Sunday

I had an interesting day on Sunday - subbed as pianist/organist at my former church job. I found, to my embarrassment that I'm pretty out of shape musically... not a surprising discovery considering my dislike of practicing. I play the piano a fair amount at home - nothing serious... mostly just improvising and playing around with jazz harmonies. The organ has been pretty much ignored for the past year, thanks to taking care of a string of sick cats, and the organ itself being on the fritz for several months. The organ was recently repaired, and the cats are less demanding these days, so I really should get my butt back on the bench and back in shape, so as to not embarrass myself further!

After church I went out to lunch with some fun ladies I hadn't seen if far too long. We spent a couple of hours at Applebee's, gabbing and giggling, and having too much fun. I fell off my respective wagons and 1) ate some baby back ribs and curly fries, and 2) slammed back a couple of Long Island Ice Teas. I paid for my sins by feeling like crap all day yesterday, so today I'm back to the vegetarian fare and plain ole' ice tea, and, have to admit, am feeling a lot better! There's definitely a lesson to be learned (or re-learned) here.

Here's my wonderful "Auntie Betty"...

And Betty P. and Super-Fran...

Thanks Ladies... it was grand!

Mystery Quilt

I LOVE doing Mystery Quilts! Trudy, in my quilt guild, does a mystery quilt class every year, and they are totally fun! Here's my finished top from the class last Saturday. I'm working on the back right now, and hope to get it to the quilter in a couple of days. I like the pattern a lot, and it was super easy. I love these colors, but I had a terrible time making up my mind between these and some beautiful green hand-dyed fabrics I have in my stash, so, I'll probably make another quilt soon... maybe two...

Jenny

Our beloved little Jenny, the 20-year old Matriarch of our cat family, left us today. Out of nowhere, she went into convulsions last night, and never recovered. We rushed her up to the after-hours pet emergency clinic at 3:00 a.m., and they worked with her for several hours and got her stabilized, but were unable to bring her back. When the clinic closed at 8:00 this morning, we brought her back to our established caregivers at Redwood Vet Hospital here in Vallejo, where their fabulous staff of caring vets and techs spent the day monitoring and caring for her. Alas, the damage was done - both cerebral and cardiovascular - and there was no hope of ever getting her back. At 6:30 this evening, we made the impossibly difficult decision of euthanasia, and released her to cross the Rainbow Bridge and join her brothers, Boris, Michael and Josef, sister, Crystal, and special mother, Cuddles. Our grief is overwhelming, but she was our wonderful, fun and special little girl... and will live with us always.

Late Harvest

Thanks to the incredibly fabulous weather we've been having recently, the garden is still going strong, though it's beginning to look a little shabby, as well it might a week before Thanksgiving.






Yesterday was probably the swan song for the nice weather, though. Even as I type, the temperature is dropping and the winds are rising. The sky is completely clouded over and is turning darker by the minute. I just revved up the fireplace, and a crowd of cats is already gathering in front of it. I intend to join them with a book and another cup of coffee as soon as I finish here!

This morning I picked most of the veggies so they wouldn't get pounded by the rain that's been promised. For dinner, I'll fix the beans, along with some salmon, and grab a hunk of basil from the herb garden and mix it up with the tomatoes, some fresh mozzarella and spinach.

Last night's sunset was truly spectacular, and, if you can believe it, got even better after I took this picture!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

YAY! After far too many years, and Goddess knows how much haggling and negotiating, the Beatles have finally arrived at iTunes! Just in time for the Holidays! (imagine that...) Now you can buy Beatles singles for $1.29, entire albums for $12.99, or, if you want to totally blow your mind, you can get everything in the iTunes Beatles library for $149.00! I may have to restrain my husband in that last category, but I guess even I wouldn't mind that kind of splurge. I used to think the FabFour were a waste of time, but thanks to DH, I've learned to appreciate them over the years, and, after watching Sir Paul in a special broadcast on the tube the other night, I'm quickly approaching fanhood. While, in their early days, I thought they were the dorkiest looking bunch of dudes on the planet, I have to admit, they got better looking as the years passed and I began my own journey into OldFart-dom.

Ready to dive in...

Today I finished the fusing phase of one of the pieces I started at PIQF... now to get going on the stitching/quilting. I haven't done a piece like this before, and I'll be trying out my free-motion stitching chops for the first time on a Serious, Real, Live Piece! Don't have a clue what I'm going to do... to quote the Queen of Hearts, I guess I'll just "begin at the beginning and proceed until I get to the end, and then stop."

My Studio

I spent some time last week cleaning up my studio, and thought I'd take some pictures of it while it's still presentable!

Looking in from the hallway door...

Diagonal view from the loo...

My "inspiration" wall - photos, cards, ribbons, pictures, patterns - anything that grabs my eye that could become a quilt...

Some of my stash hides behind the inspiration wall...

The "entertainment center" - can't work without music! My favorites are Renaissance choral music, ambient, and jazz...

One of the design walls, holding small UFOs (unfinished objects) awaiting their fate...

Looking across the desk and into the Greenhouse In the Loo...

The Greenhouse In the Loo... the perfect atrium, and it didn't cost a penny in expensive additions!

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Is it REALLY November???

It was in the mid 70s today, sunny, warm, balmy, beautiful clouds in the sky - an altogether lovely day. It still feels almost too warm to be true... I was just outside in shorts and a tee, and it was entirely pleasant. This can't last... so I'm glad I was able to enjoy it today - out and about running errands and even goofing off a little!

I haven't seen clouds like these in ages - they changed every few seconds... it was quite a show!


I made a jug of sun tea...

The sunset about knocked my socks off...!
Some peppers and strawberries are arriving late on the scene, and probably won't make it to maturity... but they're trying!

Messiah Sing Along

What a great way to kick off the Holiday Season! This festive event features a professional orchestra and soloists, conducted by Vallejo's own fabulous Kristy Juliano, and YOU (and scores of other Messiah-lovers) singing in the chorus! Due to problems with the former sponsor, the event didn't happen last year, but it's been resurrected by Norman Ortiz, Music Director at First Presbyterian Church of Vallejo, and is now poised to fill your soul with glorious music and propel you into the Holidays!

It's all happening on Sunday, December 5, 2010, at 6:00 p.m. (doors open at 5:00) at First Presbyterian Church of Vallejo, 1350 Amador Street at the corner of Nebraska (across from Vallejo Junior and Senior High Schools). Tickets are $15, and can be purchased in advance from the church, 707-644-4414, or at the door on the night of the event.

Elvis - Cat of the Week

He was only three weeks old, barely able to walk, scared out of his wits, cold, hungry, filthy dirty, crying pathetically, stranded in the enormous parking lot of a local Safeway... no place for a tiny little furball to be on his own. Fortunately, the vet hospital was right across the street, and one of the techs on her way to a coffee break found him. We showed up the next day with one of our cats, heard his story, took one look at him, and said, "We'll take him...!" We brought him home, bottle fed him for a couple of weeks, held him nearly constantly for several days before he finally stopped trembling, and more days later, finally heard him purr. He grew up and out, got real fluffy, learned that fingers make great chew-toys, and, somewhere along the line, developed a fun, if somewhat irascible personality. He loves attention, having his head scratched, sleeping in our laps and being underfoot. He does fun, silly stuff, is constantly on the wrong side of a closed door, eats everything put in front of him, then tries to steal everyone else's food and treats, and windmills, screams bloody murder, hisses, bites and scratches if you try to pick him up when he doesn't want to be picked up. He ambushes and chases Sarah from one end of the house to the other, then beats the crap out of her when he catches her (or she allows him to catch her), whereupon they pummel each other, screeching and growling and sending fur flying in all directions. Five minutes later they curl up on the futon in a tight kitty embrace and sleep for hours. He's been with us for almost eight years and we never know what to expect from him. All in all, a very interesting and challenging kid, and we love him to bits!

He can be very laid back...


Inelegant...

Silly...

Intense...

An opportunist...

And all cat...

Ready for class...NOT!

Tomorrow is my Chicken Quilt class, and, as usual (alas), I'm totally unprepared. Well, maybe not totally... I DID get the fabric washed. There's a shitload of pre-cutting, though, and it's just not gonna get done before 9:00 tomorrow morning! Fortunately, this is a Guild class, and didn't cost an arm and a leg, and, additionally, is being taught by two excellent teachers who always prepare copious and crystal clear notes, and whom I can call, e-mail, or otherwise bug, if I need help. So I should be able to figure things out, even if it IS a "traditional" quilt! (Hey... I haven't made one of those in at least three years.) Look for chickens in my future...!

Lukachukai

My NeoWORX counter informed me this morning I'd had a visitor from Lukachukai USA. For whatever reason, the counter only supplies city and country names, but not state names, so I'm always diving onto Google to try to figure out where a US town is. I thought this one sounded Hawaiian, but was surprised to learn it's over 7000 feet high in NE Arizona, in the heart of the Navajo Nation. There were plenty of pictures available, so I thought I'd include a few here. It's a beautiful area, though I'm sure the weather extremes are nothing I'd care to experience. Here are the Lukachukai Mountains to the east of town...


And here is what is politely referred to as "Mid-town" Lukachukai...


I must say the population density appeals to my isolationist/hermit predilections - the population of the area is less than 2,000 - that's roughly 70 souls per square mile, as opposed to the over 3700 bodies per square mile here in Vallejo! The beautiful scenery would definitely inspire me to make a few landscape quilts, and maybe even take up fabric painting...

Two more from the SAQA auction...

These two quilts were purchased during the third and last week of this year's auction. They arrived while I was at PIQF, so I'm only just now getting around to showing them off. I absolutely love their colors!


This piece is by Carol Churchill, an art quilter who lives in Signal Hill, CA, an enclave, or "city within a city", in that it's completely surrounded by the city of Long Beach, which happens to be my hometown. In addition to it's eye-popping colors, it's encrusted with beads, glitz and dense quilting, and I love it!!


By Diane Carver, this is a whole cloth work that's been painted and quilted. I was unable to find any websites that linked me directly to Diane, so her life and work are a mystery to me. At least I have this little piece of her with it's vibrant colors... it sings!

Goodbye, Yoda

Unfortunately, while I was away last week, it fell upon my husband to take Yoda to the vet for his final visit. I'm so sorry I was unable to be with him on his last journey, but he took a sudden turn for the worse, and Martin and I agreed it would be heartless to make him wait until I got home. So, he's gone, and the house is a little emptier now. I miss him very much... no more bed time snuggling, and waking up to find him purring in my ear, and receiving that blast of kitty morning-mouth in my face as he greeted me. He was so loving and seemed so appreciative of our attention. I'm grateful we were able to rescue him when we did, and make his senior years a little easier than the early ones. Thanks for everything, Old Man...

More favorites from PIQF...

I wanted to post a few more pictures of quilts from the show. I wish I had a better camera, as well as the time and software to publish many more photos. In fact... I'd love to shoot the entire show and put it all on a CD, with information about each quilt and artist, but, if I did that, I wouldn't have time to make any quilts of my own. So, here are a dozen more to give you another shot of eye candy before I wrap up my PIQF report. As should be obvious, my preference is for art quilts and pictorial pieces. To give credit where it's due, there were some absolutely astounding traditional quilts in the show, but, while I admire the time and workmanship that goes into them, they just don't do much for me, so I seldom photograph them.

Wonderful quilting in this one, but it's quite invisible here. ~8>(

Interesting 3-D effect.

More adorable animals.

Gorgeous Japanese fabrics.

Look at the embellishments!!

Detail of above.

Good example of thinking outside the box (or border).

Beautiful colors, fabulous curves!

Detail of above.

I LOVE black and white pieces! (Though I can't believe this got hung on a black background...)

More great color.

IMO, the piece de resistance of the show. This one has everything... color, black & white, curves, and bling, bling, bling, with embellishment in the form of a mind-boggling 55,000, that's fifty-five THOUSAND Swarovski crystals. It was drop-dead beautiul... just ALIVE with light and color. Fortunately, it was one of the last quilts I viewed... what could follow this???!!!