Sometimes smaller is better. Minor league baseball is a case in point. Now, usually I could care less about pro sports…too much big business, too much money, not enough soul.

When we lived on San Juan Island, Wash., though, the boys of course got caught up in rooting for the Seattle Mariners. When we moved to Maine, allegiances were shared (transferred?) to the Red Sox, with glee that the curse of the bambino was stomped into history the year we moved here. So the boys wanted to go to a game…where to go? Boston is about 4 hours away, and tickets cost a fortune. Why, the Sea Dogs home stadium in Portland (2 hours) of course!

Hadlock Field seems to me to be what pro ball ought to be and maybe used to be. You get to meet the players downstairs. You can actually see their faces even from the top row of the bleachers (sat there and can attest to that!). They have folks from Maine sing the anthem, and a kid from the stands launch the game with “Play Ball!” (this past Sunday, the little boy couldn’t have been much more than 2!). They announce things like “most improved students” and post names on the scoreboard and let the kids walk onto the infield and get a round of applause. They have a “lobster toss” at the 7th inning stretch where two folks from the stands get to try to catch toy lobsters in an old-fashioned lobster trap gizzy and win a dinner at a local restaurant. Here are “my guys” (L to R) hubby, Joshua (trying to avoid being in the shot) and Eli (red t-shirt):

This Sunday was HOT…mid-80s, amplified by the dark green plastic seats and shiny aluminum stands, bright sun and screaming blue skies. And lest you think I’ve totally lost it, I take my hand applique or hand quilting with me! And actually work on it. Or, take pictures for visual reference…. Look at the lines in these crowd shots:

Or even the physical contours of a pitcher doing his thing:

Just proves you can find art anywhere if you just look!

From time to time I have mentioned the “canine horse” or the “dog-beast”, also known as our dog, Yeti. He is a Tibetan Mastiff, which is considered an “ancient breed,” so old that the females go into heat only once a year…at the beginning of winter. The puppies are born in winter and weaned as spring arrives. So here is “the legendary guardian of the Himalayas”:

Clearly, the boys wanted him to be warm (with all that fur he needs help?)!

Tibetans were traditonally the guard dogs in villages and rural areas of the Himalayas. They were kept chained during the day, then turned loose at night to watch the flocks and homes. Hence, they are large couch potatoes who, upon whim, get up and bark, then go back to sleep. Before we moved to Maine, we lived on San Juan Island (Washington), where there are lots of bald eagles. Our neighbor told us one day Yeti had been asleep in the driveway for so long an eagle dive-bombed him to see if he was road-kill. Apparently he did twitch enough to be left alone LOL!

Here in Maine Yeti (named, of course, for the legendary Bigfoot of the Himalayas) LOVES the snow…loves romping in it, and eating it. Every night in his before-bed “constitutional” he has to snarf a bite or three of snow.

These are large dogs… yes, he really is as long as the sideboard is wide. A bit larger than a Saint Bernard. He drops his chin to rest it on the dining room table–a whole new experience in guarding your dinner plate. Ahem. He also has a long tongue. Sigh.

Here’s a (horrible) picture of me with the boys at Christmas which will give you an idea of his size. At our old house, if he stood with his front paws on the deck railing, I looked him in the eye. I’m 5’6″.

Legend has it that Alexander the Great (famous conqueror guy) brought them with him when he returned from Himalayas, and that these dogs were the foundation stock of all the large breeds in Europe: Saint Bernards, Bernese Mountain dogs, Great Pyrenees, and Newfoundlands. You can easily see a “family resemblance” in the general shape of the body, head, and size, though some traits have been selectively bred (like larger head and longer coat in the Newfs). This is a Link to the Tibetan Mastiff Association, or you can google Tibetan Mastiff Images and get lots of pictures. The colors vary from black to red to gold. Yeti is considered a “cream sable.” The breeder calls them “independent minded.” We, however, have decided he is beautiful, sweet, and dumb as a dirtclod. Loveable, but DUMB.

Here’s some dog breed info. And that’s probably waaaaaayyyyy more than you ever wanted to know about my dog. And because I couldn’t resist, here is one more photo of the wonderbeast, looking his usual “intelligent” (AHEM) self… like I’ve said, sweet, beautiful, dumb:

Well folks….I’m happy to report that I have not only made more progress on the Tableau (nativity) quilt, but that it is coming together! I was getting worried there, but I lopped off some of the sky (which I’d been intending to do all along, but actually trimming it down helped immensely).

Then, I cut the inner borders (made from the same winter uniform skirt / jumper fabric as the mountains) and pinned them up. Then I took the rubbings I did of the plaque at the flagpole with the dates of the four Dominican schools in California and placed them as outer borders. I decided finally to use both, as the vertical borders. On the top I will quilt “San Domenico School” (maybe trapuntoed?? or mock trapunto?) and the school motto, “The tradition continues” on the bottom.

As you can tell from the sky area, two major things remain … the angel (her face and halo are done, but her body and wings are my treat to myself to finish last) and the comet / star. The roof of the arched / collonaded building is a bit boring, so hoping the angel’s dress will reach that far and spiff things up.

I got the manger done … and since I have cats, of course the cat is about to jump into the warm spot just vacated by baby Jesus since his momma picked him up to snuggle. Eli wants me to add a mouse (his current favorite critter), so he drew me one which I’ll add to the hay in the manger “grin”. OK…that’s it for now. Have to finish the March, April and May journal quilts and get jpegs ready to send to Houston…. need to quilt and bind May, then do the paperwork…due date is May 31 or June 1.

Now….hot shower, tylenol (Eli has shared his germs again, and I’m getting achy), and a book and TV. Hope you like the progress!

Robert Genn publishes a bi-weekly newsletter about and for art / artists. Today’s post was particularly interesting (at least to me …. ). I asked and received permission to repeat the body of the newsletter here. I liked both the seven virtues, and the idea of different types of perspective: of line, of color, of clarity.

The da Vinci Mode
May 23, 2006
Dear Sarah,

Leonardo da Vinci’s life was a living demo of his “seven virtues.” For those artists of life and of art who might plot to develop higher levels of accomplishment and greater self-realization, here are his seven virtues, as I understand them:

· “Curiosita”–an attitude of curiosity and continuous learning. What, when, where, why, and how?
· “Dimostrazione”–an ability to learn and to test knowledge by experience. Experimental nature.
· “Sensazione”–a development of awareness and refinement of sight and other senses. High sensitivity.
· “Sfumato”–a tendency to embrace and accept uncertainty, ambiguity and paradox. Free thinking.
· “Arte/Scienza”–a development of balance between science and art, logic and imagination. Whole-brain thinking.
· “Corporalita”–a calculated desire to achieve poise, fitness and ambidexterity. Physical action.
· “Connessione”–a recognition that all things are connected. Systems thinking.

“How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day,” by Michael J. Gelb, and, “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,” edited by Pamela Taylor, are two of the noteworthy sources of Leonardo insights. In the latter, the first chapter, “The Painter,” is particularly valuable. For example, Leonardo neatly divides perspective into three types: “Linear perspective”–scientific diminution of objects as they recede from the eye; “The perspective of colour”–variations in colours as they recede from the eye; and “The perspective of disappearance”–the increasingly unfinished rendering of objects as they become more remote. Could anything be clearer?

In my daily evangelizing, I’m constantly devising ways to press creative people into thinking about things in a Leonardo mode. Whether we’re talking about flying machines, military engines or easel paintings, we are led to a greater realization of our potential through personal, self-generated knowledge of the what, when, where, why and how. Perhaps because of Leonardo’s charming admissions of personal weaknesses (procrastination, for one), we feel the uncanny presence of a contemporary who’s just dropped in from the local Brotherhood and Sisterhood. For many of us, an evening curled up with The da Vinci Mode would not be a waste of time.
Best regards,
Robert rgenn@saraphina.com , http://www.painterskeys.com

Sounds like an outline for self-education in art to me! Now, upstairs to make some art (well, at least I hope it will be artistic!).

Hi all! Well….at long last I have another update photo for the Tableau quilt, which means that at long last, after returning from Mom’s, I have begun to re-focus. If I intend to enter this in Houston (gasp), I’d better hurry and get it DONE! Here’s the full shot:

I painted a wash of greens and black on the mountains to tone down the white in the plaid (the winter uniform skirt …. to re-cap, this quilt is to celebrate 100 years of the Christmas play at my school, where I attended from grades 7-12. I got the best education of my life there … better than university and grad school, because (a) the sisters and teachers cared about us, and (b) they taught us to love learning and (c) they taught us how to learn). Then I added (oh gag) camouflage mesh and this hideous black spiderweb tulle from Halloween at JoAnn’s Fabrics in bits on the mountains to create some depth and dimension. This afternoon….time to sew them down, and then applique the figures.

I also did some free-motion embroidery / threadwork on the figures, which are now ready to applique prior to basting and quilting.

I mentioned in a post on the QuiltArt listserv that I had painted the backside of some Halloween bat fabric (used years ago in pants for my oldest son), using black to blot out the red (nose) and yellow (eyes) dots, then using a wash of browns and blacks. Places with the wings running vertically, I think it kinda looks like plaster walls. The photo above with the shepherds and sheep shows a building which has an exterior collonade (will be more obvious once quilted…go with me on this one), and bat fabric on the interior. The same fabric appears again on the far right, above the donkey.

And here’s what it looked like to begin with:

Teehee! Enjoy….back to work!