Time-suck alert:  WARNING!!!! Reading this post may cause you to spend several extra hours surfing the web….but your soul will be refreshed! and PS…pictures are clickable to view larger.

Incoming Tide by Winslow Homer (from Maine!), from the US National Gallery of Art

The U.S. National Gallery of Art just launched NGA Images, an online resource to view and USE portions of their collections.  Here is how they describe it:

NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. More than 20,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.

Astonishingly and wonderfully (this is one of the things the U.S. Government does so well), the artworks no longer under copyright are FREE for you to download and use and enjoy (just be sure to make sure you read their terms of use).   Thank you to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation which made this wonderful resource possible!  And thanks to Uncle Sam for doing this.

One of the most popular paintings in the collection is Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de Benci.  The painting is relatively small, even with the frame it is smaller than your typical college-dorm poster.  And the detail is phenomenal…you can see individual hairs on her forehead.  Just imagine, he and this young woman lived over 500 years ago and there she is, still alive for us today in this portrait!

Ginevra de Benci by Leonardo da Vinci

And one of my favorites is Gaugin’s Fatata te Miti.  When I was an undergraduate at Georgetown University, I would every now and then take my books and hop on an “even 30’s” (32-34-36) bus line which ran from Wisconsin Avenue, NW in Georgetown down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the White House (the street was open to cars  then) and down to the National Gallery, and sit in one or a couple of the galleries to do my homework.  I could look up between paragraphs or assignments and just absorb all that incredible art!

One of my favorites, Fatata te Miti by Gauguin....just LOVE the color!

At least as astonishing as NGA Images is GoogleArt or, more accurately, The Art Project powered by Google.  All I can say is HOLY COW!   WOW!!!!!!!!!!! This resource lets you explore museums around the world and you can zoom in so close, the photography is so phenomenal, you can see brushstrokes and small cracks in the paint!!!!!! I mean, you can see details that you’d need to be standing 6 inches away in real life to be able to see that well (and I expect in many of the museums you’re not allowed that close!).

Just SOME of the museums on GoogleArt are

• The Museum of Modern Art (New York City),
• The Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)
• The National Gallery (London)
• The Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam)
• The Versailles Museum (Versailles)
• The Uffizi Gallery (Florence)
• The Hermitage (St. Petersburg)

I mean you’d need to win a BIG lottery to be able to travel to just these museums let alone all of them.  And to be utterly greedy, I hope that as more and more of the repositories of our world heritage bring their collections online, they will become a part of this phenomenal resource.  And the Art Project not only lets you see the artwork, but the museum spaces, too…. oh sigh drool dream!  It’s like you are standing in the rooms…..sigh, drool, dream!

In this image captured from the site (and gosh I hope that is OK to have done!) you see Les Vessenots à Auvers by Van Gogh.

Van Gogh's Les Vessenot à Auvers in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid

If you go here, to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Spain, look in the lower right for a slider bar that allows you to zoom in.  You can SEE THE BRUSHSTROKES and daubs of paint….

Zoomed in to see the individual brushstrokes and daubs of paint

Have I said recently how much I love the internet?   WOW.  And remember…not my fault if you forget to pick up the kids after school or make supper <GRIN>  HAVE FUN surfing the web!

WOWIE ZOWIE!   When you’re a quilter, there are a couple of real “biggie” things that can happen.  Getting in to one of the major shows (done that), winning an award at a big show (done that! Second Place at Houston, Honorable Mention at the NQA show), being published (done that, a lot fortunately), but up there with winning an award is being on the cover (still hoping) of a major magazine, or featured on the last page in what I think of as the Grand Finale page where most magazines profile one quilt.  Guess what…… DONE THAT thanks to Jan Magee (editor) and company at The Quilt Life magazine, which is one of my favorite quilt magazines (along with Quilters Newsletter).  My art quilt “Fields of Gold” made the final page!

Here is that last page, 86… I mean PINCH ME?  Is this real?!?!?!  It MUST be, because I finally have a copy in my happy hands!

Page 86, April 2012 issue of The Quilt Life

And talk about WOW… they included me on the page with the other quilters in this issue…what a line-up…and me, next to them!!! Plus, I’m right next to the amazing Suzanne Marshall, who was my roomie when I taught at AQS-Paducah in 2008.  Suzanne is so much fun!  I can hardly believe I’m on the page where, in the last issue, Noriko Endo’s quilt was featured!  Who ME?????

The quilters in this issue page....I'm on the right and LOVE that they chose my favorite "head shot"...the one with the dog! so much more fun than the usual mug shot! It's a PUG shot!

And a final bit of kindness… I had thought this would end up only on their website or blog (blog link here), but it’s on p. 18–a note that this quilt is, sadly, one of two lost.  The whole sad story is here.  Thanks so much, Jan, for adding this note.  If there is any hope of someone spotting this quilt, this will help SOOOOOO much!

Note about this quilt being lost....sigh....

Thank you to Jan Magee, the wonderful editor of The Quilt Life, for asking to publish my quilt, to Ricky, Alex and the entire gang that put together The Quilt Life for such a fun magazine….now I’m off to read it cover to cover and pinch myself yet again… wow, this really happened!

Last year it looked like this on April 1st (no, not a joke, that’s when the blizzard hit):

April 2011

This is what it looked like today:

Today, 21 March 2012

And, drum roll, the weather station said today:

Yep, that is EIGHTY degrees.  In March.  In Maine!   The weather guy said he could not find ANY records this warm this early in the year as long as he could find in the records…. INSANE!  Of course, as Eli said, he loves low humidity 80 degree summer days…oops…it’s the start of Spring!

Hi all!   Several years ago my Frayed Edges friends and I were lucky to be included in Lark Books’ Creative Quilting With Beads, and my pomegranate notebook cover was the cover of the book.  Lark has re-issued the book as a paperback, and added a few more projects to the cover including Deborah Boschert’s houses and trees!

Lark graciously sent me a copy to do a drawing, so guess what…. leave a comment by midnight (East Coast of the US time) March 28th, and on the 29th I’ll do a drawing using a random number generator for the lucky winner.  To make it even sweeter, I’ll add the pattern version of my notebook pattern.  As always, you have more real estate on the page when you publish an individual pattern, so there is more “how to” in my pattern.

Hmmm… I just discovered that I never (DUH! Sarah) put that pattern on my website for sale!  Guess what I’m adding to my to-do list.  Anyway, it is the full-length version of the pattern in the book.

To read about the book at Lark Crafts click here, and over on Amazon, click here.  You can read my original post about the book here, but please note I am not selling the book myself any more.  You’ll need to order from Amazon or another source.

Or, Mama gets to brag on her kid!  (You are thereby forewarned LOL!)

Yesterday was the last regular meet of the Middle School Wrestling Season for the Pine Tree Wrestling League (PTWL — which covers about 75-80 percent of Maine).  Next Saturday will be Eastern Regionals, held here in Camden at the High School (16 teams…eeeek!), and the following Saturday will be States in Bath.  To say that Eli has done well in his 8th grade year is an understatement of epic proportions:  he has just finished an UNDEFEATED regular season (and you better believe Mama and Papa are shouting!).

Eli pacing before a match. He sometimes strides purposefully opposite the kid he's about to wrestle as a psych-out maneuver. Wrestling is at least as much a head-game as one of physical strength and skill.

The way it works is the kids (boys and girls) are divided into weight classes that are about 8 pounds apart.  Eli is wrestling 138,meaning he can’t go over 138.  Fortunately, he has had a couple of pounds leeway every week.  The good thing is that the league recognizes that kids grow, so every 2 weeks the weight limit goes up a pound…this coming Saturday if you weigh (for example) 140 or less, you can still wrestle in the 138 pound weight class.  This year in his weight class there has not been a lot of competition…not every school has a wrestler for each of the many weight classes…in fact MOST schools don’t fill all the slots.  But of the 23 scheduled pairings, Eli has wrestled about 13 matches.  The ones he didn’t wrestle he gets a “win by forfeit.”  So that means he “won” those 10 or so.  The ones he DID wrestle he won EVERY SINGLE ONE–two by points, all the others by pinning his opponent, most often in the first period! (There are three periods of two minutes, one minute and one minute.)  AND he had four exhibition matches…ones that don’t count toward the rankings for Regionals.  Two he wrestled a kid from the 131 weight class, two from the 145 weight class.  He won all four!  Amazing…

The two boys shake hands, crouch and wait for the ref to blow the whistle. Here she is signaling to the scoring table that she is about to begin.

As soon as the whistle blows the two start trying to gain an advantage

Eli begins to take the other boy down to the mat.

Eli is in red, on top. True Bragg, our coach, and DH Paul, Assistant Coach, are in red with their backs to the camera. The Ellsworth coaches are on the opposite side of the mat behind the ref.

Sat. March 17, 2012 at Ellsworth. It took Eli less than one minute to pin his first match on Saturday, against Ellsworth. Here the ref is checking to see that the Ellsworth boy's shoulders are on the mat for one second before calling Pinned!

Then…drum roll…

For once I got it on "film"..Arm raised for the win! I took the big heavy camera and set it on "burst" mode. It took about 12 shots but at least one of the was "hand up" for the win!

After the match, the boys shake hands, the ref raises the hand of the winner, then Eli goes to the opposing coaches to shake hands, the other boy comes to shake hands with our coaches, and the next match begins.

This picture of True (left) and Paul (seated) will make every Camden-Rockport parent chuckle... it is SO typical!

Eli also had an exhibition match…as it turns out, against a boy whom he knows from track and with whom he was chatting and having fun.  That kid wrestled at 131 and pretty much knew he was going to get whomped, but he tried gamely anyway.

Eli in the process of rolling his opponent (from Belfast) over by turning him with his arm/shoulder.

At one point, his buddy told Eli in a joking voice “gee you stink” …after the match he told Eli he was trying to make Eli laugh and lose his concentration.  Eli said his buddy *almost* succeeded but Eli didn’t give in and kept his concentration, as you can see in the next photo.

Pinned! Notice the blur to the right of the ref?

That blur to the right of the ref is his hand, as he slaps the mat to indicate that Eli has pinned his opponent.

Next:  Regionals.  As long as Eli stays on his game, which we expect, he has a VERY good chance at repeating as Eastern Regional PTWL Champion.  The most interesting thing that weekend will be to see who wins at 138 in the Western Region.  Eli has three times beat the kid from Bath who is in that region, and that boy’s coach said the only matches he has lost have been to Eli.  IF that boy wins Western Regionals…….. so we are eagerly, nervously, looking forward to the next two Saturdays!   Eli lost States in the last 20 seconds last year, so we’ll see what he can do this year.  No matter the outcome, he has done an outstanding job this year and we are proud!

One more warning:  You may here wild shouting if/when he wins next weekend…stay tuned for more Proud Parent photos….