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Four more weeks until I'll have my camera back in my hands! It will be Thanksgiving for sure! 

With threats of frosty nights as a constant reminder that winter is approaching and there isn't a thing I can do about it.  I strongly dislike this season with its bitter cold and high maintenance required for clothing and vehicles.  This is one season I would never ever miss.  I can only hope that its a mild one without knee deep snows and below zero temperatures and ice storms!

My big adventure this past week was hitting Wild Oats with its 50% off everything in the store except for beer which was 20%!!!!! I wonder if this happened anywhere else in the country?  Whole Foods purchased Wild Oats last month and here the 2 stores are less than a quarter mile apart so Wild Oats closed its doors.  It was a mad house...we, my friend Petra and I, arrived 30 minutes after opening and the lines where front to back and the aisles where jammed packed.  We were there for 3 hours with 2.5 hours spent in line...the only thing better than 50% off groceries would have been free gas!  I only took a hundred bucks and stocked up on teas, skin care, condiments, juices, a cd, nothing that I couldn't have lived without, which is prolly why it was so much fun...but there were folks who came to seriously shop. The highest total I overheard was 800 and that was with the 50% off.  It was kinda fun in a crazy sort of way.

My upcoming adventure this week will be me giving a poetry reading at a private gathering of poets.  Its been very close to 3 years since I did a reading and I'm looking forward to it.  In preparing for it, I actually got an idea for a quilt which I placed in my idea book to work on after the first of the year.  I keep turning over ways to incorporate poetry and quilts and specifically my own poetry.  I've been dismissing ideas because they are not bold or dramatic enough but this recent idea is quite simple but it is working for me because it gives equal weight to the textile and the written word. I shall see....

Judy tagged me a while back on the 7 random things about me and I'm going to play this time (I don't like memes and quizzes) because I like Judy's blog and I know she will never tag me again and I can do anything once for a friend. ;)

1. I've had beer with jalepenos in the bottom.

2. I'm a Scrabble fanatic but haven't played in a long while.

3. I really dig the poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye.

4. I love coffee and I'm snobbish about it...will not drink coffee that is artificially flavored...that just messes up the bean.

5. I was a consultant with Mary Kay Cosmetics for 7 years and loved it! I only stopped due to ill health.

6. I never did learn to roller skate inspite of attempting to several times in my teens and in my 20s.  The last time I tried I was in my late 30s and an 80 year old woman who had knee surgery 8 months prior kept passing me up.

7. I cooked buffalo meat for the first time yesterday.  I prepared steaks on a Foreman grill and they were delicious.  I purchased them 2 weeks ago after sampling a bite at a local farmer's market.  We all loved them!

If you read my 7 things, then consider yourself tagged! 

 

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I was really sleeping good having decided last night that today would be a day of rest and then the maintenance guy came in to repair the kitchen faucet and the ceiling fan.  I didn't hear the doorbell and was startled by him calling out rather loud "maintenance".  I had drifted off to sleep while watching a film based on Howard Zinn's autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train on LinkTV.  Zinn's background was such a ordinary one that I wonder how many "zinn" like people we come across in daily life that get dismissed because they are "too crazy, too radical, too weird, too fill-in-the-blank".  Today I'm feeling that warm and hopeful feeling knowing that there are people devoting their full time pursuits to crafting legal, spiritual, political responses to debaseful events and attacks on our humanity, people such as Senator Keith Ellison, Prof. Charles Olgletree, Rev. George Regas, all of whom I've seen on TV in the last 24 hours.

Here are the last of the fabrics I dyed a few weeks ago:

The colour is eggplant and the fabric is unironed...I seldom iron my fabrics until I'm ready to use them...just not a task I can redeem enough to make me want to be proactive about it.

Here is one of the three 10"x10" quilts.  The image is scanned so the sides are cut off and I've not put a binding on it yet...I think I'll put a dark green binding on it.

I used the circular attachment to quilt it.   

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The last of the fabrics that I dyed weeks ago is soaking.  I thought I had distinguished the fabrics that I had pre-soaked in soda ash from the ones I didn't but the evidence proved contrary...so I still don't know if adding the soda ash before or after the dye really makes any difference in the amount of dye absorbed...what I really want to understand and apply is colour that vibrates!  What really makes colour vibrate...not jarring but smooth and rhythmic?  And can it be done or how to achieve it using 1, 2, or 3 hues...I know this much, that value is the key.  But how can it just pulsates off the wall???

In an earlier post I mentioned doing postcards for the remainder of the year but that hasn't happened...instead, I'm looking at previous dyed/painted fabrics to see if I can cut them up, what would go together, etc.  I have such a difficult time cutting up my dyed fabrics where 3-4 colours form abstract movement across the length of the piece...I just want to quilt it as is...no cutting.  And its even harder when the pieces are patterned...for example, I love these fabrics below and I'm going to take a leap and combine them in 10"x10" quilts...

 

The top one on the left I groove with the most and I thought about just quilting it with low contrast thread and love it as is...but since matters of love are never that straight forward, I thought I'd torture myself by trying to put all 3 fabrics in one piece.  That is my mission today.

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First, lets talk poetry...there is that saying "you betta tell somebody"...well, I've been told and now I know a little something about the poet Jessica Care Moore and I'm all the more better for it.  I attended a reading by her as the featured poet in the Sonia Sanchez Series as part of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference held annually at UofK in Lexington.  As far as the official introduction went for the reading, it was expected to be complimentary, but what really struck me in addition to her energy and unapologetically political poetry was that she started her own press as a serious literary house for young Black Poets and then she named her son King.  She pays honor to those who have come before her and whose shoulders she stands upon...it pisses me off to meet young people who behave in such a way (incoming colloquialism) "like they ain't got no people".  We are not in this world alone and what we do has a rippling effect on those who are connected to you and beyond. Ms Care Moore knows that she has people.

This past Friday I attended a poetry salon to hear a long old soulful friend read, Capri.  He was in great form, poetically speaking, and his lines are full of Motown rhythms and jazz licks.  Unfortunately, I can't link his work...he lamented over having to give up his word processor because he couldn't find anyone to repair it and how his daughter set him up to put his work on a computer program but he sure misses his word processor. The poetry salon is a place where the younger poets will meet the more seasoned ones here in the city.  While listening to Capri read I became transfixed into splashes of colours and decided Capri will be a moon quilt...2 moons of coral/fuchsia. 

I've had 2 days dyeing fabric recently at MACA.  I wish I could show you or at least tell you about the fabulous colours but I just mixed with sheer recklessness and can only guesstimate what the colours are...brazilnut is one that I like and I have 2 blues that make me shake my hips...one almost periwinkle...oh and a deep dark aqua made my eyes widen and some great hues of gray...terra cotta was in the mix too.  Much of this year has been spent doing surface design work and dyeing and not much actual quilting.  Not a lament just an observation.  The silk screen will stay, the transfer dyes was tossed...the silk fusion will stay, angelina fibers I'm neutral about...beading will be a keeper but I'm not sure how...hand embroidery definitely will stay...The remainder of the year will be spent making fiber postcards and finishing up 2 quilts previously started.  Can you tell I've already started reviewing my year and am making plans for next year. 

Until I have my camera back in hand (7 weeks) I'll just make a weekly entry here on Mondays.  Oh, and Noreen, Canadian artist who has a spiritual relationship with trees solidly confirmed my tree images as birch. 

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The diagnosis: barrel on the lense out of alignment.

The cost: $138 Whew! Of course, I could buy a bolt of fabric from Dharma for 138, but I'm still relieved that the repair isn't the cost of a new camera! 

Thanks to everyone who assisted with the tree identification.  Some type of birch for sure (or until I know otherwise).  I've printed the 3 images I have onto 8.5"x11" fabric sheets but I have no plans yet for them...just love this tree.

"corporate media...nothing to tell and everything to sell" quote by Amy Goodman overheard this morning on LinkTV in a speech she gave at the SolarLiving Institute Festival.