This week it was more commission work for me. My focus was on my pepper-themed
piece. I need to create my own
canvases for each piece, which in this case must support peppers across a range
of colors and sizes. For the
background layer I combined lots of fall colors, including red, orange, yellow,
purple and plenty of green, which will contribute to making it a vibrant
piece. Most of that layer will be
covered underneath the peppers, but patches will slip through and enhance the
pepper layer. Because it’s a
custom sized piece, I went to my frame maker Tom Bertolacini to put something
together for me. The frame is now
finished and I stretched out the background on the frame before I stitch it on.
Now I need to felt a flat of finely felted
peppers (it was too late in the season to pick a peck). I have all my colored felts picked out
to cover the pepper shapes, which I’ve been making out of old men’s wool suits
that I collect in my travels.
People probably think they’re selling me a suit that I’ll bring home and
make my long-suffering husband wear, unaware that I’ll carve it into little
pieces, run them through the dryer and use needles to jam little pieces of
colorful felt onto the shapes until they look like peppers. Bwa ha ha!
My other project has been making more sweater petals. I have plenty of time to work as I
watch my boys do Taekwondo, so I get a lot done during those times. I have a new display of them up at
Bloomingfoods if you want to check out how they are evolving. I also set up a scarf display for
November at the Bloomington Bagel Company. I’m low on scarves, so I had to pull all my traditional
scarves from By Hand Gallery. I replaced
them with a set of my Lion’s Mane scarves, which is a new line I brought out
last fall but haven’t displayed much.
This week I’ll launch into a serious scarf-making frenzy to replenish my
stocks, but I’m running low on enthusiasm for making a lot more scarves. This might be the last year they’ll be
on display around town.
This was the week of Halloween, which means I spent one
night handing out candy to all the neighborhood kids in my cow costume. If you can’t imagine me as a laughing
cow (no, not a little triangle of cheese) here I am! I don’t think I scared a lot of kids but I did have a good
time. Fortunately, there is a
modest tax for handing out candy all evening, so I rewarded myself with some
hundred thousand dollar ‘fun size’ bars, ad libidum. On Friday night my family went to see the preview of 39 Steps,
the latest Cardinal Stage production.
I bought tickets, but I also found one of the free tickets hidden around
town. That meant we could also
invite one of the boy’s friends.
We all went to the Runcible Spoon for dinner, over the Blu Boy for a
pre-show cookie, then on to the John Waldron for the performance. As usual, they did a phenomenal
job. With four actors and a
limited but highly creative and ever-changing set, the whole story just flowed
beautifully and came to life. Everybody had heard about the plane crash on stage and it
was well done. The character
changes were managed beautifully, so hats off to the cast and Randy White for
bringing it all off.
Finally, last night we had friends over for dinner. Jim made salmon and boca negra, which
is a Julia Childs creation of a flourless chocolate cake. It was amazing! The best part, though, is that there’s
enough left over for dinner tonight!
I can’t wait!
Until next week,
Martina Celerin
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