Fiber and Pulp

New Goodies

I have decided to fold the news about my store into my personal blog here (at least for a while). We have gotten ooodles of new fabrics and magazines in stock the past two days. Here are some of the greatest:

This is apparently the week that new magazines come in, too, since we got a number of them:

New calendars for next year are starting to come in (we ordered three new ones that haven't come, yet, besides the ones shown below):

Happy Days!

What a busy weekend this has been! I taught on Saturday, all day. This was the second session of my free Quilter's Day Out class. We were making a tote bag pattern by Lazy Girl Designs, the Summer Tote. There were six women in the class and they all finished their bags! I love teaching and one of my favorite parts is getting to see the different color/fabric combos that people choose for their projects. ;) I sent photos of everyone's bags to the store's web site for the show and tell pages (http://www.seminolesampler.com).

The weather was nice yesterday -- warm without being too hot or too humid. I was surprised how many customers came in to the store, really. I spent almost the entire day in the classroom and only got out to the sales floor around 4:30 pm (close is at 5) -- but the three sales associates who were working were obviously tired. :)

Today I slept in; Skip didn't wake me up until 11 a.m. I had planned to get up around 9 -- but apparently I shut off the alarm clock without even waking up. :) We got to the store at the same time Alice did (the associate with whom I worked the sales floor today) -- usually we go earlier in the morning and I use the quiet time to work on projects or catch up on my paperwork and planning. Sunday mornings with Skip at the store are my favorite times of the week. :)

Alice and I were busy today -- we only had 18 customers but they kept us hopping. A larger share of the people who came in than usual were looking to buy fabric for whole bed quilts. I love seeing all the new ideas and I really enjoy helping people with their projects -- I guess my temperament is pretty good for being a retail sales person, though (God knows!) I never expected to be doing that with my life. I love picking and cutting (and ringing up!) fabrics.

By the time the day ended, Alice and I were both 'whipped' -- I went to bed at 8 pm and slept for three hours (will go back as soon as I finish posting here:).

The weather today was cooler and cloudy -- I thought all day that it would rain, but no such luck. Our front yard grass is looking strained -- the big maple trees and the ash trees by the street suck up all the moisture at times like these ... the grass gets precious little (anything that grows in our yard has to be tough -- I don't water outdoors even when there is no ban on). We could use one of those week long periods of continuous rain (we haven't had weather like that in a couple of years -- it used to be really common when I first came to Maryland in the late 70's). I dislike sunless weather but I would make an exception this year (and gladly sit in front of my lights instead)

Stumbling Around

It has been a fair bit of time since I wrote here. I've lost the thread of my own conversation. I went to the midwest on vacation and have gotten out of sync with reality -- gotta catch up. :)

Hugh and I drove to Indianapolis in a single day -- we left Columbia around 10:30 a.m. and got to Indy at 9:30 p.m. It is a much faster trip to drive than I thought -- and I did not feel particularly rushed or excessively tired when we arrived. The reservations we made last fall were for the Hampton Inn Downtown, right in the midst of Indianapolis. We stayed at another hotel the past years we have gone (two? three? years already!) -- but that particular place was not listed as available, nor could we find their web site (previously visited to register) when we were searching for a room.

We were going so that Hugh could attend GenCon, the largest gaming convention in the world (and one my family has been attending since Skip and I started going in 1972. except for the one year we had to miss because I was eight month's pregnant, carrying Hugh ). Eva comes down from Madison with Alan and her other gaming friends, so I get a chance to see/visit with her, too.

We had a lovely dinner out with the entire group (20? or so of us) on Wednesday night at Bucca di Beppo (I think that is correctly spelled:), a great Italian resturant in the middle of town. I have to say, their food is actually the best Italian I have ever eaten in my life (and, although I am not a gourmet by any means, I have eaten a lot of Italian over the years).

I was still suffering with more chronic fatigue than my usual so I tried to be careful and only exert myself to go out once a day, and not to overdo/overtire myself at that. Gentle exercise and stimulation and lots of rest is the only thing I have found to really help recover these spells. :P

I managed to take a trip to the south side of Indy to visit a great quilt store I had been to in past years -- The Back Door. This is a small but chock-filled shop with delights for the eye on every side. They specialize in civil war reproduction prints, Thimbleberries fabrics, a large batik selection and assorted wool applique, needlepunch and embroidery items. I am clearly going through a serious history-of-quliting stage because I was attracted almost as soon as I steped into their door by a wonderful kit (which I purchased). It is a small wall quilt that features simple 6" basket blocks in a vertical strippie type setting with Civil War era repro prints and is very scrappy.

When I was packing to go on vacation, I spent several hours at the store gathering up the materials and such to make the eight Make & Take class samples I need to complete for the fall semester. Of course, I went off and forgot to take the bag with me on vacation (I was somewhere in central Ohio before I remembered it). Now, I don't know about you, but I cannot just sit around and do absolutely nothing -- I get too bored! Spotting this little basket quilt kit got me all excited as it would give me something to make while resting (hand piecing, of course, since I had no sewing machine along:).

I actually paid full price at that shop for the kit ($35, including pattern), a small rotary cutter, small cutting mat, a 6.5" acrylic cutting ruler and needles and thread to sew with. Over the next few days I managed to piece six little basket blocks. I have to say that I am actually really proud of them -- they are exactly the correct size (and the same size as one another:) -- which means my 'eyeball' estimate of a 1/4" seam is getting pretty darn good (and what's more important, consistent:). I'll take a photo when I get to the shop of my finished basket blocks (I am housing my camera at the store just now as my shoulders are hurting too much to carry it around in my purse).

Another visit I made (different day) was to the Eiteljorg Museum of the AMerican West and Indian, again. I really, really like this museum and have been for two years in a row. Here are some photos of the various bits of architexture I noticed (no photos allowed in the galleries):

This fountain runs down the two story wall on the outside of the elevator into the museum. I like the textural contrast of the copper, stone and water!

This is a brass plaque at the entrance to the elevator, maybe five or six inches square -- it is the museum's logo and can be seen in many places inside. I was surprised the first time I visited that such a great Native American museum would be in Indianapolis, of all places -- but I have since learned that it makes perfect sense, given the history of the state and region.

These photos show only a tiny portion of the entry structure -- when you are here, you have not even entered the museum buliding itself. I did not take photos there -- but I will in the future. I am accustomed to museums like those in the East, here, that are grand buildings made to inspire, intimidate, and exhibit the art inside. The Eiteljorg is almost an exhibit in itself -- the architecture is meant to reflect the native american ethos of part-of-nature, close-to-the-earth life principles while still retaining the gravitas of a sacred space.

I did manage to visit the gift shop (a really excellent shop with a wild variety of things to purchase, called White Water Trading and, I think, on the web as well). I bought a book about the history and contribution of black women to the settlement of the west. I'll try to remember a cover shot and vital statistics soon. :)

Another day I met with Bianca M from the Altered Book List on Yahoo. She lives in the Indy area (teaches music in upper grades in a private school and trained as a concert pianist). We went to lunch, shared some great show and tell, and visited an Indy store called Dolphin Papers. Imagine an artists' supply store as big as my quilt shop but with paper instead of bolts of fabric -- it was giddy for me to walk around and admire all the incredible textures, colors, patterns, types of paper!! I bought a small stack to take home. Bianca was fun -- she's in the beginning of organizing a paper arts group in Indy with which I am hoping to occasionally play. :)

Bianca gave me a beautiful ATC (altered trading card -- original artwork that she made just to give me!). I gave her a beautiful piece of dichroic fused glass that I had been given by another artist friend. (I managed to use two of the pieces she had given me, but I decided that I needed to send one on in the world to play with some other artist). When I got back to the hotel room from the visit, I sorted out the two scrap bags of papers I had purchased and made two entries in my artist's journal to commemorate our outing:

The scrap assortments had a staggering array of paper types -- wood paper (NOT wood-patterned paper but paper made of thin slabs of wood), stone paper, woven silk textured paper, rice paper in several lacy shapes, soft mulberry bark papers, and many more. I chose a color assortment that I liked to go with Bianca's ATC, "Dare". She gave me the card in side a clear plastic sleeve which allowed me to glue the sleeve onto the page and still be able to pull out her card to admire (and read the back). What fun! The brownish tissue paper in the very background on the two pages are recycled paper napkins peeled down to a single ply, from the Sports Bar that we ate in several times (in the hotel lobby, with pretty good sandwiches and such:).

OH, something that I saw in the underground parking ramp when I visited the Eiteljorg Museum comes back to me -- every pillar in the small lot had some spontaneous performance art memorials, the artwork likely having been executed by adolescent male visitors (if my memory of my kids at that age is any indication:):

On the way home from Indy we drove down to southeastern Ohio to visit my Mom and brothers and to see my aunts who live near my father's burial place. Since I was there in January for his funeral, Mom and my brother Jeff designed, had made and erected a headstone for Dad's grave. He is buried in a private, neighborhood cemetary near my aunts' homes, in the country outside Albany, Ohio. I think the cemetary is called Beanhill.

I was too overwhelmed when I visited to take photos of his gravestone, but I think it is lovely. My brother, Jeff, and Hugh and I took some time to clear the weeds off the flower bed Mom had planted with some lovely petunias in it.

I also got to visit that day with my Mother, my three brothers (Jeff, Alan, and Kevin) and with my mother's sisters, Janis, Joyce and Jean (her brothers who live nearby -- Jackie and Bud -- were off sleeping and working). Jean is the aunt to whom I have been sending my scrap fabrics and extra magazines and such since I purchased the store. She has had some hard times in her life over the past seven years (death of her only son from kidney cancer at age 39, death of her husband of 42 years from lung and then brain cancer) ... and she is a busy-doer kind of person anyway. She showed me a LOT of lovely quilts she has made from the stuff I send her and made sure I knew how much she treasures the possibility to quilt instead of fretting. Of course, I think she is doing me a favor by using the scraps I generate and by enjoying the magazines and books I don't have space for any more. Every one is happy. :) I must say I do like Win-Win situations!

I was happy to get home but am still pretty tired, physically. My back muscles are slowly getting better but the spasms make it hard to sleep I am not quite caught up to date at the store, but I'm working on it. I have to teach classes both days this weekend, so need to rest up for that. :) I'll share more photos from our trip in another post.

Work, Rest, Work!

I've been pretty busy this past week at the store. Our fall newsletter went to the printer/mailer on Monday and we've been getting the class notebook and such done for the opening of class registration tomorrow (August 7th).

AT home, I've been working on another canvas in the rr. I did some additional imagery and some embellishment on this one. I'm mailing it onward tomorrow:

I don't know if you can see this in the picture -- I particularly like the soft feathery white paper around the central image -- it makes the little girl look like she is floating on a cloud of apple blossoms. :)

Yesterday I taught a class at the store -- our first Free Class -- on making a particular tote bag (Summer Tote by Lazy Girl Designs). I made myself one, too (which I finished this morning, after I went to the J-store to buy a zipper for it:). I sent a photo of my new bag to the store's webmaster to mount in our show and tell photo section (www.seminolesampler.com). Forgot to email myself one here at home.

Tomorrow I get to wash clothes, run errands and pack. Tuesday morning Hugh and I are going to leave (by car) for ten days vacation in Indianapolis -- going to GenCon, the world's largest gaming convention (don't know what gaming is? check www.GenCon.com). My husband and I have been going to this Con since 1972 (except for one year we missed because I was eight month's pregnant with my son:) We have passed our gaming Batons on to our children now -- I don't play any more (mostly because I don't have the attention span:).

I will be visiting museums, enjoying some choice quilt and paper arts stores, and resting. I"ll take some hand work with me and some altered book supplies. Probably do a bit of sleeping, too. :)

Wish us luck! I won't have an online connection, I think, while we are gone. I will take lots of photos to share when we get back. :)