Art Stream meeting 06-08-24

I drove to San Diego this morning for a meeting of an art quilt group I belong to  - "Art Stream".  There are six in the group, all of them live in the San Diego area. I am the only "outlier" with my two to  three hour drive down about every other month. We meet in member's homes, except for when it is my turn and I find a place down there to accommodate us. We usually have an assignment, all of which we choose at the beginning of the year.  Therefore we can get started  anytime on  any of the projects.   Somehow I never do that and am frequently unfinished or even just lacking.  Don't know why  they put up with  me.   This month the subject was  "Cut-it-up", using an unsuccessful previous work or parts rescued from UFOs, Everyone had a different idea so it was an interesting discussion. 

My incomplete project  was  using the cut offs from trimming previous quilts, I have a large box of them saved over the years. Also including some I have rescued from fellow students trash bags.  The black represents  the black already quilted pieces that  I  have cut to  "sash" the blocks.  The pieces are butted edge to  edge  and  zigzagged a la Paula Kovarick. 

"D" created a background of gently curved strips, which  she but into wide slashes and then fused this  fantastic fused bird.  Love those  blue mum  petals for wings.

"JWT" experimented with raw edge rectangles arranged on a background of similar prints and quilted with meandering vine like lines. It gives a soft meadow feeling.

"N" used a quilt with abstract appliqued forms that she never thought worked.  She arranged  various colored triangles over the previous applique and heavily over-quilted with more vertical lines.  The different widths of spacing makes a great texture.

"A" started out with a  strip woven background she bought long ago at a quilter's sale.  She had some large flowers from other fabric which she cut and fused along  with  the vase shape.  The  texture was lovely, but she found the heavy thickness  difficult to sew through.  

"E",  as usual had a beautiful complete quilt.  She does exemplary hand work and there is a lot of that on this piece.  Cut out flowers, fantasy flowers, leaves, squiggles, and vines, along with  just on folded rose bud, are  applied to a fabric printed with tiny  dots.  

It was a lovely meeting and so interesting to learn from each others experiments,  decision making process, and how they solved the problems they encountered. 

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Friday Food 06-07-24

 Here is one of my favorite light meals, good any time of year.

Fresh broccoli microwaved just to crispy.  Two soft scrambled eggs. A grating of sharp cheddar.  A sprinkle of paprika. Eaten usually with unsalted matzos. 

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Doctoring #2 06-06-24

This morning was spent at the Hoag Surgical Center on Sand Canyon Rd in Irvine, CA.  My patient and calm driver, Dick Bednar, picked me up a  little after 7am, just as we returned from our morning walk.  I checked in at the facility at 7:40am for my 8am appointment and had to fill out papers identical to those I did by phone yesterday. Because I had done that, I did not take my medical file, knowing they already had all that information. Finally about 8:45am they took me back to the pre-op room with all the individual cubicles draped in tasteful cloth curtains.

These are different than those I photographed last June.

And the side curtains were different than the front curtains.  

I always request the front curtains open,  a slight case of claustrophobia,

but it gives me a chance to see what goes  on in a operating"lobby". I was right across from the organizational hub (nurses station?) which usually had two or three people working.  There were only three males, all in surgical outfits, who came and went.  Finally after laying ready to go in my bed since 8:45am they took me into surgery about 1030am.  The procedure  takes about 20 minutes, then I had be in bed to decompress.   So, about 11:30am we were on the freeway home.

Poor Dick is a trooper, waiting all that time in the parking lot.

I  slept off and on all day.  Took KoKo out for a piddle and we did half a walk this  evening - about a thousand steps added  to  the  2000  this morning.

I am  not  hungry  but ate some noodle soup.  Expect I will wake up starving  in the morning. 

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Doctoring - again! 06-05-24

This is not a long post because I  need to take a shower and get to bed.  Tomorrow morning at 7am my driver will pick me up for the drive to the Hoag Surgery Unit at Sand Canyon off  of  the I-5.   I need to be clean for another spinal injection for sciatica.  The last one was a year ago in June  2023 and it lasted about ten  months.   Slowly over the last two months the pain has become  increasingly worse, but getting an  appointment is always a  problem these days.   I first called mid-April and now we are into June!  Next time I will call the minute I feel a twinge!   It isn't  a humungous procedure,  takes about an hour and then I am home again  with no restrictions.  

All  the hospitals or surgical centers I have visited in the last five years have fabric  curtains with calm designs.  Decades ago when I visited such places they were all heavy plastic.  Good change. 

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Just a flower day 06-04-24

 

And my favorite -  the rose "Brandy".

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Cleaning out! 06-03-24

I have never  been  much of a housekeeper, not something I learned when I was growing  up.  But over the years I have read the articles and listened to the housecleaning gurus  and always  managed  to keep at  least a decent house.  But being a widow, living alone (KoKo doesn't care) everything has gotten away from me.  Now that I am feeling better and the bi-weekly  fitness is improving my strength, I will slowly start to clear out the piles and boxes of old papers and "stuff" in the office/library/computer room.  Last week the offices of my financial advisors held their annual shredding day so their clients could dispose of old files. I  took four full file boxes and hardly made a dent in my piles.  

 

Almost cleaned out one end of the room. I did not go through the files.  I haven't looked at those papers  in decades, nothing there I need. These empty boxes are available to fill with all the papers in the two four-drawer filing cabinets.   Those  I  will  need to sort through the papers -  groan.

And then there are the three bookcases crammed with books I have already read, photo albums of guild events and pictures of quilts, and a lot of doodads and whatnots from years gone by.    

I'm going to work at this when I have the energy and the will power.   I'll let you know when I have accomplished this goal.  Probably by the holiday season!!

And I will need someone to carry the boxes to the car.  Those four boxes nearly killed me. Good that the shredders unloaded them at the site.  

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