Japanese Cats are finally quilted!

This weekend, I finally quilted the Japanese Cats quilt that I started over a year ago (or was it two?) Anyway, it's done and I'm very happy with it. I used Mountain Mist fusible batting which worked very well--I didn't have to do any basting. The cat pattern, designed by Susan Hill, is available here. It shows the cats on a white background, but I think they look cuter on the dark Japanese woven fabric. I keep trying to use up my collection of Japanese fabrics, but the pile grows faster than I can make quilts.

Alternative Press Expo in SF

This year, my daughter Jemma and her friend Katie shared a booth at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco. Katie is on the left, waving, Jemma is in the middle of the picture, wearing a black and white shirt. Her brother Isaac is on the right side of the picture, giving a thumb's up. Jemma created a comic, "Unicorn Life Cycle" just for APE, it is very funny. Katie was selling two of her comics, "The Queen's Knight" and "The Lives of Seamonkeys" which are also very funny.

I bought three books by Enrico Casarosa: "Sketch Crawling, watercolors and comics of varying degrees of silliness" "Fragments" and "The Venice Chronicles". He told me to check the web site sketchcrawl.com to find out when sketch crawls are being organized around the world--sounds like fun! Looks like I just missed one in October in SF, but they are planning another one for January.

By following a link on Enrico's site, I discovered that one of my favorite writer/illustrators, Danny Gregory, has two new books for sale at blurb.com, "Bad to the bone" and "Me Time." Check them out!

I'm selling stuff on ebay!

To clear out some space and also make some cash, I am selling stuff on ebay. The "zine" in this photo is one that my daughter made two years ago and I paid to get 50 copies printed. Now she doesn't want to sell them alongside her newer work, so I put 25 copies on ebay. I also am selling some Rowan knitting magazines and three "vintage" Hawaiian shirts. I bought them at various times when I lived in LA, they are the real authentic rayon shirts and very soft. My user name on ebay is msalume, check out my auctions and bid on something while you're at it :-)

New paintings!

Yesterday, I completed a small watercolor from a photo I took at SFMOMA of my daughter and her friend (it's the third picture). The other two paintings are acrylics done by my daughter in her painting class at the Academy of Art University in SF. They are studying reflections and also creating a color palette. Aren't they fabulous?

Is it Halloween yet?

Before I went to Atlanta, I ordered a kit to make a gingerbread Halloween house and brought it with me so I could make it with my DIL. She had some great ornaments to add to it since the kit decor was a bit sparse, but we didn't have to bake or cut the gingerbread so the kit did save a lot of time and it turned out very cute. I got the Wilton kit from Joann.com. (I searched but don't see it on the site right now, it's probably sold out until next year).

My trip to Comic Con and San Diego

The brochure for Comic Con arrived today, with lots of pictures from this year's show, which I attended with my family. Imagine my surprise to find my picture in it! I am standing in line to get my copy of Lynda Barry's new book, "What it is", signed by her. I'm the shortest one in line, second from the right). If you have not seen this book, run out and get a copy right now, it is a fantastic book about the creative process, totally funny yet totally true, and every page is a work of art. It was my major souvenir of the trip.

Georgia on my mind

I just got back from a week in Atlanta. My son Brett and I, shown here, did lots of sightseeing--the Aquarium, High Museum, etc. For fiber-related things, I was able to spend a day at the Georgia Quilt Show with my DIL, Jennifer. We also visited three knitting shops: Main Street Yarns in a lovely red barn in Watkinsville, Knitting Emporium in an old white house in Kennesaw, and The Whole Nine Yarns, in a new strip mall (no picture). I confined my yarn purchases to just one or two skeins from each shop, so there is plenty of yarn left for you. On the way home, I noticed two art quilts by Jane Burch Cochran in the Dallas airport.

Who made this drawing?

No, this isn't my work--my son Isaac drew it in his school's art class! He usually prefers to make sculptural things, I think he surprised himself with this drawing.

Korean textiles at the Asian Art Museum

Today at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the big show is Chinese Ming Dynasty art. It was okay--some nice embroideries--but there were too many tour guides talking too loudly for my taste. On another floor of the museum, much less crowded, I found this small exhibit of contemporary textile art from Korea. I probably wasn't supposed to take these photos, but no guard was around to say no, and I didn't use the flash (in another gallery, I asked the guard and she said it was okay if I didn't use a flash). So maybe it was okay. This woman's head is made of linen pieces stitched together and reinforced with steel wire. The other piece is also made of fabric, lit from within. The museum is giving away a nice color catalog of the show, check it out if you get a chance.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

I took my daughter and her roommate to see the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) on Sunday. We didn't want to pay an extra $5 to see the Frida Kahlo show (you've seen one Frida, you've seen them all) but there were a couple of other exhibits there and we managed to spend a few hours looking around at weird contemporary art from China (the oddest piece was a sculpture of Mao lying down, surrounded by hundreds of small plastic dinasaurs) and photos by Lee Miller. During the 1940's, she went to Europe as a Vogue fashion photographer and also wrote articles with photos about the horrors of the Nazi death camps that were published in Vogue. I could not take pictures of the exhibits, so here is a shot of the SF skyline from a rooftop terrace, complete with large dinosaur sculpture. I liked the way the shadows were cast on my daughter and her friend as they peered through a cut-out in the wall. We also walked through Yerba Buena gardens where a free concert was just winding up, and had a snack at the Metreon. It was a very fun day.

Crafts Report Online

This online craft magazine featured my work this month--I sent them the image and text, so it's not quite an article about me, but hey--whatever works.

My Ravelympics medals

Here you can see the medals and the projects that won me the medals in the Ravelry Ravelympics--the "Nutkin" socks were made for the Sock Put, and the sweater was finished during the "WIP (Works in Progress) Wrestling" event.

White orchids that turned pink

This painting was inspired by some white orchids I saw in an artist's studio in Philadelphia this spring, but they turned pink as I painted them. I tried a different background but it was too distracting so I overpainted it with blue. This is quite large, painted on 18" x 24" paper.

Everything's coming up roses

My rose bushes went crazy this year, so I picked a few and finished the painting today when my "Saturday Painters" group met at my house. I'm still working out a method of painting white roses--this one looks rather "art deco," a bit stylized but still realistic.

Crazy sock

This is "Frenchman's Creek", a sock kit designed by Lisa Grossman, otherwise known as the Tsock Tsarina. I'm in her sock club this year, and the patterns are very challenging, as you can see. She was inspired by the Daphne Du Maurier novel to come up with this design--the lace cuff symbolizes the lavish dresses worn by the main character, Dona, the design in the foot section is bluebells, and there are also "sea gulls" and ship's ropes in the cuff.

Chihuly show at de Young Museum

As you can see by these pictures, I went to see the Dale Chihuly show at the de Young Museum this weekend. It was crowded but not unbearable, and the lighting is very dramatic. No flash allowed but it wouldn't have helped--the glass needed to be backlit to show off its colors, and that just isn't how great pictures happen. But here are a few shots. The saffron tower is outside the museum where anyone can see it, you don't need to pay admission for that. As a member, I was able to just walk in without standing in a long line and got a "timed admission" ticket to the Chihuly exhibit right away, even though it was a busy Saturday.

My trip to Comic Con and San Diego

We just got back from Comic Con in San Diego. I didn't take any pictures there--it was a madhouse, I barely escaped alive. My favorite bit was meeting Lynda Barry and getting her autograph on her new book, "What it is". But I did see some other nice things in the city.

I spent one day in Balboa Park, so here are three photos from there. The black and white people are painted on a wall around construction at the art museum. I saw a very interesting photo show there, as well as Georgia O'Keefe's paintings (plus work by other women artists of the same era). The palm trees are next to the museum. And I always love to spend time in the Spanish Village--it is full of little shops selling handmade things, and many artists are there, making more things.

I just discovered this marvelous sketch blog for you to check out--the artist's name is Pete Scully.

Watercolor postcard

A painting buddy, Linda, sent me a card with a sketch of her cabin where she is spending the summer. I used that reference to paint this quick postcard to send to her. I'm also working on a more "formal" painting of flowers, but it's fun to mix things up and do something looser sometimes.

Future quilts?

I took pics of the photos that I printed on fabric after the SAQA workshop--they are still pinned to my design wall, waiting for me to do something with them. Too much knitting! As you can see, in the top image (ferns) one print did not fill the page, so I need to figure out whether I want to chop all of the ferns off to match, or somehow fill in that space. Also, I want to paint the white areas to tone down the contrast. The others are all pretty close to what I wanted, it's just a matter of figuring out how to sew them together, if they need borders, etc. NOTE: All of them are still attached to the paper, so that's why you see white borders around the edges in some places--I have not trimmed them off yet. Sometimes those white borders end up inside the seams when I sew the photos together, so I leave them on until I have chosen a layout.

a new quilt is born!

This is my contribution to the SAQA "1 foot square" fundraising auction. I took a photo of a lion statue at the Getty Villa in Malibu, California earlier this year, printed it on fabric and altered the colors with Photoshop. The "exit" sign is from another photo that I printed last year. My daughter helped me print some of the fabric with rubber stamps, several years ago.