Earlier this year, four of us (Deborah was in Texas) were able to drop in and say hi to Natasha Kempers-Cullen (one of the early leading art quilters, been in Quilt National, website here), whom Kate, Hannah and Deborah know… I blogged about it here.  After that visit, we talked about how fun it would be to do a day workshop when Deborah said she would be able to come visit!  Our schedule and Natasha’s fortunately overlapped on just the right day, so on Monday, Sept. 8, we trooped on over to Natasha’s studio at her house.   Our supply list included a square sketchbook / notebook, and art pencils, pens, pastels, watercolors, whatever.  I brought my Prismacolors, some Aquarelle / watercolor pencils, a waterbrush, a few fine-point sharpies (and went to Target afterwards to buy a whole set….ahem!), some old magazines and papers for collaging, and a lovely Canson square notebook.

Natasha has some seriously cool books in her library, including these:

I LOVED the artwork in this last one…good eye candy….

We worked quietly at first…which is of course hard for me.  I enjoy the camaraderie, but our first assignment was to take a half  hour and draw a mandala starting with a free-hand-drawn circle in the center.  Here’s my effort…so-so.  The center is OK, but I clearly rushed to fill in the outside.  Bleah. I don’t work well when rushed.

I liked my second one, a collaged piece, better.  Natasha had a selection of small “centers” from which we could choose one.  I deliberately chose one in colors and texture I don’t normally work with.   Here’s how it looks:

I think the green overwhelms (at least it wasn’t where I wanted to go with this one), but it’s not too bad… I really like the shrimp soup bowl I cut into quarter-wedges….Due to the papers I had on hand, it became more of my Caribbean colors and less of the earthy thing I had intended when picking the center….no gardening magazines around, so no good supply of leaf greens and browns!

Then my words mandala:

So for flexibility my words and phrases are:

(handwritten)

• as water flows around the rock
• the tree that does not bend will break
• as the wind blows as the rivers run
• be open to change, be spontaneous, live

(from magazines)

• folding
• wild
• resurfacing
• clarity, smoothness and luminosity
• explore
• unconventional
• conversations that never end
• of wisdom and knowledge
• convertible
• a rare combination
• rejuvenation

Hmmmm….

Natasha usually works with longer workshops, not one-day classes, so she had to abbreviate some of our projects, but gave us ideas to do for homework and exploration.  Then she had us pick a word…she has these angel cards with words like Freedom, Adventure, Flexibility, etc.   We had to write the word in the center of the page, then cut other words from magazines that interpreted the angel-card-word.  I got flexibility.  Hmmmm. So I used some very “expanded” definitions of flexibility!  Here’s that page:

Here’s Kate’s–seriously improved with color wedges

:

And I’m not sure who did this one…. ladies….help me out here–if I guess correctly from the handwriting, this is Deborah’s:

Our final project was a group exercise, with Natasha participating.  She gave each of us a large square of paper (about 20 or 21 inches).  We were each to begin with the center and draw something in our style and/or colors that interprets Friendship.  Then every 5 minutes we switched off the papers, doing two full rounds on each piece.  I think in the exercise book from which Natasha was working, they suggest 7 minutes or ten, but Kate needed to be home in time to meet her first grader at the bus, so we did the up-tempo version LOL!   at each round you pass your paper to the left, and then continue in the vein of the piece you receive.  The longer the process went on, the more freed up we became, working REALLY quickly to try to fill in and make the imagery or colors we wanted.  I was REALLY glad to have my watercolor pencils… I’d quickly scribble in color into a shape, then use my waterbrush to moisten and intensify the color.

I’m NOT good at translating abstract concepts into specific imagery, or at things like this.  Once I got the first part over, tho, it was easy to simply do a round that was a riff on what someone had done before….   For friendship, I fell back on a tried but true:  I made a circle with an acorn in the center, from which five trees (us, duh) grow.  Here we are working madly, towards the end.  This first shot is of Kate, Hannah and Deborah’s table:

And here’s the table I shared with Kathy and Natasha:

And here is what we had at the end…we all signed all of them…fun!  This one was Deborah’s; she began with the mug, heart, home, and hand:

Hannah’s:

Natasha’s—she began with the hands, Deborah added the arms, torso and chin, so I felt I had to add the skirt… it went from there!

Kate’s:

Kathy’s:

And finally mine:

Then we all split to the winds, kids, families and real life

This is a brief interlude to the Frayed Edges fun to return to the summer vacation fun, then I have a ton of stuff I’ve quilted to share… for once!  It has been SO LONG since I’ve been able to make stuff, and it feels SO GOOD… anyway….   after visiting Niagara Falls, we had a full day’s drive to Gorham, New Hampshire.   The weather observatory there sees some of the most wicked weather in the lower 48 states, and the highest recorded wind speed on earth.  It is always fun on the evening local news to see what’s the weather atop 6000-ft. Mt. Washington.

This beautiful stream is just as you cross to the entry gate.  You are greeted by this sign, which I thought was hilarious in a dry-humor sort of way:

And entering the park/facility:

The road up was wonderful, and you passed from forest to alpine zone remarkably quickly…the treeline in the mountains of the western states seems to be at a much higher elevation.  Here’s the lower part of the road, with lots of deciduous trees:

First Scenic view, from passenger-side window:

Second scenic pull-out…glorious…the sky went on forever…..

Then crossing above treeline…barren!  You can just imagine the winter winds here….

And the first view of the observatory–the low, hunkering, rounded building flat on the top of the mountain:

Once you reach the top (we drove, obviously tho you can hike), you can get to the tippy top easily.  Here are the boys and Paul.. it was windy and nippy, about 60, when down at the base of the mountain it was about 80:

And rarely enough, a photo with me in it:

Notice the tote…one of these days I’ll take pics and share… my summer sewing treat was to make it.  It’s not for a book, not for a class, but just for fun!  Anyway, back to the trip…. here’s a picture of Eli sitting next to a cairn of rocks someone had built, with the vista:

And Paul and the boys looking at the signage and the view:

I’ll share some of the totally cool photos in another post… they just prove you can find inspiration anywhere… quilting lines, abstracts, designs…….

Our Frayed Edges merriment continued…. starting with mojitos by Kate, made with mint fresh from her garden (as an aside… I may be the only person on the planet who has managed to kill mint….  we got some, but it was in a planter left outside in winter…a large planter, but nonetheless it was too cold, besides which our garden is too shady even for mint, tho we get a bumper crop of moss and mushrooms).  Here’s mine:

And all of us toasting:

I’d never had a mojito before, but I do think I should like to have another, especially in such fine company! Kathy and Kate do seem to be enjoying dinner (a potluck affair, as we didn’t want to muck up the kitchen in someone else’s house!)

Then it was time to swap! we had decided quite some time earlier to do another trade, like our 5×8 memo pad covers.  This time we used a pattern from Jake Finch’s Fast Fun and East Book Cover Art Book:

Here are five journals / sketchbook covers, with pencil pockets inside…. life overtook Hannah, so she ended up not making one, but Deborah had made a couple so she generously gave Hannah one, so now we all five have one.   From left to right these were made by me (lime and aqua), Deborah (painted cloth), Kate (rust-dyed and discharged fabric, with watch parts to be added), Deborah (trademark embroidery!), Kathy (trademark luminous blues!):

I was SO lucky to receive Kate’s!   I love it!

And in Parte Tres, I’ll share our Mandala workshop!

This month was extra special:  Deborah came to visit from Texas!!!!!  So all five of us were together AND we got to have a sleepover AND we did a day workshop (on Monday) on Mandalas with Natasha Kempers-Cullen…Yippeee!  Here we are in the late afternoon…thanks to Kate’s hubby Andy for doing photographer duty…at one point he had five cameras dangling from neck and wrists!

Back row:  Sarah Smith, Kathy Daniels, Deborah Boschert

Seated in front:  Kate Cutko, Hannah Beattie

We were going to bunk over at Kate’s house like we did last year, but Kate had a brilliant idea that made it better for everyone (including her kids who had to get up and go to school Monday morning:  she asked her generous neighbors, who let lots of friends use their summer house, if we could too…so we did!  The house is at the very end of Browns Point, and juts into Merrymeeting Bay (isn’t that the most wonderful name?  Merrymeeting?  I love it….).  Kate showed us one of the secrets of the point…a bald eagle’s nest (look for the tangle of sticks on the branch at lower left):

As we gathered at the house, we took something to sip and something to munch on and went to sit under the trees, near the marsh and we heard this keening overhead.  We had apparently caused the two eagles some concern, so they took off from the nest, circled around the tip of the point, and settled in to some upper branches on a pine RIGHT OVER where we had our chairs!

Kathy’s birthday is at the end of August, so we celebrated and shared gifts…here’s Kath looking delighted at Kate’s gift:  rust-dyed fabrics, plus more fabric and some very rusty nails to do her own rust-dyeing….only art quilters can truly appreciate how wonderful LOL!

While we sat and talked, Hannah relaxed:

And Deborah helped Kate shuck some corn (which she picked from her garden THAT afternoon….YUM):

while I snapped pictures.

Deborah brought gifties as did Hannah…. but I was having so much fun relaxing at that point I forgot to take pictures…. you can see pics of the wonderful journal books Deborah made on her blog, here.

After our group photo, Kate took us to a spot where flotsam and jetsam…AND old shards of glass and pottery gather… Hannah found an old bottle (which of course I forgot to take a photo!).  This is a photo of the bay:

and walking down to the access path:

That’s Kate’s daughter on her back, a neighbor on the far right, and Kate’s son leading the troupe.

I’m always looking for patterns…for quilting, for design….so I got a nice shot of the water:

I’ll be back tomorrow with the evening fun, and the next day with our Mandala workshop!

One of the highlights of the trip was brief but memorable:

The Maid of the Mist first set float with tourists in 1846.  No, that is NOT a typo. Obviously it was a different boat, but there has been a boat taking folks into the mist of the falls for over 160 YEARS… amazing!  What else is totally cool is that the Ontario side park is ENTIRELY maintained (and beautifully, with wrought iron railings, gorgeous hanging baskets, etc) through proceeds from sales in the park and fees and whatnot…not a penny of tax money.  Cool.

And a warning….LOTS of water pics!

Waiting in line to board one of the boats you get a great glimpse:

Here’s the first view of the falls as you approach on the boat….and speaking of which, they give you mist ponchos…essentially garbage bags with hoods…good thing too as you get wet anyway!  It was a gas!

Here is a narrow section of the US falls–love how I got the bird in the photo:

And a closeup of the cascade hitting the rocks….

And a good wide shot of Niagara Falls:

Mist spraying out from the Horseshoe Falls:

I LOVED the power of the water as it plunges over the crest…this is as you have passed the American falls and approach Horseshoe Falls (the Canadian side), which is here it gets REALLY misty moisty wet.

And at the end of the half hour tour, happy and wet (we all gave up on the hoods I think….plus it was so hot that day the wetness felt good):

And the next morning, as we got into the car to leave, what should we see but one of the highlights of the trip for the boys (which Joshua had to take pics)…..a Ferrari and a Maserati.  No one should be this rich.  And they can’t even carry groceries in the trunk I’ll bet….yes, I know, that’s not the point.  But for the cost of those two cars you could buy a nice HOUSE……

Next on the trip:  Mt. Washington and finding inspiration wherever you are…..