Back from Virginia

What I did on my vacation: flew across the country, got stuck in the snow, chopped out the ice and got unstuck, met really great neighbors in VA, coughed, blew my nose, coughed some more, petted donkeys and horses, wrapped up in blankets, took pictures of a foot of snow, met some more neighbors, ate mucho food, made one book, drove to NY, visited my mother on Christmas, drove south to Binghamton to visit my sister and her family, ate more food, drove to VA, picked up Dave in Charlotte, went to a picking party, ate more food, tasted Gumbo for the first time, spent all day flying back to Phoenix.

The first pic is my rental car stuck on our road (hit some ice and slid into a small snowbank). The car was stuck for a day until it warmed up to the 40's and I spent 3 hours the next afternoon chopping out ice. In the meantime our neighbor, Maggie, got me some groceries to tide me over until I could get to the store. I walked A LOT! Our "street" is almost 1/4 of a mile, so I trudged luggage both ways as I parked at the end of the street (where the Laurel Ridge Lane sign is). Our street is not flat and not straight, I was afraid of getting stuck again, so I parked by the gravel road while I was there. You can see how painfully close I was to the road where I got stuck:

Once I dug my way out, I drove almost 12 hours to visit my mother in upstate NY for Christmas. I got there Christmas Eve and left the day after Christmas.

Our house in the snow:

Our neighbor, Brian, was very nice and plowed our street so I could at least get to the house. He owns the farm behind our property so when I saw him I asked him if we could pet his animals. So instead of just taking photos, when Dave came out we walked over and got closer. The goats wouldn't let us pet them, but the horses and donkeys weren't shy at all. My camera got funky with low battery juice so I was only able to get pics of 'ole no. 10 (the big goat):

After walking home from the picking party (man, those two kids can play!) at Maggie and Bill's house it was snowing and I got a few pics of the snow falling that night. Even though the weather was horrendous before I got to VA, the weather while we were there was great!

Zine Wowzers!

I received my I Heart Zines swaps in the mail today! A motherlode of fantastic stuff.........and I haven't even opened any of them yet! I am so impressed with just the covers and packaging that I had to make a neat pile on the floor and take a picture. Sort of like Christmas a few weeks early (sans the tree of course!). I am savoring just the outsides for now and after I return with my pizza and savor that............ I will have a ball checking out the actual pages! Thank you, Alma for hosting this wonderous swap!

12 Days of Christmas Artsy Style

The blog Where Women Create has created a huge giveaway............one for each of the first days of December. 12, count them 12! giveaways...........so.........go there............and enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh, hai! Just wanted to tell everyone out there in Blog-land to have a stress-free Thanksgiving. I plan to work on my new VA book and then head over to April's for lasagna! Nom, nom, nom...........

After much time goes by............

....I figured out why I don't like to blog here much. I just waited what seems like an eternity for the pictures to upload. Went and read a couple of chapters of my book while waiting. Might as well multi-task!

Since my last post I have completed several projects. A couple of weeks ago I went to Jane's studio with Karen and took her Halloween book class. It was fun and the kids in my class enjoyed looking at my finished book:

For the past several weeks I have been toiling away at my contribution to Alma Stoller's I "heart" zines exchange. I was to make 10 zines and send them to her. I just mailed them off today, big relief to have that huge project finished and out of the way! I made 3 extras: one for me in case I don't get one back, one for April, and one for my niece, Sara in New York. The zines are several different colors, but essentially the same inside. The covers of the three I kept back:

April's copy:

Just finished this last book today. April, Sara, and I are at the end of a Schmutz Book round robin. We each created covers and sent them on to be decorated and pages added. Schmutz books are created using leftovers and whatever is laying around. The first Schmutz book I ever made was created at April's one night. She started handing me stuff she didn't want or like and I said I would make an attractive book out of it.... and I did! It's almost a tradition now when I go over to her house that I sit and dig through her schmutz bucket and glean "treasures" and start another book for her. Our next project is to create schmutz book kits for each other.

Jabberwocky!

I LOVE this book! Last spring my 7th grade students presented the nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky" in a reader's theater. This is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll for Alice in Wonderland. I loved the poem so much that I decided I needed to incorporate it some way into a book. While in VA this summer Somerset Studio announced that their March 2010 issue was to be dedicated to this very story! Kismet! Fate! Wahoo! I will be sending this book in for possible publication. I have been working on it for several months now and finally finished yesterday over at Jane's studio. The entire poem is "written" in free hand free motion embroidery (no, my machine did not write the text for me!) and each page has hand embroidered accents, some are images from a book I purchased in Powell's while in Portland last June. The front cover is also hand-embroidered, the back (not shown) was written with machine stitching. The final book is nowhere near what I envisioned, but I think I love it even more than what I originally planned. I used red hand-dyed muslin for the cover (the Red Queen), and tea-dyed muslin for the pages. The spine is a stick from my yard in VA attached with hand-dyed twill, the tie is also hand-dyed ribbon.
The front cover:

The final page (one of my favorites):

One of my favorite image; the flying salt shaker from when Alice rips the tablecloth off the table:

One of my other favorite images, the borogove bird whose body is embroidered in turkey work stitches to look "fluffy":

Whew!

I have working like a dog to get books ready to send off to magazines for possible publication. I am almost finished with my Jabberwocky book, one more page to embroider and then put the book together by the Oct. 15 deadline. Since returning from VA I have started teaching 8th grade language arts, sold our house and moved into an apartment and made almost 3 new books.
This is the rather "fat" book I made for April to chronicle our trip to upstate NY last October. It is made primarily from fabric and incorporates many of the souvenirs we picked up while there. It features the photos taken by April. We visited Cooperstown, Cazenovia, and Chittenango as well as Hamilton, Sangerfield, and of course Madison. The leaves were gorgeous as was the weather. We had a small family reunion the last day we were there visiting.
This is the cover: the colors of the book were chosen to work with the photo of the two of us at Grandma's house

A postcard featuring my alma mater, the leaves, and a feather:

A mini "nom, nom, nom" book with a pic of Grandma making bread. The book has take out menus from the restaurants we visited:

One of my favorite spreads showing my father's grave stone, the church in which Dave and I were married, and my sister and me walking through town:

There is a story behind this spine! I made the original cover at the same time I made each of the page spreads but by the time I was finished with the book the cover was way too small, so I split the spine, added some hand-dyed fabric, and re-stitched the blanket stitch on the edges. The book is about 3 inches thick! I'll be sending this along with my brown nature book to Art Quilting Studio to see if they want to publish them in their March 2010 issue. Keep your fingers crossed!