I taught a class on bindings today, and it went really well….I think there is good hope for this class, and we covered a lot of territory. However, I’m whupped, and really REALLY hoping the general achiness is a result of being tired and on my feet all day and NOT catching Joshua’s flu-bug which kept him home for three straight days (the first time since, I think, pre-school he’s been out for three consecutive days. In the meantime…Spring!

I bought the tulips for the Frayed Edges lunch on Monday last as a special treat. Then, walking down the street in town (“downtown” Camden is about two blocks long), I spied this bunny casserole in the window at Stonewall Kitchen….$7.18 later, it was mine! So spring is definitely coming…..Eli discovered the tips of the daffodils about a half inch above the ground, and I noticed on the way home from teaching today that the trees have that fuzzy look about them when the buds begin to swell!

The last photo is of the Godspeed, the replica sailing ship built at Rockport Marine for the Jamestown Plantation in Virginia. Last weekend when we were at wrestling and karate tournaments we missed the launch of the Godspeed. It is now at anchor at a floating dock on the far side of the harbor next to the Rockport Marine building where it was built. They seem to be doing more work on it before it sails South next month. Hope they announce in the paper when they will hoist the sails…I wanna take pictures! Once in the water, it looks MIGHTY small for having sailed across the Atlantic. Thank you, I’ll take a jet!

Well, last Saturday was a two-fer: Joshua had his first regionals wrestling tournament in Belfast (half hour north of us…Paul went there), and Eli went to his second karate tournament, the Battle of Maine in Winslow, about 80 minutes north-northwest of here–and came home with something almost as big as he is…read on!

Joshua lost both his matches, but he went out there and tried his best, and we are very, very proud of him. He gets really nervous before a match (who wouldn’t?!), and he does it anyway! His dad told him that when he began wrestling in high school on junior varsity, his first season he 2 wins, 7 losses. He got ticked and decided he didn’t want to get pinned ever again…and didn’t! His next season was 10-1-1 and won 2 of the 3 school wrestling trophies….and his record improved after that when he moved to Varsity.

So, Joshua wants to go to wrestling camp this summer. One of his teammates, Angus, who looks like Ichabod Crane when he walks out onto the mat, went to the camp last summer, and was undefeated in the regular season. He lost one match in the regionals, and placed Third overall in the Maine Eastern Regionals, and will go to States tomorrow. Paul, who has been helping coach the team, Joshua and Eli will make the trek to Rumford (in western Maine on Route 2 on the way to NY state) tomorrow while I’m teaching Fine Finishes (a binding class). We’re both happy Joshua has found something he loves so much!

Eli found tae kwon do, a Korean form of karate, in Sept. 2004 after we moved to Maine. He now takes classes 2 or 3 times a week, and has progressed from rank white belt, to yellow belt, two TWO stripes on his belt! At the Battle of Maine tournament the age 7-8 year old yellow-belts (boys) group was so large…26 boys!…they divided it into two groups, and awarded trophies to each group. As luck would have it, some of the most able kids were in Eli’s group. Even with that, Eli placed fourth in forms (set routines) and second in fighting (the same boy who won first in both forms and fighting was really good!). Adam, also in 2nd grade with Eli, was in the other group and he took a second place trophy in forms.

At the beginning of one’s forms, the kids introduce themselves to the judge, tell them which school and method of martial arts they practice, and ask permission to begin their katas (the “forms”). That’s what Eli’s doing here, holding the correct beginning, respectful stance:

This photo is of Eli still in his fighting gear, right after receiving his 2nd place trophy:

Here are Eli and Adam:

We had a great meeting today, but really missed having Deborah…so we called her and put her on speaker phone! Previously, we met at Deborah’s house because she had Benjamin at home and he (and mom) were most comfortable with him in his home surroundings, with familiar computer games, toys and such like. Now that (boo hoo, again) Deborah has de-camped to the wilds of Dallas, we will be rotating meeting locations. I got lucky–we had it at my house first! No 3 hours of driving (even though I love the get-away days)! AND, as always, having guests forced us to *really* clean house and tidy, so our house is nice for once!

Hannah is new to the group (Deborah met her shortly before she moved, and introduced us all–thank you!), and we urged her to bring her “stuff”. She is very much a mixed media artist, and newer at the art quilting thing–this is going to be great for all of us. She brought all sorts of totally cool collage pieces and fabrics which she basically created from scratch….silk screening, stamping, surface design. So we decided NEXT month, we’re meeting at her house and gonna play with silk screening! Welcome to the group, Hannah!

Here’s a picture of her (gee…I hope this is OK…..I didn’t ask her if I could share a picture of her…well, I’ll ask after I hit “publish” and if it’s not I’ll delete…) with a fantastic piece of cloth she dyed.

This next picture is a piece of fabric she made that is so cool we all told her not to do a dang thing more except maybe add a border, layer it up and quilt it, and possible add a few beads or doo-dads…..the color in this photo somehow seems lighter, brighter and not as rich as the original…which is definitely better than the photo!

Wish I had taken a picture of her collage about “Home”…way cool. And she found some great, LARGE foam alphabet stamps at Target for all fo $9…guess what I’m looking for the next time I’m in Bangor (the Target nearest to me..about 80 minutes away)….

Here’s Hannah (on the floor), Kathy (center) and Kate on our new sofa in the morning….

I took a picture of us at lunch, but haven’t figured out the “backlighting” on my new camera, so we’ll have to check Kathy D’s blog for pictures of our repast. I fixed minestrone, Hannah made beer bread, Kathy brought coffee cake (still warm when she arrived!), and Kate brought pineapple….don’t know how she found a ripe on in Maine, but she did…I never can! YUMMM. Oh yeah…and in honor of Deborah, I dug out the latter maker (no counter space in our kitchen here) and we had lattes. Here’s a picture of the coffee table with detritus during the morning:

DEBORAH BOSCHERT–STOP reading here until you get your envelope!

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Those of you who surf into Kathy’s blog, Studio in the Woods, know that she just (as in less than 72 hours ago!) returned from a trip to Ireland (we want MORE PHOTOS, please!). Sweet thing that she is, she not only brought us each a goodie from the Emerald Isle, she picked colors special for each of us, mine being my favorite pool aqua blue. Inside the little bag, was another surprise, an envelope Kathy made with little treats. There weren’t any fabric stores in Ireland that she could find, but she did find the one bead store, and found little green beads with shamrocks on them. Then she went to a beach that had no sand, but instead was made of bits of coral. She brought some with her and shared…how totally cool is that…these little bits of branchy white coral…PERFECT for embellishing! Thank you thank you thank you!

I forgot that I wanted to add Stephanie Sersich’s website in my previous post. She’s the lady (from Portland, Maine, no less) who invented this technique and teaches both Bracelet and Necklace classes. She travels the US to teach, so we’re lucky that she is here in Maine and teaches at the Beadin’ Path regularly. Her glass beads are to die for!

It was supposed to be a bracelet. I don’t DO bracelets…they make me crazy, banging and flapping and generally being a nuisance and getting in the way. Here’s a picture of what I had at the end of a 4 hour class….considering how long it takes to put together a quilt, I felt this was moving at lightning speed!

But Hilary Ervin, a member of Art Quilts Maine, had been making these incredible bracelets during or bi-monthly AQM meetings. And I kept thinking about them…..so finally I asked. And then Deborah Boschert figured out that the lady who taught the class was teaching at The Beadin Path in Freeport (also home to LL Bean). The teacher is Stephanie Sersich—see the post for March 20th for the hotlink to her website. So I signed up right away, despite the cost because (tippety tap) I had just sold my Brooks and Branches piece at the Ducktrap Bay Trading Company and decided I deserved just a bit of a splurge!

Having looked at Hilary’s bracelets, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to modify it (there I go changing things) into a necklace. I bought some lucite / vintage lucite beads and things via the Beadin’ Path website, and figured I’d buy anything else I needed the morning before the class (the store is almost 2 hours away, so didn’t want to spend 4 hours and a lot of gas money just to buy beads). I will not confess how much I spent on beads. Let’s just say it’s a good thing two more small pieces sold (quite unexpectedly…I wasn’t anticipating any sales until summer—yeah!) last month, to help cover my indulgences.

Here’s a picture of the whole thing:

And a close up of the fancy part:

And, believe it or not, finally a picture of me wearing the necklace, which you can barely see because I’m holding my wonderful new digital camera, the Panasonic DMC-FZ30!