My schedule catches up with me.

The weeks leading up to the Fourth Street Festival were unusually hectic for me. I was trying to pull all the pieces together for the Children’s booth project , finish some weavings and helping make sure the show runs smoothly. Last week when my elder son came down with the flu and a respiratory infection I didn’t worry about me beyond, ‘gee, I sure wish he’d be a little better about coughing into his sleeve’. Like the way the picture from the Centers for Disease Control shows at the pharmacy. I know because I was there picking up his antibiotics. Last week the flu visited me, which slowed me down for a day or so. The pneumonia that followed brought me to a full stop, and so my sweet husband got to see the CDC picture at the pharmacy too!

Have I said lately that I love my job? Even when I have no energy and I’m huddled into a tiny corner of the sofa trying to stay warm, I can always work on ornaments! So it’s one more week of ornament blogging. My art studio floor is littered with fleeces of all colors, as if a flock of tie-dyed sheep ran afoul of a frustrated barber. All around my spot on the sofa by a big window are baskets of fleece, needles, scissors and a box of tissues. I’m up to 66 ornaments, with a goal of 100 before the holiday shows come around. Fortunately, ideas for new designs just keep flowing. I’ll finish one with a color or pattern that will remind me of something else, and off I’ll go on that next theme. Sometimes I see a neat design in a magazine or a store flyer and that will spark a new piece. My weavings are just too big a format to allow this kind of stream-of-consciousness piece creation and I really enjoying the process.

My other big art projects are slowly creeping forward. The project to urethane the artwork glued to the BEAD panels slowed down with the heavy rains and cool weather. Two panels are inching toward dryness and two more are waiting their turn for a urethane shower. I also worked on completing the demographic analysis of the fairgoers at this year’s Fourth Street Festival. It’s interesting to see the differences from last year, and I’m heartened again to see how far people came just for the show (one fourth came from more than 50 miles) and how positive the responses were on the surveys. When asked what part about the show they liked best, the participants gave overwhelmingly positive comments about the atmosphere of the fair, the setting in Bloomington, and the terrific artists and the diversity of art. It rained a little on Sunday morning, but we still had more than 42,000 visitors. Just another reason to appreciate the great town we have here in Bloomington.

Until next week…

Raisins on the Stairs

This has been a week to poke ornaments. I’m now in full holiday show mode, with thoughts of sugar plums dancing in my head amid the red, green and white patterns of my latest ornaments. I’m closing in on sixty for the holiday show season, which is good, but now they need names. My family usually helps me with deciding on names, and they have come up with some great material. With that many ornaments though, on top of the hundred or so that I made last year, I need more naming help. I’ve learned that if you want creativity, my seven-year-old’s multiage classroom at Rogers elementary is hard to beat. Some I really like and will use, like “Green Bean Casserole at Night.” Wow! Others didn’t speak to me since we’re not into Sponge Bob or the Transformers, but I still appreciated the effort.

The rains and humidity also let up this past week, and that meant I could get on to my project of urethane treating the Community Art project from the Fourth Street Festival. The fairgoers glued thousands of plastic toys, beads and other treasures onto four panels representing the four panels of the Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District (BEAD) logo. To waterproof the project and help secure the pieces I planned to treat the panels with urethane, but I discovered a new problem. The water-based urethane I chose has a slight pink tinge. I decided it would work on the red panel but not the others, so I set to work pouring the two half-gallon coats of varnish on the red panel and letting them dry. I decided that I would go with the yellow-hued organic based urethane for the yellow panel and just wear my gas mask. I’m a little sensitive to organic solvents, so that wasn’t my first choice, but the art has to come first here. Yep, that’s quite a visual—an earthy artist wearing a gas mask pouring varnish over a bunch of plastic toys glued to plywood in the backyard.

But if you really want the image of the week you’ll have to hear the story of my handy-dandy hand-held sander. This is the time of year when I need to finish frames for the long winter, which means I have to take advantage of the last warm, dry days. I was out sanding frames with a passion last week when it became clear that I had no choice but to install a new piece of sand paper. I had worn the last piece down to the pad in some places. To have any success at all I had to work in specific zones on the surface where any sand was left. It’s kind of like harvesting the zest from a lemon—you get most of it in the first few shaves, then you really have to focus on the little slivers that remain. Anyway, when I took off the paper I unfortunately ripped off the soft underpad. Yikes! Luckily I remembered the HoA (husband of artist) and Grandpa using JB weld to fix the broken faucet. I got it out, carefully mixed it up and splatted it on, and voila! It held tight. I’m so excited to have a big, fresh surface of sandpaper where I don’t have to remember which parts are worn out! That reminded me of a card I got back when I was in graduate school studying fungi. The picture on the card showed a stairway with raisins laid up the center of the walkway. They were there to remind the person to walk up the sides and avoid wearing out the carpet in the middle. I still laugh when I think of that picture.

Until next week…

How my life is like my freezer.

Cool mornings and hot cooking!

Can you feel the seasons change? There’s something about the cool, dry mornings, the last flowers in the garden and the first bright red leaves in the trees that gives it away. The calendar gives it away too: I wrapped up my final summer art show last week at Penrods. I dried out all my outdoor booth materials in the living room and carefully packed them away until the Broadripple show in the spring. The boys and I picked up the last CSA vegetables this Wednesday too. We’ll miss seeing Amy, Andy, Grace and Willa at Musgrave Orchards every week.

Every ending has a new beginning, and it’s time to get ready for the upcoming holiday art fairs. For me, that means the Holiday Market at the Shower’s building, the Fiber Arts show, the recycled art show (Déjà vu, in Columbus, IN) and the Unitarian Universalist art fair (Holiday Art Fair and Bazaar, with the great cookies!). I was wondering what I could make that was new for me to sell at those shows when my eyes fell on my giant pile of waste yarn. I decided to launch into a project I’ve been thinking about for a while, but one that I have resisted to keep focused on finishing weaving for the summer shows. Have I said I liked finding uses for everything? But what could I do with leftover yarn scraps of all colors? You guessed it—holiday wreaths! So with great enthusiasm I went through my sewing basket of thread and pulled out my spools of green, red and white. I used the thread to wrap yarn balls. This is a technique I picked up from Sue Westhues last year. She saw my ornaments from a distance and thought they looked like Temari balls. I had never heard of them so I started looking in books and on the web. It turns out that Temari describes an ancient Japanese craft of wrapping remnants with fine thread, then stitching onto the product. How perfect: pretty thread, meet yarn remnants! I even found a use for the leftover quilt batting Aunt Lois saves for me. She belongs to a quilting bee in Michigan and the batting scraps they generate would otherwise end up in the trash. I make her save them for me, and it gives me a connection to my slightly quirky aunt.

So now I have a bunch of Temari balls in search of a home. Hmmm. I built a wire frame and covered it with remnant cotton cording to make the backbone of a wreath. Then I wrapped the frame with strips of remnant commercial felt. I decided I need 106 Temari balls for each large wreath—wow, that’s a lot! Life would be easier if I wasn’t so good at math. So I made the first 106 and attached them to the frame. I hung it on the front door to get an idea about how it would look, and to me it looks just delightful. The eSoA (elder son of artist) thinks he’d like one in autumn colors—that’s my boy! So soon I’ll pull out the orange, yellow and plum threads from my collection for the fall color wreath.

The new fall wreaths are fun, but of course it’s also time to get back to finishing the projects I’ve put off doing to focus on the summer art fairs. That means putting together an analysis of the Fourth Street Fair from the surveys and writing the final reports. Important, yes; informative, yes; exciting, well, hmmm. I do like statistics! I also have to assemble a grant proposal to the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to help support the Fourth Street next year. Another deadline to meet. Arrrghhh.

So what’s been fun this week? When the world starts to descend on me I launch into cooking mode. The CSA has cleverly and deliberately filled my refrigerator with everything from eggplants to zucchini to cabbages to tomatoes, to, well, you get the idea. I cooked ratatouille, Mexican pepper casserole, Bulgarian pepper pot casserole, Chinese green beans and peanuts, and Garbanzo pepper curry. I’m still planning to make Gujarat baked cabbage, a cool looking Indian dish that I’m hoping will provide a tasty use for the cabbage. I’m also going to make Zucchini Parmesean and caramel pie for the kids. At least they call it caramel pie—I make with my blender and a huge zucchini. Despite the ingredients (not knowing helps) the boys like it and that’s the important thing. I even get help from the HoA, who makes the crust. He seems to like doing that, and me…did I say I like pie?

Until next week…

Mr. Turtle Goes to Indianapolis

I spent last week in serious turtle mode. Where do you find serious turtles? That’s right, I started out at the Monroe County Public Library. I pored over the books with glossy color pictures of Eastern Painted turtles, which I needed to finish my latest weaving (Among the Ferns), but I didn’t meet any really serious turtles. The librarian told me that they’re off at the Library of Congress this time of year. To finish my turtle I needed some specialized fleece, starting with just the right deep olive green. I found some that I bought at the Hoosier Hills Fiber Arts Festival (in Franklin, IN) that worked well. Painted turtles have beautiful, bright red lines, and I matched the color I needed from a lot I picked up at Sheep Street in Morgantown. Last, I needed a natural-looking golden yellow highlight. I was stumped until I remembered my disastrous beet dyeing experience of a few weeks ago (August 15^th blog). Who knew that the perfect soft yellow-brown for turtle stripes was in beets, as soon as you got past that deep red color? So this week I poked and poked (and poked) and out popped the turtle. He slipped right into the fern fronds as his new home, but something was missing on the ground. I needed some rocks, and I decided that slag was perfect for the task. Slag is a glassy leftover from the smelting of iron ore, and I picked up mine in Michigan along the Saginaw River. Recycle everything, I say. I’m always delighted when I can take someone’s cast-offs and make something others think is beautiful.

Yesterday the turtle and I headed off to Indianapolis to the Penrod Art Fair. It was a great show—beautiful weather, lots of people, a helpful staff and an elegant garden setting. My booth was set up so the back of the booth was in the shade and the front in the sun, so I get the best of both worlds. The turtle prefers the shade this time of year. A lot of people remembered the frog I had last year and were pleased to meet the turtle (Ms. Frog lives in Wisconsin now). It was nice to meet patrons from previous shows and hear that the pieces they bought are still appreciated. I get pretty attached to my critters and flowers and everything else. It’s good to know they have good homes. Indianapolis shows are also a good chance to catch up with friends and acquaintances that live in that part of Indiana. When the show was over, take down went smoothly this year—no pouring rain, and we got a lot of help from the guys in the golf carts. They zip your stuff to the road when you’re ready to pack up, so we got in and out in just a few minutes when the van got through the queue (definitely not a Czech word—too many vowels). Thanks to all the Penrod Society folks who helped to make it a great show and the IMA for keeping the grounds so beautiful.

Now I just have to figure out what to do this week.

Until next week…

Turtles and Ferns

For a working artist in Bloomington, this is the biggest weekend of the year. The Fourth Street Festival is Saturday and Sunday, and that means two things. I’m frantically working to finish a few new pieces and I’m working to make sure the show appears effortless to the fairgoers. The piece I’m working on is tentatively titled ‘Among the Ferns’ and it features an Eastern Painted turtle. I really like turtles, and I’m the person who stops to help the turtles across the roads when they set out on a quest. Everybody needs a little help when life’s traffic starts speeding all around you. Last weekend I wove the background for the piece, including some dirt. Normally I try to create the reddish brown earth tones that are common in this area (and remind me of chocolate!), but this time I wanted a mossy feel to accompany the ferns. I came up with olive brown earth tones to anchor the ferns. The fern leaflets I need were also started a while back. They’re pretty labor intensive, and it only gets worse if you can do math. I wanted 8 fronds with about 50 leaflets each—that’s a lot of cut copper flashing from my secret supply store in Michigan! This week was I was in a serious wrapping mode, consuming a whole ball of green yarn from my big dyeing project a few weeks back (the “Greens of Summer” blog from July 18th). The turtle was my good-humored travel companion (I’m always poking at him). He’s been taking shape as I watch my kids at their Tae Kwon Do class, or when I’m in the Creek-Love class at Rogers as the kids sort beads, or any place I have a quiet few moments to fill. Don’t worry though—soon I’ll be done and he’ll have some new fronds. When I get a picture he’ll join the painted turtle from “Among the Hostas” and the soft-shelled turtle in the “Summer Pond” sculpture on my website.

The other big draw on my sanity this week is tying up the details for orchestrating the Fourth Street Festival. I have a lot of wonderful friends who have volunteered to facilitate the Children’s booth this year as they create a mosaic art piece. I hope I have enough glue—it’s hard to know how far forty bottles (and 30 leftovers from last year) will go on the project. I’ll also help mark the show layout tonight with chalk on the streets, and that’s a big project. Then I have to set up my booth and put on my artist hat back on. We are extremely fortunate to have Jean Kautt acting as show manager—she organizes and directs the volunteers, distributes artist packets and information. She tells them where to park, where they can find great pizza—whatever they need. Her calm, steady temperament is perfect for interfacing with artists, who are famous for their curmudgeonly independence. They’re the kids who wouldn’t take directions in school in case you want to spot them early. She also loves to use Excel, so we bond on a deep level. With the show in her hands I can go off and set up my booth with confidence that everything will run smoothly. So if you’re in town this week, come by and meet the turtle, visit the Children’s booth, and stop in and say hello!

Until next week…

Peach Pie on the Banks of the Blue River

This was a week of completion. With the Fourth Street Festival coming up next weekend I wanted to finish my ‘Blue River’ piece. I built up the background, which I wove a few weeks ago, and I set out to add detail and form to the water elements. I pulled out my luscious watery-blue yarns and shimmery silvers. I needle felted the yarns I wanted onto the background to create the swirl in the waters and the glisteny reflections of the blue sky. I just kept introducing new yarn elements until I was happy with the details. I then retrieved some deep coffee-brown wool I bought at Yarns Unlimited some time ago. I knew I’d need it someday. The wool was shaped and needle felted into the tree trunk and branches that stand out in the foreground. I created the tree foliage in the background by embroidering with three green yarns I mixed. To get the texture I wanted I mixed chenille, wool and cotton fibers and fed them through the eye of a darn large darning needle. Not the kind that flies over the pond in the summer, but the kind you’d use to poke a giant if you wanted his attention. Next I delved into my collection of ‘rocks with holes’ that I collect from local creek beds. The sedimentary rocks of southern Indiana, especially those with imperfections, get worn smooth by the water and sometimes have a hole eroded straight through them. They’re perfect to capture the local creek bed feel and they’re easy to stitch on where I want them. I don’t get to use my drill press, but hey, no project is perfect. I then found my bag of green crocheted leaf clumps I created on a long drive to Michigan. These became the leaf clumps in the foreground. Last, I created a new element for my ‘tree’ pieces by needle felting a small stand of mid-ground trees. I think it makes the tree in the foreground stand out even more and provides a focal point that places the green background still further in the distance. Early this morning I added the final touches by stitching it into the frame and voila! I have a new piece ready to debut at the Fourth Street show. Stop by and say hello.

I do need to confess one small self-serving act from this week. Last Saturday the HoA (Husband of Artist) and eSoA (elder Son of Artist) went off on a weekend fishing trip. That’s what they do. What the HoA didn’t know was that I went to the farmer’s market and bought a huge basket of peach ‘seconds’—the tasty ripe peaches that are bruised and usually less than pretty. The kind that my kids just won’t eat unless you cut them up and remove the brown parts—yuck! The HoA came home and concluded—who knew—that we should make a peach pie. Did I tell you that I love pies? So Monday night I got a beautiful fresh peach pie, and every morning since I’ve had a slice with a little whipped cream on it for breakfast. And a nice cup of tea or coffee, again made the HoA. Luckily, he’s on a diet so I was forced to eat a fair bit of the pie. I must have cashed in some karma points from some good deed I did last week! Now I’m wondering how I can get him to bake a blueberry pie from the bags in the freezer? Hmmmm.

Until next week…