Art, Quilts, and Other Adventures

Good grief

So what is that you can take to help with memory?  Ginseng?

Cause I Need some serious help.

For the THIRD time in 2 weeks, I missed an appointment.  Seriously.

Today's was the 10:30 appointment at the chiropractor.  I had gotten a call yesterday reminding. "Yup, sure, I'll be there."

10:45 this morning the phone rings.

I'm so grateful to live in a small town.  The chiropractor's office is only 2 minutes away, and they were still able to fit me in.

Next month, she's going to just wait and call me the morning of my appointment, instead of the day before.

What this points out to me is something that is both a blessing and a curse:  I tend to hyper-focus on whatever it is that I am doing at the time.  I get so involved that the rest of the world just disappears.  This is great for productivity (as long as what I'm working on is useful and not playing games on the computer...), but not so great for the state of my house, and the ability to keep appointments.

It also means that I do silly things and don't always notice my surroundings.   For example: I decided to play with my watercolor pencils for awhile this morning.  I have a cup of water next to me, and a glass of grape juice.  I just went to take a drink of juice and discovered that one of my brushes was in the juice.  Oops.

I didn't even really know watercolour pencils existed until recently.  I know, I've been living under a rock. Well, maybe not a rock.  A pile of fabric anyway.

I promise to share some pictures of something -- anything -- quilt related later. 

Looking For....

My TurboTax discs.  If anybody knows which "safe" place I stashed them in, will you please let me know?

I think my brain is probably in the same place.

Urgh.

Late Start

We are in a deep freeze here in Iowa.  I suppose this is our punishment for having such nice weather through December and January.

I saw 13 below this morning on the thermometer.  Wind chills are supposed to keep us in the 20-30 below range all day long, which means it is dangerous to be outside for very long.  Frostbite is not something with which I would like to be personally acquainted.

You can imagine our surprise, though, when we turned on the news last night to discover
that all of the schools in our area had decided to announce a late start fro today's school day.   A 2 hour delay, in fact.  I do understand the desire to keep our kid safe, but I'm not convinced the2 hours is going to make much of a difference in what the temperature is when they have to be outside.  Mostly, I'm grateful that I am not the one that has to make decisions about school delays and cancellations.   No matter what the school administration decides,  someone won't like it, I'm sure.

I will admit that I was happy to be able to sleep in...I am not a morning person...

The boys have had a nice morning -- piano practice, a little bit of reading, and at the moment Joe is working on defeating the bad guys in a GameCube game, and Will is playing games at pilkey.com -- (every heard of Captain Underpants? Dav Pilkey is the author. A lot of bathroom humor but these are the books that convinced my boys they needed to figure out how to read on their own.) 

Have a great day!

Speaking of Pink

I got my haircut and my eyebrows waxed today.  The haircut was about 2 (3?) weeks overdue.  I feel so much better.  I have no idea why I wait so long, it needs to be cut every 4 weeks.  The eyebrow waxing:  that's about 2 months overdue.  I didn't start doing this until last year.  I never even plucked.  Can you imagine? 

The main problem with getting them waxed is that I am very fair-skinned, and will now look like I am wearing pink eyeshadow for the next 3 days.  Perhaps I should go put on some real eyeshadow to try to tone it down.

My hairdresser and I started wondering about the history of eyebrow waxing.  How do you suppose that started?  Who decided that women need to shape their eyebrows?  And who on Earth thought up apply warm wax and then ripping the hair out?  Do you suppose it was a man?

I'm so excited!!!!  Airborne Express just delivered the new battery charger for my good camera!  Yahoo!  I'm back in business!!!!  (Now, to go find something to photograph.  Oh wait.  Now, I have to wait for the battery to charge.  *Then* I'll go find something to photograph.)

edited to add:  ARGH!  Apparently you have to buy the POWER cord separately.  This was not indicated in the description on their website.  Yes, it was my fault that the charger and power cord got LOST, but I am so not happy with Sony's customer service today.  My DH has a Sony camera and charger at work and is going to bring home the power cord that goes with it, as it sounds like it might work with mine.  Phooey.

Calendar Challenged

First up today is a look at some fabric I got last week.  This is the fabric that has been haunting me for the last few days and the top I'm making out of them is nearly complete.  I may just leave you with this tease for awhile before I show off what has come of all this pink.  And yes, it is a LOT of pink.

I have mentioned before that I am calendar challenged.  I have trouble using calendars.  I'm sure some of you are wondering how it is possible to have trouble using calendars -- and if you are, I wish I were more like you.  Others of you might know what I mean.  I put stuff on my calendar, but if you don't look at the calendar, it doesn't matter if the information is there or not.

Craft projects

I'm really kinda liking this intro/extended body thingie.  I need to try to include some images in my intros, though, so it isn't horribly boring here on the front page.

Today, played with glue and paint and paper and buttons.  I think the paint is finally all off of my hands.  I went to the bank earlier and my hands had streaks of black gesso on them.

Happy dancing day

I reread yesterday's post, and I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of sense to me.  It made sense when I was thinking about it in the shower, but then, I wasn't completely awake at that point.

Ah well, I tried.  They can't all be gems, right?

I'm having a happy dancing day today:  I received an e-mail last night with an offer for an incredible opportunity.   And no, it's not from the wife of the President of Nigeria wanting me to help her launder $18 million....it's a real e-mail with a real offer....but I'm not going to say anymore about it (yet) because I don't want to jinx it.

I'm also happy dancing, because I'm almost done with the ginormous applique quilt I've been working on.  Here's a sneak preview:

Thanks must go to the cast and crew of Grey's Anatomy for getting me through this particular quilt.  Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely quilt, and I'm enjoying working on it, but the quilt is quite large, and that echoing takes awhile....I have wireless headphones, and I like to listen/watch TV shows on DVD while I work.

(I adore Grey's Anatomy and was very sad to finish season 2 yesterday....).

Opportunity

Some writers sit down to a blank page and just start writing.  If find that I need to do some composing in my head before I'm able to sit.  Often, I'm doing this in bed in the morning before I get up -- or right before I drift off at night.  The shower is also a prime thinking time.  This morning in the shower, I start composing a post that was going to be a little bit of a whine about hands. (I got a blast of steam on my thumb last night and it HURTS).  I was also going to whine about the fact that I haven't yet figured out how to draw hands, which is why in my drawing for yesterday (in my photo album or on my other blog, see the links to the right...) the girl's hands are tucked behind her back.

But then I started thinking about the fact that it has been almost exactly a year since I fell on the sidewalk at school after dropping my children off.  I was hurrying, and even though I had boots on, they didn't have a lot of traction (who makes BOOTS with no traction??  oh wait -- who BUYS boots with no traction??  Oh yeah, that was me...).  The sidewalk is on an incline and I slipped, and landed flat on my back.  Wow.

It took me weeks to get over it.  Looking back on the experience, I realized what an opportunity it turned out to be for me.  It was during the time that I was sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing because my back was so sore that I signed up for, and starting reading the QuiltArt e-mail list.  It was also during that time that I discovered some books about creativity and it was that time that ultimately started me on the artistic journey that I'm taking right now.

Today is supposed to be my reveal day for my January 12x12x12 journal quilt project.  It's not ready, yet, though.  Maybe tonight, but I'm not sure.  I got clobbered with some other stuff that had to be done today (which I'm not actually complaining about, because it was good stuff, it was just unexpected...).  The reason it is not done, though, is because the project is transforming itself on me.  My theme is supposed to be the Alphabet, but I've had a few ideas occur to me that might make me rethink my plans for the year.  The piece that I'm working on right now is going well, but it's not turning out like I had planned.

When I was thinking about this in the shower this morning, and thinking about the fact that I wasn't going to meet my intended deadline.  I was thinking things like "The trouble is..." or "my problem is...".  The truth of the matter is that I don't have troubles or a problem -- I have an opportunity to learn some things and if it goes in a different direction, then by golly, I can't wait to see where it leads me!

So, I'd better get back to work, and maybe you'll hear from me again later.  With pictures!

Camera Frustration

Unfortunately, my frustration is my own dang fault.  The charger for my camera battery is missing.  The last time we saw it was when we took it to Chicago between Christmas and New Year.  It was in the bag with my reading material.  We didn't actually use it while we there, but the prevailing suspicion is that it got taken out (when someone was looking for) and didn't get put back in.  We've pretty much looked everywhere that we can imagine it being, so...that's all we've got.

At this point, the battery is completely drained.  I just checked Sony's website, and they don't appear to offer the charger for sale separately (yet).  It's a Sony alpha -- a new product within the last year.  I've e-mailed their customer support asking what the heck I'm supposed to do if they don't offer chargers separately for sale.  Buying a new battery does me no good, since eventually I wouldn't be able to charge it, either.  (I just looked at Amazon.com, while waiting for my photo to upload, and discovered that maybe there is a charger, but it's $$$. Phooey.)

I had to use my old camera (which is now my DH's camera) and it felt like a toy.  I can also tell that I'm much happier with the quality of the photographs on the new camera, which makes it all vastly more frustrating.

I spent most of my day working on a customer quilt.  It is a gorgeous quilt, but it is very large and it is all appliqué, and I'm echo quilting the entire thing.  Did I mention it was large?  I'll be at it for several more days, I'm afraid.  I do need to go do some more beading on my January 12x12x12 quilt.  And I need to figure out how I'm going to do part of it.

My sister-in-law sent me some pictures of my niece and nephew.  One is an amazing close-up of my niece's face.  She has incredible blue eyes.  Last night I decided to draw them in my sketchbook.  This led me to look for pictures of my kids and some of the other nieces and nephews, so I could try drawing their eyes.  I even got brave and worked on some noses and even a mouth!  My ultimate goal with all of this sketching is to eventually translate this to fiber and thread.

FLO

I was going to try to post last night, but my Internet connection was flaky, so I just went to bed instead.  I wanted to report that I did, in fact, manage to get both loads of laundry washed and dried (and some of it is hanging on a rack...).  It wasn't all folded before Mark came home, but it was close.  It's still in baskets, though.  I will work on that today.

I've set myself several goals today, and while working on one of them I decided to listen to some music on my laptop.  I have some of our CD connection on here (I love iTunes and my iPod...)

I wanted to be sure to listen to Flowers are Red (you can read my post on January 5, 2007 about the song).  So, in iTunes I typed in "FLO" to search for it.  Half a dozen songs popped up that had those characters somewhere in the name/artist/composer.  For fun I decided to just listen to all of them, and thought I'd share today's play list.  Some are obvious, some I had to look further to find out why they were included:

Norwegian Wood (This Bird has Flown) Lennon/McCartney, sung by P.M. Dawn
San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) John Phillips, sung by Scott McKenzie, from the Forrest Gump Soundtrack
You're the Devil in Disguise Bernie Baum/Bill Giant/Florence Kaye, sung by Trisha Yearwood, from the Honeymoon in Vegas Soundtrack
Wild Thing sung by Animal, Floyd and Kermit the Frog, from Kermit Unpigged
You Don't Bring Me Flowers Neil, Alan & Marilyn Bergman, sung by Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand
Flowers Are Red, Harry Chapin

This was fun.  I'm going to try other letter combinations and see what other interesting playlists I can come up with.

Before I get back to work, I wanted to share a funny poem, too.  My husband usually does bed time, but for the last two nights he has been out of the house at bedtime, and it has fallen to me to read.  He is reading Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (one of the Chronicles of Narnia).  I usually read something short to the boys -- lately it has been Shel Silverstein poetry.

Here is one that really struck me last night.  It is from Silverstein's book A Light in the Attic

In Search of Cinderella

From dusk to dawn,
From town to town,
Without a single clue,
I seek the tender, slender foot
To fit this crystal shoe.
From dusk to dawn,
I try it on
Each damsel that I meet.
And I still love her so, but oh,
I've started hating feet.