why i miss my little girl so much...

this morning i got an email from my daughter. this was all it said ~

"I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness, our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met."
-Marguerite Duras, French Writer

i am very blessed to have a child who knows this is the best compliment i could ever hope to get.

the latest project

i'm taking part in a round robin with 5 other local artists. we were all to draw a design on a fabric background measuring 144 total square inches, then divide it into six even portions. it then gets passed to the person under us on the list. we have 3 weeks to embellish one portion any way we like, then pass it on. we get to fill in the last portion of our own piece. we should be all done by xmas. this is more of a challenge than i thought it would be, but that's good. i know most of the gals, but not all, so sure hope everyone likes purple and green - ha. at any rate, i got pj's tree first, and needle felted & beaded her leaves. i'm looking forward to getting the next one now, and seeing what everyone else is doing. now on to finish my piece i'm working on for the majestic sea swap.

I almost forgot, look what came in the mail!

Getting mail is often the highlight of the week for me. Very often the weather is so bad here the mail planes don't come in, so sometimes there is nothing, other times it can be like xmas. sometimes the only thing i get is the Home Depot flyer, and there isn't even a Home Depot around for several hundreds of ocean miles - but i read the darn thing anyway. But yesterday i hit the jackpot when i got a box from julie at Cupcake DD. i won her cottage charm give away, and look at the fun stuff!! red rubber gloves!! an angry housewife pin cushion! yeehaw! and a 1950's ground beef cookbook with things like Heart Patties with Gravy (using ground cooked heart) and Frosted Lam Loaf. my husband is all over this, sticky noting the ones he thinks i should try. Anyhow, it made my day, thank you julie. check out her blog & etsy shop!

housework...

since my last post i have done nothing but...refinish our deck. blick, what a job. the only creative part was choosing the colour of the stain. (the choices...clear, weathered cedar, old barn red, or dark brown. geez. i went out on a limb & chose old barn red.) after 2 days of pressure washing in full rain gear, it was ready for the weather sealer. only, it started raining. two days later it stopped, i swept it all off again and got all jazzed up to start rolling the stuff on. with the slick roller thing. sadly, we waited too long to do this, and the boards were so split and dry that the slick roller thing was useless, and i did the entire deck on my hands and knees with a stinkin' paintbrush. i alternated between painting, chasing the little white dog off the wet parts, and kicking myself for arguing to extend the deck the full length of the house when we rebuilt it...what was i thinking. eight hours after my final brush stroke a cloud splitting downpour started...i had visions of sticky tacky weather sealer having to be rubbed off with solvent...but then the sun came out, it all dried up, and it's perfect. the boys and i hauled the table, chairs, grill & cooler all back up and had the beer iced and the prime rib on just in time for dad to get home from work on father's day and enjoy the sun on the old barn red deck. it was a real norman rockwell moment. and now i can get back to my fun stuff. with a dog who is now half old barn red.

ABAA's sea shell challenge

in an earlier post i mentioned Awefully Big Art Adventure's shell challenge... i've been working on my offering for that the past few days. i finished it yesterday, i didn't realize i would get so wrapped up in it, but i'm awfully fond of the thing. our ugak bay home is also home to a pod of harbor seals, the sweetest things. they thrive on sea urchins, and this year left me a bumper crop of empty urchin shells washed up on our beach. i love everything about sea urchins; the spines, the subtle colours, the patterns. so i combined one perfect urchin with a piece of my beloved weathered dock, which made it through this winter but my husband assures me is destined for the midsummer bonfire in a couple weeks... and i have a princess urchin sitting on the dock of the bay... it makes me smile. hope it makes you smile too. the best part is i got to create it all outside, in the sunshine!! in two days i broke a sweat, got a sunburn, wore shorts, and got a bee sting. these things don't often happen here on kodiak. happy summer! and please take a minute to go look at all the beautiful shell artwork at ABAA's blog!

summer solstice is coming...

this week i've spent working on pieces for the Summer Solstice Small Art Show hosted by liz at emerald isle framing. artwork needed to measure 6x6" square, but could have dimension. i was feeling non-dimensional this week.

this is my first piece. the center of the sun is made from a pile of the fuzz ball scraps i snip off my hand dyed fabrics before i dry them (i really am i mess, i can't throw anything away and have jars of these fuzz balls lining shelves in my workroom) i added some machine quilting and some beads. it was a little jump from my usual colors and i had fun with it.

this is my second piece. i started with the collage center and the midsummer mermaid. included the tide table for june 21, added a pearl and some beach glass, and last, a photo of the old ferry the kalakala, which used to run between kodiak and bremerton washington years ago. it was abandoned here in kodiak until a salvage company came and towed her back down to bremerton several years ago with plans of turning her into a restuarant. we haven't heard anything since, but i hope they did something with her, she was a beautiful art deco ship. anyhow, i sewed that down to a piece of marbled cotton, gave it some quilting and sent it on it's way.

and this is my very first ATC i've ever done. i've had a stash of angelina fibers forever and not used it for anything other than some fairy wings for a dance recital a few years ago, so thought i'd try it out. i sure love the sheen and sparkle of the stuff. i raided my son's fly tying bench for the fuzzy stuff on the edges. the color in the photo isn't really correct, in real life the purples and olives all blend nicely together instead of shouting at each other. i hope to catch on the the photo thing soon...