Snow in Tennessee, and VOTE

Well, after a month of company and a computer break-down I'm back in the saddle again--again. I'm looking forward to posting all the things that have been running around in my head for the last month and a half, but for now I will share this:

It's not yet Hallowe'en and we had three days of intermittent snow flurries. In Tennessee. What's the deal?! I thought about taking pictures but if you blink--or push the button at the wrong time--you miss the flakes, so . . .

Anyhow, nice of Tennessee to make us feel so at home--we'd been wondering about a winter without appreciable snow after the whopper of a winter we had this past year in Massachusetts.

My last word: VOTE.

If you're in the States, get out there and make your voice heard tomorrow, whatever your preferences. We are endowed with some truly wonderful rights by being citizens of the U.S., but we have some truly solemn responsibilities as well, and voting is right up there at the top of the list.

If you're still undecided and want to find out what among the candidates' claims are true, check out www.factcheck.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan fact checking service. It's enlightening.

And if you don't vote, don't whine.

Felt is yummy!

Made some more nuno, including this piece that I'll use on my piece for the New Focus exhibit at the Coos Art Museum:

felt side

silk side

I started out with a piece of china silk 28" x 24 1/2" and ended up with a piece 11" x 9". Bob declares this, like all my artistic exploits, to be highly inefficient, but he admires the end results anyway (because he clearly has good taste).

This was just the thing I needed to start me moving. I wasn't ready to jump right into the piecing or applique process, but as long as I could tell myself I was just fooling around I managed to keep moving--it's hard to get back into the swing of things when you haven't had a real routine in months!

This lovely bunch of cotton/silk satins and three lovely variegated threads are helping, too. Compliments of my MA Round Robin, they have added color, shine, and inspiration to my studio. I have another quilt in mind for them--want to combine their lovely shimmer with the lush matte of wool roving. Mmmmm, mmmmm good!

I just couldn't help myself

Well, I said I had stopped taking pictures of the frequently spectacular skies here, but . . . had my camera to take photos of my youngest's first race and . . . the sky was so cool after the race. All these photos are from the same evening. So here, for your delectation, is the Eastman Chemical Company's headquarters building here in Kingsport, TN:

and a couple of photos from my driveway:

Glorious Asheville

So, of course I forgot to take my camera, but went to Asheville, NC, on a day trip with ma familia today and it was awesome! Felt like being back home in W. Mass. but bigger and with better weather. I discovered Earth Guild, which is smaller than WEBS but still a great supplier of weaving, woodworking, clayworking, felting, dyeing, and basketmaking supplies. Also visited toy shops, book stores, an organic festival, a decadent sweets/ice cream shop, various other shops, and finally the Lobster Trap, a fabulous restaurant with fresh Maine seafood--go figure!

Anyhow, Deborah and Francesca, if you're reading this, I thought of you all off and on all day--thanks for recommending Asheville! And the rest of you, if you're ever down this way, definitely stop there.

Next time I go alone and walk from gallery to gallery to art supply shop to gallery to gallery to coffee to gallery to . . . well, you get the picture.

One of my favorite things . .

. . . about our new home in Tennessee is the cloudscapes. The sunsets are beautiful any day it's not raining, but the daytime offers awe-inspiring sky vistas as well. Pictures say it far better than I, though, so . . .

(These last three are taken from my back yard in suburban Kingsport.)

For a while I was taking photographs all the time--until I realized that this is par for the course and that inspiration frequently is only as far away as stepping out the door. It lifts my soul, sends it soaring, exhilarated, joyous.

Back in the saddle--mostly!

The studio is nearly unpacked--I can now imagine what it'll look like once the boxes and extraneous furniture are gone.

I have missed my fabric and find myself caressing favorite tools and materials as I put them away. Ah, the secret life of quilters!

So, since I have a deadline looming and a commission I should be working on (and because I NEED TO WORK!!!), I played hookie from unpacking and spent a couple days working.

Did a few very small painted studies (including these two):

(clearly haven't made it out of my color rut yet--
so I've decided to embrace it)

And made some faux nuno, including this piece:


Now that I have the new process down, I'm making a felted piece for a new work--woo-hoo! Never thought I'd resent a long weekend. (Well, not really. Or . . . well, only a little. :-P )

I'll end on a note of apology: A great many people made our last days and weeks in Massachusetts memorable and smooth and uplifting and wonderful, and I really haven't mentioned that--or them individually. Everything just caught up with me at once and I had to let it go to remain sane.

I hope I did manage to thank you all in person, but if I missed you in the blur and rush please accept my apology and know I appreciated everything you did for me and for my family. You all rock and we are tremendously blessed.

We're live! We're live!

The new Dancing Threads website is up and running! Woo-hoo!

This new and improved site includes both Dancing Threads studios: my studio in the U.S. and my dear friend Pascale's studio in Ireland. Pascale is a rocking tapestry weaver and a fabulous teacher.

Gloderworks is great and Pascale and I love our new content management system and really enjoyed working with Derry (the "der" in Gloderworks). He was always patient, prompt, polite, and professional--and never stuffy.

Anyhow, check out www.dancingthreadsstudios.com or www.cindihuss.com to see what we're so excited about!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Community Garden
by the 2007-08 third-grade class
P.E. Bowe Elementary School, Chicopee, MA
with Cindi Huss

Didn't the kids at P.E. Bowe Elementary School do a great job?! They designed the foliage, fruit, veg., and flowers on paper then translated them into fabric. The fringe at the bottom is made of 199 wood joining biscuits with words the students came up with about what it takes to make a community and/or a garden grow and thrive.

The kids also made design desisions, such as where to "plant" their creations and what to quilt in the background. Some of them just fell in love with quilting and sewing and all of them worked hard. These kids and their teachers rock and it was a privilege to work with them this year! (Click here to see some of the other things we did together.)

Timna Tarr (Q Tailored Quilts) rocks, too. I called her in a panic in June because the end of school was fast approaching, we were getting ready to move, and I couldn't figure out how I'd get the quilting done on this piece in time without crippling myself (it is extremely heavy and quite thick in places).

Found time in her very busy schedule and quilted this in a day! Woo hoo! Thanks, Timna, for putting up with my unreasonable requests for all these years!

Seat-of-the-pants wrap-up--Part I

I'd love to create a long post about favorite places in the area (Pioneer Valley in Western MA), but that would require heights of organization and planning that I, frankly, am incapable of --aside from plans for our (very) impending move, so I'm going with a much more seat-of-the-pants approach . . .

Today I had lunch at Judie's in Amherst, MA, with my friend Cindy--fellow quilter, fellow dancer, fellow ex-Pittsburgher, fellow office supply junkie, fellow Belchertowner (for a couple more weeks anyhow), and fellow foodie and Judie's devotee.

And while my sister is the queen of photographing beautiful food before digging in, I apparently am the queen of gluttony.

I dove right in to my lovely, velvety bowl of seafood bisque. I excavated all the best bits of my decadent lobster salad and enjoyed them with Judie's scrumptious creamy onion dressing. And . . . well, the key lime pie with creme brule cheesecake top (pure culinary genius) boggled the mind and I savored each bite in between sips of a perfect cappuccino.

Then I remembered I was supposed to be taking pictures. So here's the one photo I did get:
Guess this is why I trained as a journalist, not a photographer.

More as I can . . .

New Heights of Domestic Insanity

Well, our house is finally up for sale. Check it out.

Isn't it cute?!

We kicked it all off with an open house last Saturday. After our Memorial Day bash the floors, including the throw rugs, were trashed. The amazing Alicia Murphy took care of the floors and DH took care of the rugs.

If I had been thinking I would have done the rugs and used Synthropol so the red didn't turn everything pink, but I can live with that. However, they didn't come out of the dryer flat and that was a problem.
I had the iron out for the tablecloth, so I, who avoid ironing at all costs unless it involves a quilt, ironed the rugs. With lots of steam. And it worked! And I'm a nut. Ironing rugs.

I've become a lunatic, obsessing about the kids tracking dirty footprints across the floor and messing stuff up. I've taken to being out of the house as much as possible so I don't mess it up. I am much happier when I can be more relaxed about housekeeping. Oy!

But the house looks great!

Tuna Tower

I dragged my poor friend Lori to Whole Foods last weekend ostensibly to buy wine and peppers to prepare for a Memorial Day party, but really so I could take a picture of this before the display changed:


She surely thinks I'm a nut, but it just illustrates my growing sense that taking a little time and effort to make even mundane things colorful and interesting is worthwhile. Hey--it made me smile, which canned tuna fish does not generally do!

Disaster Area

I've been doing so many things around the house and trying so hard to keep it moderately tidy that I have done almost no work for the past three months. However, I must finish the mural I worked on during my 10-week autumn residency with third graders from the P.E. Bowe Elementary School (Chicopee, MA) before the end of the school year (just after the middle of June).

Since we have had to delay putting the house on the market (long boring story) I took the opportunity to create a little temporary chaos in the living room. You can see what it has looked like here. And here was its state last Wednesday:

However, it's all in a good cause. All five panels are done (except the extensions where the tree branches will continue into the neighboring panel). Now I must quilt and mount them.

For the mural part of this program (we explored several quilting techniques and traditions) the children (three classes of about 25) drew vegetation then translated it into fabric and designed the three middle panels ("Spring," "Summer," and "Fall"). They also decided that the 200+ words about community they came up with would be written on "seeds" (carpentry biscuits) suspended from the bottom of the quilt and "rain" (method and materials TBD by me).

When it is done the piece will measure just under 4' x 10'. Hopefully I'll be done with the bulk of the work by the end of next week.

Anyhow, I have completely enjoyed myself (other than stressing slightly about the mess I made and how short my time is) and can't wait to finish this up. The process demonstrates, however, why it was important for us to find a house with a large, dedicated studio space somewhat removed from the rest of the living space in our house. Apparently my creative process requires chaos to thrive!