Great holiday art fairs, but no pies.

When the weather turns cold I start thinking about the Bloomington holiday art fair season.  It has been a full couple of weeks as I prepared for the Fiber Arts Show held over the past weekend.  The Spinners and Weavers Guild puts it on, and this year we had a record turnout.  I heard that the concurrent Clay and Glass shows that are also held in churches along Third Street were packed as well.  I brought forty-five of my new Re-shirts to the show and came home with less than twenty.  With the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Holiday Art show coming up in early December, and Talia's "Gathering" pop-up store opening in Fountain Square Mall later this month I have to get busy again!  With the weekend behind me I took over the dining room, pushing the table out of the way to make the floor into my palette.  The boys will just have to find somewhere else to eat for a few days!

My Re-Shirts are my project to give a second life to great fabrics trapped in old garments.  I collect and cut up shirts, skirts, dresses, curtains, and any interesting materials I can get my hands on.  Sometimes I include a fabric panel "chest plate" I created by block printing.  Over the summer, in anticipation of this season, I made my own blocks and created some prints to which I’m partial.  I also experimented with a cross-section of a Nautilus shell and used that as a ‘block’ to print.  The result isn’t as bold as I intended, but the pattern has a delicate quality and lots of detail that I find appealing.  I’m planning to incorporate it as a centerpiece in some of the new shirts for the UU show. 

Weaving hasn’t been a mainstay of my efforts lately, but I did finish one of my commission pieces, a version of Tap Water.  I excitedly finished the piece and packed it up into a big box to ship today.  And now I’m launching full force on my next commission piece, which will be similar to my recent ‘Sitting with Grandpa’.  It will feature a park bench overlooking a pond, but this one will have a secret message carved into the bench to celebrate the couple’s anniversary. 

My family life has been packed, as usual.  Jacob has been practicing with his Hip Hop group at the Panache dance studio.  With extra practices in the evening to tighten things up, along with Tommie’s Science Olympiad and Jacob’s assistant teaching at Monroe County Martial Arts, we were a bit oversubscribed.  Last Friday night was the showcase and Jacob did a fabulous job with his two pieces.  I think he also had a great time dancing with his friends, so this might become one of his regular activities.  Panache is such a great studio, filled with enthusiastic and supportive people. 

  And as for the report from the kitchen - lots of baking has been happening in the house, with bread, muffins, but no pie.  I used up all the summer apples from Grandma’s house that we had frozen in July.  I incorporated the rind of three oranges into a nice recipe I found that uses whole wheat flour and lots of cut oats.  I made variations with cranberries and just got the OK from Jacob to include toasted pecans.  Hmm, did I say that there was no pie over the last TWO weeks?  Even though I called on the Pie Fairy in my last blog?  I am not amused. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Re-shirt week.

This week I pulled out my trusty Jeans Machine sewing machine that Grandma gave me and spent the whole week sewing!  I first converted the dining room into a sewing room.  After the Unitarian Universalist Art Fair in December I was secure in the knowledge that my new Re-Shirt designs were well-received.  Around that time I had cut out some fabric for the next batch of Re-Shirts.  If you haven’t seen them, they’re artsy tank tops with tuxedo tails made out of fabrics that have had a previous life.  That means that old shirts, skirts, tablecloths and curtains are all fair game.  When I think of curtain fabrics, all I can think of is the great Carol Burnett and her parody of "Gone With the Wind."

My friend Ruth has been wonderful about giving me all kinds of fabric scraps, including batiks and embroidered pieces that I think came out of a jacket.  I even ‘retire’ a few shirts from my husband’s closets that he shouldn’t be wearing any more.  The process of creating shirts itself is a lot like making soup—what goes in depends on what you have on hand and what color palate strikes my fancy.  Just as I was finishing up this week, the tension on the sewing machine went wonky and it got stuck in reverse !?! And so the sewing was over.  ugh.  It now sits at Klaiber’s Sewing Center awaiting some care and attention.   

In hindsight, it probably would have been a good idea to give it a little oil every now and again instead of plowing through several show’s worth of Re-Shirts.  I mentioned to my friend Karen Cherrington that my machine would be down for two weeks, and she generously loaned me her sewing machine as a replacement.  She bought it in 1984 and the machine never made it out of the box.  It looks like a really solid machine, but I’m guessing it’s going to need a little oil.  I should be chugging along again by the beginning of the week.  Basically I’m gearing up for the Bloom show, which will be this coming Sunday, February 24^th from 12 to 5:30 at the Bloomington Convention Center.  

 I’ll be in booth #60 if I’m not talking or laughing loud enough for you to hear me when you come in.  I have seen a lot of advertising for it, including in this morning’s Herald-Times, so I’m expecting a good turnout. 

On the home front, we celebrated Valentine’s Day with special chocolate.  It wasn’t homemade pie, but instead I picked up a mousse cake from Angel B’s bakery in town.  It went nicely with the 2010 Molllydooker shiraz.  Yum!  On Friday night the whole crew went out to see ‘Traces’ at the IU Auditorium.  It was an amazing show!  The upper body strength and athletic ability of the performers was outstanding.  We saw individuals who could hold their rigid bodies at an angle of 90 degrees from a standing pole, or climb a pole while spinning around it without using their feet or bodies.  It’s truly a cross between circus acrobatics and modern dance.  It had a few dramatic choreographed falls and dramatic recoveries that freaked out Jim a little, but otherwise we all had a great time.  On Saturday morning I slipped off to the Bollywood dance class at Panache.  Darrelyn runs the class, and basically it’s a huge sweat fest.  She’s an enthusiastic ball of energy that inspires the thirty or forty participants to dance their hearts out.  I may not be exceptionally coordinated, but I really enjoy the class.  And finally, between everything else, I’ve had a chance to slip into my art studio and do a little weaving.  I have idea for another Garden Walk piece.  It involves a stone path turning thorough a white picket fence that guards the flowers on the inside yard.  I’m hoping to make some good progress on that piece this week.  I’ll just have to see what else life sends my way!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin