What a week!

This was an anniversary week. It's been twenty years since I left corporate America to do art full time and earn a living at it. The good news is that it worked - I've never been a starving artist - and I have had a wonderful time in these years.

My first bunch of years was spent doing calligraphy full time and lots of craft shows up and down the East Coast. I had some specialty items that were custom orders and led me to meet many wonderful families. Along the way, I added watercolor painting to my lettering and sold paintings as well. Then this voice kept saying 'paint large,  on canvas with acrylics'. Even  though I put a lot of energy into resisting, I finally began that new chapter of making huge paintings in the shape of tapestries.

Then I moved to the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland and joined some women who gathered each week in the local quilting shop.  I was crocheting blankets for Project Linus as they sewed and quilted. And then I got hooked ... as they say, the rest is history. I returned to my first love - fabric.

I had intended to celebrate this anniversary somehow, but on Tuesday afternoon I turned and bent in the wrong way trying to help Bella and Shazamm! my lower back  went into a horrible spasm that has taken over the week. Knowing this was muscular, I saw my acupuncturist and got some relief. Since then, I've slept a lot and have just had to take care of me by going slowly. Today I have been vertical without pain, but still get tired quickly. All my plans of sewing has been put on hold.

Sometimes, we just have to go with the flow and pay attention to what is happening in our bodies.

I sure hope that I can do something tomorrow. I am bored with doing nothing.

Karen

easy stippling

I finished quilting one of the angels today and had some fun playing with stippling. I often procrastinate trying to come up with new quilting designs and try to avoid stippling again. But the ladybugs in the outer border seemed to call for stippling. It was an easy way to get the border done and not get caught up in my usual OCD quilting. I used the spaces between the ladybugs for the zooming around and found it fast. It occurred to me that a design like this could be a teaching tool - to quilt around shapes and not overdo it.



And the ladybugs seem to stand out. Now, it's time to put some binding on the quilt.

Karen



a walk in the woods

Spring called me to go to the woods for a walk today. There's a county nature center close by that has several trails. On the way there, I passed many gardens full of daffodils and hyacinth and wild bright forsythia. I love forsythia that is wild, not trimmed and shaped like a boxwood. Its yellow screams 'notice me, it's spring again'!

As soon as I got out of my car, I could hear the peepers at the pond and even some bullfrogs wanting to be noticed. Peepers are small chorus frogs that get very noisy when the weather warms. I enjoy driving with the window open and smile with delight every time I hear their spring symphony.

The path still looked a lot like winter - very little new growth yet. I was struck by these leaves in one of the marsh areas.

On the way home, I stopped to buy some daffodils to bring that delightful yellow inside. They are just starting to open up very slowly.

Take time to feed your soul with the delights of spring and drink in the sunshine.

Karen

Two more things

Spring has come early here in the Mid-Atlantic with temps in the 70's yesterday. Bella and I spent most of the day outside. She was thrilled to swing and go down her slide and just be outside. Then we got out the bubbles and she was sooooo happy. We blew bubbles for an hour, exhausting one container. Each time she filled the wand, she'd whisper to me 'a big one?' and puff away. She did not mind getting soaked from the drips at all. Life is good through the eyes and soul of a three-year-old! As I watched the bubbles float through the air, I starting thinking about how I could create that image with fabric. Maybe tulle or organza. Hmmm.

Spring also brought some good fortune for a local artist. While I was visiting the local arts council, a patron purchased Fernando Alvarez's onions (see an earlier post). I was so happy to see those luscious onions go to a new home. Happy for him.

What is spring saying to you?

Karen

Something old, something new

When I graduated from high school in 1963, I was going to business school while working full time at a medical center. Singer was advertising their newest line of sewing machines called Touch And Sew. It had stitches and was easier to use than the older one in our house. I had to have one. I traded in my mother's older Singer and had the delivery man install it in the old cabinet. My mother was not happy with me. I am not sure why since she never used that older machine, not even once. I just wanted that new machine and a trade-in made it more affordable, as did the monthly payment plan with the coupon book (remember those). The bobbin sat horizontally under the needle and was wound through the needle. Really cool. And it had many built-in stitches and cogs for more stitches. I was thrilled with that machine. Over the years, I made hundreds of items with it - clothing, toys, bazaar items, prom and wedding dresses, costumes and my first quilt. When I began quilting in 2005, I put that machine through its paces in a new way, even buying a walking foot and free motion foot. Then I met a Janome 6600 and fell in love again. I had to have it. It hummed a new tune as I began my new love of quilting My Singer sat in a corner of my workroom except when Abigail came to Camp Mimi and was learning to sew. Since she and I were focusing on clothing items, I taught her how to use my Singer. It is probably more of a clothing machine than a quilting friend. When I moved to my current home, I decided it was time to pass the Singer on to Abigail, but some flooding problems in her home kept us from setting up the Singer for use and it sat in an unheated garage for a year and a half. Finally, this past Saturday, I reunited with my Singer. I was a bit concerned that the cold storage may have harmed it, but was relieved when I opened up the bottom to oil and lubricate it and saw it looked just fine, a bit dusty, but fine. I remembered what Mr. Olin had told me when he did the only repair it needed in all those years -- that this machine had all metal parts and could last forever. I dusted, oiled and lubricated my old friend, then plugged it in for a test. After a very, very brief sigh, the Singer came to life and hummed along stitching on some scraps. My friend is ready for a new life with Abigail. I am happy to pass this on to her, sensing she will love sewing as I do.

I returned home to continue working on my new angels. Time for FMQing. Time to try something new. I like to 'play' on quilts I make for Project Linus. I practice new quilting designs and just have fun. After all, I don't think any of the children who receive Linus blankets belong to the quilt police or notice that my FMQ stitches are not perfect. I noticed that Mary Lou Weidman had used the feather motif in the wings of her angel featured in her book. So, I took a deep breath, cheated by using a blue pen to draw the design, and started 'feathering'. It worked. I learned a NEW thing!. About time. Here's a photo. I may even try them without drawing first in the large border. Maybe...

How do you celebrate something old and something new?

Karen

A bit of this, a bit of that

This is a bit of catch-up tonight. This week has been busy, car stuff, starting a retreat, sewing some angels, and just plain catching up on life stuff.

First, just a short bit ago, the moon rose. It was full last night, but clouds kept it out of sight. Tonight is clear and the moon rose like an orange ball on fire. As it rose above the horizon, it began to change color to its usual buttery yellow. So glad I got to see the orange. Just gorgeous! I always try to catch the full moon - there's a special energy around that rising.

A couple weeks ago, I blogged about an exhibit at our local arts council and promised I'd get back with photos of one artist's work. Here are two from Fernando Alvarez, an artist from Columbia. These are alive, vibrant and sensuous, just as he is. Enjoy. (The exhibit was at the Carroll County Arts Council.)

I've been shifting gears since the ACC show. As I get in this phase, I like to do fun things to recharge my energy and focus for new work. So, I pulled out Mary Lou Wiedman's latest book, Out of the Box with Easy Blocks, and made another cow and two angels. These will all go to Project Linus when complete. First, I need to embroider some eyes and a mouth on each, but wanted to share them today.

What helps you recharge your batteries?

Karen

What is success?

So, what is success? I have been struggling with to define it  since the ACC show ended. I had a lot of hopes for that show. I had focused a lot of energy on it. Now it is over and I am switching gears and have been processing the outcome of the show and how I have responded to that outcome.

A couple friends congratulated me on my success at the show. I probably responded to them not nicely, because I did not feel successful. Their comments and my response to them stopped me in my tracks, so to speak, and called me to examine this thing called success.

Is success the achievement of a goal? Is it accomplishing something that one has wanted to do, such as a bucket list item? Is it something purely internal, perhaps defined in personal terms and not always measurable? Is there a spiritual aspect to success?

If I use accomplishment as the only criteria for success, then "doing" that show and being there was a success. But (there's always a but), participating in a craft show brings the desire to sell one's wares and make money, to make a profit over expenses. In our culture, that would be the only measure of success at a craft show. Using that measure, my show experience was not a success. And it is too easy to fall into the trap of that cultural view. That view can easily lead to negativity and unhealthy reflections on one's self and can be self-destructive. Not what I want.

As I have struggled with all this for the past few days, I have heard echoes from my past, of my own voice as I taught The Artist's Way to many, echoes of how creative people deal with disappointment and failure. Studies (those infamous authorities) have shown that highly creative people are able to reframe failures, to turn them around, and to view them differently to be able to feed the future in a positive way. Well, I am pretty creative and I've been listening to what I teach. I cannot change the monetary results of the show, but I can and I must change my recollection of this past weekend.

It would be wonderful if I had a video of all the visitors to my booth this past weekend so that I could replay our interactions and hear and see what happened. With a booth filled with quilts, I attracted many quilters who admired my work and wanted to know more about what I do and how I work. We talked about about colors and fabrics, about my hand dyed fabrics, about free motion quilting, about design, about the need for a design wall, about inspiration and about the need to practice and to JUST DO IT a lot. I talked, I shared and I listened. I was present to those people and I enjoyed myself.

There is something about being in the right place at the right time, maybe for reasons we don't plan or realize for a while. I believe that was my success this past weekend - to be there for others. That might sound loftly, but it feels right to me.

How do you define success?

Karen