Books Read 2006

So far in 2006 I've read the following books, mostly from the public library (I LOVE MY LIBRARY!), and whatta ya know they are all on amazon.com too!:

Gods in Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson (Southern "Gothic", amazing writer, left me wanting more)

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller (a far future, post apocalyptic classic I'd never read)

Mulenengro - Charles de Lint (A gypsy/Rom tale, quite unlike the usual deLint)

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova (highly recommend this new take on the Dracula legend)

Your 10-14 year old (Gotta figure these kids out!)

A Breath of Snow & Ashes - Diana Gabaldon (The latest Outlander saga, pretty good she's up to 1776)

Plants of the Gods (Inspiring illustrations from around the world)

Butterfly Gardening (Wanted to see if I was doing all I could to bring in those butterflies)

The Creative Journal - Lucia Capacchione (good alternative to The Artist's Way)

World Textiles, a concise history (A nice compact book, great illustrations, taught me some new stuff too)

Why do they act that way? (Guide to teenagers brains, I need help!)

Miracle Ball Method (My back feels better already, and the dog hasn't eaten the balls...yet)

A Time to Run - Barbara Boxer (yes *that* Barbara Boxer, an easy to read political tale partly set in Berkeley)

Just keeping track is all.

Self Portrait Tuesday, All of Me,Last of Me

Thankfully the last of the All of Me version of Self Portrait Tuesday.

puffy skin
bad skin
over-reactive skin
uncooperative skin
the skin I'm in
when they say the flesh is weak, I may just be what they're talking about.
no resistance to injury
bruising at a glance
containing my insides, just barely
infested with pain
enduring surgeries with no end in sight
elastic fantastic stretchy and mine
not yours or hers or his, all mine
if the body is my temple,
my skin is the wall presented to the world

Good Morning, I'm a Greek Goddess

You scored as Athena. You are Athena - goddess of wisdom, war, and crafts... now I can't make you a goddess, but I can make you immortal Click here Athena 70% Artemis 60% Hera 40% Aphrodite 30% What Greek goddess are you? (Females Only) (PICS) created with QuizFarm.com

Chunky Books and Georgia O'Keeffe

Chunky Books are all the rage now. Generally the size is 4"x 4". Pages are swapped around, and then assembled by each artist in whatever way they choose.

Here is a fabric page that I just did for a swap of Georgia O'Keeffe inspired chunky book pages on Habiliments.

That is a printed picture on silk of a small portion of my most favorite Georgia O'Keefe painting "Sky Above Clouds II" (1963, 48"hx83"w). Those are my hand-dyed cottons, and I stitched fringe-ily around the edge with sashiko cotton thread.

Ages ago (back in 2000), I did a quilt interpreting this painting for a new age, mine called "Clouds Above Smoggy Sky". It now hangs in my brother's house where it looks fabulous against the terracotta painted wall.

I almost included this class poem about O'Keeffe, by the editors of the school yearbook of Chatham Episcopal Institute, a boarding school she attended inVirginia.
"A girl who would be different in
habit, style, and dress,
A girl who doesn't give a cent for
men- and boys still less.

O is for O'Keeffe, an artist divine;
Her paintings are perfect and her drawings
are fine."

They sure had her pegged way back in high school! A woman who had given her heart completely over to art. Thank goodness she was able to continue in the arts so that we have her artworks to inspire and move us even now.

52 Figments: Week 7

52 Figments: Week 7: The world needs a new bird, make one!

Self Portrait Tuesday

For Self-Portrait Tuesday.

My fingernails.

They used to be soooo important to me.

I always wore nail polish.

For twenty years.

I still wear it occasionally.

I still buy it all the time.

But I don't think about keeping up appearances as much anymore.

I'm more inside than outside of myself.

It isn't that I've lost my self-image along the way to motherhood and artisthood. It has just been rearranged, reprioritized and reinternalized.

I like getting my hands dirty, making art, gardening, whatever. And it shows, so what! I am ok with it. Until I'm confronted with someone with perfect nails, then I let myself feel bad for 1.8 seconds. Then I'm over it. Onto the next thing.

Fairy Doll

If I were a Doll, I'd be a green fairy, with leaf wings...
From Candybar Doll Maker
Too fun.
Thanks Laume!

52 Figments: Week 6

52 Figments: Week 6 Question: What does Hell mean to you?

Today's Daily Devotion Art

"An Atom of Adam" (thanks for the title go to my son Alex).
See more of my daily art at my daily devotions blog High Fiber Content Daily Devotions.

Modern Tales & Fables

Found the book that I mentioned yesterday. Here is a picture of the first page showing small illustrations from many of the stories found inside. This was published in Czechoslovakia in 1967. How did I end up with it when I was five? I'll have to ask my mom and dad...

Children's Books

This is a meme I've thinking about responding to all week, from Jen at Bayou Quilts. And after mulling it over here is what I'd like to say about children's books.

I was a rather obsessive reader (still am) as a child, got the bookworm award from my favorite fourth grade teacher Mrs. Blankenship. We each got a bookworm face at the start of the year, and then got to put up a circle representing a worm section for each book we read that year. My bookworm took up a LOT of room at year end, and I was really proud of that.
I knew the school librarian really well and even gave her a birthday card. She knew when I was getting bored and helped point out new types of books for me to read and encouraged me so much. I felt really safe in the library.
My parents read to me, and bought me a lot of books, everytime we got one of the book order forms from school, they never said no when I wanted a new pile of books. I try to do the same with my kids. I grew up amidst books, relishing devouring consuming books, I still do the same, I'm in book overload-land, close to addicted to buying books, I have a books expense category in Quicken, every room in the house (except the bathrooms) has at least one bookshelf.

So books are important to me, have shaped my life, and are a permanent part of my future. I could go anywhere and be happy in the library or a used bookstore or any bookstore or any comfy chair with a good book.

In answering this I'm defining it as the books I read as a child (10 and under). So Nancy Drew, Madeleine L'engle,etc. wouldn't be on this list. That would be the pre-teen list, and then there would be the teen list, college list, post college list, young mom list, middle age list,.....

1. Name your 3 favorite children's series.

Pippi Longstockings by Astrid Lindgren What an inspiring character for a young girl, W.W.P.D.? , what would pippi do? would be a great motto for a girls' t-shirt!, someone steal this idea!

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald with the great illustrator Hilary Knight(he did Eloise). I really wanted Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to come visit me at home or at school. She had such great solutions to everything that ever could go wrong in a kid's life.

Andrew Lang's Fairy Tales
These books have all the original fairy tales (ie, NON-Disneyfied) from all around the world with amazing color and line drawing illustrations, I didn't have the whole series which were reprinted by Dover in the 60's but I had about 6 of them that I read and re-read.

2. Name your 3 favorite non-series children's books.

James & The Giant Peach by Roald Dahl The characters, the adventure, the story, the sweetness of the peach.

Eloise at Christmastime by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Hilary Knight
I remember getting this at a garage sale or used somehow, and it was so unlike anything else I'd read, it just was so satisfying.

Modern Tales and Fables" published by Paul Hamlyn in 1967, illustrated by Vaclav Sivko, and written by various Czechoslovakian authors. This book isn't on Amazon or anywhere else I can find so far :( , but I made a quilt inspired by it, and maybe I'll share some images from it later if I can find it in the kid's room (they loved this book too!)...

3. Name 3 favorite children's books characters.

Pippi Longstockings, I soooo wanted to be her (except for the orphan part). She could do anything, go anywhere all by herself, she could wear anything she wanted, she was silly, smart, independent, fierce, capable, no one could get the better of her. Girls today could do pretty well emulating her. I read these stories to my boys, they liked them, but didn't connect as much as I did (that gender thing I guess).

Eloise! She was rich, outrageous, bratty, funny and had kewl pets.

Dorothy Gale because she got to wear those amazing shoes and have adventures and come home safely.

Ok, that's enough time spent on this for now. It was certainly fun tripping back in time...

Open the Art Door

Check out my fabulous door. This is the door to my studio, and I am displaying two fiberpirate quilts created from bags of my scraps (this project also known as BaggoS*it). The top one with purple and lime green shoes just for me done my the shoe-obsessed quilt and blog genius DebR.
And the new one "Reclining Lady" by Peggy Spence, who started this cool quilt in a class she took with Pamela Allen (who is another fiberpirate). Thanks to these two artists I have a wonderful entrance to my creative space.

Happy V-Day!

Self Portrait Tuesday - All of Me

All of Me for Self Portrait Tuesday once again.
This time focusing on the Teeth.
The horrible gnashing yellowy teeth.
The I refuse to spend $500 to get them whitened teeth.
The one of my front teeth is dead or something teeth.
The this is why I wore braces teeth?

The I'm so glad I still have my OWN teeth.
The I'm so very lucky to have good food and good nutrition teeth.
Teeth that make me feel bad about myself and good about myself at the same time.
My Teeth and nobody elses'

52 Figments - Week 5

52 Figments - Week 5. The question this week is: "What Does Heaven Mean to You?"

Why is the Sky Blue Challenge

The exhibit page for the "Why is the Sky Blue" Challenge is up. Go see it, there are some really great quilts! And then there is mine, which you can see waaaayyyy down at almost the bottom of the page. Maybe I should adopt a new artist last name of Aaardvark or something....

The Unbearable Perfectness of Being Rexie

Think Green!

Don't you just love fancy napkins? I buy them when I see them, this was at the local small town non-chain drugstore in my town. It was just such a lovely spring green and I loved the combo of clovers, cucumbers, peppers and beans. Nice design too.
I use these napkins in collage, you remove the second non-printed layers and then have a slightly transparent image to play with.
Anyone want to trade some napkins with me?
Or serviettes?
Or whatever the heck are they called where you live?

Self Portrait Tuesday on Thursday

Self Portrait Tuesday

"All of Me"

No masks allowed

No Hiding

Get Real

This is evidence of what I try to hide: Those dark circles which show how tired I am.

Tired of being tired.

Tired of being sick.

Tired of being depressed about being sick.

Tired of pretending to everyone that I'm fine.

Tired of it all.

If I look too closely at myself I see how far I've let myself sink down into the mask of "I am a sick person". When I actually can muster the energy to get out and about I pile on the makeup, especially under the eyes to try and pretend just for a little while that I'm just me, the pre-sick me who could get up and go anywhere anytime.

My Word Cloud

What a cool idea this is, a word cloud generated from the verbiage on one's blog. The website is called snapshirts.
I went through and replaced people's names with words that I thought fit them. Thanks to DebR and DebR for this.

Order of Succession ensured

Thanks DebRoby
Get your position here

Cirque du Soleil - Corteo

We were so excited to go see Corteo yesterday. This is one of the newest Cirque du Soleil shows, and it goes on to Arizona next.

I loved the costumes, they were more realistic and recognizable than the last Cirque show that we saw.

Much more subtle colors this time around and clothing that you could see yourself wearing.

There was walking upside down on a tightrope, riding a bicycle through the air, getting your angel wings when you die, and women swinging from chandeliers. Gave me good dreams last night!

I wish that everyone could go see at least one Cirque show, but they are unfortunately terribly expensive, this basically blew our entertainment budget for the next few months, thank goodness for Netflix. Where you can of course get the Cirque shows on dvd's, a poor substitute, but much better than nothing.

Flame of Inspiration

This is a quilt I just finished. It is named "Flame of Inspiration: Brighid", measures about 28"x 28".

I participated in a Goddess Round Robin quilt project begun back in 2002. The central chartreuse square with the Brighids cross and abstracty swoops was what I sent out. And this was what I got back! Alyson, Lutra, Greymere thank you, and thank you Meguey for starting the whole thing off.

Studio Cleaned Up

Several months ago, some of us in the Artful Quilters ring vowed to clean up our studios and post the pictures when we were done. I've finally gotten around to working on this and am saying it is done for now.

I don't know if you will be able to see a difference between then and now, but I can feel it when I walk in the room. It is ready for action! Creative Action! I can open and close the closet doors now, and nothing falls on me. I have a worktable with space, lots of open space, ahhhh.

I've at least gone through all my stuff (or most of it to be honest), touched it all, re-remembered why the heck I have all this stuff, made lists of ideas and projects, made plans, thrown stuff out, moved lots out of the room.

The best part is, my scaredycat, Pele that lives in the room and never comes out is being ms. personable, dare I say even cuddly. She must feel the difference in the room too, maybe she is no longer worried about having stuff fall on her. And she has a comfy cleaned off futon couch to lounge about on now.

How long will it last? We'll see about that one...

Joyous Imbolc

Here is Brigid milking her cow, a stone carving on the Tor in Glastonbury. Today is Brigid's Day, so cheese, milk, and butter are on the menu! Originally Imbolc was a festival celebrating the milk coming in (cow's,goats, etc.), and everything revolved around that wonderful occurence. Just think how it must have been, way back in the "old days", coming through a cold long winter with no fresh milk to be had, and then, woosh, it is back. Definitely something to celebrate.

Today it is Imbolc, Brigids' day.
From here on in, we get to experience Winter leaving us. Back on the Winter Solstice in December, you have to take it on faith that the days really are getting longer, it is soooo dark, winter seems so endless. But here on the first day of February, you can really sense that Winter isn't going to be hangin' around all that much longer and Spring is on its way. And thank Goddess for that!

Here is the Hawthorne tree on WearyAll Hill in Glastonbury.
This tree is said to have grown from Joseph of Arimathea's staff.
This is a view of the Tor from Wearyall Hill.
Near this hill there is a small mound called Bride's Mound, where it is said that St. Brigid once visited. I felt closest to Brigid in this place out of everywhere I visited on my trip last year.