January!

Time to change your desktop calendar.

Happy New Year my friends!

Click on the image below to download from there.

Crabby at the refrigerator / Happy New Year!

NO, not crabby because there's 200 pounds of leftover turkey in the refrigerator, and no ice cream.  Crabby because at our recent retreat I discovered this new addition to the decor -- refrigerator magnets that you can use to make poetry.

I have enjoyed such toys in the past in other people's kitchens, although I've never had a set myself.  It has always been fun to write a poem while waiting for the water to boil.  But this set was suspiciously lacking in half the concepts I thought should be available to me as a poet -- especially a poet who's taking a week to focus on art.

Where is the discouragement?  Where is the frustration?  Where are the obstacles to overcome?  the problems to be worked through?  How could I write an honest poem if all the words were sappy and positive?  Would it be great art if Hamlet said, "To be, that is wonderful!  No questions!"

Don't know about you, but sometimes I have small dreams.  Sometimes I feel the urge to step right up and shout "No, I won't do it today!"

I want a poetry magnet set that allows me to write poems along the lines of :

Negative attitude
no focus, no goals
not enough determination
can't see a future
don't want to work

Tomorrow, maybe excellence
today, trash TV 
junk food and a bottle of beer.

Happy New Year!!  May 2016 have less junk food and more excellence, but let's don't get discouraged if that doesn't happen every day.

Sign of the week

Turmoil and tranquility

In early November I decided to lift myself out of a funk by sewing, without much idea of what was going to happen to the sewed-up bits.  Here's what I had on the wall on November 13, and thought that I might do a composition where the black morphed into red.

I sewed a lot more bits and pieces and by the week before Christmas it looked like this below, with all the black part sewed together and most of the red part still in pieces.  Still thinking of a single quilt with two colors.  The line between black and red seemed pretty harsh so I figured I would need to make some transition blocks to get from one color to the next.

At some time after I had started sewing on the project, I decided that it would be an entry in SAQA's contest, Turmoil and Tranquility. The two themes are meant to be combined in a single show, but the deadlines are a month apart (January 31 for Tranquility, February 29 for Turmoil) and I thought I could get a quilt done in time for the Turmoil deadline.  And besides, I like turmoil a whole lot more than I like tranquility.

But after I looked at the red and black together on the wall, with the help of my art pal Marti, I had a thought -- what if this were two quilts instead of one?  I could submit the black part as tranquility and the red part as turmoil.

Since we didn't have much planned in the way of holiday festivities, I got to sew on Christmas Eve and a bit even on Christmas Day, and by this week I had the black one quilted!

I feel superstitious about showing finished work on the blog while a show entry is pending, so I'm not going to show you what it turned out to be.  I will show you the red bits up on the design wall.

The neat rectangles have been sliced into smaller bits and rearranged for maximum turmoil.  Way more interesting than they were in the first photo, don't you think?  Clearly a lot of work ahead before it turns into a finished quilt, but heck, I have until the end of February!

Christmas presents

Several years ago we made a policy decision to abandon Christmas presents within our family.  Obviously Ken and I, like any decades-married old couple, have all the stuff we'll ever need and then some, so it was hard for our children to come up with any new stuff that would be well received.  And as the children became adults, it was hard for us to come up with anything that they would appreciate.  We guessed at one another's reading or music preferences and usually missed the mark; we gave sweaters or shirts that didn't really fit or sing.  So we gave up, and in retrospect, both generations agree it was one of the best family decisions ever.

This year, though, I had an idea.  I own too many things and am looking for opportunities to divest myself.  So at Christmas dinner I approached the two daughters-in-law and one granddaughter and gave them their choice of a whole lot of jewelry that sits unused in my drawers.  Much of what I put out for grabs came from my mother, who had a huge collection of fabulous jewelry, most of which I find way too heavy to wear myself.  But the one Zoe chose was a beautiful tiny opal necklace, which Ken gave me many years ago.

Here's Stephanie with an enameled fish that came from my mother; it's articulated so it wiggles around on its chain.

Here's Kristin with a massive gold chain that also was my mother's.  It goes so well with her white turtleneck that I hope she will always wear the two together.

I haven't worn any of these pieces in years, if ever, and it felt great to send them off with new owners who I hope will wear and love them.