, Josh, concentrating on putting rubber bands on his t-shirt. His clever, creative 4th grade teacher gave the kids an assignment to do a book report on a t-shirt: favorite character on the front, favorite scene on the back. And clever,creative Josh asked me if he could come over and tie-dye his book report. I was excited to spend a one-on-one day with this sports-a-holic who is busy every weekend with football or baseball. This is vacation week and we were both around - yay! We were having so much fun that I forgot to take pictures of him dipping and applying dye with foam brushes, but here he is, removing the rubber bands. Instructions were to draw on the shirt with magic markers but you can guess what we did! Josh drew his illustrations on paper, I photocopied them and we made Thermofax screens. He screened them onto the shirt and voilà! I was thrilled to see that Josh has inherited my ability to draw. I sent the screens with him so he could show the teacher how he had done it. Maybe there is even a transparency maker lurking in one of the supply closets of that old building... Looking further back A book launch My book came out in June and is still selling like hotcakes! I just sent out another signed copy yesterday from a new carton of books I had to order because I was out. People have been wonderful about writing and saying how much they love the book and that makes me very happy. Media Quilting Arts - Deconstructed Screen Printing Cloth, Paper, Scissors Studio Issue - feature on my studio Fibre & Stitch, Sue Bleiweiss' on-line magazine - Soy Wax Batik QuiltWoW , Maggie Gray's British e-zine - Printing in Layers Quilting Arts TV - Transforming fabric with Screen Printing Exhibits Gaelen Gallery, West Orange, NJ - solo Carol G. Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ Mikhail Zakin Gallery, Demarest, NJ Bridging the Space Between, Montclair, NJ And while I missed every deadline for submissions except one - I got into Form not Function for the second year in a row. Happy Miscellany Sold some work, including one to a major collector. Taught at QSDS and other venues and had terrific people in my workshops. Saw Helene, Shelley, and Usha during the year. Made a wonderful new blogging friend who has enriched my life. Treated myself to a class with Jan Myers-Newbury and discovered shibori. Had a house guest who was a delight to spend time with. Took a collagraph class and got back on the press. Got a new kitchen!! Rejoined an Internet mailing list I used to belong to a decade ago and reconnected with old friends who are not on any of the other lists. There's probably more in every category but that's it for the moment. I need to go change my clothes and clean off my car so we can go spend New Year's Eve with our friends with whom we have spent every one for the past 27 years. Wishing all of you a healthy, happy, productive year and everything you wish for in 2009.

I'm going to bed

It is beyond late and I am now too tired to blog. Will do it tomorrow morning, but wanted to post this piece, which I made in the last century. I never exhibited it because it had a different background, which was just plain WRONG. A few years ago I printed this batik fabric and it was just perfect for the background, so I think I remade the whole thing. It came about because I was sitting in a concert one day listening to a piece of music in a minor key and I wondered how a minor key would be expressed visually. I was going to call it "Life in a Minor Key" but changed my mind. It is called Blue Note.

As I drove away today, I snapped this picture of the snow. If you look really hard, you can see two little blobs of white between the driveway and the tree. There are piles of it across the street, but ours is gone. It was 65 degrees here today and smelled like Florida. I was in my usual Birk sandals and it was too hot for a sweatshirt. Tomorrow will be in the 50's and then they are predicting snow again later in the week. Weather is not my favorite subject, but I send my sympathies to all of you in the northwest and midwest for all the horrible storms and floods and what-not. Good grief! Stay safe. Jessica and Tommy have been in Wisconsin this week spending Christmas with Tommy's family. I hope they get home safely tomorrow. I sent Marty to the mall to take advantage of the sales and buy a new pair of jeans while I went to work. Like my friend Carol Larson, I am printing art cloth to submit to an exhibit and need the space for two yard pieces, which are difficult to do at home. I have now got two layers on one of the pieces and am debating what my next move should be on that and on another piece. I added a layer to some yardage that will probably not be submitted, but we'll see what happens tomorrow. I took lots of pictures but the battery on my good camera went and the little one takes lots of blurry pictures if you get too close to anything. So I will have more pix to put up tomorrow when I reshoot them. I had cut this piece of rather odd shibori in two, determined to do something to the half that didn't come out so well. This is the better half of what started as a yucky piece of yellow. Today, I made a new Thermofax screen and decided it would be good for the other half. This is before I brought it home to steam, etc. What looks like purple has turned into fuschia, which takes five years to ever rinse out completely. It is soaking as we speak. And finally, I was playing around with the neutrals and left this small piece on my design wall at the end of the day. It seems this series will never end; it is so deeply a part of me that it resurfaces again and again without conscious thought. In Sept '07 we had a whole discussion on this blog about working in a series which continued a second day and ended up being an article in the SAQA Journal. Lots of people are able to work consciously in a series and I wish I could do that - but it feels contrived for me to do it that way. Nevertheless, several series emerge all by themselves when I least expect it. Don't you find that happens to you, too?

quiet weekend

It has actually been a long weekend and it's not over yet! Starting Wednesday at noon, when Marty came home, every day has been Saturday. It is getting a bit old. Spent 2 or 3 days re-photographing a bunch of quilts and putting them into a powerpoint, which I also had to rewrite because I was bored with it. And if I am bored, just think how my audience will feel! Anyway, here is the first quilt I ever made: hand pieced, hand quilted, 1974. No rotary cutters or mats existed. Traced pattern with carbon paper, added 1/4" all around, cut, and sewed with needle and thread. Only Polyester batting was in the stores - this one weighs about 900 lbs because I wanted it warm, so it is double batting. Years ago I took it to a small quilting group meeting of people I didn't know very well. I brought this quilt and they all laughed and told me how ugly and "seventies" it was. I think those ditsy calicos have a certain je ne sais quoi: I never went back. Here is a detail. Today, I spent half the day in the beauty salon, getting beautiful. While I was waiting around for the color to take (gasp - "You mean it's not your natural color???") I realized there were patterns everywhere. Luckily, I had my camera in my purse, so I amused myself and frightened the manicurist by taking a picture or three. Tomorrow is Sunday - let's see what day it feels like...

carpe diem

As the new year approaches, I wonder how this past year has vanished so quickly. I have spent the afternoon revising a slide presentation for my digital projector and realize that the last time I gave this talk, I used a slide projector. All of my pre-2000 work needed to be shot digitally, so I've been going through "vintage Rayna" and shooting the old ones. I made this piece in 1998 (or so the label says). The crit group to which I belonged was doing challenges, which was a good way to jump-start creativity for budding art quilters. We each brought a quotation, put them all in a paper bag, and you had to make something that was inspired by what was you pulled out of that bag. I had just started dyeing fabric and had a bunch of these baby blocks left over from a quilt I never made because I couldn't imagine making enough for a whole quilt. Here was the quote I pulled: The past is over; the future hasn't happened yet. And as you experience the present, it becomes the past. All you have is the moment; all you have is now. Carpe Diem. Let's make the most of every day!

yum yum

This package of Jane Steinberg's delicious-looking silks arrived from Artistic Artifacts and I can see already that they will make beautiful collages. They go to the studio with me tomorrow afternoon. Today, I put the first layer on a couple of two-yard pieces I am printing to submit to an exhibit of art cloth. If you print knowing you will be going back in, you don't worry much about the first couple of layers. One piece is linen, the other is a silk-rayon blend, and both have been steamed/washed/dried. I haven't looked at them yet and will wait till morning, since I am on my way to bed soon. I also overdyed a scarf that just didn't have any pzazz. Not sure if you'd call this pzazz, but it is a lot more interesting than it was yesterday. The orange with red blotches was the original...it's not that I was TRYING for red blotches, you understand. The lists have all been quiet - I guess everyone is holiday shopping/preparing. My friend Patti will be here tomorrow morning. She was my neighbor for 25 years and has been my friend for more than 40. She now lives in Myrtle Beach. Every year, when she comes up to visit her daughter, she stops here to chat for an hour. It is as if no time has gone by. Time to rest my pinky: did you ever hear of repetitive motion injury on a pinky from typing? Well, you have now. Happy holidays to all!

Spring is coming!!

We're past the shortest day of the year and now the days have started getting longer again. If you pay attention, you can savor one more minute of daylight in the late afternoon. Makes the winter doldrums shorter...or so I tell myself. What could be more doldrum-producing than paying bills for half the day? Lots of things, I suppose. For starters, having an idea of how you want a piece of fabric to turn out and having it turn out so differently that there is no hope. THIS is why I don't start with preconceived notions! Disappointment is always the result. If you begin with no idea of where you are going, you can't miss the mark. My endlessly wrappped piece of linen went into the dye bath tonight and did not want to do what I wanted it to do. So, I re-wrapped it and discharged. Still not there - but it is in the dryer, so we'll see. Meantime, a couple of pieces of cloth I had no expectations of came out very interestingly: Tomorrow, the studio!!

Look! Jane Davila's and Elin Waterston's new book! It will be available in January and I can't wait to see it. I contributed some pieces for the book, along with quite a few other artists (listed on Jane's blog) - but can't imagine how they are being used in the book. Something to look forward to! I expect that Jane's blog and Elin's blog will have signed copies available and there will be a big release party, book signing and art quilt exhibition at the Country Quilter in Somers NY on Saturday, February 21st. I am somewhat bummed that I can't be there to celebrate, but I'll be traveling and teaching. Oh, well. Have a glass of wine for me if you go. 10:35 pm - I just came in from cleaning off the cars. There is something magical about being outside in the snow at night -- it smells so good. It has stopped snowing, although now something wet is falling - not sure whether it is sleet or more itty bitty snowflakes. But in any case, I thought I had better get the 3" of white off the cars before it freezes overnight and we need a sledgehammer to get rid of it. 11:20 pm - Since I had my cocoa earlier, before I decided to play snowman, I had a cup of soup to warm me while I read the NYTimes. NEWS FLASH: Cosmetic surgery is down 30-40% because of the economy. One person ditched her personal trainer and is taking gym classes; another is wearing bangs to cover up the fact that she is stretching out her botox treatments. Oh, dear. Even worse, all this cutting back is making these people feel "downmarket." How depressing for them. 11:25 pm - Making progress on the quilting project and hope I can finish it tomorrow, enough to photograph it. I'm not pushing it tonight. Here come the plows again - what a comforting sound...

snow day!!

Didn't you love snow days when you were a kid? I don't think we ever had them when I was growing up because everybody walked to school - no busing - you went to your neighborhood school, bundled up like Nanook of the North - hat, scarf, mittens, and those embarrassing snow pants and galoshes. My kids had snow days, though. I liked it because I had to stay home from work. We usually baked cookies. Today is a snow day. It doesn't look bad from this picture, but it is coming down so fast that I have already cleaned off both cars three times each. By the time I finished sweeping the second car, the first one needs it again. Forget it - I'm DONE. The plows are out. My husband's secretary brought him up the hill and almost had a disaster. Fortunately, there is no traffic on our dead-end condo street. No cookies today: SOUP. Snow days are soup days, too - and I used to play Stone Soup with my kids. We started with 6 cups of water and threw in took whatever random vegetables we had. Here's today's batch of stones: some peas and beans; some tomato paste. Oh, and a soup bone! I have been without bones for months but fortunately, I had bought some the other day - they make the soup rich and delicious. I keep them in my freezer. Salt, pepper, bay leaves, basil and garlic. Into the pressure cooker. I toasted some stale Italian bread and it was the perfect lunch. Between my housekeeper, DH, who happily came home early, and me - there was only a bit left at the bottom of the pot. Boo hoo. I will probably use it as the base for the next permutation. I think the Italians might call it Ribollita. With a salad, it would be a perfectly delicious dinner that is practically free! I have procrastinated the quilting thing long enough. Here I am last night, taking out stitches so I could put some other in that will probably be just as unsatisfactory. Does anybody really care? Why am I torturing myself? I am happy to have company in my Quilting Angst Network - makes me feel a lot better. But, back to the machine. I am going to post this so I'm not tempted to keep it going forever. Promise you'll check back tonight to see if I've posted again.