Who is that artist?

First of all, grandmas can be SO awesome!! My grandma Elizabeth, is one of them!! I was VERY fortunate to grow up with my grandma & grandpa living right next door. I have noticed throughout the years that I have acquired some of her values, personality traits & "quirky ways" (which I'm very proud to possess!)

It was that same grandma that saved these creations of mine while I was growing up.  We came across these little treasures when we moved her from her big 6 bedroom house of 60 years into a 1 bedroom apartment.  This first one as you'll see in the picture, was done in 1974 (I was 5 years old).

The potholders (remember the little looms we all made those looped potholders on), I was 10 years old. (I still love weaving today.)  At least I had an eye for color in the brown one, not so sure about the other one though :) I remember making TONS of these!!  It was so touching to see that grandma had saved these ALL THESE YEARS!!


One of the many things my family did right was to expose me to some type of art since I was 4 years old (I was put into dance classes & didn't stop that until age 16).  I was encouraged to draw, to paint, to dance (music was in the house at all times) we went to musicals, I was in art fairs, anything that involved the arts, we were encouraged to participate..  I remember taking art & music classes all through K-12.  (Then a college degree in Fiber Art.)

(Time to get on my soap box here) This summer, I went to an Art Fair in Leavenworth, Washington & I had the opportunity to visit with one of the jewelers.  He explained to me that 20% of all of the sales of this art fair, which was every weekend for two months, went to local schools so it could help them have an art program, which was one hour once a week.  ONE HOUR, ONCE A WEEK?  That broke my heart!  Apparently, (I didn't know this, since I don't have children) but with budget cuts, in the schools, the Arts are the first to go?  That saddens me. Children should all have the opportunity of being exposed to the Arts, encouraged to create & to only get one hour a week to do this?  I just hope families are encouraging their children to create at home since they can't get that at school anymore.  
(Ok, I'm down off the soapbox, now)  :)


I am VERY grateful & thankful that my family encouraged me, while growing up, to be creative!!!  Maybe some day, those pieces above will be worth something, lol!!

Think Pink.....

Ok, so you don't really have to if you don't want to as some of you know pink is not a color I really prefer to work in, but I think these turned out kinda cute AND I hope it will help mask the thought that I haven't posted in awhile. 2010 has seen a lot of ups & downs for me & it's only March?!!

My most favorite grandma (whom practically raised me) suffered a massive stroke earlier this year. Doctors said she wouldn't be able to feed herself or even get out of bed. We flew back to Iowa the very next day to be with her & right before we boarded the plane, my cousin called to say that my grandma (who is a very tough 'ole lady) had just got done walking 40 steps back & forth down the hospital hall & was feeding herself whole food!! She seemed to sleep a lot while we were there, but she recognized us & was able to carry on conversations. It broke my heart to see her in this condition.

She has improved more than the doctors & nurses ever expected at the nursing home, however, I don't forsee her ever living alone again, which she seems happy with & I do too!! Since my grandma's son, (my Uncle) died of lung cancer a few years ago & her daughter, well, long story, but her daughter has nothing to do with her, I'm the oldest grandchild, so I've been the one that has had to make a lot of plans & decisions for my grandma (with the fabulous help of my cousins, who live close to her.) I wouldn't have been able to do this on my own without their help. So you can kind of imagine the ups & downs & how it really forces you to do a lot of growing up. (I thought I was all done with that!) :)

In early February, we lost my 15 year old Abyssinian, Sydney, to some unforseen illness. It absolutely broke my heart!! He was momma's boy. He would sit on mom's lap while watching TV, but if the heating vents were putting out that nice warm air, you'd find him laying on top of one of those. Bedtime, you'd find him under the covers with mom.

It's amazing how the loss of a pet can really affect you. I felt like I had a permanent dark cloud hanging over me. The creative juices just would not flow & I almost felt like I was in a depression. As you might know, we still have Matisse, our Bengal & Taryn our German Pinscher, but we had Syd for 15 wonderful years & now being gone, there was an empty hole.

About a month later, we rescued Milana (melawna). Well her name was Lizzie at the time we adopted her & she told us that she didn't like that name & asked that we give her a new name. (She thought her new name fit her SO much better!!) :)

As those of you that have had the pleasure of introducing a new pet to your family, trying not to freak out the new pet, while trying to reassure the pets you had in the house before the new one arrived that you still love them just as much. It's been leaps & bounds with trying to get everyone to like each other, but I think we achieved success!!! Milana loves sleeping with us at night (she actually beats my DH to bed each night). You can either find her laying between us or on papa's pillow closely spooning his head, which he still hasn't gotten used to. :)

AND, she's my little studio cat!! She loves hanging out with me while I'm in the studio & her personality really comes out when she's hanging with mom. She's very good at reminding mom, with little meows ,that I should take breaks from time to time to pet & play with her :) She's an absolute wonderful addition to our family!!

One other bit of happy news (I think), I'm doing my first Arts & Crafts fair in April & I'm SO NERVOUS!!! I went out & bought my 6ft foldable table & am slowly gathering items I need, but oh wait............I need to fill that 6ft with my art. My luggage tags & mini wallets are pretty small on that 6ft table, so you can imagine, that I've been a creating machine ever since I found out I was accepted for the show. I have plans for other items as well, but I really don't have a surplus of items I've created just hanging around in my studio, so I will be a VERY busy woman up until the show comes.

Any pointers or helpful ideas for a person who's never done an Arts & Crafts fair, would be MUCH appreciated, since I'm a nervous WRECK!! The one nice thing is that this show is indoors, so I don't need a tent. And, what about a tent? If I'm not sure that I'm going to do many of these Arts & Crafts fairs, is it smarter to rent a tent?

Ok, sometimes it pays to be a packrat.......

God love 'em, but at least 4 generations of the women in my family have been packrats & we're talking serious packratitus. Where upstairs bedrooms are so full of things that "you might need someday" that all you can do is walk into the room & walk back out backwards in your same foot steps. Hallways crammed with filled boxes of outdated fabrics & patterns. Closets of extra serving dishes & platters. My grandpa, bless his soul, also had this "problem" (don't want to call it a disease, since I question if it was something brought about from living during the Depression Era). He would go to estate sales & bring home boxes of "things".

Growing up with this, it seemed "normal". I never questioned the clutter. Once I moved away I realized, "oh my God, these people are packrats!" I vowed from that day on, that I would break that chain in my family.

I did pretty well until I started creating art again. It's a lot easier creating when you already have the paper you need for a journal signature or the right color of thread to finish a quilt. I spoke with other artist friends on how to "cope" with this disease & if it was acceptable or shunned & I was reassured it would be ok, but that I had to be careful, that it could easily get out of control. So, I keep it "in check" by organizing. All of my paints are in 2 clear rubber maid totes, my rubber stamps in another, fusible webs, etc AND they are kept in my studio either in the closet or underneath my work table. I cannot store extra rubber maid totes visibly in my studio, so this is a way of me controlling how much I can "hoard".

I generally give my grandma a hard time about all the things she keeps & shouldn't, but this time, I'm glad she did. When we went back to see her last week, she gave me a grocery bag full of the postcards that you see here. There had to be over 150 of these postcards & in fabulous shape for being over 97 years old!! They're all correspondence between my great grandmother & a friend of her's, most of them still have the 1 cent stamp that was needed to mail them on it still.

I feel like these postcards are a small part of my family past so I won't be cutting them up to use in my art. Instead, I have plans to scan them into my computer & then use them possibly in my work & as for the actual postcards, I think they'll be put into an archival binder where one can easily enjoy them any time!!

I'm Back!!

Bawd (that's Croatian for Hello) :)

I'm back from my Rome/Croatia trip & have to tell you, I had the MOST wonderful time!!! The only reasons I was looking forward to coming home were to see my 4-legged kids, sleep in my own bed & drink a Dr Pepper. (Some people smoke, some people have to have their coffee, I have to have my Dr Pepper.) The only soda that I found in Rome was Coke, Coke Zero, Fanta or Sprite and in Croatia the same with every once in awhile finding a Pepsi. So, I compensated by drinking more wine & beer while I was there (that's another story for later.)

I learned a few things as well :

• Americans are always in a hurry
• eat WAY too much junk food/greasy foods/foods just in general not good for our health
• should have adopted the metric system
• don't eat enough gelato (lol)

& oh yeah, somewhat shy about showing skin on Croatian beaches. We saw a lot of FKK (we never figured out the translation, so if someone knows please tell me, but from what we can tell, FKK has something to do with nudity). We saw quite a bit of nudity on Croatian beaches & everytime, it was shocking. And, if any of you are wondering if I participated in this................ARE YOU KIDDING?! Um, NO!!! :)

Anyway, I'm back & I miss those beautiful & wonderful places already. I took TONS of photos & once I can get them all organized with all of the proper names of the places on them, I'll share a few here AND plans are to set up a new site/blog with all of the photos that were taken by my DH, me & the friends who went on our sailing Flotilla with us in Croatia. I'll let you know once it's up, if anyone is interested.

(btw, Adriana went with us, so she has some photogs as well) :)

Happy Birthday!!

Today is Taryn's birthday & she wanted everyone to know that she turned 6!! Taryn has been one of the best additions to our family!! Our children are of the 4-legged kind & we have 3 wonderful kids!!

LOVE those ears!! We chose to not clip her ears after she was born. Taryn is a red, German Pinscher & at the time we got her back in 2003, German Pinschers had only been AKC recognized for about a year, they were UKC recognized originally. In Europe, it is common to not dock the tails or clip the ears. We had her tail docked (when she was first born), but liked the look of the original ears (besides, we felt clipping the ears to be cruel.)

We often get comments, when we take her on walks or to dog parks, "she looks like a deer." If you ever watch her run through tall grass, she does leap like a deer & she is fast, she LOVES to run with the greyhounds at the dog park.

Every spring/summer, we tend to have problems with moles (oh did I tell you, she's a ratter, since her breed was originally bred with terrier) as for kills, she has 2 moles, 6 rats & an oppossum & she wants you to know that the squirrels keep her busy, running along the back fence in the summer. Anyway, when the mole mounds pop up in the yard, my DH will go out, Taryn following, & we will place mole traps in the yard. To place the trap, we have to dig out the dirt from the yard, so the DH will flip it all over the yard. Taryn LOVES to try to catch the dirt clods & yes, she's fast!

This was her very first day with us, poppa's laying on the floor to play with her. The first few nights were rough since we think she was having separation anxiety from her mom & her siblings, she'd cry through the night, so poppa slept on the kitchen floor with her the first few nights. (I never thought we'd make it through potty training!)

Our little girl is so absolutely fabulous & we love her SO much!! And poppa says that momma spoils her too much, but I don't think poppa is too far behind. He's the one that told her that we'd got to Dairy Queen to get her ice cream for her birthday tonight, vanilla of course!!

Practicing for Croatia

Yes, that dork in the photo is me. Daryl (that guy in the photo below, my DH) didn't think I looked like a dork. He said it looked like I was enjoying sailing the boat, which is the first time I've ever done this!! I'm still not comfortable with how the boat leans when the sails catch the wind. I've been told that you cannot flip the boat, but it still makes me nervous!

Remember the week long sailing trip next May that Daryl & I will be taking with some friends, to Croatia? Well, we're going to be sailing a few hours each day, site seeing then eating & sleeping on the boat. We've never done the eating & sleeping on board & since we're going to be doing it for a week, we thought we should practice before we get there. We rented a 30' boat from the sailing club that Daryl & our friends are members of. We soon decided, we must have a bigger boat if we're going to be doing this all week.

The head room in this boat was short enough that we kept bumping our heads into certain areas of the boat & trust me, you never seemed to remember that you hit your head there last time, so each time it was a painful wakening.

The sleeping berths...............I experienced my first episode of claustrophobia at about 3:30 in the morning. They were small, it was like sleeping in a tube. You had to crawl in & roll around to get into place & the ceiling was so low that every time Daryl rolled over he hit his shoulder. As I was laying there having this awful claustrophobic experience I thought, if I could just get out of the boat & get some fresh air, maybe I'd be ok, but I didn't want to wake the boat. As I laid there, Daryl decided he needed to get out of the boat. I soon followed & one of our friends was on my heels. Funny thing, was that we had all been laying there for an hour wanting to get up & out of the boat but didn't want to wake each other.

There wasn't much to see or do but I did find a couple of things to takes photos of.

(Oh by the way, we're taking another week, probably before the sailing week to site see another spot. I'd really like to go to Athens, but I think we'll end up in Rome instead. Am finding that it's a lot cheaper & easier to get to Rome than it is Athens. I don't think the art will disappoint me in Rome. I've just always wanted to go to Athens & see all the ruins that I studied while taking all of those art history courses in college.) If anyone has some "must see" spots while in Rome, please let me know!!

Busy weekend with the family...........

Remember the family that came for a visit? We actually had a pretty good time and I got to play tourist for awhile, which was kind of nice seeing things through different eyes. I think being around certain things all of the time, I wonder if we take them for granted? I live in the Pacific NW, in a very beautiful part of the state of Washington, the west side of the state where we're surrounded by beautiful snow topped mountains on all sides, the sound & the ocean that is probably about an hour's drive away. It was actually nice to take a step back & admire all of what is around me.


We stopped at the Space Needle, in Seattle, for lunch, which is always wonderful. Here are the beautiful tulips that they have planted at the base of the Needle.




We then went to Fremont that afternoon for a beer festival called Hop Scotch. At this festival, we had the opportunity to sample over 60 beers from local breweries as well as 10 different Scotches & Tequila's. We are very fortunate in that in the states of Washingon, Oregon & California, we have a huge number of what I call "craft brewers" where making beer is considered an art. Fortunately, there are no laws prohibiting the selling of beers over 4% alcohol by volume since a lot of the beers brewed in this area are around 5.5-9%. I have a friend on the east coast where some of the counties around her are completely dry & where she lives they're only allowed 4% by volume (what a shame).


After the festival, we were all hungry (of course), so we found this place called The Ballroom. Below, you can see the pizza that we ordered. On the menu it said it was a 28" pizza. Ok with me, numbers don't mean anything unless I can actually see it. When she brought it out, I couldn't believe the size of this thing, as you can see it pretty much took up the entire table. One slice (for the visual reference people) from crust to tip, it was as long as the tip of your elbow, to the tip of your middle finger & it was GOOD! (That's my bro in-law with his girlfriend on the right & the gal on the right side of me is a friend of ours.) Daryl & her hubby were off playing pool.

The next day, we took them sailing on Shilshole Bay (Daryl has taken sailing lessons, great another hobby) :) At this marina, they have this beautiful statue of Leif Erikson standing guard over Shilshole Marina & it also serves as a tribute to the Norwegian heritage of the Seattle area. It was a gift to Seattle from the Norwegian American community during the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. The statue base is a granite stone about 6 feet high & he is surround by authentic Viking carvings (see below) & there is also a list of over 850 names of immigrants, along with their home towns & years of migration.

Aren't these just absolutely beautiful?? Now see, if I wouldn't have been paying attention, I would have missed out on these beautiful works of art!! (might be kind of interesting to create some fiber art with these beautiful designs..........)

Matisse turns 1 year old today!!

Taryn, our German Pinscher, is so excited that today, Matisse, our 15lb Bengal boy has turned one year old. I told Taryn, it's not very lady like of her to pose this way, but she said she can't help it, it's one of her most favorites positions to lay in.

And here is Matisse in one of his favorite positions that he likes while he's watching TV (wonder where he learned that one from). We just love him!!! He's so full of energy & never seems to tire out. He is a little sassy though. After he's been scolded for doing something that he shouldn't have, he'll go into the other room where no one can seem him & he'll sass (meow non-stop)!! But once you come in to see what his problem is, he's all quiet & has that look of, "what it wasn't me." There is never a dull moment with that boy!!! Happy Birthday, Matisse!!

Sassy!

Sorry, I just had to share these with you. Here's Taryn showing off her latest gear. Doggie goggles, aka Doggles and her dog booties, for when we take her on walks where the surface may hurt her paws.

This was actually done for a possible calendar shoot that one I my co-workers does every year, called the Dogs of Seattle. Isn't she sassy!!

Who Says I'm Fat?

I just had to share this with everyone. This is Matisse, my almost 7 1/2-month old Bengal & this is his most favorite position to sit in. Yes he is a little tubby, but this position makes it look worse than it really is. We were fortunate to meet his parents after he was born, which gave us some kind of an idea how big he may get. Matisse's papa, Link of DreamQuest Bengals is approximately 15 lbs & Matisse is already 12 lbs at 7 1/2 months. I hope he's about done growing.

The children in my life!

My husband, Daryl & I decided long ago that we never wanted to have children & so these 3 have stepped in to fill that void. And let me tell you, there is NEVER a dull moment with these three.

From left to right: Sydney is an 11 year old Abyssinian that we've had since he was 6 months old. In the winter he likes to sleep with us under the covers at night. Taryn is our four year old German Pinscher, she thinks she is a still a puppy (not sure Daryl & I could go through the puppy stage again). Matisse is our newest addition to the family. He's an 7 1/2 month old Bengal kitten. He's a talker and he LOVES the water, I think eventually, he'll end up in the shower with me someday (I think he thinks, he's part dog, like his sister Taryn) who are best buds.

These children of ours are just absolutely wonderful & I wouldn't have it any other way!

15th Wedding Anniversary Trip

Daryl & I went out to Orcas Island, off the coast of Washington for our 15th Anniversary. It was absolutely wonderful. Since it was September, the weather wasn't too hot & there were not very many people at the resort, so it was nice and relaxing.

We stayed at the Rosario Resort http://www.rosarioresort.com/. When we arrived, they had surprised us by upgrading our room to the Roundhouse. This was absolutely fabulous!! It was a ROUND house that was set off to the side from part of the resort. (This resort is spreadout over 33 acres, which includes four restaurants, a marina, 3 pools - 2 of which (one indoor) that are heated to 89 degrees & a Spa. This roundhouse used to be the playhouse of the Moran family children (in the early 1900's) The mansion that the family built(Mr Moran was a shipbuilder), now houses the Spa, two of the restaurants, the check-in desk and the offices for the Rosario Resort .

It was wonderful to wake up in the morning & sit on our patio (that was entirely around our building). It was so nice to sit back & relax & take in all of the views: the bay, the mountains, the sailboats & the float plane what that would drop off or pick up passengers to go back to the mainland. Will we come back and visit? You betcha!! Daryl said he could easily retire here!