Photo Failure 02-28-20

I was working to post pictures I took on the last trip up to San Juan Bautista and Pacific Grove when my phone started to just say "loading" on and on and on.  It won't stop.  So, I have no access to any pictures on my phone.  Hope it can self correct.  It is almost midnight, so I will just check it in the morning.   I tried to find some great almond blossom pictures from years ago, but since the demise of Picasa I can't find anything very easily.  But when I drove up and back on I-5 last week the almond trees were in their full glory.  By the time I drive up again in a couple weeks the blossoms will all be gone.  

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A Resting Day with KoKo 02-27-20

These days whenever I drive a distance (like the 200 mile round trip to/from San Diego) I am just too tired the next day, no matter how much sleep I have had.  So, now I plan for a rest day after each travel day.  Age requires adjustments for me.   I did my physical therapy appointment and took KoKo for his walk around the neighborhood loop, put a few things away, looked through my e-mail and Facebook, and rested. 

KoKo has been very  active lately and today was no exception. He received a new toy from the KoKo caregiver while I was up north.  It is a yellow snake (at least it faintly resembles one) that is 18" long and about 7" in circumference.  It has four little feet and did have two ears about 1 1/2" long.  He tore one ear off before I returned from up north and has been tugging and chewing on the other one until finally it was hanging on by a thread.  I cut it off and thought the earholes were too small for him to do any more damage.  Wrong.  He was in the living room working on the squeaker and then it was very quiet.  I went in to see what he was up to and found him frantically pulling the stuffing through the earholes!  He had seven or eight large wads scattered around.  So, I stopped what I was doing, re-stuffed the batting and sewed up the holes.  Now he just works on the squeaker which is in the snaky nose.  He hasn't deserted Froggy though. 

Bedtime with KoKo's current favorite toys. 

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Down and Back to San Diego 02-26-20

I had signed up to do a gallery tour of the Ruth B. McDowell quilts at Visions Art Museum in San Diego today.  I think the group of about 40 quilting ladies might have been a Traveling Quilters group as they were from all over - Palm Springs, Temecula, Hemet, and !Canada! (surely a snowbird, eh?).  The museum people divided them into two groups and one group went to lunch while the other had the tour, then they switched.  I was hard pressed to keep track of what I had explained to the first group, or had I just said it to the second group?  Old age?  And my voice was getting a little thready by the end.  But I do enjoy talking about the quilts in the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection, especially Ruth's quilts.   They will be up until April 5th. 

When I drove home I stopped at my favorite pokey place on Jamboree in Irvine to pick up a pokey bowl to go for dinner [it was delicious].

When I parked I wondered what was going on with all these people on the sidewalk.  They didn't look agitated, so I went on toward them, not a shooting anyway. 

By the time I returned to my car there were even more people. 

Turned out they were lined up to get into Yogurtland!  Something I have never seen before.  But it makes sense because it was 88F there today.  Whew, a little taste of summer already.  

It was a very beautiful day and the ocean was very blue. 

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What is on my wall 02-24-20

With so many quilts in exhibits or traveling with exhibits I am so lucky to still have lots of quilts to enjoy on my walls.  Several are "works in progress", such as the yellow strip quilt, but there are spaces for some from TCQC. 

Pamela Allen's "Getting My Ducks In a Row" doesn't travel often because of the dangling lines of beads that can become twisted or (horror) broken.  But I enjoy it on the wall facing the door to the back bedroom.  Just the right size and light colored to show up in the dark hall.  

"Getting My Ducks in a Row" Pamela Allen - Ontario, Canada 2005  33"W x 46"L

And a detail image showing some of the beading.  In the upper right corner are clouds with strings of beads to  show rain falling.  And on the top right you can see her beaded blue hair, again the beads dangle on strings.  

Pamela's Artist's statement: "I had been feeling glum after a string of sad events, when my little grandson gave me a picture of a duck he had drawn. Seemed like a signal to me to get on with life, so I enlarged his drawing and this quilt was born."

This is what I posted about it here on 09-25-08:

This quilt 'spoke to me' the minute I saw it. The color, the balanced design, the intense quilting, the "get on w/life" aspect and those lovely skeleton ducks across the bottom. My only hesitation was about the embellishments. The clouds in the sky are raining strings of beads and the lady's hair is also strings of beads. They are perfect for this quilt. However, I do trunk programs and ship quilts to museums and galleries, which is very hard on embellishments. The quilts in the collection are rolled, covered and stored on shelves, except for those for which I need to invent special storage. Now I have an archival box large enough to store this quilt and a few others flat, unfortunately it still hasn't found a permanent place in my house! But soon.

Pamela's quilts are so individual, unlike any others I have seen - this is one of several in the Collection. I doubt that at my age I could loosen up enough to imitate her, but I have signed up for a class. It will help me understand her methods and it might even teach me how to play. 

www.pamelaart.com

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A busy lazy day 02-23-20

I decided to not drive to SDiego today for a meeting of the art quilt group I belong to down there.  I was just wiped out by my long drive yesterday - I don't have the endurance I once did!  So, after KoKo's walk and breakfast we went back to bed and slept another four hours.  I don't know about KoKo (since he sleeps about 80% of any day, as most dogs do), but I felt revived and accomplished a lot.  First priority was unload the car and put everything away, which takes an inordinate amount of time it seems.  This time I only had two quilts to put away, so many are either at Back Porch Fabrics or Visions Art Museum, it is easy to find spaces now.  

The rain yesterday didn't amount to much at my house, but the clouds were pretty great.  Here are some on the route across the 210 Freeway just past Pasadena.  Someday I will make a cloud quilt, haven't quite figured out how yet. 

I was driving pretty much due east so the San Gabriel Mountains are off to the left of the pictures.  The mountains stop the clouds and they pile up. 

I hope to edit the travel photos one day soon. 

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