This n That

This is one of the pieces that I am working on right now. Have I shown it to you before? If so, please forgive me. I want to finish quilting it THIS WEEK and get it hung in our condo. I really love the sky.


I love each season of the year for so many reasons, but one of the primo reasons that I love summer here in the south is all of the delish fresh veggies! We have a terrific local farmers market and C really enjoys going there once or twice a week. It seems that he is the one in town on the days the market is open, so I am pretty much at his mercy to bring home veggies that I will then cook! He likes fried okra, while I am a huge fan of okra cooked up with some mustard seed, cumin seed, coriander, onion and sliced tomatoes. I've heard folks say that okra is slimey, but even this Yankee doesn't find the okra in this recipe to be slimey. MMMMM: I love it! So, here it is sauteeing up in some olive oil with a Vidalia onion:

and here I've added the spices, some water and the Roma tomato slices. I like to let it simmer, covered, for a while.


We're also having grilled eggplant that I've marinated in olive oil and Balsamic vinegar.........and a small Prime Rib! We are cleaning out the freezer and will no longer buy any meat that is not GRASS FED! I am seriously thinking about going vegetarian, but I'm not sure that that is a promise I can keep!

I haven't shown you any pics of Barker lately, so I thought I'd slip this one in. The longer he is part of our 'pack', the more we love him...........he will be seven in October, which I find so difficult to believe!

Hope you've had a great day!!

PEACE!!!!

Saturday, in the Park

Saturday morning is one of my favorites in the city. Today our walk took us down 8th St to Monroe, where we stopped at Starbucks for coffee, locally made pastries and the morning paper. We walk through a neighborhood occupied by many older and very interesting homes and a smattering of lovely older apartment buildings. I am so pleased to see this garden that has been lovingly installed at the very busy corner of Piedmont and 8th:



look, there are even little squash growing:


but, as I said, it is a busy corner and as we turned it, we saw sad evidence of that fact:


After our coffee, we walked north to Piedmont Park and the Saturday Green Market:


I was not the Pack Leader


The park is always peppered with groups of exercisers:


and then the lovely local produce:


A treat for us this morning: our friend Mary was there selling her colorful and deliciously fragrant soaps:

C bought me these two yummy bars:



All this leads me to tell you that we saw Food, Inc yesterday afternoon. I had wanted to see it, was prepared for the gory scenes, but came away with an increased awareness of the importance of buying local produce and grass fed cattle. I know that seeing this film will make me more aware of my purchasing options in the future. I urge you to see it.....together we can change the world, one seed and one purchase at a time!

I also went to Knitch yesterday. It seems that my cataracts are growing at a galloping pace and I can no longer see to knit the socks that I love so dearly. You may recall that my friend Diane recently sent me some yummy soy sock yarn, but I am dismayed to report that at the present time I cannot use it. I had also purchased some ultra soft cashmere to knit a lacey scarf for my Mom, but I cannot do that either. It is so frustrating! So, I figured I'd try some thicker yarn and some larger needles to tide me over until the surgery. Voila:

Misti Alpaca: 50% Alpaca, 30% Merino, 20% Bamboo.....and I can see it! I'll show you the nice little scarf I'm knitting once I make a little progress.

Go See Food, Inc!!!

Morning Walk

we walked past your home this morning
to enjoy your lovely gardens
c said I was stalking
we didn't stop

Deliveries

Before I get started, I want to tell you that this is my 700th post!! YIKES! Can you believe it? Just call me Chatty Cathy!!!

I delivered six newly created scarves to the gift shop at the Quinlan Art Center today. While there, I was thrilled to check out the new exhibit Local Colour, in which my "Grace on Tenth" is hanging. It is a terrific show, and if you are nearby, you need to go see it. I was blown away by all of the works exhibited, but especially those of Clayton Santiago.

So, I thought I'd share a few pics of the scarves that were included in the delivery. This delivery was particularly difficult for me, as I felt very attached to these babies.


This is "O O"


and this is the crepe de chine scarf I showed you the other day that has the foiled gold swirls on it. It is yummy, if I do say so myself!



I am particularly fond of this one, as it started out as a deconstructed screen printed piece, and has lovely little echoes of light blue and gray and white in the background. Again, I used the swirled Thermofax screeen and some royal blue for the added effect.


here's a detail shot:

Now this one is definitely my favorite of the lot (I think!)! It also began its life with lots of deconstructed screens and then I went back in a folded it up, applied some soy wax and then some dye, and voila!



a bit of a detail shot:

and here's a pure shibori scarf, using some wood blocks that our friend Joe cut for me as the resist.
I love the colors in this one.......very vibrant and rich. The bit of turquoise is sort of a surprise, isn't it?

Thanks for sticking with me for 700 chatty posts!!

PEACE!!!

KaBoom!!

I hope you enjoyed a fabulous Fourth, if you reside here in these United States. If not, I hope your July 4th was terrific. Barker, C and I mosied on down to our local Starbucks to enjoy our morning coffee and New York Times, and were surprised to find the outside deck almost full of Peachtree Road Race 'groupies' (spouses or family members waiting for their loved ones to finish the race....but at that point the race hadn't even started!). [C and I have run our fair share of Peachtrees (easily 25, and we do have the t-shirts!), but we're now challenged with sun issues, so we have opted out of this party.] We were able to snag one remaining table on the Starbucks patio, and enjoyed our morning ritual, accompanied by a phone call from K & D, who are still in Croatia).

I did some beading (no pics to share) and some reading and a bit of knitting and then we went out for an early dinner at the Woodfire Grill on Cheshire Bridge Road. C is a real foodie and subscribes to many Atlanta food blogs, so he had heard that the owner/chef of the Woodfire was smoking a whole hog on the 4th. It all sounded too good to be true, so he phoned ahead and made reservations. IT WAS FANTABULOUS!!!! Check out the menu for July 4th: it was so great!!! We got back to the condo in time to take Barker for a nice long walk before the fireworks began, and he was pretty fine throughout: hanging out in our bedroom.

As for the fireworks, they were awesome! Our condo is on the 14th floor, so we were able to see above most buildings around us, and Stone Mountain was in our view to the east. There were displays at Lenox (to the north) plus an incredible number to the east (was that Decatur or perhaps Avondale Estates?), plus numerous in the neighborhoods between the aforementioned and ours. We had opted to dine out early so that we would have ample time to walk Barker and get him settled before the festivities began. We didn't want to leave him alone during the boom-booms!

So, it was a win/win situation: we were able to enjoy MANY fireworks shows while Barker had us there with him during an otherwise trying time.

Here are a few of the pics I snapped from the condo.....please bear in mind that we were many miles away.

PEACE!!!!

Happy Day!!

Hope you're having a great July 4th! I'm taking a day off from the dyeing and am kicking back to do some knitting and beading.

Over the past two weeks I've been trying out some new (to me) techniques with soy wax. After attending Jane Dunnewold's "Soy Wax Three Ways" demo in Kansas City, I came home enthused and inspired to dye some yardage using stencils that I cut from plastic. Here is a portion of my first endeavor:


This is 3 yards of a lovely silk linen blend. I waxed it, dyed it yellow, let it batch, washed it out, waxed it again, dyed it scarlet, batched it, washed it, waxed it (sounds like a car, doesn't it?), and dyed it with a bronze-ish hue. After completing this piece, I thought how silly I was to do all of that washing between waxing and dyeing. So I consulted my guru (Jane) and she suggested that results might be different and that I do a comparison study. Since I had another two yards of the same fabric, I decided to give it a try, but using a different stencil. Here's what I got:

Totally different, isn't it! So, I think it depends on what result you are wanting, which method you should use. The washing between layers certainly does mellow things out.....but it is labor intensive!

Here are the two pieces together:


I finally got around to foiling some of the scarves that I dyed last week:

I prepared a new Thermofax screen and got the results above with the foil. I liked the screen so much that I added textile paint to a round robin t-shirt that had arrived on my doorstep earlier in the week:


It kind of reminds me of fireworks, which makes it very appropo for today!

Enjoy your holiday, if you are celebrating, or just enjoy your day!

PEACE

A Little Catchin' Up

I have been feeling sooooooooo gooooooood that I've been overly productive and haven't had time to post on the blog! So, I really cannot complain! Hope you are really living life too!

I had two most pleasant surprises last week. The first was a long and newsy email from my long lost friend Diane! She is totally responsible for my introduction into fabric dyeing, and silk dyeing in particular! I owe ALL of my happiness to this woman! We've taken a couple of classes together, and when she is not too busy in her hectic life, we email. So, it was GREAT to hear from her. She said that I should expect a package, so this was the second very pleasant surprise:

The lovely hand-knitted bag on the left is chock full of lavender.....and now that my sense of smell is returning, I can totally enjoy it! Diane is an incredible knitter, as you can well see!

On the right is this lovely skein of yarn:

If you look closely, you'll see that it's called Tofutsies and it's 50% Superwash wool, 25% Soysilk Fibers, 22.5% Cotton and 2.5% Chitin (fiber from shrimp and crab shells...it's naturally antibacterial!). I'm very excited about this new yarn and I've already picked out a pattern - it's called Peppermint Twist and here's how it looks in the little demo:

Thanks Diane....thanks for everything!!!

Well, I think "Pieces of Grace" is finally finished:

I've beaded, foiled, painted, quilted, etc. Here are a couple of detail shots:


I may have to put some gold on the cornerstone buttons....just to jazz them up a bit!

With the reno of my sinuses, I also added some new specs AND a new 'do'!

The heat and humidity had about done me in, so here's a rather unflattering photo of the new and much improved MOI! It's so nice to get up in the morning, take a dip in the pool, go for a long walk with Barker, take another dip in the pool, do some dyeing, take another dip in the pool...........you get the picture! With this do, all I do is shake and walk away! LOL

PEACE!!!