night gardens

a neighbor's weeping cherry tree photographed while on a late night dog walk.







there is a simple setting on my little cannon digital camera for taking pictures at night.

i think these will make wonderful paintings some day, when my painting studio is back from the dead.

hot dog day

saturday was hot dog day at alfred university.


we saw margaret in position as barista at the moka joka -


and checked out the doodle show she had assembled on the cafe's wall.

i'd given her a bird doodle to post in the show. some post-pubescent vandal added some scribbled boobs. margs was annoyed but i found them rather funny.


there was a parade, we watched as she rode down main street on the walf radio station float.


later we pondered the caution gate to the "museum of luminous phenomenon."


we all basked in the 90+ degree sunshine while watching the engineers compete in the hot dog launch. there are few things as entertaining as watching wieners shot out of catapults, crossbows and slingshots on a hot spring afternoon.


of course such freakishly warm spring weather is always followed by a wicked thunderstorm, which drenched the festivities and sent the parents scurrying home so that the kids could start partying in earnest.

a silly photograph of a rain droplet caught by my flash.

the forsythia city

i went to my 'homeland' today - ithaca, ny.
it's the forsythia city and the bushes were bloomimg madly.


every year at this time i drive down for the annual flax sale and, with any luck, get my entire wardrobe for the coming year.

it's nuts, i know, but it is a great day of wild shopping. after my morning of hardcore earthmother linen shopping i always have lunch with my baby sister, it's tradition.

quilting birds

i just finished machine quilting the second side of my exotic birds tote bag.
(see april 6th)


machine quilting is so much fun, it is like gesture drawing with threads.


lots of pink thread and lots of metallic silver thread.


one of the birds.


a little heart filled with silver stitches.


the bag face on my cutting board, all trimmed and waiting.

napoleon p. oodle

the grand old man of the house gets his napface on.

morning sunlight

"live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…"
- ralph waldo emerson (1803 - 1882)

rusty blue beads

i just torched for the first time in months.

the beads are a bit lumpen,

and a bit labored.

i love that when you encase silver foil with transparent pale pink the silver blushes gold.

the beads are just periwinkle, silver foil and pale transparent pink.

it felt so good to be back playing with fire.


one last snapshot of the swans on the bay, i love the ripples radiating out from the big bird as it scratches its head with that big orange flipper.

swans a swimming

a snapshot from the bay yesterday.

bits & pieces

yesterday was glorious here and i ran amok.

i went to out to fairport and visited my favorite store -
craft bits & pieces.

i found pailettes.


some juicy loopy orange mohair and some weird blue fringed yarn.


a new bottle of black ink and microscope slides.


vintage upholstery fabric in a very 70's fwench provincial motif of castles and hunting dogs.


some very cool vintage cotton webbing for tote bag handles.


there are also "blanks" for clip earrings, more vintage strap webbing, some trim, "specially made for you by mother" tags, moss fringe, nail head studs, plastic noses for plush animals and a couple more pieces of fun vintage fabric.

total: $10.69. i love that place.

p/s - i torched yesterday.

bluestars

the little blue flowers opened today.

i have been very absent from my blog in order to be present at the hospital. my baby sister proved you could almost die from a sprained ankle - twice. after nearly two weeks she has been discharged from my big city hospital and is on her way back to her small town.

i need a nap.

snow drops

the first moment of spring - the snowdrops are blooming.

they are weeks late this year.

these little flowers were such a welcome sight that it seemed even the poodles were glad to see them on their walk this afternoon. they sniffed them, then ceremoniously pished on them - so much for anthropomorphism.

worst fears- a gunman on campus

i got a frantic cel phone call from my freshman daughter yesterday.
the campus was on 'lockdown' because a gunman had been spotted.
she was in the depths of the library waiting for information thru the mass cell messaging network the university set up after the virginia tech shooting.

to read her blog entry written during and after the event click here, it's chilling.

i was stunned, angry and petrified.
eventually the 'gunman' was found, he was carrying a nerf gun which he had painted black for some unimaginably stupid reason. a secretary had seen a young man in a hoodie, wearing a backpack, run by with a gun.

quilted peacocks

i have started another quilted tote bag - this one for record albums.

the vintage material is goofy 60's colonial upholstery fabric from a decorator's estate sale.

what a dreamy orgy of fabric buying that was - a whole attic full and every piece was 25 cents.

here's a close up of the bird and some of the fruits. the overall machine quilting was done with a creamy beige thread.

then i added some details, like the birds beak, with metallic gold thread.


i also put some gold on the blossoms.


i have started working on the reverse side of the bag, which is also a vintage bird themed upholstery fabric. it's almost done - it has silver metallic details.
why silver? because, nothing succeeds like excess.

spring tote bag

hey, i took another quilting class yesterday
and made myself a quilted floral tote bag.

it's about 20" long and all cotton.


first i wildly machine quilted the fabric - that's a lot of fun -
you can see the reverse side inside the bag in the pic below.

after the fabric was all quilted it got sewn up into a big tote bag with mesh handles.
the teacher was very clever and i learned how to make 'french seams.'

and here is some more french, as in a poodle

a glam headshot of miss kiki p. oodle.

little birds

bird watching in the enchanted forest.


bird graffiti.



eerily beautiful white bird shrine

messages in the woods

signs in the enchanted forest.




stranger



forget everything but the circus