October over? How'd THAT happen?

How did October slip by me? I thought this was still September and I had so much time to get so many things done . . .

One of the most "fun" things I've done is to spend Fridays with Bethany in my studio. She is three and a half, loves to draw and make beaded necklaces, and running her hand through a bowl of threads is her idea of a contemplative moment. She isn't ready to stitch, though, but I'm ready when she shows the first interest. She asked, immediately, to have an apron like mine, so I decorated the canvas apron I'd bought for her (before she was born) with her name in big pink letters (she chose the fabric for each letter), and each time she comes, we add buttons and ribbons to it. She is in the garden, here, taking a break from a hard morning of drawing and counting wooden beads.:

Two weeks ago we went to Burt's Pumpkin Patch to find that perfect pumpkin for her dad to carve, and after being overwhelmed by the ocean of orange, I found the shed with gourds and corn, where the texture was so compelling I had to be dragged away:

And this past weekend Charles and I were invited to go camping with them to Hiawassee, GA, to an Airstream Rally. We have no Airstream, of course, so Jordan loaned us one of his. We stayed in the Silver Pickle (1959), Jordan and Julie and the children stayed in the slightly larger 1964 Airstream. He has a penchant for finding old Airstreams that need TLC and ripping in to them to bring them to life again. It was rainy and cold, but the mountains and lake were still a beautiful show of color.

We old folks think this might be a bit more fun in the spring. The time with family and meeting their Airstream friends was lovely, though. The most rewarding thing a mother can experience is the moments when total strangers come up to you and take your hand and tell you what a great son or daughter you have, and my buttons were a-busting with pride this weekend! I also got some lovely photographs to use as models in the pastel painting classes my sister and I are taking with Karen Margulis. My sister is the artist; I am along for comic relief.

I am working on two projects, now. One is a weekend class at the Campbell Folkschool I will teach in December on making Holiday Postcards in fabric. (Anne and Beth: I agreed to do this in March of 2008, before you two took up the Fantasy of Trees project with postcards and ATCs!) The other is to put together a proposal for a class to be taught at the EGA Regional Seminar in Birmingham, AL in 2011, also a weekend class. I am typing handouts for the Campbell class now, and making samples of 4"x6" cards. The EGA proposal has to be in by January, and if it is accepted, I will offer it to my Freestyle Group friends to do a test run on it and to tweak it a bit. So I have a few things to keep me busy for the next weeks-- including Thanksgiving and Christmas family dinners. To be with my family was the reason to return to the Atlanta area, and even without all our furniture, it is a pleasure to have us together for the holidays. Julie and my sister, Michelle, are ICU nurses who will work Thanksgiving Day, so our family dinner will be on Friday. I would like to have the dining room painted by then-- no small feat, because it was brown until I began covering it with Kilz (two coats and it is just a lighter, spottier brown), and a coat of white (still spotty, but more cloudy than brown). Fortunately, it is a room with an 8' ceiling, and I won't need scaffolding to get it done like the living room, sun room, and master bath. We need the pros for those rooms. And something stronger than Kilz. Anyone with experience in primers?

Plans for the next few weeks: to get over this miserable sinus infection and begin my crochet projects for Christmas. This is perfect weather for working on something woolen and heavy that drapes across my lap as I add to it.

Tough Week for Sunflowers

When we were driving back to Powell from Woodstock this morning, I was shocked to see the sunflower fields.  They had dried, were actually very brown and pretty well gone when we saw them last week, but today one of the fields looked as if it had been harvested.  No brown blossoms with the little crook at the top that held the drooping flower head.  Just tall, brown stalks, now.  It was the sort of thing that looks more like a bad dream than a harvest, so I didn't even ask Charles to stop so I could photograph it.  The stalks, several feet tall, no longer look crowded in the field, but stand there startled, as if they'd had their hats snatched off and they aren't quite sure whether they should continue to stand or is it time to sit, or lie down . . .?

I did manage to get a little "fun" work done last week, besides the never-ending tasks of sorting and putting away.  The only thing worse is having seen an item in a box and needing it, then wondering which box it was in.  I'll be so, so SO glad to get the cabinets here to hold these boxes.  Waiting for the Powell house to sell for that.

Anyway, I looked at my embroidery table and had to laugh-- what a mess!!!  I'm working on too many things at a time, and my table reflects this bad discipline.  Here are some of my little color books that I've been keeping for more than a year-- little mulberry paper albums with scraps and bits and pieces of ideas and miscellany and useless information about colors.  Anything at all is grist for this mill, so long as it is small and interesting and looks like the start of something sometime along the way.  I keep finding things for the book as I go through boxes, so they are stacked on the table rather than being on the shelf, where they would be no trouble at all.

In Knoxville:  Anne Stevenson and Beth Ralph are co-chairs of the EGA Fantasy of Trees project this year, and the theme is holiday postcards and ATCs.  I have been collecting ideas for postcards for a year, since I'm to teach a class in holiday postcards for the Campbell Folk School in December, but sitting down and turning the drawings into the real thing seems out of the realm of reason, right now.  But, I took the bull by the horns, or bit the bullet, or whatever it is you do when you have lost all excuses for gross procrastination, and I made an ATC.  It is a pear, from the "Twelve Days of Christmas" repeating line about the pear tree.  Now that I've gotten this first one done, there is hope for others to follow.

While On The Road

Traveling the road between Woodstock and Powell can be interesting, often an adventure.  We pass this sunflower field, about 45 minutes from Penny Lane.  It was in soy beans last year, but we were thrilled to see the sunflowers this summer.  They are droopy and brown, today, but this is the way we think of them, bright yellow and spreading across both sides of the highway, on and on . . .  It is easy to see how Vincent could have chosen them for portraits.

When we got back to Knoxville, the strawberry plants that grow in a concrete fountain were ready for rifling.  The three-tiered fountain was in the front yard of the house in Powell when we purchased it in 2001, and moving it around back was one of the first items of business.  A friend drilled drain holes in it for me, and we've planted it with a variety of things over the years-- wave petunias do especially well in the two deeper bowls.  But a couple of years ago we put strawberry plants there.  Raising the plants from the ground saves our backs and makes finding the fruit easier.  They're small, but really sweet.  Never enough for more than a bowl at breakfast or an afternoon snack-- but I'm not complaining!

The deer seem to prefer to nibble the blueberry bushes in the front yard, though I can sometimes get a handful before the deer come to graze.  I wonder if the bunnies who dance in the grass are waiting for us to plant something for them to snack on!

How the studio came to be

Tonight I am going to bite the bullet and add pictures to the blog.  A blog without photos is like a day without chocolate, too blah to contemplate.

The studio is the remodeled detached garage at the upper back of the house.  The previous owner of our new home, Dennis, originally built the garage to house his two antique cars.  It is about 22 feet square.  I needed a little more space, so we took the two single garage doors out, including the wall between them, replaced all with an overhead beam to hold things together, and began framing in the little bump-out addition.  A raised floor was also put in.  The picture above shows the work in progress.

This photo is  from the inside looking to the front of the building, the framing done, waiting for sheet rocking.  Dennis, who is also our builder, found the five 6-foot windows that make this wall so striking.  Because the studio is away from the street, on the upper level of the sloping yard, and in a wooded neighborhood, it is rather private, so I am still of two minds about hanging curtains there.

This next view is of the completed sheet rock, before it was trimmed out, primed, and painted.  There are two small windows (right photo) on the wall facing the lower terrace of the backyard and the house.  Despite this, it still left the back corner of the studio a little dark, but we solved the problem by adding two sky light for maximum natural light.

Bookcases are a big deal with me, so we had the top half of the back wall made into nine sections of bookcases with movable shelving.  The cases do not go all the way to the floor so I am able to move furniture around as I make different uses of the space.  Dennis trimmed the space out beautifully and painted everything in Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace in a satin finish.  How the light bounces!  The floors are plywood over the subflooring, tongue-and-groove, with three coats of urethane exterior varnish with white pigment added to it.  Even the air conditioning unit is white!  The only color will come from the elements of the studio itself.

In the center of the room are sets of strip lighting and two power cords that are ceiling hung for convenience in working at tables there.  

You can see the bookcases, and to the left, between the two small windows, is an old wall cabinet that was in my dad's shop.  Riaze, one of Dennis' carpenters, did a nice job of sanding

and re-painting it for me and adding open side

 shelves.

We were away when the room was finished, and my husband and I came home, eager to see the space.  When we opened the door, it was a shock to our senses, because everything was so pure white that we momentarily lost our sense of "up" and "down."  It was like walking into a totally negative space where gravity and walls and ceilings did not exist.  After a moment my world righted, but for that instant, I was in a white free fall.

I began filling it that evening with boxes of books, fabric, paper, thread-- all good things for making fiber art were stored in those boxes.  All the furniture has not come yet, several large pieces are still in the old studio space in Knoxville.  Unfortunately, I will have to wait 

for the movers to bring them (which means the Knoxville house has to sell). To make the materials accessible I have installed temporary plastic shelving for a large number of boxes.  This called for careful labeling.  Still, I cannot become distracted and leave things out while I work away at a table, because the boxes are a bother to navigate, and I trip over things regularly.

 

Since I have been away from regular studio hours the last several months, I dove right in.  I had a lovely weekend class with Margaret Cogswell in Asheville through the Cloth Fiber Workshop, and I finished the second of two pieces I began there.  And worked on a project for the Freestyle group back in Knoxville.  And enjoyed re-discovering old studio journals and sketchbooks that had been packed away for months and months.  The books came out of their dozens of boxes, and suddenly the wide-open white space is filling with all that color and texture that excites me.

Home at last!!!

So, you see, Cynthia, maybe I CAN do this blog, after all!

Packing the old studio

Packing up the old studio is a heart wrenching task.  There are places here that simply NEED the studio things in place to give the rooms a sense of spirit.  

Charles, my husband, has worked like a galley slave.  He enjoys sorting the boxes and furniture and putting them on the truck.  He is extremely organized (there are all sorts of jokes I could make here, but not after he's done such a nice job of things), and has packed  the trailer Jordan so graciously loaned us, the bed of my pick-up truck, the back seat of my truck, as well as his Camry.  We look like the Clampetts on the move.  We leave with the just-rising birds tomorrow morning for Woodstock, and I will spend the next weeks organizing the studio, or at least I will move things in their first space and see if that really works or not.  How will 950 square feet of "stuff" squeeze into 500 square feet?  I think I am about to find out.

The larger pieces of studio furniture are not coming yet.  I have to really be a good girl to get that job done.  The drafting table (gift of Sandra and Lynn Beck), small desk, and antique cupboard (which is where most of the fabrics are stored) and tall, thin chest of drawers for storing linen yardage-- these things need better backs than ours to heft them out of the studio.  As with all things, now, I wait and try to practice patience to see what plan unfolds for me.

I haven't seen the studio for a week, now, and our builder says it should be finished when we get there tomorrow.  I will take photos before we bring anything into the studio-- this will be the last opportunity to see all the walls and floor before I start to cover them up!  And maybe I'll have figured out how to add photos when I post my next blog.

In the beginning . . .

Cynthia Patrick has encouraged me, by her example, to blog.  I have not thought I had the time for this, so I'll give it a shot.

I am a fiber artist.  If I don't create something regularly, I get surly and difficult to live with.  I also use dangling participles and split infinitives when I'm creative-less, so you can see I need to get to my studio.  SOON.  The problem is this:  the detached garage that was given to me to convert to studio space is moving slowly, slowly, toward the finish.  First the foundations had to be dug out and waterproofed, the two doors removed and a beam put across the whole of the opening to support everything.  Then the front had to be bumped out three feet beyond the front wall, a raised floor put in, and along with insulation and sheetrock, HVAC, lights and wall outlets (these outlets are absolutely EVERYWHERE, including a pair of pull-downs in the ceiling).  And what would a studio be unless bookcases were built?  Lots of books, so all along the back wall, about half-way up, so I can use the wall space for tables and ironing board and lots of et cetera.  I had everything painted white, so the floor was put in last of all, because it is also white.  Yes, white!  Painted with three coats of a urethane outdoor enamel with white pigment in it.

This all came about because we are moving back to the Atlanta area from Knox County, Tennessee, where we have lived since 2001-02.  We moved there when my husband retired from the Cobb County school system so we could take care of his dad, whose memory was failing.  It is two years since his passing, now, and we've bought the house in Woodstock (September of 08), only 3.5 miles from our son and his family, and we're playing the waiting game as we try to sell the Knoxville house.  Meanwhile, the studio in the basement of the Knoxville house is an eyesore and doesn't encourage anyone to want to live here, so it is being emptied, and everything stored in the sun room of the "new" place, waiting for the studio to be completed.  The room is about to split its seams.  Hence the conversion of the detached garage.

The hardest thing about leaving Knoxville (Powell, really) is my stitching friends in the Freestyle Embroidery Group, an interest group of the Knoxville Chapter of Embroiderers' Guild of America.  The dozen women there are incredibly talented and very happy to share their talents with others.  They are an unusual and rare group.  It is difficult to get back for the meetings, now that I have a half-live in both places, but I really try to work my schedule so I can make the trip back and forth.

We only have a computer in Knoxville, so blog entries will be scanty until the house is sold and everything is moved to Woodstock, we get our cable line installed there, and my son, Jordan, sets things up for me.  Right now I'm getting ready to travel to Asheville for a class with Margaret Cogswell this weekend.  Cannot wait!  I love her clean style, have met her at her Penland studio, and am impressed by her seriousness and vision.  I hope to gain insight into studio journaling and developing ideas from the process.  I love my studio journals, would be devastated to lose them.  They represent years, decades of thinking on paper.

Hope to be able to keep this going.