'Mixed Media Quilts' show

When I got home, I found this link in my email that Martha Sielman kindly sent me. 'Mixed Media Quilts' would shock and amaze Grandma is a great review of a show in Guilford, Connecticut that I'm in right now.

I love what Judy Birke said about my work:
A couple of whimsical pieces catch one’s attention. Pam Rubert’s "Mysterious Migration of Miscellaneous Objects" is a colorful, entertaining cartoon-like stitched quilt with an appealing narrative and openness and a charming homespun quality.

Hodge Podge Day

It's been a crazy multi-tasking day, and I've got lots of photos to prove it. I ought to save some or break this up, but don't know how...

Took lots of photos of the sculpture as it's being dismantled and prepared to take to North Carolina. I'm learning to use Russ's new digital Canon so that I won't look like a total dork with it on site. Hopefully tomorrow I can post more of the photos on a new secret blog I had Russ set up for me in one of my maniac moments.

Finished up the cover and insides of my portfolio to submit to the gallery we're jurying at tonight. I know I showed you the drawings, but here it is in real life. I know lots of artists make super cool handmade things, but I don't have time so I just went to my friendly Staples and found these neat binders.

You can easily add, or in my case, remove the extra pages. Rebecca said submit 10-20 images, and I had trouble coming up with ten. But I wanted the work to look cohesive and not disjointed, like it would all go together in a room, so I was selective.

Another thing, I rethought my descriptions of each piece since this is an art gallery and not a quilt show. I decided I really didn't like "machine quilting" that I had been using to decribe my stuff, because I think it sounds like a machine did it. The machine didn't do it, I did. Does an artist who works in wood or metal describe what kind of band-saw or welder they use to describe their work? Not too often.

Finally I decided on these type of descriptions: layers of cotton fabric, digital prints, and photo transfers stitched with cotton and rayon thread. What do you think?

I didn't want to mess around writing a full resume, so I just listed my recent exhibition history. Hah, it's all recent anyway because I only started entering shows last year. Was feeling pretty good at this point, you should try this. Even if you don't need to submit one, it just feels nice to have a printed portfolio you can clutch in your hands.

Printed out my new card design. Was thinking I was pretty clever figuring out how to print on these spiffy Avery business card forms. The purple backgrounds are bigger than the card form, so when I punch them out, the color goes all the way to the edge. Except I only get half as many cards this way (5 on a sheet of 10).

And except after I punched them out, I thought, You idiot! Who makes their name so HUGE on a business card? You look like a total egomaniac. I admit I think artists need to play up their name a lot, but really I did get carried away with that typography. Back to the drawing board...

Then I felt stupid again when I got to the gallery, because after all that I totally forgot to bring my portfolio. But actually we were late because I could barely drag Russ away from the studio where he's working so hard to get ready to leave for NC. All the student work was waiting for us, and isn't the gallery nice? I love that polished concrete floor.

This was one of my favorites. It's called "Skirted" by Megan Brown, it's made on a background of paper that comes in dress-making patterns. Pink dot means it's in.

Two more fantastic pieces. The front mobile is made with Barbie doll parts inside little decorated frames called "What's Your Frame of Mind" by Laura Sapa.

The sculpture behind the Barbie mobile was made with little pill bottles and nails. It's called "Pilgrimage to Purity" by Kurt Brethauer. I love it when people make amazing things with ordinary objects.

Here's Russ joking around with Todd Lowry who asked us to jury the student show. Todd's a groovy painter, manager of the gallery this year, and happened to have a blue tongue from eating blue Peeps this evening.

Blogger on the Naughty Stool

Blogger was acting very stinky to me this morning and wouldn't let me post comments. So go sit on the Naughty Stool!

Has anyone else been watching Super Nanny? She makes bad kids sit on the Naughty Stool one minute for each of their years--so three years old equals three minutes, etc. Hmmm, I was trying to meditate this morning at yoga class, and I realized I could hardly sit 20 minutes, much less all my years in minutes.

Twilight M Zone

Since Susan asked, I thought I better expound on the situation, except that I don't really know anything new. I go in on Friday for another ultrasound for the doctor to "make a comparison" which I think is secret code for "checking to see if anything's growing" besides just my stomach.

Which is coming along nicely, thank you. My body is just happily chugging along, and you'd think that after all those other pgs, I'd be used to this by now, but I still can't help feeling like I've crash landed on another planet, and an alien has taken my body hostage.

Right now I'm in twilight zone between maternity clothes and the next-size-up. Part of the problem is that in between each time this has happened, I lose less than I gained and so the next size up is really THE NEXT SIZE UP. Which has turned my closet into a nice little museum of nostalgia. "Ohhhh, I remember when I could wear THOSE pants...." Where can I get those little white plastic rings with numbers on them to separate the parts of the closet into different sizes? That would help me save a lot of time from digging in the mornings, especially since almost all my pants are black.

I shouldn't have been so harsh on brown yesterday. Brown is good. I've got this one brown denim skirt that is working out very well for me lately, and I'm finding that lots of things I didn't know will work just fine with brown. Don't you just love it when you figure out this really great outfit and then you realize that you're not going to be seeing any of the same people the next day so you can wear it twice in a row? Or am I the only one who does that kind of thing. Saves a lot time really.

So I'm not wearing the M clothes, just buying the next-size-up and taking in the hips if I can. Except for underwear. A couple of years ago I found these great cotton bikini underwear, and now that's all I wear, pg or not. I hope that old adage about wearing nice underwear in case you're in a car wreck isn't really true.

I have this vision of being wheeled into the emergency room on a gurney someday, and the paramedic yells, "Hey Fred, this 80 year old lady has on Old Navy Maternity underwear! Do you think she's really pregnant?" No, it couldn't happen...

Really I would like to get back into some of the M clothes, because they really are comfortable. I like the pants with the great big wide soft elastic waistbands. Why don't they make faux-maternity clothes, I'd like those kind of waistbands on all my stuff. That and more pockets, and I'd be happy.

Color and Emotion

No naps today, although I was sick most the day which is a good thing everyone keeps telling me. Being that way, I still managed to get quite a few things done which is also a good thing since we'll be leaving Saturday to take Russ's sculpture to North Carolina.

This morning I interviewed some crane companies in NC and hired one to help us install it at the park. The other art-related thing but again not art, was I finally started to put together a printed portfolio of some of my work to take to the university gallery that has asked me to do a solo show in 2006, gulp! I've been putting off doing the portfolio for a month now, but on Thursday Russ and I will be jurying a student show there, so I thought I better get my act together.

Once I actually got most of it printed out, I felt a lot better about the whole thing. Here's what some of the pages look like.

I found this font called Retrofit (Bold and Light) that I had on my computer from a long time ago when I bought something fun to use in the campaign for my friend who was running for the school board. You can see it better on this card I designed when I should have been figuring out a cover for the portfolio (still haven't). But hey, I need some cards too to pass out at swank events. Not that the card's that great, but I hate posting without any art and I am liking this color scheme, so remind me to use it in a quilt.

Today I wrote, "Color is an emotion I can't ignore," and I have no idea what that means, but it sounded good at the time...

I had a friend who was having a hard time finishing up this quilt that had a lot of browns in it. When I went to lunch with her one day, she was telling me about how this personality test that she had taken matched up to what she already knew about herself. That she loved to be surrounded by bright, bold colors in her house. So I said, Then why are you trying to make a brown quilt?

I know there are lots of beautiful browns in the world, and I have a quite a few in my stash. But anything that is all about brown would never get finished in my studio either. Anyway, I always tell people that my studio is actually my color therapy room, and I'm never depressed after spending a little time in there with lots of bright colors.

Nap Time's Over

Great weekend, I think got a good nap in between some naps, and when I wasn't napping, I was sick. So you can see not much got done other than a few spats of email from the pink sofa.

I did get PaMdora's head put together along with the rest of the quilt top. The instruction sheet in her left hand is done with photo transfers. Sometimes I print written things like menus or magazines on pre-treated cotton in the printer, but if I want to use a flowery print like I did here, I'll use transfer paper to print black letters right over the pattern. I think it looks kind of funky that way.

Small transfers are easier, I think because they peel off better while they're still hot, and a it's hard to keep a big transfer hot all over. I wonder how those big t-shirt waffle-iron-press-things work?

After I got the top together, I fused it to some Hobbs 80/20 because I want to try Melody's pillow case escape hatch finish on a bigger piece--this is 30" x 31". Before I've always used White and Warm, but it did get all lumpy when I tried to fuse to it. I just tried to ignore it and quilted over the lumps. It worked okay, but this Hobbs seems much smoother.

Paper Moon Link

Here's a link to The Paper Moon, the website of artist Ida Pearle. I love her graphic style and beautiful composition. Her work looks so spontaneous and expressive, and yet I read in her bio that these paper collages come together only after lots of drawing and sketching. Enjoy!

Edward Scissornose

Swap Day

Today was spiced up with a visit from my friend Emmie who has been doing fiber art a lot longer than me.

I have been bugging her to make me a jacket ever since I saw her work at a trunk show she gave to our local guild. Here's the jacket she brought along to show me how to make using a Park Bench pattern called Audubon Park.

I'm sorry I can't show you the beautiful kimono fabrics that she gave me today because you will drool all over your moniter, and I don't want to be responsible for that. Just kidding, here's a peek.

So feeling rather greedy and guilty, I showed her some of my little treasures like old buttons, belt buckles, other little odd embellishments and happily she agreed to take some of them home with her.

Of course it still wasn't really a fair trade, so I threw in some moolah for the kimono fabrics. (Green goes with everything.) Emmie, if you're reading this, I hope we both think we got the best deal!

Help -- I lost my head!

Just kidding! It's really a work in progress.

Here's the pattern being taped together after tile printing.

Using the pattern to trace shapes on Wonder Under, I then iron them to the fabric of choice.

Next I cut out the objects and and fuse them to black fabric. Then cut around the shapes again to leave a black border. I learned this trick in a class with Laura Wasilowski.

I usually break the figure up into smaller sections, and in retrospect I should have done that here because it was difficult to cut out such a large floppy thing, especially that rubber band arm.

Now there's a real block head. To be continued...

Art Cars

Looking back over Emily Duffy's bra ball website, I found she's done art cars! I've wanted to do an art car every since we saw a lot of them in Houston at a sculptors' conference. Most memoriable to me were the Shark Car and a double-decker bus that kept showing up at art events.

Harold Blank has written a couple of good books about art cars, and here's his website with a lot of great cars. I like the painted ones like Miss Vicki and the Plaid Mobile, but all the sculptural are fantastic too.

Maybe I could make a Quilted Art Car. However art cars usually are pretty durable, able to withstand driving on highways, but I did once hear of a guy who put real plants all over his with a watering system too. I'm wondering if I could make a big quilted cover that could come on and off. I guess it could be washable. I probably still wouldn't want to take it on the highway though.

Poster's Remorse

I learned a new term today from Laura Cater-Woods, poster's remorse. How appropriate because I had it several times today.

Being in sort of foul mood this morning, I probably shouldn't have written, but it did make me feel better. Anyway, I found out my doctor's out-of-town until Monday, so we'll just have to wait and see what she says about the ultrasound. The nurse for the on-call doctor said I shouldn't worry so much, that there's not necessarily anything wrong. We'll see.

Another thing, I was trolling around that Urban Dictionary website and although there's a lot of funny interesting stuff on it, I also found there was an lot of gross sexual slang on it that I hadn't realized at first. Hey, freedom of speech, it's what make the internet great. But anyway, I did edit the link off my post.

Angry Chicken Link

I just found Amy Karol's blog called Angry Chicken. I love her little quilts at her King Pod website. It looks like she uses vintage fabrics and they have such funny little things in them. They are totally different from anything else I've seen.

Nervous

First off, I really want to thank everyone for all the warm comments and messages I've gotten. I was overwhelmed and got a little teary by such a big response. Thank you all, even if I haven't gotten back to everyone personally.

I was going to write this yesterday, but was too tired and then my hubby came home with his RX of a double dose of mindless comedies--Potluck which we thought was going to be about eating dinner with friends, but was really about a bizzare cast of characters who keep trading off a stolen suitcase of mariujana, and Monty Python's Life of Brian, say no more nudge, nudge, wink wink.

Before I go further, let me pass on a couple of links. A friend sent this Art Bra competition link, and since I've been thinking about doing some 3D work, it sounds tempting. It reminded me once we were in San Francisco at a restaurant, and a guy came driving down the street pulling a huge Bra Ball on a mini-flat-bed trailer. I'm not kidding, but now that I've googled for photos, I'm not sure which one we saw, but it seemed about the size of Emily Duffy's.

I had an ultrasound yesterday, and it didn't look good. They like to give me these early ultrasounds because I'm such a problem patient, and although the radiologist was rather tight-lipped, I know from the other seven I've had that everything looked way too small for how far along I should be. Don't know anymore than that, but we're talking teeny-tiny, so now I'm just waiting for the doctor to call. Of course it's 4 am, two hours until yoga class, so I don't imagine she'll be calling anytime soon.

Thinking about how I got in the situation, it's time for a melty dissolve into ancient history. I was a happy Only Child for about seven years, then I had a couple of rowdy brothers show up. Now don't get me wrong, I love them to death. But after years of being the built-in babysitter, I was not enthralled with the idea of having any children of my own. In fact, it never seriously crossed my mind.

When I met my husband one thing that attracted me to him was No Pressure in the kid department. So we were very happy with our cat Chaunnie and our super smart wonder dog Mocha, our art, and our traveling adventures.

Then our cat disappeared, and later our dog died. Sometime in there my brother had his first child, and it was the first time I really thought about having one myself. But the most life-altering thing happened about five years ago, when one of our best friends was murdered.

Stuff like that really changes your life, and makes you think in different ways. But now I'm 43, and I feel crazy for trying, very insecure about the whole thing. Well, I guess who wouldn't be after this crazy fertility rollercoaster of a ride I've been on the last four years.

I often think it wouldn't be so bad if I weren't all stressed out about the age factor. I saw on a magazine in the grocery store that Demi Moore is pregnant at 42. And last week I heard a guy in the deli say his friend's wife just had twins at 54. But where I never really used to think about my age, now it's all about age and statistics and blah blah blah.

Sunday I saw on 60 Minutes a reporter went to some tiny remote Pacific island to see if anyone there survived the Tsunami. In this society he said the people had no concept of time or age, and no one knew how old they were. They were just happy where they were at. They also had no word for "want". I'm ready to go there now and be a lot more relaxed. And maybe to get another dog!

My Big News

I promised to tell my big news a couple weeks ago, and time has really gotten away from me. But it's official as my handy ept test verifies.

Actually I used three tests because I couldn't believe it. The newer tests have changed so that the two lines cross. One line is negative, a full cross is positive--very clear. But I happened to have an older box of tests laying around, and amazingly enough the diagram on the instructions was printed opposite (or upside down) from how the stick actually worked. Can you believe that?! But I've also been to the doctor since then, so it's been confirmed.

Since I've had three miscarriages in the last four years, I'm tried different approaches to telling/not-telling people what's going on with my pregnancies. Last time I hid it for a long time, and then when things went wrong, I didn't talk to anyone about it. That was definitely not good for me.

So this time I'm just letting people know and taking it day by day. One thing I know for sure is I can't stop making art. When I do that, I really go to pieces.

I've started these drawings and will begin a new quilt this week. A first I thought about doing a simple one. To be able to cut PaMdora's face out of fabric, it must be at least 10 inches long. That would make the top design about 21" x 24". I printed it out, but when I took the pattern to my studio, the scale didn't seem right compared to my other work.

Since I work on computer, I can drop a character into a new drawing. So I tried that next. For some reason I like the idea of putting a sink in a quilt. But PaMdora looks too small here, and I don't like the front-on view. Too static. And that mirror would be no fun to make.

So I went back to a bigger horizontal format -- this would be about 70" x 42". It's a good size for me because I can put lots of interesting things in the background and still lay the pattern on my design table. When I'm drawing, I try to think about how I'm going to construct all the objects and like to imagine some little embellishments. I'm also thinking about how to quilt it with little x's and o's. The next step will be to decide on a color pallete and start pulling fabric.

But I'm wondering if I should do the top one also. It looks kind of fun and easy, and I like her rubber-band arm...

Needle Felting

Don't you just love that jolt when you open the same old website, and it's got a new look? I guess it's like my hair, I can't stand looking at the same thing day after day. There's not much I can do about my hair, but I did want to get rid of that green template--yay!

Yesterday my friend Rosemary came through town to pick up her quilts from last month's gallery show. She was kind enough to bring her needle-felting machine because I had been asking about it. Here's an example of Rosemary's needle-felting, and here's what the machine looks like.

It looks like a sewing machine, except there's no thread, no bobbin, and instead of one needle there's seven barbed ones that just go up and down and mash-mesh two or three layers of fabric together.

She let me play around with it on several different types of fabric. It works best on wool, silk, and rayon -- not cotton. It's pretty addictive, but I don't know what I'd use it for. I'll have to put that on my someday this would be nice surprise present list for that little elf who lives in the hollow tree outside our house. It's good to have one of those lists, with lots of good stuff on it.

I have a friend who got a full set of drums for her birthday last month, and I'm wondering if she really, really wanted them or was it just one of those things she might have mentioned after a couple of glasses of wine? So be careful what you put on your list. A full set of drums is a lot more difficult to store than a needle-felting machine.

Chinese Checkers

Oh my, it was a beautiful day today...I saw a guy and a dog flying a kite in a big grassy field. Now there's a good idea! Actually I spend the morning inside drawing, not a good use of the fabulous weather, but I did get out in the afternoon to go to an auction.

This flea market is only a half a block from my studio. When it first opened, I went in and rented a booth, or rather a little room in the front of what used to be a car dealership. That's because a couple of years ago, I was kind of addicted to auctions.

If you don't have auctions in your town, you may not understand. But where we live, auctions are a big thing and pretty frequent. Houses, businesses, estates all go to auction. At first I didn't understand either, I thought they were boring.

Then I started going to auctions looking for old graphic magazines I was collecting, and I found that it was kind of fun. I began to see some of the same characters at them, and it became a social event mixed with some adrenaline rush I imagine gamblers might get. On a good weather day, it also feels like playing hookey from real work.

But the trouble with auctions is it's easy to end up with more than you really want. Just ask my basement. And the back of my studio. So that's why I got this little booth, to try to get rid of some of it. The only problem is, I don't want to sell any of my cool stuff. I'm not really a mercenary like many of the people who frequent auctions, so I had to cut back. AA -- auctions anonymous.

So when I went to an auction today, it was only to take my truck so Russ could load up his haul. Wait a minute, is that another cut-off saw?! Well, he said it was really different from the other one he has, because this one has a little tube that automatically lubricates the metal as it cuts.

Oh, okay. So I'm happy and smile, because whenever he buys stuff like this, it seems to justify all my weird equipment and fabric purchases.

Just as we were leaving, I noticed a table with old games and puzzles, so I couldn't resist bidding on a Scrabble game and some Chinese Checkers sets. I figure you can never have enough of those little Scrabble letters--who knows when I might need a whole bunch someday--and now I'm collecting Chinese Checkers because the graphics are so interesting.

This one I got today has unusual graphics because it has this odd little Pixie guy, and it says it was made in St. Louis.

And wow, does that guy really have five hands? I sure could use his help around the house!

March Art Meeting

We had our Uncommon Threads meeting today at the studio. It seems like everyone's gotten back their energy (or is that just chattiness) since last meeting. I think then we were all still stunned and recovering from hanging the show and all the other hulabaloo.

As usual, Lucy Silliman showed up with more work finished than anyone else! Lettie intensely quizes her about her new Center Ring quilt. It had a nice hand-painted background with Seta-colors.

Lily Kerns showed off a gorgeous fractal print that she did at a Technology Conference at North Carolina State University. Up close, it had a shimmery appearance, I guess because it was printed on silk.

Cathy Jeffery had finished another tyvek piece with a nice use of colored thread. The back was as interesting as the front.

And another beauty by Lucy. I really like this one, maybe because it sort of looks Japanese to me.

Every one agreed that we should take Hawthorn Gallery up on the offer to have another fiber show next year. We also heard about Emmie's trip to see the Gee's Bend quilts in Memphis, and watched the end of the Women's Work dvd that we had started last fall. All in all, it was a pretty good meeting.

My Studio Neighborhood

Yesterday was a beautiful day, I went downtown for a while and picked up some of my quilts at the gallery. When I got to the studio, I couldn't figure out where Russ was. Eventually I found him--up on the roof. He was filling a 23-foot tall pole with concrete for a structural element for a sculpture he is working on. Crazy guy, he had to carry buckets of concrete up there. Maybe I'm glad I didn't find him earlier.

Then today the temperature rapidly dropped, so he was worried that the concrete wouldn't cure properly. We discussed several ways to keep the pipe warm, and he decided to wrap it in blankets. I helped on the lower parts, but am not too good at climbing on the roof, so I turned my camera to our little studio neighborhood.

I'd like to say our studio is in a cool location with trendy restaurants, but it's actually in an industrial area where many of the buildings look like they were built in the 60's. I went up to several doors, but none of our neighbors seemed to be home -- I guess they don't work on Sundays.

One of these buildings has a big hole under it where a beaver lives. There's a little creek at the end of our street, and in the summer we watch him waddle up and down the street and then disappear under this wall.

Here's an attractive truck that is always parked on the side of our studio, but I have no idea who it belongs to. I guess the mobile unit isn't very mobile.

Another great neighbor. I wonder what they think of us, always carting weird stuff in and out of the studio. I'm not so impressed with them since I know someone who went there when his transmission failed. They told him the guy that fixes transmissions was out of town. That's when I realized that they're not really the World's Largest Transmission Specialists.

Across from the other side of our corner is a huge factory, I could barely get the whole thing with my camera.

Right in the middle of the factory is a two-story paper cup. Every time another paper cup factory buys this building, they paint a new name on the cup. It used to have colorful swirls on it, but I guess that part got too hard to repaint. One time I did a video animation of a big head in the sky drinking from the straw.

The Solo Cup factory has these huge towers on the side facing my office. Sometimes they make an awful humming noise, so then I go to my studio in the back of our building. I have no idea what they're doing in there.

Here's where we used to eat lunch every day, before they remodeled the Catfish House down the street and put in a Subway. The people at Schlotzsky's are friendlier though, and always ask about the art. They have a chalkboard that has a question every day, and if you get the right answer, you can win a cookie. We've won a lot of cookies, especially when they forget to change the question from the day before.

And here we are back at our studio. We painted it bright colors to make it not look so 1960. I wanted Russ to cover up the block on the side with stainless steel, so it would look like a Bork spaceship. But he said that would be hard and expensive. He did put up some nice signs though.

Once in a while, we have an open house or a crazy halloween party. Then we stick this sign out in the front yard to warn the neighbors. For some reason, they never seem to complain that the music's too loud.

Cell Cat on a Date

I finished this little quilt today. I know I said that I wasn't going to make any more little quilts, but I already had a little Cell Cat left over from another quilt, so I thought, how long can it take to work it into something...

Here's the pattern. But as you can see, I had trouble picking out colors and fabric that I was happy with. I also kept changing the drawing. I added a rug under the slippers.

I took off Cell Cat's collar and gave him a bow tie--it just seemed like he needed something a little dressier.

I started calling the girl cat Sophisticat, and had trouble gettin her head and face right. The polka-dots didn't work for her either. Then I changed the background several times.

In the end, it only took a couple of hours to quilt, but a whole week to get it ready to quilt. I used Melody's escape hatch finish, and that worked very well. This time I knew to trim as much as possible out of the seams.

You Call That Art?

Okay, I'm all hot about something, so I'm going to get on my soapbox. Last night on ABC News 20/20 there was a editorial piece called "You Call That Art?" and it made me mad.

Here's a link to the author's viewpoint.While the author did mention the most obviously controversial art pieces like The Gates and Damien Hirst's work (which I kind of like, but won't go into here), he really based most of his argument on a very small part of the bigger art picture--abstract expressionism painting.

Using his "test" on whether a few people could tell the work of some abstract expressionist painters from those of some young kids, he then makes the leap that we should all protest government funding for the arts.

He makes no effort to address the good things that museums do and how they enrich so many people's lives. Nor that they exhibit much more than he selectively presented. Nor does he mention the long lines to get into museums or that art museum attendance is continually growing. Actually in the US nationwide attendance to art museums and performances surpasses attendance to professional sporting events. I tried to find some current statistics, but the most recent I could find are here.

Not only that, but the amount of government funding that goes to art is so small compared most anything else. And yet it's always under attack, maybe because it is a visible, emotional topic. Never mind that besides enriching people's lives, the arts can generate a lot of economic growth related to creating jobs and tourism.

Now that I've got that said, I'm off to the studio to make some art!

The Gates article

It's been a big week for publicity at the studio. Russ was interviewed by a local TV news station and the piece aired tonight. Also he wrote a guest feature article about The Gates for Thursday's NewsLeader. He doesn't really consider himself a writer, so I was proud of him for doing it. They published several of his photos in a very nice layout. If you want to see his full gallery of photos, go here.

Me, all week I've been tinkering around on several websites, so I haven't really finished one thing. But tonight I finally put a new links page on www.pamrubert.com and kind of gave the whole site a few nips and tucks.

I also have some big news, but I think I'll wait until next week to let the cat of the bag...

Money Can't Buy...

Recently on the QuiltArt list there has been quite a bit of banter about how much income people have and what they can or can't buy. So I've been thinking of a list of some things that money can't buy...

Health, love, friendship, family, imagination, vision, intellegence, common sense, time, memories, creativity, skill, insightfullness, joy, peace, good humor, dreams, talent, sympathy, strength, grace, wisdom, kindess, laughter, life.

Out of Fashion

I saw in the NY Times that there's a new show starting that I want to watch called Craft Corner Deathmatch. Problem is, I don't think we get the Style channel. Does anyone?

I also have a big confession to make. I cannot turn on my own tv. I'm sitting here on the sofa, surrounded by little silver remote controls. I can punch a lot of the buttons, but only succeed in getting a picture of static.

It's because my husband has all this gear hooked up to the tv -- Direct TV satellite dish, Tivo, DVD player. 695 channels, and all I get it static. My theory with technology is to keep moving. If something doesn't work for me, I keep moving onto something else. There's always plenty more things to do out there...

I ordered a new coat yesterday. Actually I ordered several, hoping that one will work, and I'll return the rest. Probably after watching too much of that Project Runway stuff, I started feeling rather frumpy and sick of wearing black coats, especially when we went out to First Friday last week. March seems a little late to be getting a new coat, but it is supposed to snow tonight, blech. My luck it will finally get warm the day my coat arrives.

On the Sofa Again

We went on the First Friday art walks this weekend, especially to see the ceramics show by our friend Keith. After the art walks, we all went to Keith and Sue's house for a post-party. It was nice to be around all those artists, mostly clay people, but the most interesting guest was definately the one-eyed pug dog.

Spent most of Saturday on the sofa. Here's a glamour shot. Notice my look of intense concentration.

Oh, on a happy note, my Yoga quilt got accepted to the Kansas Art Quilters' Midpoint show.

Wicked Wendy

After watching the finale of Project Runway, I did this PhotoShop collage with altered orgami paper, old magazine ads, and the font Kiddie Cocktails from FontDiner.com. Although I put skulls on the girls' dresses, it still looks like it needs something else...daggers coming out of their eyes maybe.

I wasn't really interested in Project Runway when everyone else was watching it, but Russ with his usual foresight, Tivo-ed it for me. I couldn't believe how evil and erratic Wendy was and kept wondering if they paid her to act that way. If Wendy and Kara Saun hadn't been fighting the whole last show, they would have had trouble filling two hours, but it gave me heartburn.

But in the end it was worth it to see Jay win. I loved what the judges said, about his work seeming original and straight from inside of him, very unique and not too serious. That part was very uplifting.

How Stupid Am I?

Yesterday I got my hair cut and colored, and it reminded me of these old photos I working on last summer for a series I'm calling "Wish you were hair!"

Back when I was in my accumulation of junk mode, I started collecting old mid-century magazines, and one treasure is this little booklet with instructions for creating stylish coiffures, "Simple...and stunning as this casual page-boy." I did doodle on it to make it not-so-boring gray and white.

Anyway, arriving at the studio feeling rather perky with my new doo and shiny black color, my self-confidence was soon crushed when I found that I had done most brainiky-lacking thing I've done in a long time.

Earlier this week I had carefully packed up a quilt to be shipped to the Guilford Handicraft Center in Connecticut. I used FedEx.com to create automated shipping labels to and from the show--something that probably takes me longer to do with the rather quirky on-line program than it would take to hand write a form. But hey, I'll do anything to avoid looking at my own terrible handwriting, and they say you also get a discounted rate for using the preprinted labels.

Well, you guessed it. I put the wrong label on the outside of the box, and after dropping it at FedEx on Tuesday evening, it was delivered back to me the next day. A whole five blocks.

I did take it back to FedEx with a new label, and endured the jokes of the guy behind the desk to find out that I won't be charged shipping from Connecticut.

This morning I've been looking at funny cat photos and cartoons to cheer me up. If you like cats, you'll like this site. Check out the hilarious drawing of a cat's brain.

Cell Cat on a Date

Not much time to do art this weekend because we had lots of company. I did finish this drawing, and also received a postcard from our friend Frances Paley whose art photography shows will be opening this month in Florida.