The Visitor

I looked out the window on Sunday afternoon and saw a little white bunny munching away in the vegetable garden . I went out there right away to try to catch it and to my great surprise it allowed me to get close and pick it right up without any kicking or biting (I'm the bunny whisperer!). He is a young ruby-eyed white something or other (if it's a pure breed it could be a New Zealand). I put up a sign in the neighborhood and called the local animal shelter but no one so far is missing him. He is so sweet and gentle! He came to the right garden to be loved instead of eaten by coyotes.

A Peek in the Garden

Can You Guess What Cities?

Some favorite places.
Oil on canvas.
Each 4 x 4".
©

i migliori a roma

For the November show at Gallery Fraga I made this piece called, "I Migliori A Roma". The theme for the show is five (for the gallery's fifth anniversary). My piece is about my five favorite places in Rome (Pantheon, Palazzo Spada, Campidolio, Fontana di Trevi, Piazza del Popolo). I love maps and have wanted to paint maps for quite some time. This map is in silk, cotton, nylon and rayon however. Il Tevere, the river, offers some orientation to the map along with hints of major roads, parks and Il Vaticano.
Happy Anniversary Kathe + Jeff! Cheers.

Wow, It's Been A While!

Now that I am taking my medication regularly I am back to my regular old self again at last! Gee, it has been quite some time since I have felt normal. I hate taking medicine and so I wasn't taking it consistently, not an effective way to manage pain. So happily, I return to the living again. Funny how inspired I have become since regaining my old self. For the past months I felt so void of inspiration and lust for creativity. But it's back in a big way and I am ready to cook, well, make stuff rather.
Here's what I finished yesterday:It was made without a pattern and in an improvisational mode. Just sewing away and seeing what happens next.Here's the other side that has a zippered pocket with more Kaffe Fassett fabric (ooh that is delightful stuff) as the lining.
The saffron harvest is ongoing. There is something so enchanting about plucking the stamens out of a crocus blossom and then watching those crimson threads stain a pot of risotto.
Before this glorious sunshine disappears I am off to plant some grape hyacinth bulbs imagining their fragrance in spring.

Year of the Pumpkin

It is one fantastic year for pumpkins. Quantity, size, color...it's all there waiting for pies, bread, cookies, and carving. Shown are cinderella pumpkins that ripen to nearly red in ideal years like this one. This is Pistacia chinensis....oh isn't fall delightful!

i fiori del oggi

Questi sono i fiori dello mio giardino.

Last Friday

I started this post last Friday in the midst of exploration of the inner workings of my left boob.

Under the florescent rectangles on the ceiling, in a windowless room of extraordinarily cohesive drab colors, I wait. Another is told she is fine and come back in a year. I wait for the same conclusion.

On the way over, on the ferry and on the walk up steeeep Seneca Street I listened to the soothing voice of Brenda Dane from the podcast Cast On. Interspersed with delightful music Brenda's weekly trek through the world of knitting eased my anxiety as I maintained a quick pace up the hill to the hospital.

Escorted to the radiology room the technician took a quick peek and changed the paddles from normal to small due to the pancake profile of my boob. And then the stance: grab the bar with the right hand, cheek pressed against the machine and then the panels are dialed in closer and then the squeeze until I uncontrollably utter, "ohhhh!" Such a squeeze! Hold my breath. The picture is taken and I'm allowed to breathe again. But wait, the image is all white. Try again. Yet more squeezing. Same result. Then another technician is called in to help figure out why the machine can't read my boob. They decide on manual exposures instead of automatic and the result is far better after a third smashing.

Then the machine is twisted on its side. I'm instructed to put my arm out like I'm swimming (nice thought right about now) and the clamp comes down again until I can't take any more pressure. A man must have invented this torture for women. There has to be a better way than to smash my boob until it is in extreme pain.

So with the films seemingly good for review by the the radiologist I am sent back to the waiting room until the conclusion is made. Cancer or no cancer I'm waiting to hear. I am ready for either one. In the tiny windowless waiting room, with three other women, we all wait. There is a steady stream of women into the changing stalls, stripping their upper half and donning a striped gown, tied in the front. I make a big happy bow on my gown. I'm sitting in the oddest elevated chair and joke as I enter the room, "oh good I get the high chair". Joking in this environment isn't exactly what these women want to hear right now. How long will it take for my results? I'm told to keep my gown on just in case. In case? Should I start another Cast On podcast? Will it be another hour? The thought of Brenda's voice helps.

I didn't sleep very well last night, as usual, and when my kitty crawled up on me I started to pet her and the pain in my chest seemed to melt away. I guess I need to bring my cat with me wherever I go for pain relief. Maybe that's why Paris Hilton always has such a blissful look on her face, because of her little dog companion. But does she still carry that pup around anymore? I thought I read that she got rid of it.

And here I wait, with two women now. One was escorted away for her films. What will be the result? But what I really want to know is why I have gripping pain in my chest.

I've got so much catching up to do. Lots of pieces have yet to be started for my November show. There seems to have been a never ending stream of needs in the last couple of months.

And then my name is called and I'm given the come here finger signal. I think that can't be good since I heard another woman's all clear diagnosis right in front of everyone else. The technician said the radiologist described the polka dots on my film as "probably benign". This is not quite what I had expected. I wanted to have a black or white conclusion. Not a "probably", that leaves reasonable doubt. They want me to come back in six months to see if anything has changed. So in the mean time I live with do I or don't I? Uncertainty. I want concrete conclusions, no kinda sorta maybe. And now over a Chinese chicken salad, next to a scrambling three year old, I just want to cry. Cry about my boy I left at college yesterday, cry about uncertainty, cry just because I'm tired.

Forget crying how about a mood swing by trying on a designer dress. And it has to be one of the most gorgeous dresses I have ever tried on. By Nicole Miller. I felt dreamy. Perfect colors. Soft luxurious exotic fabrics. And that dress, that lovely dress, melted away my anxiety and mad me feel fabulous. Thank you Nicole.

Population 300

In the tiny town of Wheeler, population 300, I found a fantastic fabric store that was loaded with delightful offerings in this Oregon coastal hamlet. I wish our local fabric store, in a town 76 times the size of Wheeler, could offer such an array of goodies. Creative Fabric has thrived in that tiny town for over 26 years. Thanks to my family for indulging my need to stop there. It was great.

Manzanita

i had never been to that part of the oregon coast before. what a treat to slip into a charming town for a few days in a delightful cabin within walking distance of the shore! the timing was perfect for warm temperatures and the added bonus of shopping at the local farmers market for fabulous produce. what a great town! wish i could stay for the rest of my life. but i know what the oregon coast can be like in the winter, gales over 100 miles an hour. yes, but on days like those we spent there the desire to spend more more more time amoungst the sand drifts and rustling beach grass is great. and who would have guessed that in a nearby town, wheeler, with a population of only 300, that there would be a superb fabric store that has been there for over 25 years. more later...daybreak on manzanita beach
the yummily soft sand at sunrise
watercoloring at the beach

Knitting in the Garden

Waiting around has its advantages, especially when something tangible is produced. Although with this pattern I have had some major ripping seasons. One misplaced stitch throws the whole thing into chaos. I have to train myself to check each row before continuing on to the next row, instead of blissfully knitting for twenty rows and then taking a look. There is great satisfaction in solving a knitting riddle. Several of my stitch markers had slipped under yarn-over stitches and fouled up the whole sequence of the pattern. I finally figured out the problem and am now happily knitting again instead of the dreaded rip. This yarn is delightful to work with. I bought it at an alpaca farm in Oregon, near Mt. Hood (alpaca babies have to be some of the cutest things on earth!), even though I found when I came home that it is also available at my local yarn shop (but not in the color I chose). The color seems camouflaged amongst the geraniums, so I guess it will feel like I'll have a garden wrapped around my neck once it is finished. I bought two skeins of the yarn, not knowing what I would make with it, and I will continue the triangle until I run out of yarn.

great find

maybe not everyone's top choice at the biggest garage sale in the state, but for me, finding this assortment of metal zippers in their original packaging was fantastic. at last after so many long years of waiting in their package some have been freed to finally be functional. a couple of the zippers were custom made. i also found very old wood frames that are waiting for paintings (when will i get a chance to do some summer painting?!). several years ago i bought a big box of basket making supplies. i made one basket but need to revisit that box and make some more baskets(so i can have more room in my sewing area).

no presents?

The invitation said no presents, please, to a birthday party. Doesn't everyone like to get presents? I know I do. Anyway I like to make presents and here is the latest. I recycled a worn out shirt to line the purse.

s u b l i m e

my first etsy treasury, entitled "sublime", can be seen
here on etsy.there are just so many lovely shops on etsy it was hard to narrow the selection.

assignments

i love a design challenge! i was asked to make a spinnaker pouch that's tied down to the deck of a dinghy from which the sail is unfurled. so i crunched up the sail, measured the ideal size and started sewing away. i made channels on the bottom to thread lines for tie-downs and corner loops for more tie-downs. when the inspector general came into my sewing nest i was told to add more tie-down loops on the top corners of the pouch. sewing was a challenge after inserting custom cut fiberglass battens into the casings at the top of the bag. it has been tested as sea-worthy by the sailor man and given the thumbs up by his crew.

i'm thriving with my next assignment: 5. i just love a widely interpretable topic like that. one of the first things that came to mind was haiku. now that the haiku has been composed it's off to embroidering....
the goal for this and other new pieces is to be exhibited in november.

hybridized painting

circular knitting needles and an ebony knitting needle crossed with an owl doodle.... that's today's hybrid painting. the owl, oil pastel + oil paints on linen, is the size of an atc (artist trading card). the atc phenomenon is something that i thought i might try and after i had cut the painting to the specified size i placed it on top of another painting temporarily and low and behold there seemed to be a marriage in the works.

i had originally planned to sew the owl painting onto cardstock to make an official atc, but as you can see that's not how she ended up. i'll put her in my etsy shop as soon as i can figure out the postage. i bought a postage scale recently yet every time i use it the machine measures a different weight. gggghhhrrrr!

just messing around

on a drizzly day what else should be done but to mess around in photoshop for a bit? well, i can think of plenty of things that NEED to be done, but that's another story. here's a sketch from museo correr in venezia (seen earlier in this blogorama) layered with our garden leaves + biglietti from my solo trip to europe long ago. just pencil + paper for sketching on that trip. no color. just pure illustrative simplicity. on days like today it is wonderful to be transported back to those cool marble steps, where i sat + sketched, in that unairconditioned museum looking up at that vast fresco. ahh memories are a wonderful thing. i hope to keep them around for a long time.

palette creator

just discovered this cool web tool where you input any photo and the site generates a palette of colors from the photo (with web code numbers). the photo shown here i took at the ferry dock.

details

leek

yummy

i think zucchini buds look like a man eating plant.
echinacea mango meadowbrite....love that color.
i wait all year for these beauties. and oh the fragrance! they get soooo tall! if the painters even brushed these babies i would pummel them. such destruction has been wrought upon the garden by the house painters that i am really stressed out right now. all my shrubs had matured to glorious natural symmetrical orbs. yet now, with the mass of broken branches, they look so beat up. i know for my next garden to place the precious beauties far far away from the house.