Prickly Pear Bloom

I finished piecing the patchwork squares of my little quilt last night, and save for a few corners that don’t line up quite right, it looks pretty good. I don’t much care about corners that line up perfectly anyway, that is why I am a lazy quilter.

And now, I enter Phase 2, the uncharted territory of the the quilting process: top stitching. Which will be followed by binding. Maybe. Uncharted, because I have never gotten to this point before, and thus, don’t know a lick about it. I know that you sandwich the top of the quilt, some batting, and the bottom of the quilt, and sew them together. I even know about high and low loft batting, although only that there is a difference, but not the intricacies of that difference. I will probably be using a low loft for this, since it may be easier for me to wrestle through the sewing machine than a super thick batting. And with my old machine that needs a tune up, I probably shouldn’t push my luck right now.

So, I plead to anyone with experience in this sort of thing, do you have any words of wisdom you could share with me? Challenges that I may encounter? Or perhaps know of someone that might be willing to share some tips? My machine and my sanity would appreciate any help.

I have really been wanting to do some sewing lately, with all of the reading of crafty ladies who make clothing and quilts and stuffed animals and things out of some truly wonderful fabrics. I have had a number of projects in mind, but usually some other project, usually graphic in nature, gets the higher priority, and so the sewing gets put off for another day, and then another, and another. Do you know where this is going? Thought so. Anyhow, I had gotten about as far as I could on my graphic project for the weekend, so after much thinking and mulling about and putting off, I finally started a small quilt yesterday, which is to be a gift to someone special. It will be throw sized, perfect for cudding on the couch, or for a baby to snuggle with.

My starting point for color was some of the orange fabric from our wedding tablecloths, since we have alot of it, which will likely also pop up in some other projects before Christmas. I also had some pink stuff laying around, and then decided it needed a bit of complementary blue to balance the orange. What has resulted is quite colorful, and seems a tad random, but I think it will work.

I decided to make this quilt fairly straight forward and simple, only large squares, since the last quilt of ridiculously tiny small squares that I started 4 years ago has yet to be finished. Cutting and piecing went incredibly quickly, I got most of it done in only a couple of hours last night, and I should be able to finish the front of it tonight.

I hope that telling someone about this project will motivate me to finish it! And if it really is as quick as I think it will be, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

For some reason this website, a gallery of walls with stuff written on, intrigued me a bit today. I wouldn’t say these images are necessarily beautiful, but there is something about them that makes me keep looking. Some are funny, some are vulgar, some are just odd.

Also, the work of Noah Wilson. Amazing. I especially like his collection of partial landscapes.

Have a good weekend!

Prior to my aquisition of Harry Potter, and it’s subsequent takeover of my brain capacity, I did a bit of creative work this past weekend. While I was doing some things in Photoshop, particularly a process that I apply to almost every hand drawing I bring into the program to then use in a design, I started mulling…Why was I doing this same process over and over? It occurred to me that there had to be a way to automate things that you do on a regular basis in this program. After all, what photographer would want to go through however many steps were required to post-process every photo they took? That seemed ludicrous.

Well, OF COURSE there is. And thus I discovered the wonder that is the Photoshop Action. WHY DIDN’T THEY TEACH ME THIS IN SCHOOL?

Anyhow, loads of people probably already know about this, but I didn’t. Now I do, however, and it has changed my life. And it is SO darn easy to do. If you’d like to know, let me share:

Open up the action pallette in Photoshop. Expand the pallette menu from the upper right corner of the pallette, choose New Action, and give it a name. Highlight your action in the pallette, and select the record button at the bottom of the action pallette. Now you will record all of the steps for your process. I like to save a copy right away, do not rename it or place it in a specific folder when the dialog box comes up because the program will then want to name it that every time you use the action. I also like to take a snapshot at this point, so that if your action doesn’t work out the way you intended upon running it, you can get back to your starting point without closing and reopening. Then just perform your steps as you normally would. When you are finished, select the stop button at the bottom of the action pallette. If there are steps during your action that you would like to pause and be given the opportunity to choose a setting, such as levels or contrast, click in the box to the left of that step in the pallette, which places an icon there. Now, each time you want to perform those steps that normally would have taken you 5 minutes, you can select your action in the action pallete, click the play button at the bottom of the pallette, and the action will run, automatically performing those steps for you in seconds, stopping only where you indicated to ask you for specific settings. Groovy.

So there’s my first little Photoshop Tutorial on Actions, for anyone who didn’t already have this lovely piece of knowledge. I apologize for not including pictures, but today, I am lazy, and a little under the weather.

travelling. This photo was taken in a trattoria in the small town of Fiesole, Italy, just outside of Florence. We had a fabulous meal there that day, alone, which included rabbit and wild boar, or cingale {Italian pronunciation lesson for today: cheen-GA-le}.

a grand (not grande) cup of espresso in Italy

pumpkins

a cold beer

my backyard early in the morning or at dusk

the tiny greek fest in my neighborhood in July with amazing spanikopita

holding hands with my husband

winter scarfs and long sleeves in the fall when the air starts to get colder

the sand between my toes and the smell of saltwater at the ocean

road trips

a glass of fine Puglian Primitivo

the smell of the big bakery down the street - fresh bread sometimes, fresh doughnuts other times

snugglies with my kitties

unexpected packages

the smell of paint

This is my submission to this week’s Illustration Friday theme of Poem.

Poetry, being build of words, was not an easy thing for me to translate into image. After some measly brainstorms in that vein, I started to move in a different direction: other concepts associated with poetry. I landed on Longfellow, an American poet whose name I hope should be recognizable, and, well, this is where I ended up. A long, tall, skinny fellow from the perspective of a frog on the ground, looking up, not entirely human, with a little bit of urban rhymester in him.

I sketched out the figure, and felt that he needed some sort of grounding element, and added some hand rendered type as a base. The feather quill is a touch of the vintage poet to contrast the more contemporary concept. After sketching out the elements, I brought it into photoshop to add some simple, quick color.

I was going to write something else today, but there’s really not much else I can put my brain on.

I finished with Harry Potter last night at 10:30pm. No spoilers here. But it was sublime. Most definitely.

Now my eyes are very tired from 100 pages of emotional havoc and then waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep from thinking and thinking about the end of the story, and so I feel a bit wonkish today. I don’t believe I have ever read a book that fast in my life. But now I can rejoin the life that I put on pause for three days. The Husband was starting to miss me, he said.

Sitting outside, white lawn chair beneath the butt of my jeans, and another supporting my feet. Folding table at my right, with a half drunk bottle of beer keeping me company. Harry Potter in my lap, opened to page 122, “The Will Of Albus Dumbledore.” Later, page 501 gets surpassed, I am reading more in a weekend than ever before. Shoeless. Blue sky, clouds dancing by, the light seeps from the day, a breeze takes the heat with it, it feels like fall, I need long sleeves. Music from across the world floats over the air from a block away. A scrap of charred paper lands beside me, drifted from some backyard barbecue, perhaps. For hours, my neighborhood is filled with the smell of roasting lamb and the tinkling of some foriegn instrument accompanied by lyrics in another language, on and on, never ceasing.

Every July, save for last summer, when the streets in my neighborhood were under construction, the Greek Orthodox Church on the opposite corner of my block holds the smallest, lovliest, Greek Fest. One block of the street is closed off, chairs and tables are set up, Great Dane beer is poured, and fabulous Greek food is sold: gyros, baklava, kabobs, dolmades, the most amazing spanikopita ever, and more. There is usually some sort of entertainment, and this year they had quite a loud band playing Greek music for hours. People come and go all day, and my neighborhood is full of cars and celebration and smells and music, and many of my neighbors venture out for good eats. It is the best thing, perhaps the only great thing, about my neighborhood.

I spent the majority of this weekend in my backyard, reading The Deathly Hallows, feeling the music folding over our block, embracing me like a quilt, and watching Nari grow up a little bit. I didn’t expect to finish the book this weekend, but I read much more than I had anticipated. It was much needed “home time” that we haven’t had the luxury of much this summer, and felt as though it went by just slowly enough. I could use one more day though, to finish the book and let go of any worries of accidentally encountering spoilers.  Perhaps tonight. Or tomorrow.

I don’t have children, but I read a few bloggers who do, and Angry Chicken passed this bit of children’s art along on her blog that I find immeasurably inspiring today. I may not have found it otherwise, so thanks Amy! It is also pretty relevant to me at the moment, since I’ve got a little project going on based on animals. I recently inherited a love for the color combination of gray and orange {thanks for that little obsession, Shane}, and this alphabet poster by Binth satisfies that nicely, as well as being pretty hip, cute, simple, clean, and quirky, with lovely illustrations inspired by Danish wood toys, and a nice mess of typography to boot. I especially love the Octopus. And the elephant. And we all know I love letters. Oh, you didn’t know that? I do. Almost as much as I love orange.

Countdown:  1 day and a few hours to the release of the final installment of JK Rowling’s literary phenomenon. Yes, I’m talking about Harry Potter right now.  

I, like so many others, am a rabid reader of HP. Reading really great books, especially really great books in a really great series, is like a washing machine of emotions for me. I love the anticipation, the way I see it all in my head, the tingles and laughing and crying that comes with empathizing with the characters, the finding out the crazy twist or how it will end. But I also hate the finality of it all. Each time I reach the end of a great book that I have anticipated for any length of time, that has had me twisted up in knots as I read it, I crest a wave of sadness that I will never again feel those feelings or read those words for the first time. Of course I will read it again, and pick up details that I missed the first time around, and see how the whole series fits together once it is finished, but a part of the magic is lost after you know how it will end. The first time you read the words painting the death of a loved character will never feel the same again.

I also think it is curious, the magnitude of this Harry Potter thing. Each new book creates this stir of talk, secrecy, security, excitement, theorizing, leaking of information, culminating in a mass event across the world at bookstores everywhere, where, at one past midnight people can finally take the book in their hands, read it, love it, all together. This thing unifies people of all ages in a way that is rarely seen, without war or terrorism. I don’t think something like this has happened to literature in ages.

I haven’t attended a midnight release of something since Star Wars Episode 1, when I waited in line at the theater weeks in advance for my ticket {before internet movie ticket sales}, and stayed up late into the night to experience it with a roomful of other equally excited people. I am thinking of going to the bookstore at 12:01 am on Saturday morning, though, because this is the last chance I have to experience this thing to its fullest. I likely won’t dress up, though, that is just a bit too much work for me. I just hope that my need for sleep will not end up outweighing my desire to be part of the craziness. Of course I know the book will still be there waiting for me in the morning, and I won’t get a chance to read much of it that night anyhow, but really, how often does something like this happen? Rarely.

So, for the next week I will be reading. Fervently. I know I sure don’t want to read any of it until everyone else is reading with me, in houses and coffeeshops around the world, and I don’t want to know how it ends until I get there fair and square for myself. And I think JK will kill Harry, and I will be sad if she does, but I will forgive her, because she knows what she’s doing. We shall see.