Fallin' Back

We've had a restful day of just hangin' out with the boys (dogs, that is) in the city. We walked our four mile route early this morning and it was grey, windy and quite chilly. After a leisurely couple of hours of reading, we loaded everybody into the car and started making our rounds about town: MetroFresh for our Metrofreshual Saturday soup lunch, Breadgarden for homemade wholewheat sourdough, the thrift shop for bargain beautiful silks and Egyptian cottons, Intown Quilters for their fq sale, the supermarket for provisions, and then home for a late lunch. After a nice nap, it was time to get the boys out into the park.

It must be Autumn in the Southland: the pansies have been planted and these babies will be bringing us pleasure for the next six months.

Look at this beautiful Great Dane puppy quenching his thirst at the water fountain! Remind me not to partake of those waters!!!!

Just a hint of Fall color in the trees in Piedmont Park.

I do love that Midtown skyline!

This picturesque fountain stands in front of some new condos right next to the park. It wasn't until I got home and looked at the pictures that I saw that lovely orange construction fence in the background! If I'd only brought my scissors I could have taken a snip or two for my silkscreening! Oh well.....next time!

The Piedmont Park logo....do you think they'd miss this section of the gate if I borrowed it to use as a stencil??? Hmmmmmm........................

My Yellow Jackets beat Miami this afternoon....it's been a wonderful Saturday...hope yours has been too!

Silk Painters of Atlanta

This morning dawned dark and rainy in northeast Georgia. Have I told you how ready I am to be back on Eastern Standard Time? My body wakes up at 6:30 AM, but my mind says it can't be so, as it is still pitch black outside. I sometimes fall back to sleep, but most often I get up and do a bit of journaling before C and Barker rise. It's so peaceful at that hour....but it sure is dark! AND, it's too darned cold and black to go out and walk!! I do miss my sunrise walks with Barker Baby!! Sunday morning we'll finally get some relief!!!

Today was the monthly meeting of the Silk Painters of Atlanta group, so after breakfast C, Barker and I packed our bags and headed off to the big city. Poor Barker didn't know that we would also be dogsitting for his little Beagle nephew Marley over the weekend. It's so hard being an only doggy, especially when your space is invaded by another dog, and a hyper Beagle-type, at that!

Due to inclement weather, several of our group members stayed home, but a few of us gathered to share our work over the past month, new techniques that we have learned, and any news of shows, classes, etc. I brought along several pieces from my week of classes with Rayna Gillman, Gail Racey shared upcoming events in the Atlanta area (you heard it here first: Susan Moyer is returning next Fall!!!), and Martha Andreatos had several gorgeous scarves for us to ogle. Here are two. (I hope that Blogger will allow you to enlarge them by clicking on the image.)



I love the varying colors in the background of this silk charmeuse scarf, and the playfulness of the sunflowers.

Texas Bluebonnets

I had promised several photos over the past week and when it came time to adding them to my blog, Senor Blogger was reluctant to comply, so the following post is a bit of a photo album from those days both at John C. Campbell and beyond. Enjoy!

Photos, as Promised

In an effort to catch up on photos, here are a few from my past week:



This is Rebecca Cox, one of my more talented classmates at John C. Campbell Folk School. She does incredible work, and seems to be comfortable in most any medium. Rebecca and her husband were both taking classes at Campbell. I enjoyed getting to know them both better during mealtime.











Barbara Weitekamp (hope I haven't butchered your last name too badly, Barbara!) is the other half of the Caifornia Girl team. She is a very talented surface designer, who always seemed to come up with an extremely creative twist to whatever it was that we were doing!













This is a silk habotai scarf that I batiked and dyed in my Rayna Gillman class at John C. Campbell Folk School.

Ahhhhhh, the Fabulous Fox!!!! Some will recall that the Fox Theater in Midtown Atlanta is where "Gone With The Wind" first aired, with Margaret Mitchel, Cary Grant and Vivien Leigh all attending the opening. Last Saturday evening, C and I attended a beautiful wedding at the Cathedral of St. Philip on Peachtree St. in Atlanta. Our friends Bonnie and Fulton were tying the knot, and we were there to witness them saying their vows. Their reception followed at the Fox and it was a wonderful affair!!!

The very same marquis that announced the opening of GWTW, here proclaiming the wedding of our Bonnie and Fulton!!!

It was a most memorable "do"!

Armed and Dangerous

I am very excited and looking forward to some fun in the studio this afternoon! I found the two batik tjaps at Mingei World in Decatur on Sunday afernoon. You can order them online too if you wish. Helene Davis had one of the electric tjantings in our class at Campbell and was kind enough to let all of us borrow it. I fell in love with how easily it worked, so I ordered one as soon as I got home and it arrived today. You can have one of your very own by going here. And, I found the lovely potato masher when I was out running some errands. You're on your own for that one!

Speaking of the mail, this also arrived today. I had ordered it so long ago, that I had totally forgotten about it. You can have one of your very own by going to MoveOn.org. If you want to read a great political rant, please mosey on over to my friend Gerrie's blog.

Speaking of Gerrie, she had asked to see some of my "work" from Campbell, so I'll share just a couple with you. This poor, pathetic shirt has been my dyeing work shirt for a couple of years now. In the winter, my studio tends to be a bit on the chilly side, so I usually wear this. It began its life in my home as a long-sleeved white GAP t-shirt. I bought it specifically to wear when dyeing and even brought it to Campbell Folk School a couple of winters ago and asked my fellow surface design classmates to use it as a drip cloth or for drying their dyed hands. So, it looked pretty messy. After seeing Rayna's wonderful shirts (see post below) in class last week, I decided to follow her lead and batik this baby. It came out pretty well, and looks a whole lot better with the turtles and periwinkle background. So beware, family and friends who read this, there may be batiked clothing items in your Christmas packages this year!!!

Well, I had hoped that blogger would allow me to insert a few more photos, but alas he is up to his old tricks again. I am absolutely positive that blogger is a male AND I am almost convinced that he is also a REPUBLICAN! What do you bet????

OK, off to follow my batiking muse!

Bloggin' Chick

Well, this about says it all!
It's so cute, I couldn't resist sharing it with you.

So, if you're a chick AND you blog, why not sign up!!!

For Art's Sake

Yesterday afternoon, C and I had a lovely drive through the country over to Athens, Georgia to visit with his cousins, Heather and Scott. Scott is a Philosphy Professor at UGA and Heather is retired from the Women's Studies Program, but I digress. As if my day wasn't already "made" by driving through the picturesque campus of the University of Georgia in Scott's jet black Ferrari, but we then viewed the new exhibits at the Georgia Museum of Art, first taking in the quilts of the mid twentieth century of Georgia. There is a knockout Crazy Quilt that greeted us as we entered the room. But further along, my heart was captured by c. 1850 silk presentation quilt.


This is the best I could do to photograph it, but you get the general idea. The colors are still so vibrant that I just wonder how bright it must have been when it was first constructed!
Of course I wasn't able to use my flash, so the colors are a bit distorted and more yellowed. But you can see that this was and still is a remarkable piece.

Here are a couple of pics of the individual blocks:

We next viewed the works of artist Art Rosenbaum, who was born in the U.S. in 1938 and now resides in Athens. His pieces are very colorful and incorporate many highly stylized scenes from the surrounding area. I thoroughly enjoyed viewing his murals and could have spent hours examining the details.

Later we met up with Letty Smith, another of C's cousins, for dinner. It was a fun family get together, for no other reason than to simply enjoy one another's company (i.e.: no wedding, no funeral, no holiday!). Thanks guys, I enjoyed it!

I didn't quite finish posting pics from my class with Rayna Gillman at John C. Campbell Folk School. So hopefully Blogger will allow another couple of photos.

Ah, no, not today....well, you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. I also have a couple of pictures from the fabulous wedding we attended last weekend in Atlanta, so stay tuned for more! Afer all, I'm BACK!!!!

I'm Back

Well, I'm back. While I enjoyed my time away on Typepad, I really don't have the time to make it work the way I had hoped. So, for now, I'm back here on Blogger, and I hope I can make it work more to my liking.

I'll first republish a few pics from my last week's class with Rayna Gillman. (These first appeared on Typepad, so please excuse me if they are repeats for you.)

Rayna is one of the very best teachers I've ever had, and the class was not only fun but very conducive to learning. The group seemed to bond immediately, although we all came from such varied backgrounds, had such different levels of experience, and all hoped to learn something different. Bless you, Rayna, for being able to suit so many of our needs!

This is my good buddy Mayme Mitcham. Luckily for me, she chose the table next to mine, but poor Mayme had to put up with me all week! She made some wonderful pieces.

This is Belinda, who sat to my left. We also had a great time together. Belinda has so many varied interests, from gardening to graphics, that we never lacked in conversation. I just loved the pieces she created.

And this lovely lady is Rayna's good friend Helene Davis, a very accomplished fabric dyer and fiber artist. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Helene and her husband Bob. He was such a good sport to put up with all of us last week!

"Califoria Girl" Joan made a rather unhappy discovery on Wednesday. She knew that she was allergic to ingesting soy products, but it came as a very bad surprise to her that she could not inhale soy wax fumes either. But Joan was a good sport about it and did her gelatin printing on a picnic table outside on our patio.

Well I guess I've reached my photo limit for today on blogger. I had hoped that I might be able to include a few more photos, but I guess not. We are off to Athens, GA this afternoon to go to a quilt show with C's cousins, and then out to dinner.