Warning: Proud Mama posting!

Saturday, March 24, was a busy one for us. Paul took Eli to the Battle Of Maine martial arts tournament in Winslow–about 20 minutes north of the capital, Augusta. I followed the bus (which left at 5:30 am…ugh–dropped Joshua off at 5:15 am–uncivilized!) at a later hour to Ellsworth for the Pine Tree Wrestling League Eastern Regionals for 2006 to watch Joshua. Both boys ROCKED THE HOUSE!

Here is Eli, who this year (for the first time) competed in Isshinriyu, a Japanese style Karate; he has placed equally well in the past for his Tae Kwon Do, a Korean style Karate.

His sensei, Pete Bishop (who for his day job owns Rock City Cycle in Rockland, Maine, and customizes Harleys and other motorcycles), taught Eli a BLACK BELT level kata (routine / set of steps for martial arts) even though Eli is a second degree yellow belt (then to green, then brown, then black!). Eli did so well that he placed second in a very competitive field of 21! Pete sets very high standards for adults and kids, and wouldn’t have taught Eli such an advanced kata if he didn’t think Eli could do it well…waaaaayyyy cool!

And in sparring / fighting (all with safety gear on and no blood, no serious hits) Eli took a fourth.

Alas, Paul didn’t figure out how to work the old digital camera (I had the new one at the wrestling meet) until after Eli’s kata was over, but we’re happy he got these photos. And here is Eli (in the white ghi) lined up to receive his trophy!

WAY TO GO, Eli!

Joshua’s meet got off to a late start due to a faulty computer. He wrestled four times, won three matches, lost one.

The match Joshua lost, he lost to the kid who (a) finished first and (b) was the state champ in their weight class last year and (c) has been wrestling 5 years (to Joshua’s two) and is a year older (and wiser?) than Joshua. Even better: Joshua is eager for a re-match! So what all this means is that Joshua finished THIRD in the Eastern Region of Maine! Here’s one of the matches where he pinned his opponent:

Papa and I are VERY proud! And last night, Papa showed Joshua a few more tricks. So this is what the Smith living room (??) looks like on a Saturday evening:

Back to the meet…here are the kids hoisting the second place at the meet trophy, for the team.

They were beat only by Belfast, which combines FOUR or five middle schools on their team! If we combined with the HAL schools (Hope Appleton and Lincolnville, which also feed into the Camden Hills Regional High School) the way Belfast does, we’d have slaughtered the competition. ALL but two of the team qualified to go to States next weekend…WOW! AWESOME (and yep, I’m shouting!) Here’s the team in their “pose for the newspaper photo”

and one of my favorites, the kids just being kids after the wrestling was done:

Then Kate showed us Ukrainian pisankyi (sp>?). Her adopted daughter Olena is from Ukraine, and these eggs that Kate made in the Ukrainian style are awesome!

Kate said that just ONE of these eggs can take a full day to make. She showed us the wax tools, much like a tjantjing from Bali used for batiking, which melt the soft beeswax (hold over flame) so you can draw the fine lines. I forgot to take a picture, but Kate has a set of “circle makers…heavy cardstock with holes in, and markings evenly spaced so you can make symmetical markings on the eggs.

First, you need to extract the egg insides. She has this cool tool that makes a small hole (with no cracks and chips), and another one that helps pump the egg out. Since it is just air, you can USE the egg…no waste! Sounds like scrambled eggs and bacon for dinner to me! Anyway, here’s Kate showing how to use the pump:

The process is much like batik: apply wax, dye first color. Add more wax (covering some of the previous color) and dye again. Repeat until done. Phew!

And here is her container of eggs from a birds-eye view:

Then, Kate turned the eggs over so we could see the sides:

I LOVED this one with the wheat stalks:

And here we are at lunch (which was actually beefore the eggs…who cares about chronology!). We had peanut soup, made by Kathy from Kate’s mother-in-law’s recipe (Kate—don’t forget I want that recipe…YUMMM again!):

Don’t they look nice and happy? Kathy always looks so pretty in all the pictures of her, and Kate has the nicest smile!

On the way home (on a detour…lotsa road damage here in Maine last weekend…we had snow followed by torrential rains which have washouts and sinkhole-sized potholes all over the place–gonna be LOTS of work for the road crews!) spotted this falling down house. I’m developing this “thing” for pictures of old falling down houses, wondering what it was like when the house was new and filled with a young family with kids and hope and hard times and love:

And then this barn on Route 3…you can see an old log cabin in the center, chinking and all:

OK, that’s all for this particular wonderful meeting. Now, to work!

What a wonderful day we had! We were a small group this Monday, though. Deborah, of course, is in Texas, and Hannah…drum roll…is still in China with her new daughter Nina and hubby Bart. Check out the pics from Beijing and Guangzhou here. I realized on the way up that the four of us were all in China…Hannah in the country, then Kathy, Kate and I were in China (Village) in Maine! There are lots of towns in this state named for other countries: Mexico, Poland, China…..

I took SO many photos I may have to do this in two posts! We started with sharing, coffee and Kathy’s homemade biscotti…drizzled with melted Dove dark chocolate easter eggs…YUMMM! And Kathy sneaked some extras into the box of cookies I brought (Pepper-Cumin, from Rayna Gillman’s blog here, also YUMMMM) made with cumin seeds sent from Rayna (since I didn’t know of a single place to find them up here in the wilds of Maine!). Thanks Rayna!

Anyway, back to Frayed Edges. First Kate showed us this GORGEOUS length of fabric she bought on vacation in Florida, made by Bold Over Batiks–expensive but SO worth it!:

And Kathy bought a sweater pattern after she saw mine last month, ordered this beautiful hand-dyed yarn and has already begun knitting….how come it takes me so long to get going on anything…lookit at what Kathy has done already:

Kate wanted to know what to do with a piece she began at our last meeting for the Art Quilts Maine log cabin challenge. We fiddled with the edges and here is what we came up with:

Aren’t these glorious fabrics? One of the AQM members passed away, and her husband gave her stash to the group. AQM then (and drats I missed it) sold the fabric as a chapter fundraiser, $5 for a bag of scraps. Kate scored these awesome hand-painted pieces and made this top.

And here is Kathy’s piece, seen on her blog, too:

The background fabric started as white, then Kathy painted with the goal (achieved!) of looking like patina’ed copper. She adapted Deborah’s use of washers (check out Deborah’s Journal and scroll backwards to see how she used washers and inspired Kathy…see….we can still cross-pollinate and be more than a thousand miles apart!) and painted them up to match the fabric…awesome.

I loved the way Kathy quilted the piece, in waves and then sworls and eddies in the center

Tune in tomorrow or the next day for lunch and Ukrainian eggs…gotta go finish the taxes! (BLECH…art is so much more fun! Of course, tax refunds aren’t bad….)

So I took a break from writing, and doing taxes (UGH!), and going to wrestling meets (courtesy of our late snowstorm, which has postponed regionals and States by a week), to sew! The good news is I can share this with you:

The bad news is that I can only tell you it is (wooohoo!) something I’m working on for an article. If all goes well, I’ll be published again by the end of this year. But, I am pretty sure I’m supposed to keep things “under wraps” until publication. So, I can only show this to you and not tell you about the article. Aren’t I wicked?

I just had to share these links with you, which I came across on the QuiltArt list (thanks Diane!). The main site is about how machines work:
Click here.

The next page is about how a sewing machine creates a stitch:
Click here.

And this last link is a 26 minute video about sewing machines, from the first one through today. The video quality is a bit blurry due to on-line streaming or whatever, but it was SO cool!
Click here for video.

These are a lot of fun…even my 13 year old son liked them!

I’m actually SEWING today (if I ever get off the computer) so hope to have quilty content tomorrow! And then, yeah! a small Frayed Edges meeting with Kate and Kathy at Kath’s house, as Hannah is in CHINA! She and Bart have met their new daughter (to join three already at home) Nina. See pictures, and prepare to have your heart melt and get a lump in your throat by visiting Hannah’s blog, Xiao Nu Hair (which means little girl in Chinese) here.