majestic sea swap...

my partner in Gypsie Mermaid's Majestic Sea Swap was rebecca from Bec's Shabby Dreams in australia. she has created a beautiful, light, french-y shabby chic home, and i tried to create something to compliment it. she also has three sweet children, so i started by printing three scallop shells on a piece of fabric right out of the dye bath, and went from there. bek mentioned liking aqua also, which isn't a colour i use a lot, but lucky for me i remembered one of my daughter's tutus from a few years back was that colour, so i snipped away at one of the seams i had taken in. she'll never miss it. i stitched on some pearls, a couple of mother-of-pearl buttons, and some seaglass from my fave beach out back. it was fun doing something so frilly for a change.
on a very not-related note, has anyone else lost their followers? i've lost mine, and can't figure out how to find them...:(

ABAA's bird challenge~

rosie & linda of Rosie & Linda's Awfully Big Art Adventure put out a challenge for bird-themed art. i was mulling what to do when i heard chainsaws start up at the neighbor's. they are fairly new to the neighborhood, having moved in last year. within an hour and a half they had cut every single beautiful ancient moss covered old growth sitka spruce tree down (almost 2/3 of an acre). all the huge trees you can see behind our banya in my previous posts are now laying dead on the ground. it's just about the saddest thing ever, and changes not only their home, but the look and feel of ours as well. no fuitcake for them this xmas. even sadder, as the days have passed i keep finding tiny newly hatched baby birds on the ground...and am enduring the wrath of many families of homeless squirrels in the aftermath of what my kids are calling the sitka spruce chainsaw massacre. so, i made my bird themed art with a heavy heart. i created a little 2" copper wire cage, enclosed an egg in a soft nest, and locked it up safe & sound with a tiny key, until it hatching time.

for 48 very short hours...

... my daughter thea rose came home. she turned 21 on the 9th, and was able to get a friday off of work to fly home for cake, her first glass of wine with me, and her new license. it was a painfully short amount of time, but the sun was shining, the sky was blue and we crammed as much home as we could in. we walked on the beaches, ate king crab, hiked up to see the new wind generators on pillar mountain, and dad took us on a skiff ride over to long island for a few hours, where we found a hidden cove of sand dollars. she was scheduled to leave sunday morning, but true to our island we got fogged in and the plane couldn't make it in until dinner time, which was fine with me. i can't believe i won't get to hug her again until xmas...but it was wonderful to have her while she was here.

summer mini quilt swap

i just finished this little starry~eyed halibut quilt for the Good Ol' Summertime Mini Quilt Swap i'm in. it's a pity the real fish isn't this cute, but they do taste quite good and i guess that's what really counts. we've caught some big ones this summer, always weird to haul up a big old flat ugly fish longer than yourself out of the water. anyhow, i hand appliqued him and machine quilted it, and will be sending it off in a day or so. hope my partner likes it.

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...

new mermaids!

Mermaid Heidi

Mermaid Maddie

i just finished these two new mermaid boxes for a friend who is moving off-island. one is for her sister, and one for her daughter. it was fun getting to be a little more personal with them, and giving them real faces! it's also nice to know where they are going to be living! sometimes it's hard throwing your work to the wind, so to speak.
while i was working on them my new diamond bits came for my dremel tool, so i got to drill my first bits of seaglass for them. it works so slick, and now they get to bring a part of mill bay & mission beach with them.

anyhow, now on to a piece for the summer solstice small works art show...due in 2 days. it would be nice to have some sun for inspiration...but rain keeps one focused.

new challenge at Awfully Big Art Adventure

rosie & linda have posted a new challenge at bigartadventure.blogspot.com ~ the theme is shells. who can resist that??? go take a look, it's inspiring. and they give us 3 whole weeks to create & post. i automatically thought of all the pasta shell necklaces my three kids have made me over the years... i have a shoebox full of them.

a sunny day for graduation

i haven't been doing a lot of artwork lately as we've been busy getting ready for devon's graduation from high school, and we did make a quick trip down to ugak. it was hot! and i don't get to say that very often! also dry. the boys got everything opened up, tuned up, and ready for summer. i aired out the lodge and de-spidered - ugh they are horrid and huge down there. the annual shedding of the shells has already occured and there is a continuous line of hollow perfect little crab shells down the beach. how do they get out of them like that? anyhow, now we're all set for summer, and can't wait for cullan to finish school so we can head back down.
devon graduated sunday, it was a beautiful sunny day and the speakers had mercy on all of us crammed into the auditorium and were blessedly short. yesterday i put him on a plane to anchorage to meet with his air force recruiter. he will finish his last paperwork, get his physical
and take his oath. when i pick him up tonight, he will be in the air force. as i sat boo hooing in my car after his plane took off i realized that, just like every other major event in his life, he was meeting this one full of confidence, with his goofy grin, and a giant scabby scraped left knee.

i won bead soup!!! yee haw!

thank goodness we don't have close neighbors, because this morning when i discovered i was a winner of one of beverly gilbert's amazing bead soups, i did the happy dance in my pj's out on the deck. and to get to choose which one...over the top. i couldn't pick. i'm trusting ms. beverly for that. my family is notoriously non-celebratory. say the word birthday and all 4 heads get buried in the sand. so this is like the best mother's day ever for me. i encourage whomever may read this to check out beverly's blog & website. she is the zen master of colour and bead artistry.
beverlygilbert.blogspot.com
www.gilbertdesigns.net

the sun is here!

we are having a burst of the most beautiful sunshine ever. on kodiak, when the sun comes out like this, no one stays inside. duffy and i have been out on our favorite beaches all day long. he's a smelly salty wet dog, and i am sunburn. it's great. and, i can finally post a photo of my tiny little patch of crocus blooms - i have been seeing so many pretty flowers blooming on blogs from everywhere for a month or so now, now i can be one of the flower crowd.

it doesn't get much sunnier than this. now we just need the green to come in. this is gibson cove, a favorite place for duffy to swim with the sea otters.

i have finished two projects. i lugged my sewing machine outside and made a new sassy dog bed for duff, he loves the pin up girls. then i completed a mosaic lamp i've been wanting to get to all winter. it has mother of pearl buttons from my grandpa's shirts, and "pearls" from an old necklace of my grandma's. i wet felted the shade, and will probably sew "stuff" on it this afternoon, in the sun, on the deck. yay!

i wish i knew how to get that evil glow out of his eyes - my photo program doesn't register it as red eye... he really is a nice dog.

clarice is finished!

the whole sparkley effect doesn't really show up for lack of sunshine, but this tail shrieks when the bright lights hit it. a friend tells me she is elegantly overstated.

the golden circle hook was too fun to make. i wonder if it would really work.

i love the pale back side, again the sparkles don't show, but they are there. this fabric turned out perfect for this. while dying it, i threw in some of thea's white socks & tank tops, so she's set too.

i finished clarice very late last night, everyone was asleep so i celebrated with duffy. this morning was overcast, but no wind or rain, so i decided to take photos of her down by oscar's dock for atmosphere (trying to make up for lack of photo skills.) it was a big risk, as the seagulls were out full force, but i had cullan along to warn me in case of incoming...you know. just one close call so all was fine. and the whole time there were a couple of sea lions playing behind us, i'm sad they didn't show up in the photos, just their ripples.

so, i turned her in to KICVB right after. they will be displaying the tails at various businesses around town until may 16, when they will be auctioned off at the annual chocolate lover's fling. it will be fun to see them all.

the tail becomes clarice...

i can't even say how excited i am to be at this stage with my halibut tail. all the fretting over fabrics and seams is over, i know it is going to fit on the form, and now i can relax and have fun with her. the tail has become clarice over the past couple days. she's getting so lovely, she couldn't remain "the tail." i have been hoarding my precious pearls for a long time. i decided if any project deserves them, it is clarice.

for some reason a couple days ago a wild hair hit me telling me to stop everything and clean out my work room. i resisted as long as i could, knowing i need to finish this project...but the hair won and i was up until 4 a.m. wednesday night moving shelves on walls, dragging totes out and purging, hauling tables, dusting and scrubbing. too weird. but i got it done, and when i woke up yesterday morning and headed out to get my coffee, there was my spanking clean studio, all organized and ready for me to sit and sew on clarice with a clear head. funny how those wild hairs work. i got a whole new perspective on my project, and found my favorite missing xacto knife to boot.

as a really over the top bonus, the clouds parted and the sunshine appeared. it was so bright you could almost hear it. the dogs went nuts outside, and i sat in the porch swing for the first time in months. it was wonderful. my poor rhododendron is less than thrilled with the amount of snow it is still buried in, but i see tiny buds on it...

The Tip of the Tail...

i've been doing nothing but re-dying fabrics, deciding on fabrics, sewing, ripping apart, sewing more...i don't remember ever ripping apart so much, i'm blaming indecisiveness on the hot flashes...i finally have the top of the tail pieced & sandwiched, ready for quilting & beading. the bottom will be whole cloth as the dyes blessed me with the perfect halibut belly fabric. i will just quilt the heck out of it.

a reporter from the daily mirror called today to talk about my mermaids. wow, i was surprised. it was a bit confusing as he thought he was talking to a different person and my descriptions weren't going with his photos...a regular laurel & hardey thing was happening. who know what will end up being printed in the article...

well, Low Tide Lunch Date didn't make the CPS challenge.
i've allowed myself today, a lovely grey cold snraining day, to stay inside, pout, drink an extra pot of coffee and do nothing but look at everyone else's incredibly beautiful and inspiring blogs. as an added bonus, i am not cooking dinner, instead ordering pizza. and i believe a piping hot banya will cap off the evening. tommorow back to work on the halibut tail.
viewing all these wonderful blogs has made me realize two things. 1) i am not the only one in the country who sees things the way i do and 2) it is spring everywhere but this little island. what fun to see what other folks are doing with paper & glue, ribbons and glitter, and of course, the mermaid. i'm refreshed, and even if my version of a beach doesn't fit in with everyone else's version, it's still my beach, and i wouldn't trade it for anywhere else in the world. okay, maybe a caymen island beach, but only for a little while.
time to order the pizza. ;~)

whale fest entries done

i decided last minute to do a couple of mermaid boxes for whale fest instead of more fabric. i finished the last one last night, and i don't want to part with either of them. i love making these little ladies and their worlds. and they all start with a name on a paint chip. (i've been banned from the paint isle at our hardware store)

now, to get started on the tail.