Let it snow:

Let is snow (some more):

Let it snow (even more!):

We had a White Christmas this year in spite of the warming weather last week, mostly because there was about 22 inches of snow on the ground. Quite a bit melted off before New Year’s Eve day, when we got more. Then the night of New Year’s Day, we got even more….. We now have more snow than I’ve seen in our short 3 1/2 years here. The snow plow ridge at the end of the driveway is SO high I can’t see over it to look for oncoming cars! So of course, since I love the winter and the cold (and being snug inside our house and quilting and reading and fixing tea and listening to the kids …well…. most of the time listening to them), I took pictures. LOTS of pictures! Here you go! Plenty of inspiration for art quilts, I think…. (a late note…too many pics! will post more tomorrow!)

Here’s our house:

And the mailbox:

The house end of the driveway after being plowed and shovelled…notice how high the pile goes compared to the basketball hoop!

And here’s Eli at the street end of the driveway…Widgeon loves the snow, at least when it is in the 20s. Today it was around 0, yep, ZERO Fahrenheit (which is well below zero centigrade!), currently with a windchill of minus 10! That was a bit too cold on his little tootsies!

More pics tomorrow, including ones of town and the neighborhood.

Gifts for the Frayed Edges were home-made and recycled this year… the best kind! I had found some gorgeous ribbon at Rock Paper Scissors, a store in Wiscasset. Deborah always loved to stop at Smitten, owned by the same person, and I had never been despite the fact that I drive through Wiscasset at least twice a month on my way to and from Frayed Edges meetings. So one time, on the way home, I finally stopped. And bought YARDS of this gorgeous ribbon, with the idea of making a gift for my fellow Frayeds. As Christmas approached, I thought…do they really need ANOTHER bag with this ribbon on it? Why not let them make something they like/want instead? That led to the decision to dye fabric.

I got home from Mom’s in California on Dec. 11th. Over the next couple of days I dyed about 16 yards of fabric! I did two yards each of five colors (one for each of the other Frayed Edges and one for Marie. Each person received a half yard of “their” color plus a fat quarter yard of the other four colors. While I was at it, I decided to also dye some wonderful PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabrics Marie gave me for Christmas last year: silk organdy, gauze, lawn… plus some cheesecloth and also some silks. Oh MY!

I moved my “table” (two old cabinets plus styrofoam insulation and a 4×4 piece of scratched up shower board) over by the basement windows. A vast improvement to being on the other side of the basement. Still no sink downstairs (I had a plumber give an estimate….$1200 not including sink, counter, faucet…to install….not gonna happen), so am hauling water, but at least it is space and I don’t need to worry about dye or soda ash splattering on the cement walls and floor. The shelving on the left is new and wonderful! All my dyes, auxiliaries and pots and beakers and whatnot in ONE place!

Batching and just rinsed fabrics look so wonderful (too see larger, click on the photo):

Then…. I took some raspberry syrup jars and painted them with glass paint. I used Pebeo Vitrea 160 (available here at Dick Blick) . I picked colors and a motif for each person….green for Marie, sea blues for Kathy, purple for Deborah, green for Kate, and deep coral for Hannah. The purple one for Deborah, for example, has the stalk with buds on it which she has used so often in her work, Kath’s has waves for the sea. I used contact paper cut into shapes and stuck on the bottles, then painted, allowed paint to dry. Paint is supposed to cure 24 hours (I cut it a little close on a few! as usual ran late on time) before baking. You put the glass in a cold oven, turn on the temp to 325. When the oven reaches 325 you “bake” for 40 minutes, then allow to cool inside the oven. It worked! Wouldn’t these look great in a window? I think we need to have more raspberry syrup on our waffles so I can make some for us!

Finally, I wrapped everything up…. the bottle got wrapped with a pair of hand-dyed socks, which got wrapped with the 1 1/2 yards of hand-dyed , which got rolled with that ribbon from Rock Paper Scissors!

In the interest of having good materials to work with for my art quilting, I dyed a lot of fabric… I’ll have more to share over the next week or two.

I’m on a quest…. there is a line drawing I remember (which I saw about 30+ years ago) that is a seated nude woman, and consists of two lines–I had thought it was by Picasso (it was reproduced as a poster sold on college campuses….). I asked on the quilt art list and got many “close” suggestions, but none that is the one I remember. The suggestions folks gave will help me illustrate my point in my class (that it is possible to convey a whole lot of meaning in just a few simple lines), but now that I can’t find the danged thing that is battering around inside my brain, and I’m plagued with a desire to figure out WHO did it, and see an image. It looked something like this:

I had thought it was by Picasso, but having spent a whole lot of time at the Online Picasso Project (here) I have decided that was probably not who did it… whoever drew the one I remember probably liked women more than Picasso did.

Here are some Picasso drawings that are close, but obviously not a female nude:

The closest is “Femme,” but it’s not quite the same thing, and I’m SURE I remember a seated woman…..I’ve scoured the Picasso online project from 1955 to 1973 with no luck….:

Terry Grant, Pamela Allen and a few others suggested Matisse, and this is also close but not quite (and obviously fulfills the purpose for the photo in my class):

Here are a few other Matisse that would work equally well:

and

If anyone, however, has a clue as to who did the two-line seated nude, please do drop me a note or suggestion for searching!

In a new Christmas miracle (ahem), I actually got our annual “Christmas” newsletter written, printed, in the envelopes and INTO THE MAIL before Christmas! Some years, this event has occurred the week after Christmas (last year), in early January (several previous years), even February. One year, I thought since I was so late I’d make it an Easter newsletter. That holiday came and went, and by June I decided I was SO LATE I’d just skip it and try to do better the following year. So you can see that this is no small feat! Of course, I will never, ever be able to match my friend Gayle, whose letter and card always arrive shortly after Thanksgiving! I may try, but she’ll always beat me, and I look forward to seeing how early she gets ’em out every year <ggg>.

I thought I’d share some of the newsletter here…. the photo above is the one at the end of the letter and was taken a couple of evenings ago. I probably should have included one of the umpteen-zillion other shots taken trying to get them to sit still and behave…. how many years until they do? At least a dozen I think… For regular readers, you’ll recall all these events, as I think they’ve all been in the blog!

The Smith Family Chronicles, 2007 edition

We are looking forward to 2008, since 2007 has been a roller-coaster-ride. The year started out well, with Joshua coming in 5th in the state in his weight class in middle school wrestling, Eli earning his green belt in Tae Kwon Do (Korean) karate and yellow belt with stripes in Isshinriyu (Okinawan) karate, Paul starting out as a white belt in the Isshinriyu dojo, and Sarah’s quilting career taking off quite nicely. In March we added a new member of the family: the world’s most adorable pug, Pigwidgeon. Eli has always wanted a pug, and for his birthday he got one! ‘Widgeon is named after the hapless Weasley family owl in the Harry Potter series, and he makes EVERYone grin — the whole neighborhood loves him.

Just a few weeks after summer vacation began, things took a decided downturn. Paul had torn something in his shoulder and was scheduled for rotator cuff surgery on Tuesday, July 17th. An hour after Paul’s pre-op appointment on the 16th, Joshua decided to dash to the library. He tore down the hill to the T-intersection at the bottom; when he tried to slow down, the brakes didn’t work properly. He cranked the handlebars to make the right turn as hard as he could, but gravel at the bottom of the hill made things worse and he veered across the yellow line, directly into the front left quarter-panel of a Jeep going the 35 mph speed limit.

Miraculously, and probably with the help of an entire host of angels, he suffered only a severely broken left leg—all three major bones broken, the tib-fib into a compound fracture—a gash on his head (he was NOT!!!! wearing a helmet!) and scrapes and bruises. A friend of Joshua’s who lives near the accident scene heard the crash and called to tell us Joshua had been hit. Paul and Sarah flew down the hill in suspended terror until they saw Joshua sitting up, clutching his left leg, surrounded by helpers including a nurse practitioner who was passing by who was phenomenal—and we don’t even know her name to tell her how much her competence and calm helped us all.
After what seemed like eternity, an ambulance with a patient in the back stopped and dropped off an EMT. The EMT took one look at Joshua and before even kneeling down to examine him, got on her radio to call Life Flight to helicopter Joshua to a regional emergency center since the degree of injury was too much for a local hospital. The poor young woman who hit Joshua was devastated—Paul and I both went over to let her know he would be OK. Later, her dad told us she said her eyes and Joshua’s locked over the hood of the car—terrifying! Fortunately, Joshua only remembers thinking “oh this isn’t gonna be good” as he saw the car approach, and then sitting up and the pain in his leg—he has no recall of being hit.

To make a long story a bit shorter, Joshua endured four surgeries in seven days, including the seven-hour operation two days after the accident to insert a rod into his thigh and apply an “external fixator” to his shinbones. The “ex-fix” was six screws about 6 inches long drilled into his bones, with rods on the outside to keep the bones in position. The pressure from the swelling tissues was so great the surgeons had to do two fasciotomies, basically long slices from knee to ankle on both sides of his shin; without this, the pressure on the tissue would have caused it to turn gangrenous and die. Paul and Sarah rotated spending the night at the hospital: one of us was with Joshua 24/7 for the 3 weeks he was in hospital. Eli was a major trooper throughout this ordeal, and was always helpful and cooperative despite having to ride to and fro for 3 hours nearly every day.

After nearly a week, Joshua slept all day. Between the morphine and other heavy-duty IV drip painkillers and blood loss, he had become severely anemic. He ended up needing two transfusions. After a second week, it was time to close up the fasciotomies, requiring a skin graft from Joshua’s left thigh. Another week of rehab and healing followed. Once the skin graft was pronounced “good to go”, Joshua was released to home, three weeks nearly to the hour after the accident.

August was quiet except for Paul’s surgery and being able to go to the Maine Air Show (in September) and see the Blue Angels aerobatic team—awesome! After two days home, Joshua got fed up with the slowness of the walker and gutted his way to walking with crutches and healed with the speed of youth. Paul’s recovery has been remarkable, amazing his physical therapist and doctor! The local quilters were awesome, several coming to us with meals to feed an army, but instead we ate them with appreciation for their love and compassion. And quilters around the world (on Sarah’s e-lists) sent get-well quilt blocks to Joshua, who will have a huge new quilt as a result.

School began, life assumed some normalcy, and Eli played on his first soccer team. He proved to be a quick study once again—his proud Mom and Dad think he can excel at anything he sets his mind to! And we’re proud he was selected for Horizons, the gifted student program, for the fourth grade. Eli also competed in Maine’s biggest martial-arts tournament as an Isshinryu student and took 2nd out of 26 kids in kata (forms), and 4th out of 26 kids in fighting—way to go Eli! Joshua’s leg hardware came off in early November in his sixth and hopefully final surgery (there could be one more in about a year if the rod inside his femur bothers him and needs to come out). He will heal completely!

Sarah’s quilting is going gangbusters! She had two articles published in Quilting Arts magazine this past year, the top quilting magazine for art quilters. As well: two projects were selected to be in a book to be published in May 2008 called Quilting with Beads, the Frayed Edges (Sarah and four friends) had a month-long show in the gallery space at the beautiful Camden library, and (drum roll please) she got a contract from AQS (one of the three largest quilt publishing houses) to write a book! The book is tentatively titled “Unraveling Threadwork,” and is about using thread on the surface of a quilt: appliqué, embellishment and quilting by machine. She had hoped it would be out in Fall 2008, but the hurly burly of the summer may cause the date to slip. Sarah’s teaching is also taking off, with three big-time teaching gigs in 2008 including at the HUGE AQS Quilt Show in Paducah, Kentucky.

In early December, Sarah traveled to California for her mom’s 89th birthday! We are all hoping that Nana will be able to move to Camden (on the waiting list for the retirement community there) in 2008. Joyce, Sarah’s beloved sister in law, came up from L.A. Sarah’s half-brother Tom J. passed away at the age of nearly 75 in late June, and Sarah had been scheduled to go out in July for the celebration of his life. Joshua’s accident changed those plans, so we were all thrilled that the three remaining “Maleady’s” were able to be together.

So that’s it for a crazy year! We are all looking forward to a less-eventful 2008!

With love, cheer and good will,

Paul, Sarah, Joshua and Eli
And the many critters:
Zeus, Tyger, Hannah, Thumper,
Yeti and ‘Widgeon

Eli, in 4th grade, needed a quick gift for his Secret Santa pal. Paul and Eli went looking for a gift—the girl likes horses, so Eli wanted to buy her a bookmark with a horse. No luck. Apparently nothing with a horse at any store including the toy store (hard to believe, but that’s what they said). So they decided to make cookies. As in mom would make cookies. Ahem. Not. As in, I’m wrapping gifts, making my own stuff, working on dyeing six shirts with Joshua for science class, writing and printing the newsletter, doing legal stuff for mom, etc.

So I offered to make a fabric postcard instead and give it with a mini-easel. A quick Google Images search for horses turned up two that gave the silhouette that I wanted, so I traced them off the computer screen. Eli and I decided to make a field with simple trees on the side (this needed to be made FAST). Once that was done, we decided the smaller of the two horses was the correct size. Out comes the Saral transfer paper to transfer the outlines to the pre-fused cloth.  The photo above is the front of the card (Eli wanted eyes and nostrils, so added them with a pen which, alas, bled a little…)

On the back, Eli did as he was instructed, wrote To Francis, From ? (and it shows the quilting):

I’m rather pleased… it took less than an hour for the whole shebang (using mostly pre-fused fabrics…good to have a little fused stash on hand for quilt emergencies just like this), way less than making a huge batch of cookies! Best of all, Eli reported that Francis was really pleased with her Secret Santa’s gift! Good for Eli for picking something he knew she would like!