birthday feast

Monday was my sister's birthday so I took off work and we went for a visit. I brought green beans and birthday cake. My sister-in-law brought bounty from her garden: peppers, cabbage, carrots, green onions, cabbage, peas, cabbage, cherry tomatoes and, of course, cabbage. We had a wonderful feast. I made a forest from the carrot tops.

Not much else is new. I'm working away on the Studio Journals class. I'm having great fun with photographs this week and playing a lot in Photoshop. I'm also still working on my June TIF piece--it's getting there. And thinking about July. I'm amazed that July is already nearly over.

With Photoshop today explored abstraction and pattern. I went from this to this to this... It was very interesting but I'm having a hard time finding a balance between playing with the designs and finding time to stitch.

Still in downtown Chicago

Day three of the conference and for once everything is quiet for the moment. I'm still fascinated by the view from my hotel room. I tried to capture it in an expanded-square, part of this week's exercises for the Journals class. I pasted it down backwards, the sun's on the wrong side. I did several expanded squares and had a hard time getting the glue on the side I wanted to glue down and not on the top side.

In my room there's a sofa that has a window behind it--it's great light for stitching. I did a little bit last night on my June TIF. There's also a big-screen TV--it's amazing to me how little there is to watch, even with all of cable's offerings.

One of the "tall ships" was sailing by in this photo from my window. The view at night with all of the bright lights is wonderful but I wasn't able to capture it with the camera. This one was taken near sunset. I can see why people live near water--it's ever changing and you can just sit and watch it for hours on end.



Last weekend Steve and I went to the Antique Power and Steam Show in Crown Point, Indiana. It was our second trip and we enjoyed it just as much this year as last. It's an annual event, put on my the South Lake County Agricultural Historical Society and it's really fun. I didn't take many photos--this event is best captured in sound--motors and whistles abound. One area is full of little hand-made feats of engineering--mostly steam engines. The sounds are amazing--pockety-pockety, wush-wush, clickity-clack, and the occasional thwump. They had a steam powered thresher (chaff was flying everywhere! Now I know first hand where the term chafing comes from!) and a steam powered saw that was cutting shingles.

We sat in the grandstand for the Parade of Power, a most impressive display of tractors and farm equipment of all types. Some behemoths were from the early 20th Century. Afterward I learned the finer points of how to shoe a horse and we watched blacksmiths ply their trade.

Livin' it up!

The big conference has begun and I'm in downtown Chicago. I got here around 4:30 yesterday and immediately began working, straightening out some reservations. My room is lovely, on the 30th floor, with a gorgeous view of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. I watched the sun come up over the lake this morning.

Yes, I was up and off to work early this morning. The day was bumpy--typical of a big conference. But all in all it went okay.

Before heading down here for the conference, I had a good weekend break. I worked very hard on my journals class--catching up from the week of doing no work on it at all. I did some exercises from week 2 and then began some for week 3 and I also began using the journal to collect some notes and things I wanted to keep and also to make notes on a design I want to do (in the fiber books group on Stitchin' Fingers) but just can't find time for right now. I brought journaling materials with me and hope to get an evening or two in to work on them.

Over the last week or so, I put the finishing touches on the back of June's TIF piece. I'm still working on the front and also thinking about the July piece. I want to do a mossy stone milestone and I think needlefelting might provide just the right look if I felt the green into the gray stone from the back. I'm still not sure what I want my milestone to say. I've been reading others comments on this month's project and as always I've found new things to think about.

After I finish this, I'm going to head for the pool. Woo-hoo!

Tea and watercolors

It's been a very busy week with some fun crammed in. First my sister, niece, assistant and I had dim sum at the Phoenix yesterday. It was very yummy. We took a long lunch and walked over to the Ten Ren Tea shop and browsed a couple of other shops.

And this evening I'm stuffed from having a very elegant tea at the Peninsula with my friend Cassandra. We wore our hats and were tres chic. The food and tea were incredible. We had great conversations and laughs. We decided to make it an annual event.

These delights were in the midst of the crazyness of the last days before next week's big conference--printing papers, adjusting hotel reservations, finalizing the catering, and hunting for boxes to pack it all in. My office is piled high. When I've been home I've been crashed. I've not picked up a needle at all. I did do some fun watercolor experiments over the weekend for the Journals class. The first is cling film on wet watercolor. The second is salt on wet watercolor. They are a combination of backgrounds and playing with the color wheel. For the flowers, I colored in some pen and ink drawings from a couple of years ago.

Frottage and TIF

Since I had to come in to work on a holiday, I decided to get in a blog post. I had fun in my office yesterday with an exercise from the Journals class--frottage (rubbings). I have a little box of 2" squares that I made after sending others off to the Pink Art Doll Project. (a few are pictured here)

I used a 6B pencil and plain paper and made rubbings of my art squares and various other things in my office.

Last night as we watched Chicago's big fireworks show, I cut them up and pasted the resulting pieces into my Journal. Boy, is this fun!

And I was totally amazed of the things I found to take rubbings of. When I walked into my office and looked, I thought there's nothing here. But once I got going it was really hard to stop.

I used a 2" square window to find designs in my rubbing page of the art squares and I cut them out. I used a 1" square window to cut out my other rubbing page.

I also spent some time last night thinking about the June TIF theme. I made some jottings in my TIF journal along the lines of what I wrote in yesterday's post and then went a bit further and sketched out some ideas for making a milestone page. Right now I'm liking the idea at the bottom of the page and trying to think about where I might find gray wool felt in the middle of summer. I should go online shopping today.

All of this Journaling activity has meant that I haven't taken a single stitch all week. I need to figure out how to better balance things.

Well, I'm off to the meeting I came in today for. Then, tonight, Fireworks!