work in progress

Okay. Believe it or not, this represents progress. The rug is visible. There are whole swathes of floor with enough clear passage so that the cats no longer struggle to move around. I have packed up and thrown out huge bags o'stuff -- mostly miscellaneous papers with information that I might build a class around, or that were funny or interesting, or that might be useful, or that I can't remember why I saved in the first place.

Bags o' stuff that I only looked at when I was considering whether to throw them out, or during earlier spasms of "I really have to get organized. Oh god, this is too overwhelming." This time I threw them out (actually, I put them in the recycling bin -- which is required here in mainland NYC). Six -- count 'em -- six shopping bags of books went to the library. Some of them, maybe one bag's worth, I had bought and never read. Out. Out. Out. There is still more to go, but this is much improved.

I'm not sure how this room is going to sort into work stations. But now at least there is enough space to shift things without first having to shift other things. The house is old and the electricity is not of the first water -- so I'm not sure what all I can have going when the a/c is on, but This Is Progress. Really it is.

oh, the iron(y)ing

No pictures today, but overflowing with good intentions for the long weekend:
1. purge the books
2. excavate a space for an ironing area and
3. for the drawing table
4. haul the ironing stuff and drawing table into their new spaces.

These are little bits of furniture, surely I can accomplish this much in 4 days.
If so, then
a. plant the lilacs my friend Mary gave me
b. plant the vegetable garden
and hope-hope-hope that warm weather finally comes. God knows we've had enough rain.

shopped my closet

I've started noodling around with an idea for the next Journal Quilt Project. JQP has been reconfigured as juried invitational with a theme. (Details are at http://home.att.net/~kareyb/JQ2008/2008JQWebAnncFinal.htm) The theme is Elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. I'm sorry to lose the free-for-all aspect of JQP's original incarnation, but the theme "speaks to me" plus I ran across a terrific quote on Bartleby.com about a week ago ... so here I go. Snippets of brown-to-cream for Earth, sorted into one of my very elegant cat-food boxes, and heaps o' blue that are looking way too blue for Water, especially if Air is going to run from smoky gray to silver. Hmmm.

Meanwhile the terrific quote is: "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. " —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

I think that, for this project, green (spontaneous, abundant) will be the color of love.

words to live by

I had a productive lunch hour today -- dropped my triptych of collages from Randel Plowman at the framer, kept my promise to myself to walk around during the allotted hour, and got a good sketch worked out for the new Journal Quilt project. Then I came home and pulled these angel cards -- actually they fell out of the pack, which is how I usually "pull" angel cards. So they're propped up along the back of the keyboard to keep me company while I get myself remotivated to Get Some Things Done.

If you're not familiar with Randel Plowman's work -- stop by http://www.acollageaday.blogspot.com/

I like his work a lot, and I also find his entrepreneurial spirit inspiring.

pretty maids all in a row

These are my grandmother's irises. According to family lore -- always an unstable resource -- successive generations of these flowers have been growing in the yard since the late 1930s, or early 1940s, depending on whom you ask. When I moved home again in the early 1980s, the plants had formed massive, dense clumps of rhizomes that resembled manhole covers. The roots were so congested that the plants barely flowered. I dug them up, broke them apart, stuffed 25 rizomes into each of 20 shopping bags, and hauled the bags over to Bronx Green-up at the Botanical Garden. My understanding is that Gram's irises are now in schoolyards all over the borough. She'd love that. AND -- there were still enough rhizomes left over to start over, and over, and over. These are most definitely perennial.

When I have a flattering (or at least encouraging) "after" picture, I'll post the embarrassing "befores" of my studio clean-up, clear-out, get-organized-finally project. I found out that the local Salvation Army will take books, so that is going to speed things along quite handily. When I first got the de-clutter bug, I bought a book on the subject that revealed to me that my main source of clutter is . . . books.

Requiscat in pace

April may not have been the cruellest month, but it's not one that I'll recall with ease or fondness. My much cherished, 14-year-old cat developed liver disease, and it was touch-and-go all month as to whether she'd pull through. She didn't. Now I understand more completely why a witch's cat is called her familiar. Rest in peace, Chessie cat.

And now, back to work.

On the up side, regarding work, 8 of the 10 pieces I made for Virginia Speigel's Fiber Arts for A Cause have found homes (one is going to Scotland ! ) and -- all told, and more to the point -- FFAC raised $12,000 in two days for the American Cancer Society.

I did my bit by purchasing a lovely piece by Nellie Durand called "Hope."

Until I can figure out how to link and/or upload stuff, you can check it out on her blog (May 4 post): http://nelliedurand.blogspot.com/

Ten... Nine...

El Alma es Eterna

(The Soul is Eternal)

Commercial printed cotton, commercial printed poly

sheer, glitter tulle, cotton and holoshimmer threads.

5 3/4 x 6 3/8 inches (height x width)

What Remains

Commercial printed cotton and poly, cotton and

metallic threads, star sequins, walnut inks.

5 3/4 x 6 3/8 inches (height x width)

These are the last two (of ten) pieces that I've done for Virginia Spiegel's fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. The preview opens on April 28 and the sale starts on May 5 at Virginia's Fiberarts for a Cause site: http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/CollageManiaDetails.html