mmm.... coffee.....

who is this Nancy Pelosi? why is everybody so afraid of Nancy Pelosi?

i thought, hey, why not use one of my other cameras while the digital one is still broken?  but sadly, it has been many years since i used my polaroid camera & i'm obviously out of practice...

although i live in New England, today was the first day i wore my winter coat & winter hat!  (remember when it used to snow?)  my winter coat is oh-so-warm, it's a very old pinkish wool coat with a new lining sewn by my mother using vintage fabric given to me by our friend Mary.  and the hat: that's the beloved pink hat that i briefly lost last year, but i made signs & it was returned to me!  i love that my sister bought it for herself, decided she looked silly in it, gave it to me & i decided it's the best. hat. ever.

i also attempted to photograph the mess of my studio workbench & the last quilt i made in 2006.  it's a rich deep green framed with a bright lemon yellow & has sashiko tentacles quitled on it.  i bet if i'd hung it in the Foundry Sale it would have sold, but i wasn't ready to let go of it...

(subject line curdisy of random crazy guy yelling on a street corner, after passing him i turned abby & said, "now i feel like i'm in DC!")

we'll develop muscles from cracking coconuts

i worked a shift at the Foundry Sale yesterday: i met more of the other artists & they were all very encouraging & said wonderful things about my quilts.  i sold a couple pieces over the weekend which is very exciting to me because i'm finally raising my prices closer to what i would like to get for them.  i've been looking around & they're priced similar to actual paintings which i think makes the most sense.  it's hard to do, to raise the price & not know if someone is willing to pay that much!  i've been spending much more time on these pieces - especially the quilting & embroidering, there are finer details beyond fabric choice...  i have more of a process now, they grow organically instead of being planned out & executed. 

i rewrote my little bio for the show, printed it out & hung it in my booth because i'm not actually there most of the show & i wanted people to know a little bit more about me as a person & an artist.  i incorporated it into my about page here.  i think it's the best one i've written so far! 

don't let these foundry related posts fool you - i continue to be distracted: i had an awesome weekend as i got to go to the Harmonix holiday party, meet lots of cool people, eat tons of tasty food & stay at the swanky Hotel@MIT for a night.  hopefully i can get a few things sewn this week, otherwise teresa & kristin will have the table all to themselves at the Bizarre Bazaar Boston on saturday...

on tape, on tape and cassette, you'll hear me live and direct

sorry i left you for so long with that majorly dorky post!  i have been sewing & sewing & cutting & sewing.  (there was also a little hiking in there, too)  i'm trying to switch gears & get some vinyl work done this week since i finally realized that it's due at Craftland in, uh, a few days?  crap.  i'm also trying to make more quilts for the Foundry - i decided the other day to make a few of these teeny tiny ones inspired by 202 Little Log Cabin Blocks by linda causee.  that book taught me the paper/foundation piecing methods & after tracing hers i figured out how to draw my own.  i'm making a few that piece together into stars which is about as close to holiday appropriate as i'm going to get.

i have a lot of photos i haven't posted, but they're all from work & predominantly of moldy books.  did i mention that i discovered i can take photos through the microscope with my digital camera?  i might have to post some of those later...

um, yeah, did you get the memo about the TPS reports?

i don't think i can start a post with black & white photos!  it's just not right.  so, there, enjoy those incredible close-ups of a tiny quilt first.  and now, feast you eyes upon these:

your monitor does not decieve you: i have finally purchased a real computer!  i am no longer tethered to the hand-me-down craptop.  i'm thinking that bad memory needs to meet an Office Space end...  so, yes, my bank account is empty, but i think it will be worth it.  now if only i could find the disc with my digital camera's software i'd be all set...  and a few other programs...  oh my, i can't wait to get home & turn it back on!

eat you alive, or i'll just hug you to death

(i knew there was a reason why i had to order all that gorgeous felt, teresa!)  i got up really early sunday morning (thank you, daylight savings) and cleaned up from the previous day's baking, made a cup of strong coffee & stood in the sun playing with my fabrics.  i sewed these three little quilts all in one day.  i started to worry, though: are all they too similar?  will people be bored when they see a booth of them?  i hung them up together in my studio & am trying to decide if they are different enough.  i mean, i think they're all different, but i've spent time with each individual one & know my fabrics intimately...  i think it gets back to spending more time on the embellishment of them, like the miniature felt leaves on the first one.  i started sashiko-embroidering the purple one last night.  there needs to be a little more ruminating on their personality.

some exciting news: they finally opened an apple store in providence!  i might have to run down there between work & craft-night today...  i know you've heard me say it before, but: no more craptop because new computer, here i come!

but i got more flavors than a pack of now & laters

here is the aforementioned 'dark & muddy' quilt i made monday night & is quite a contrast from the last one i posted.  these are the green fabrics i rarely use because they're a little too olive-colored & don't go well with the intense grass greens.  ugh, can you smell that?  i still smell like grease from last night's "You Bring it We Fry It" party at shawn & stacy & sigrid's!  i should have washed my hair, but i got home so late & had to get up so early...  here are a few strange & frenetic photos from the party - the rest are up on flickr:

there was a little bit of theremin-playing going on in addition to the frying of hotdogs, pickles, crab, mushrooms, zuccinni, potatos, twinkies, sno-balls, a fake rib sandwich, broccoli, okra, chicken, tofu, and probably a few other things i forgot!  i blame the poor photography on the hazy air thick with grease & not on the unsteady & grease-filled photographer...

teresa's halloween party is tomorrow night & i'd better hurry home to work on my costume so i have time to bake something.  have a good weekend!

down and down we go, how low one would not need to know

this quilt is 6" square & made out of teeny tiny scraps.
i haven't been able to decide which way it should hang:

i hope to have quite a few mini quilts for the foundry sale in december, but i haven't decided if i'm going to put any of my vinyl stuff there.  i wasn't planning on it until i met gail ahlers at the alumni sale & she asked if i'd considered doing the foundry sale & i told her i just got in for the first time this year.  the thing is i only had my vinyl work with me so she thought my cuffs & purses were a good fit...  in the end it will probably be based on what i'm able to make because i also have Craftland to stock!

last night i made another little one, about 9" square, it's all dark & muddy greens.  i haven't decided what else it needs, it needs something, embroidery perhaps... i'm still waiting for it to tell me.

what this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't?

i have decided that the quilt goes the other way so now it's upside-down in that photograph.  i really like how the green silk puckered from the interfacing because i ironed it too much.  now how to do that on purpose?!  i did a teeny bit of sashiko-type quilting on this one & i love it.   i'm trying to restrain myself & keep it simple, but some times it's hard to know when to stop.  i still have to figure out how much white sashing there should be & if it wants to be centered or not...

there's been a good amount of work getting done over here, but i have this nagging feeling that the alumni sale will arrive far too soon.  i really ought to pull out my vinyl & work on cuffs, sleeves & purses.  i put them away after Renegade & just haven't felt like working on them lately.  we'll see what this weekend brings...

this is apple & honey for a sweet new year - friday night i helped neighbor susan celebrate rosh hashana with a dinner for 18 friends.  there was so much tasty food, including brisket which she's really getting the hang of, and although there was no kugle friday, susan brought me some for lunch yesterday!  i also made my first matzoh balls for her soup which was deee-licious.  i need to have susan over to decorate christmas cookies this year like we did with our jewish friends when i was younger...

how lovely you are with your inlays of mother-of-pearl

this is all i will show you of the curtains i'm working on - i want them to be a surprise for mike & marsha...  the curtains are for Coastal Coffee's front windows & i had an idea in my head, but then it didn't work quite as i expected & i had to re-figure it out, but i'm pretty sure they're going to love it...

so, to go to NYC this weekend or not?  i'm trying to decide...  i want to go, i want to see lee & jo, i want to buy a new computer at the apple store & i can catch a free ride down with neighbor susan...  but i have so much to do!  i won't have the quilt done in time & i want to keep working on it, i want to finish these curtains, i have new things to start & only 2 weekends left before the alumni sale!  i am still having a hard time adjusting to this whole full-time thing...  where oh where do the hours go?  speaking of which, i haven't eaten lunch yet.

romantic residuals with legs akimbo

susan & i dropped off our little machines at Spirito Sewing this morning.  i love visiting him & seeing all the gorgeous old machines on every surface.  he usually has some great machine he just picked up to show me - this time it was a single-thread industrial chain-stitch machine from Pennsylvania in a wooden case, circa 1910.  it was tiny & beautiful.  we brought him susan's lovely blue Brother which was once her grandmother's, it needs a belt, a good cleaning & a lot of oil, but hopefully the motor won't give out.  my fab green Singer also needs a good cleaning & oiling and turns out to be almost exactly the same model as the one i wanted to buy - isn't that amazing?  and mine is from Maine so that makes it even better.  oh, i am so excited about it!  i borrowed the instruction manual to copy so i'll know how all the little parts work & it can do so many things...  apparently Singer didn't make a lot of these (late 50's - early 60's) because it was kind of the higher-end model at the time, the average housewife wouldn't have spent the extra $200. 

that is a sneak peak of the quilt i'm working on for my sister to give as a wedding gift to some friends of her's.  after ignoring it for a few days i think i know what to do with it, or i will once i get to a fabric store...  it needs a something...  and i don't have that something...