Prickly Pear Bloom

It was raining, now it is gray, and I am covered in flour. A fourth batch of buns is rising. Whole wheat. Pad thai is on the way, as is more rain. The thoughts, they run fitfully through my head. Like a floral wreath topped, long haired, dewy eyed hippie chick running through fields of summer grass, flies floating on the air among gossamer webs. Like two lovers running into each other’s arms after being apart for seemingly endless days. I can hardly catch them all, they run so fast. Here are some:

I only seem to want to eat rice lately. Buttered white rice, with salt. Totally digging pinstriped pants, even if they don’t fit. All I can think about is painting. It’s what I want to be doing every minute of the day. But I have a list of other things to do, which includes cleaning the office/studio so that there is a place for guests to sleep on Saturday night, which means probably no painting will get done until after that. I want to do some encaustic paintings, the feel of wax is calling me. I am out of practice with that, so it will be experimental. Couscous, artichoke hearts, roasted zucchini, olives, feta, onion, garlic. Frames, hanging art. I know there are sea urchins around here somewhere, carried back ohsocarefully from Florida last spring. But where are they? I must find them. I keep putting off ordering film for the Polaroid Spectra. Ok, there. Now I can use those two that are left in the camera without freaking out that I have no film left. Wondering how I will sew in the couple of fabric pieces, mending the X quilt that I brought home a couple of weeks ago? I want the stitches to show as little as possible, yet I’ll basically be sewing inside in, as opposed to inside out as I’m used to. Maybe I’ll try an applique method I read about yesterday, reinforcing the fabric with muslin, then turning rightside out and ironing to get the seam allowance set, and stitching in from there…? Back to yearning to paint. But sleep is important too, I haven’t been giving myself enough of it.

Can you guess what the worst time to go grocery shopping is? 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night. Oh, it may seem great, since hardly anyone is there bumping their shopping carts into you and standing in the middle of the aisle and all of those other annoying things people do at the supermarket. But when you’re tired after a long day and you just want to go to bed and you still need to blog and you can’t find the couscous or kalamata olives, the grocery store is not the best place for you. But, oh well.

Peanut Butter cookies make it okay again. Here, have a cookie.

This weekend was grand. I got a ton of things accomplished, and managed to do a little bit of relaxing also. I’m pretty proud.

I went for a 4 mile run on Sunday morning, and then went to cheer on the runners in the Madison Marathon two blocks from my house. I didn’t get a cowbell, but hot damn, next time I will have one!

Framed almost all of the frameable art that we own, as well as finally printed some photographs that I’ve been meaning to print, and wandered around the house for a number of hours putting the majority of it on the walls. Well, showing The Husband where it should go. He put most of it up. Thanks, honey! There’s still the big wall next to the stairs left to do this week. But it already feels more like home now. And now all I want to do is run around and take pictures of the framed pictures. Is that ridiculous? It’s glorious.

Made three batches of dinner rolls from Sarah’s recipe, in preparation for a housewarming party this coming weekend. Yeah, I’m that girl. The one that makes rolls from scratch for a big party instead of buying them. But they are easy! And I have so much pride in making things myself. By the third round, I didn’t have to look at the measurements anymore, I knew them by heart.

Sat on the porch as 65 degrees turned to 75 degrees, feeling the urge to maybe walk around in the sun, but lacking the motivation to leave the perfectly blissful spot that we were sitting.

Drinking warm frascati on a warm day really reminded us of Rome. Vividly.

Finished quilting the little quilt. Contemplated the uncharted territory of binding. Still contemplating.

Cleaned. And cleaned. And some more. It’s funny, when you clean in expectation of houseguests, but then the houseguests don’t arrive due to unfortunate, unexpected circumstances, you then gaze around your house and yearn for someone to come over. Anyone. To share in the cleanliness. I called around, inviting friends over for dinner, but everyone was busy. So it turned out that our neighbors, who we’ve been wanting to get to know better, came over to have some drinks with us. I still missed my houseguest, but it all worked out.

Painted. Started working on bloom, and also a little deconstructed landscape color field painting. So far my tally of paint tubes that are unable to be opened is only one. Prussian Blue. One of my favorites. So I’ll be getting a new one tonight. But one out of eight that I’ve tried so far isn’t too bad, considering they’d been sitting there for a number of years.

Week 21 . Meditate Project

See it larger here.

A little early this week. Because I needed a little meditation today. And also because although this weekend is going to be a long one, four days long for me, in fact, it will also a busy one. I’m taking tomorrow off to do some things, and I’ll be celebrating my anniversary, as almost a year ago I married my best friend on the beach. There is also a high school graduation party to attend to the west, and a friend is coming to town to run a half marathon and stay with us for an evening. So, I haven’t decided how much I will be around this space in the next few days. I may peek in with a pretty picture or two, it’s hard for me to stay away after all. And I’ve got more parrot tulips to share, because I love them that much. Or I may take a longer break until after Monday’s holiday, to give attention to my love and my friends and my family. And myself. I hope you don’t mind.

The Husband and I have spent many of our recent days and evenings out on our screened in front porch. Sometimes with friends, eating amazing food around our little table, gathered on the couch and chairs and drinking and telling stories and laughing. Sometimes just the two of us, sharing each other’s company, wrapped in a blanket, watching the world go by. Sometimes we’ve each been out there on our own, too, reading, working, blogging, drinking. Being.

When I told him a few years ago that I dreamt of having a home with a big screened front porch, he said something to the effect of, “That’s nice honey.” and went his merry way onto some other subject, like granite countertops or something. He never cared much for the idea, figured if we found the right place and it happened to have one, then good for me, I’d be a happy camper. But I don’t believe he ever planned to go out of his way to aquire such a thing. He’s a backyard guy. You know. Grillin’, playing with the dog, secluded away in your own little green grass yard out-back-the-house. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good backyard as much as he does. But I think he thought the whole screened front porch thing was a little too, how you say… - public? Privacy is our preference, usually.

But it is fairly private. There are wispy curtains that, when pulled, pretty much block most people outside from noticing us out there, unless we are talking or making noise. Now that the weather’s been nice enough to spend time out there, he’s enamoured with it. As much as I always was with just the idea. He loves it, and so do I. And so does the dog. And it makes our home feel so much bigger, because it’s really another room that we haven’t been using for the past few months.

We’ve witnessed an awakening of our neighborhood from that porch. Of course, there’s the people out walking their dogs, running, biking. A couple doors down, a houseful of college kids spends their time out on their own porch, too. I can usually see them out there, chillin’, having some brews. They play sack toss and bolo toss in the sidewalk. Sometimes they’re quiet, like a Friday night when it was drippy raining, and sometimes they whoop it up party til who knows when, like the night after. Another neighbor was taking their new baby girl for a walk one sunny afternoon, and we tripped out the front porch door to meet them. We can hear the lions at the zoo roar in the morning, if we’re lucky, which is really surreal. Like we are in the African plains, only without the danger. One night, at the two flat house across the street, dude downstairs and chick upstairs started having a conversation between their porch floors. “Whatcha doing?” she called. “Bloggin’,” he answered. I smiled to myself, because that’s exactly what I was doing on my side of the street. They chatted for a bit, and then The Husband got up and took a piece of mail that had been misdelivered to us over to Brianna. Dusty offered him a beer, and after awhile, I finished up and brought myself over there to meet them, too. Dave Matthews Band floats down from her window sometimes, and makes me smile. She’s a fan, and one who’d noticed my DMB reference license plate.

I love the vibe of this neighborhood. The college kids mixed with the established homeowners. The partying with the laid back. The kids. The beer cans. The zoo. And we knew it was all here, but now that the porch is open, we are more aware of it. I am so looking forward to many more days and nights out there. And photo shoots, because that’s where I get the best light in this place. The porch.

I “finished” this Mr. Bunny this weekend, started AND finished on Sunday actually, which will be a gift for a friend’s daughter who has a birthday coming up. I made the normal four limbs for him, but then determined that due to proportion, only the arms could be attached via machine, and so I altered course and hand sewed a gusset to the bottom of his body to give it a little more dimension. He’s therefore become Giganto Arm Bunny, and would fit in nicely with the circus sideshow, don’t you think? Maybe he needs a bearded lady bunny friend and a lion to keep him company?

Now that I’ve had a couple of days to reflect, though, he would look nice with those legs, and I am contemplating sewing them on by hand. I know that if I do, he will lose a little bit of the charm that I think he has as the bunny with no legs. I also am concerned that the young american gladiator could totally rip those hand attached legs straight off if given half a mind. But, maybe she won’t. So, I am still undecided on this issue.

I’ve finished piecing the top to a very small baby quilt as well, for a little girl that should be showing up any day now, in fact. It’s about 3 feet square, and I would think it could be used as a floor blanket for the little one, perhaps to snuggle with in the crib, and later maybe to be drug around the house and named Blankie? That’s my hope, at least. Probably, this size is much more appropriate as a starting point for a person who’s never quilted a full blanket, rather than jumping in head first to that larger, throw size quilt as I did a year ago, which is as yet still unfinished and staring at me accusingly from across the room. So, I picked up some pink polka dot flannel today and my aim is to baste this little blanket and quilt it this week, and get a binding on it before summer solstice. Sooner would be even better. I’ll tell you more about it when I’ve finished it. I hope.

The Husband is such a ROCK STAR. He laid 3000 pounds of flagstone for our new backyard patio a little over a week ago, with only a tiny bit of help from me. Well, I helped enough to still be sore 3 days later, but really, he did most of it. AND he built two new raised beds for our garden, finished this weekend. I’m so lucky he married me. They look awesome, they make our backyard feel like OURS, and the space back there is starting to come together and look like a really nice, usable yard. I can’t wait to have a fire in the firebowl and chill out on the patio and gaze at the tomatoes.

I planted under threat of impending rain this weekend, seeds for pumpkin and carrots and green onion and all manner of greens that my father sent me for Christmas from the Pacific Northwest, including broccoli rabe and swiss chard. Woo! Exciting. NOT for bunnies. I’m nervous about that, in this new ‘hood. The carrots are a new venture for me, I’ve never grown them, and the pumpkin is just because I SO loved having the volunteer pumpkin last year. I also put in a roma tomato, and the heirloom tomato seedlings will go in in a couple of weeks. They still need some time to acclimate to the stresses of the outdoors.

The fleeting lilacs are almost done, so here’s a sniff. That’s spring, right there in a purple package.

Week 20 . Meditate Project

See it larger here.

First and foremost, thank you all so much for your encouraging words about my wordplay pieces yesterday. If I didn’t get a chance to respond to you directly, please know that I appreciate every single word. I felt sort of bad for putting off working on it for so long, starting it the day before I was planning to share it, but it just goes to show sometimes things just fall into place. And I am so glad that you liked it.

It’s funny to me, I procrastinated like a pro on gossamer, yet with bloom on deck now, and with this urge to paint I’m having, I’ve got ideas swirling and ready to pop out and I think I might work on it this weekend! So hopefully, this time, I will have some peeks to share before Erin and Emily and I reveal our next wordplay interpretations on 6.30.

Also, if you could send me some sewing mojo, I could use it, as I also really need to get crackin’ on a couple of gifts for some sweet little ones. Many thanks!

gos·sa·mer [gos-uh-mer]
–noun
:: a fine, filmy cobweb seen on grass or bushes or floating in the air in calm weather, esp. in autumn.
:: something extremely light, flimsy, or delicate.

I’ll admit it right now. There have been no peeks into my progress on the first round of Wordplay, gossamer, because there had been no progress up until the very. last. minute. Don’t get me wrong, I thought about it and thought about it, everyday, for six weeks. Thought and wrote and thought and sketched and thought some more. I had a vision in my mind, but didn’t know the road to take to get there. It was like the map was all folded up wrong in my head.

I had fully intended, from the moment I opened up Shari’s note and the pink paint chip with the word “gossamer” in typed letters affixed fell out, to make this another gocco project. I wanted to commit myself to a medium, but then the days ticked by, and it just didn’t feel right, somehow. I found myself doodling long, overlapping strands, wispy threads, and thinking about how the light hits the window, and falls through tree branches, and illuminates things from behind. I spent six weeks of spring noticing. And then I started thinking about painting.

Then, a couple of days ago, something happened to me. I found a road to follow. And that road led me to another road. And suddenly I had more than one place I wanted to go with this.

My first piece, the idea that has been in my head since very near the beginning, started with an image I was lucky enough to encounter in my backyard a couple of weeks ago. Late afternoon sun was shining through the new red leaves of this bush, which is unfortunately now gone from my life. I was frantic to capture this fleeting moment, before that waning light disappeared. You know how fickle light can be.

This light whispered “gossamer” in my ear, I imagined strands of gossamer as strands of light, and I wanted to build on this image somehow. I printed it on watercolor paper, which soaked up the ink in a darkish, slightly insane, but totally expected way when you really think about it. That’s what watercolor paper is meant to do, after all. Soak. So anyway, I didn’t want it quite as dark as it was, so I adjusted it in Photoshop to lighten it, and printed it again. Perfect. Light and red and warm and it felt like I could swirl the sunlight around in my mouth like a good wine. Just what I wanted. Then I painted a bunch of gel medium over it, which loosened the ink ever so slightly and made it feel like a hot, blurry autumn afternoon, and lay strands of thread over the image, twisting and overlapping, hanging off the edges, multiple layers, floating above and below, suspended in layers of transparent paint. Over that, I painted thin strokes of oil paint, white, yellow, some brown, freeform and floating. I thought about mounting the print directly on a small square block of wood before applying the layers of paint and thread, sanding down the edges to give it a worn look, but I couldn’t find a piece of wood to my liking. So it is just a wavy paper sculpture at the moment, which lends to the delicate, flimsy definition of the word gossamer anyway. I think it would work mounted slightly raised from a board.

This inspiration took hold, though, and I began these additional, and unfinished, pieces in what I hope to be a small series. I was so motivated to start working in oil paint again, that I wanted to translate some of the feeling of the paper sculpture into a painting as well. I laid down a color field on small canvas, with just a hint of a figure/ground shape suggested by color and brushstrokes. Pebbles, of course, because I can’t get them off of my mind. I intend to lay threads over this as well, and build up a few layers, and perhaps coat it with wax.

I used to make big oil paintings combined with screenprinting, but It has been AWHILE since I’ve really painted. I just don’t feel that I have the right space to dedicate to large scale oil painting, nor the time that I would love to commit to it. I did a little acrylic painting for an illustration assignment a few weeks ago, but wasn’t pleased with the final result. It fit the bill, but as a personal work, I plan to paint over it in oil, which I just haven’t gotten around to yet. I am not a huge fan of working with acrylic, I much prefer the way oil paint mixes and reflects light and color.

So when I decided that I was going to bring my box of oil paint up from the basement and pour myself a jar of paint thinner, I was excited. And that first dip of the brush into paint, the smell of turpenoid, the feel of the oil on the canvas - oh it made me happy. So happy. I really, REALLY want to start making little oil paintings, to get back in the saddle. And I feel like that’s something that I have the space and the time for. Because they’re just little guys. And now, I have some inspiration, this combination of paint and thread. My head is full of all kinds of directions I feel like I could go with this, and that is exciting.

Gossamer was hard. A challenge, indeed. But it is so great to see what Emily and Erin interpreted in it. The next word arrived in the mail today from an artist for whom I have so much respect: bloom. Awesome.

So, I have a thing about blankets. I have a collection of them. I love them. I love to make them, and I love old vintage ones that someone else’s hands made. I love to cuddle underneath them, and curl up with them, and look at them, and pet them fondly. There’s little that’s better than a nice blanket, in my book.

So when The Husband returned from an excursion to his grandmother’s home to move some things, he walked in holding a vintage blue and white floral quilt and asked if I wanted it. Of course I said yes. I’m so happy to have something beautiful of hers in my home.

I’ve also been a manic garage saler in the last couple of weeks. You know how it is, with all the researching and trying to get there early to find the good stuff that goes into serious garage saling. It’s more work than I usually put in to it. I have come home with a few cool things, including that polaroid spectra, some fabric, a vintage fan to join one that we’ve owned for a few years, and some doilies that I have some ideas for. What I’ve really been looking for, though, is vintage quilts. I took last Friday off, for various reasons, and went out hunting, thinking since it was Friday, I might have better luck finding those things that usually get snatched up immediately. Well, one that I went to started on THURSDAY, and he’d sold the quilt he’d advertised, of course. Man, the working folk don’t get many chances to score the cool early stuff.

I went to visit my mom on mothers day, and she and my grandmother and I took a bit of mamma-daughter time together at a really cool antique store in my hometown. I bet my mom never thought I’d be the one suggesting we go antiquing together. I remember going in there with her when I was little and being so bored. But now? Oh my, I wanted to just sit down, put down roots and live in that place. So many vintage jars and mixing bowls and red wing crocks and glassware. Yum. Have I ever told you I have a soft spot for jars? That’s probably a whole other story though. It drives The Husband insane.

Anyway, a couple of beauties came home with me. My grandmother purchased the lightweight yellow X pattern quilt as a housewarming gift for us. There are a couple of blocks that need small pieces of fabric replaced, and probably a binding to help with a torn edge, which I plan to do by hand as carefully and mindfully as possible with some fabric from my stash that hopefully will blend well with the beautiful vintage fabrics already in the quilt. I’m a little hesitant to add a binding, only because I hate to add something major that the original maker didn’t include, but if I don’t, the edge that is torn will just get worse. How do you all feel about mending/adjusting vintage quilts like that?

I’m usually not partial to loud quilts, and this one is a little busy, but oh my, the vintage fabrics in it are just delicious. I wish I could show you all of the lovely bits, but that would end up being a ridiculous wall of pictures. This lovely thing totally reminded me of Erin when I picked it up, who happens to be making this pattern right now, and I kind of feel even more connected to her now that I have a vintage version of this quilt. Hey, girl, how’s that X quilt going, anyhow?

The graphic red and white quilt is just. so. cool. A bit smaller, lightweight, and in such great condition, I think it’s going to be an addition to our growing collection of cuddle-on-the-couch blankets. In fact, I hung out with it on the porch last night. Perfect for spring snuggling. It’s all hand stitched and hand quilted, and I can just feel the creativity and love in every one of those minute stitches. The pattern of it is so contemporary, it reminds me of watermelon seeds, or Memorial Union terrace chairs. It just makes sense in our home, in every way.

So, now I think my search for vintage quilts is at an end, for now, at least.