Art, Quilts, and Other Adventures

Elbows and manners

At supper the other night, a discussion about elbows on the table came up.  The basic consensus of our family was that we weren't really sure why it was rude to have your elbows on the table, and in fact, some of us had them on the table as we were eating and determined that they were more comfortable that way.

This morning, Joe asked me if I could look up on the Internet and find out why it was considered rude.  (Because, of course, Mom can find answers to EVERYTHING on the computer).

What I learned was this:

1.  It is considered sanitary issue:  keeping the table clean is important, and you should keep as many body parts off the table as possible in order to cut down on germs.

2.  In the middle ages, when people ate, they were jammed together on benches at a table.  There simply wasn't room for your elbows to be on the table -- if you tried to put them on the table, you might end up putting them in your neighbors food.

I'm not entirely sure I believe he first one, and the second one certainly doesn't apply at our house.  I've never been overly concerned about elbows on the table (compared to chewing with your mouth open, this particular rule of manners is not even worth worrying about...at least in my book...) so I think the issue of elbows on the table will not be a battle I try to win.  I may try to convince them that when they are in public, at more formal events, they should try to keep the table elbow-less, but if you come eat at our house, you may find yourself looking at elbows resting on the table.

WIP Wednesday

It seems like Wednesday is always sneaking up on me. 

I don't have much to report.  Well, I should say that I don't have much that I can report on right now.  Everything that I've been working on, or might work on later is stuff that I can't really share yet.  I did get the cover quilt for my new book quilted, it looks just as cool as I as hoping it would. 

I had to get groceries yesterday, and spend some time cleaning my studio.  I thought I was going to have a class here today, but with the impending winter weather (yes, we are expecting more rain/ice/snow...), we decided to cancel.  I just found out that school is getting out an hour early, so it's almost time to go get the munchkins. 

60 of the 99 (I think it's 99...it might just be 90...) counties in Iowa have been declared disaster areas.  It was pretty amazing to see the downed lines and poles on my trip to get groceries yesterday.  Pole after pole -- just snapped right off.  Tons of crews out working on them -- I heard today that someone saw trucks with crews from Virginia that were here to help out.  Some of the rural areas are looking at it being 2 weeks before power is restored.

I have had a rash of book orders this week (thank you!) and that's kept me fairly occupied as well.  Sorry there are no pictures today.  I'll try to go make something this afternoon,  so that I have something colorful to share later.  Something that isn't Top Secret! LOL!

I hope you are staying warm and safe wherever you are.  (Or cool and safe if that is appropriate for you...)

Updated photo albums

One last post before I go to bed -- I was a week behind in uploading photos to my 365 days albums.  I was doing things, just not getting them uploaded! The last week's worth of photos and daily art projects are now in their respective albums, you can find the links on the right-hand side of the page.  They are organized in reverse chronological order.  It's hard to believe that February is almost over already.  It feels pretty cool to see how full those albums are already starting to get!

Purses

On Saturday, since I didn't want to turn on the quilting machine, I started digging around for something to do.  I've let myself get a little off track with my daily art project idea -- I've still been doing things, but haven't gotten away from creating something that was a completely finished project each day.  I grabbed the Winter 2006 issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors and was reminded how much I liked the tiny purse shaped books that were on the front cover.  So I made a couple.

Cootie Catchers!

Thanks to Robin who knew that what we were looking for were fortune tellers, and to my Mom for Googling and finding instructions.  The site she found (Enchanted Learning) says they are also called Cootie Catchers!  I remember that now!

I did the cutting and the folding, and the boys did the decorating.  They each made up their own "fortunes"  -- some are nice (You Rock!  or You are the Best!) and some aren't so nice (You are a blabbermouth").  They drove us nuts for awhile (and then Mom and Dad left for awhile and they drove Gramma nuts for awhile) with them.

I was thinking that maybe I'd make my own tomorrow with cool paper, and charms and interesting sayings.  Hmmmm.....I have to get ready for a class on Wednesday (which requires shoveling out piles of stuff in my studio, and I need to work on the computer, but...I might have to play!)

Looking for instructions

I'm looking for instructions on how to make something.  The problem is, I don't know what this thing is called.

I remember them from school -- you fold a piece of paper a certain way, and then write letters and colors and numbers on certain parts of the paper, and then on the inside different messages.

After it's all made, you fold it up and put it on your fingers, and then your victim is prompted to choose a letter and then you open that section and keep going until you reach a message on the inside.

Anybody?  I'd Google for it, but I don't even know what I'd be Googling for!  The boys want to make them, and have seen them on TV shows, but haven't seen them in person before. It's probably been 20 years since I've seen one.

Our eternal gratitude to the kind soul that knows what we are talking about....

Sunday report

I've been trying post an update with some pictures, but my connection isn't good enough tonight to upload pictures.  Text will have to do. 

Quite frankly, I'm extremely lucky to have any kind of Internet connection at all.  In fact, electricity itself is a rare commodity at the moment.  Our town is one of the very few in small towns in our area to have power -- if it weren't for the generators our local utility company has for just such an emergency, we'd be in the dark and cold at the moment.  There are also lots of rural families without power, my in-laws included.  There are still a lot of downed power lines -- I heard tonight that one small town has been told it might be 2 weeks before power is fully restored.  Two weeks!   

We were also lucky to have missed out on the heavy snow that we had been expecting.  We got a few more inches, but not much.  And temps were above freezing for most of the day so a lot of melting happened.  I think other parts of the state did get tons of snow, and unfortunately it was wet and very heavy.

I actually got a lot of quilting done today, and have been making some really cute creations that I would love to share, but as I said -- no picture uploading at the moment.

No school tomorrow -- the boy were in their pajamas all weekend, I think I will at least make them put clothes on tomorrow, even if we don't go anywhere.

Better get to bed!

Ice

Mark took this picture a short while ago.  The icicles are hanging off the bottom of the bay window in my studio.  There is about a 1/4 of an inch on the sidewalks, and trees are groaning under the weight of even thicker ice.

Power has been up and down all day.  It's been up for several hours how, and I'm hopeful it is staying up now.  Some areas in Iowa have been without power since last night, so we feel very fortunate.

This morning's forecast said that the ice/sleet/rain/yucko would be switching to snow this afternoon, but it hasn't happened.  The last prediction had been for 7-13 inches in our area, up to 20 north of us.

December and January were so mild -- we were very spoiled.  I had plans for this weekend that require electricity -- I'll probably wait until tomorrow to make sure that it is safe to turn the sewing machines back on.   My laptop has been giving me fits anyway, so I'm not too worried if it loses power.  I wish I had a battery in it that worked properly.

I hope you are staying warm and dry and safe wherever you live.  We are trying to do the same.

Alphabet Round Robin Ship Day

Today is the deadline.  My Alphabet round robin book has to be in the mail today.  I have really struggled to make up my mind about what to do to get it started.  It's now in the box and there is no turning back!

Here's the book closed:

As I said in a previous post, the cover (front and back...) are a work in progress.  Right now it is just painted with black gesso, which is very flat.  I also managed to get some glue on the front cover.  The hardest part of this project (for me, so far...) is dealing with the paint and glue and not making a mess!

Here's my sign in page:

Does that pinky-purple fabric look familiar?

The pink sheets that I want the artists to sign are also from yesterday's sunpainting experiment.  I experimented with a sheet of Tyvek.  It had pennies and some salt on it.  The Tyvek doesn't absorb the paint the way fabric does, so it didn't sunpaint the same way, but it still had some interesting effects:

(The blue paper was colored with Tsukineko ink  -- I dipped a cosmetic sponge wedge in the ink and then splotched the ink on the paper)

I was going to send it out with just the above done.  but then I had an idea.  And I put this page together:

The black and white polka dot fabric is fused to some Fast-2-fuse interfacing, which is fairly thick.  I was inspired to do the beading by Laura and her February 12x12 journal quilt.

The black scribbles on the paper around the little quiltlet are the names of objects that are red.

All of the pictures are clickable, so you can view them slightly larger if you so desire.

I was hoping to do some more sunpainting today, but the wind kicked up, so that's not going to happen.

Better get to the post office!

The writing on the fabric....

I should have mentioned in my previous post that the fabric with writing on it is a commercial print.   Here's what it looked like before I started messing with it.

I'm not positive, but I think my Mom might have gotten it for me when she was either in San Francisco or New York City visiting my sister. 

It's a Timeless Treasures print.  The selvedge says "DS 1023 'Optic' by David Sweet"

I haven't really known what to do with it until now.  I didn't dislike it before, but now that I'm in the frame of mind of contemplating printing and dyeing on commercial fabric -- this kind of thing has possibilities!

It's also given me some ideas for creating my own fabric with text on it.  I know I'm not the first to think of it, so I'm not claiming brilliance or anything, but I look forward to experimenting!