Weekend Recap

This is pretty much how I spent my weekend, so there is much to recap. I laid around on one couch while the dog laid on the other and then we would switch. I know, not very exciting. I thought that when I decided to get rid of my cable television that it would curtail my television watching...boy was I wrong about that. While I no longer random switch channels and watch drivel that is on, I still spend a lot of time watching television. I have hours and hours of television at my finger tips that I can access via Netflix streaming and HuluPlus.

This weekend I started watching The Monarchy series. I only have the first two seasons, but it was enough to get me through, and since I dozed off a couple of times, I had to rerun some of the shows as I would miss a king or two. I did learn some from watching these shows and it provided some insight into the Jacobite Risings, which I keep coming across in literature....so maybe, if I am going to laze around watching television at least it is intelligent shows where I'm learning things...right?
 

Something to Think About

I just saw and article (Man Designs Intricate Works of Art Using Excel Spreadsheets) on Yahoo! and thought of Sara. I know how much she loves her Excel....

 

Acrylic Ink Adventure

This past weekend I went on an adventure. My mom and I had planned to do an art quilt weekend with Judy Coates Perez for about 6 months. We made all the plans, mom bought all the materials and did lots of planning and communicating with the instructor. On Friday morning, I rolled out of bed, packed up the car and dog and as I was pulling out of the driveway to take Leo to his spaw weekend, Mom called and told me that due to unforeseen circumstances she was not going to be able to make it after all, but my sister had been roped in to take the Acrylic Ink Adventure with me.

I went by my folks' house to pick up all the supplies that mom had packed for us then met up with my sister and headed out to La Grange, TX (known for being the home of the Chicken Ranch from Best Little Whorehouse). The drive down was fantastic. It was about 4 hours of laughing and catching up (Marti and I haven't had any one-on-one time since she came out to visit me in California). We got to the hotel and checked in...and eventually got into the room. We took a short little rest and then headed out to the "Great Expectations Creativity Center", the location of where the workshop was being held. Marti and I had lots of fun coming up with Dickens references as we headed over. Sadly, we got slightly lost. Here are the directions that were provided:

General Directions to Windy Hill Lane: If you came from Highway 71 (which we were), once you are on 159/237, go about 5 miles. You'll see a few green street signs on your right; you'll pass the Jersey Barn and your left, a working oil pump-jack, then two red barns. Windy Hill is just past the second red barn. Turn left. If you reach a little white restaurant (Fishes and Loaves) on your left, you have gone too far.

We found 159/237 and started clocking the 5 miles...with Marti speeding along. We pass one sign that read Dairy Tours, Milk a Cow. I commenting "ooo, better than a wine tour". We then see some signs and one that I thought may have said "Windy Hill" but we kept going. We passed a white building that I thought was a restaurant, but it didn't look open, so we just kept on rolling along. I did ask Marti how far we'd gone and if she could slow down. Her response was "we've only gone a couple of miles, we haven't gone 5 yet". We then didn't see anything...at all...except fields...and no place to turn around. We eventually DID get turned back around because it was agreed by all parties that we had some how missed the turn. (As an FYI, when we left we clocked the distance and it turned out to be around two miles.)

We eventually did make it to Great Expectations, got checked in and set up. We threw the coordinator of the event when we told him that Marti was not Jay, even though she was forced to wear a name tag that had the wrong name all weekend (we did mark through and change the name or just put "NOT" Jay, but still). The class got started and Marti and I dove right into doing something that neither of us had any idea what it was all about. We ended up dying and painting on fabric using Acrylic inks and learned all sorts of new techniques with intentions of coming home and having a "girls' weekend" at Casa ABBA where Marti and I can fill Mom's head with all of our new found knowledge.

Here are pictures of our final "exams" where we used some of the various techniques that we learned. Now there is still work that we will both probably still do on these, but here they are as we left La Grange:

Andrea's Flower Garden

Marti's Texas Boot

 

I am participating in a quilt challenge from Art Quilts Around the World and today I reveal my latest work.

When we were given the challenge of "Out of Asia", I had no idea what I was going to do. Soon there after, though, I was sitting listening to a speaker talk about spring and the trees blossoming, which made me think of a trip that I had made to Washington, D.C. for the Cherry Blossom Festival, and I immediately sketched out what I wanted to do.

I originally planned to figure out how to make origami fabric cherry blossoms, but after a couple of attempts I decided that it just wasn't for me. This got me discouraged and I started thinking about other things that would be considered "out of Asia". I thought about doing a rendition of a Buddha, as I am also learning some about Buddhism and meditation. I thought at one point as I looked at the oil seeping out of the wrecked Arizona at Pearl Harbor that I would do some abstract play on the idea of the oil slick and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but I quickly set that idea aside as my previous quilt had been oil-slick-esque. I then started doing some research on Japanese beetles and thought doing a big beetle would be an interesting take.

Sadly, time was passing and I still hadn't made up my mind what exactly I was going to do. That is until one day as I was walking through the halls of the office building where I work and I came upon a picture of a cherry tree in full bloom with Mount Fuji in the background. Now, I have passed this picture hundreds of times, so I'm sure the image was planted somewhere in by subconscious, but when I saw it this time I knew that it was meant to be....whether I did origami cherry blossoms or not.

Therefore, here is my abstract of Mount Fuji with Cherry Blossoms:

I broke down and used silk flowers and a hot glue gun, but I still like the effect.

And, now on to the next challenge....I really need to just stick with my first thought as I seem to keep going back to what pops into my head when we first get the challenge.