SAMPLING AND SORTING

My CSI PSIs winged their way out my front door to Canada yesterday. My brain is tumbling around the most recent discussions about the nature of art - especially textile art , and clutter/stash sorting. I think I need to order my thoughts first before commiting to this blog. Don't you find that everyone's thoughts, ideas and input on both these topics is valid to some extent, raises points you hadn't considered yourself and you need time to absorb, sort, rationlise and question. I guess everything boils down to pure problem solving and that's probably the main problem with the amount of information available to us today via the Internet. I find that there are so many people with so many interesting things to say and fabulous ideas to explore that I spend wa-aa-aa-y to much time scouting round the web every morning tasting honey here and there.

CSI PSIs

I have been dying to post some kind of pics and, having to await the return of my camera's battery recharger, have had to resort to scanning this. It is a taster of the CSI PSI swap I am involved with at the moment - if you are reading this and haven't a clue check out: Arlee's notes at Albedo Design (see link on this page). Anyway, this is my collection of 54 little PSIs ready to separate and finish off:

(This was written yesterday, but the Blogger was refusing to upload pics, so now I can show you a sample of a completed PSI.)
I am going to provide full explanation of techniques and how tos together with the meaning of the things when I finish and post them off to Arlee. It really has not helped that I keep thinking it is a week earlier than it is. I have no reason to be aware of the day, so that is not unusual for me.
Other than that, I am working hard on the bonbonnierre for Nat's wedding - I have to make 100, so have given myself a weekly quota of 10 and am already behind! Mainly because I cannot find the right shade of green lining silk and big son having my car doesn't help matters! I am walking everywhere and my feet are suffering. We have also been doing lots of other wedding things like checking out the venue, choosing bridesmaids dresses, flowers and all those other joy things one has to arrange well in advance. It's hard when you've got two littlies with you who don't understand or particularly enjoy what you're doing!

INTERESTING POSTS IN PIPELINE

PROMISE PROMISE PROMISE that a decent entry is coming. Thing is, I find just words without pictures not wholly appealing - hence awaiting son to get his shit together and unpack his suitcase to give me my camera back. Otherwise life goes on, warmer and sunnier every day (32 by tomorrow) and time to pull off the leccie blankie and haul out the cotton blanket. Also in desperate need of new shorts to cover the hideous birthmark on my thigh - gonna be tricky given this season's penchant for shorts barely covering the crotch!!

PRESENTING TODAY'S LETTER - "C"

Warning!! Small bitch of the day about to happen! Went shopping with my Nat and the boy yesterday - she requiring a wedding gift (those two go to more weddings than a celebrant) plus something to wear for same (tricky 'cos she's still breastfeeding, hasn't lost her baby weight and Spring is a peculiar time of year). Anyhooooo at the point where Dylan was demanding food and drink, Nat was starving (in the way only a feeding mum can be) and Kieran was tired and grizzly and needed a bit of cuddling off to sleep. Nat goes to order our coffees, drinks and food, meantime I am scanning the cafe for a couple of seats - the place was jam-packed due to school holidays and mid-season's sales (PS WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY ABOUT?), whilst juggling Dylan's stroller, wriggling Kieran and several "diggers" (toy trucks). I spot the only vacancy is two seats on a banquette arrangement around one table, but there is a woman and her daughter at the table. Or, rather, sprawled at the table. The woman was, I guess, mid to late thirties, small, dark and well dressed and the girl, seated opposite her (obviously her daughter) was about 9 or 10. Both were plonked fair in the middle of each set of benches and had generously spread their shopping all over the remaining space - HAH! did not fool me for one moment - I knew spare seating when I saw it. So I struggle up to the woman who proceeds to ignore me staring at her from a distance of maybe a meter, while continuing her conversation with her little brat, sorry daughter. Finally she looks at me, so I say in my nicest voice, excuse me, is anyone else going to be sitting with you? She sneers back that there is no one there at the moment and I shoot back that yes, I can see that (I am not blind). I did not say the last thing of course, after all it is a rather hoi poloi type of place and I was trying my best to be pleasant. Oh I reply, would it be OK if my daughter and I share this table with you? She looks at me as if I was something slimy and rather unpleasant that had just slithered from underneath her shoe. We-e-ll, she responds, you can have the table when we are finished. Now, their order has not even arrived at the table so obviously the time frame we are discussing here is at least another 15 minutes. Like most Australians, I admit that I am prone to rather too much swearing from time to time, however there is one word that I loathe and refuse to let past my lips and I am sure everyone knows it - it starts with the letter C. That was the word that popped straight into my head. Luckily, that's where it stayed. I just flounced off saying "Please don't worry about putting yourself out, we'll find somewhere else.", thinking - it's not worth letting her know how selfish and what a bitch she is and that she has no legal right to refuse to let us sit at the table, we because if we ended up sitting with her you could just imagine how pleasant that would have been. We immediately found a lovely young chap with his little girl who waved us over to his table. I noticed that the daughter was wandering around the cafe about 30 minutes later until she spotted us and then went back to her mum to report and they left. Obviously had been sent to let us know we were permitted occupancy of madam's table. I felt like calling the girl over and telling her to tell her cow of a mother to shove the table where the sun don't shine. That's so much better - I have vented. I told Nat we need to get the tattoos on our foreheads removed (you know, the ones that say "Please ignore/be unpleasant to me. I am a nice person and I won't make a big scene.") This was after she had been ignored for 20 minutes by shop staff while buying the gift.

ARTISTIC DILEMMAS

Where do you draw that line in the sand?? Yesterday seemed like an eternal struggle for me with that damned entry in the quilt comp. It seemed the thing had taken on demonic possession and refused to co-operate with me at every turn. Everything I tried with it turned out awful - I could not get things to sit straight, or alternately look artistically crooked and intentional, every colour or texture or whatever I tried looked wrong, wrong WRONG. Then, when I looked at the whole thing at the end of the day, I decided that it was NOTHING like what I had in mind that the elements did not work as a whole and try as I might I could not come up with a way to change it that a.) would work, b.) would comply with the competition rules and c.) would not take endless hours of work and/or unpicking. I almost burst into tears and wanted to take it outside and set fire to it. Instead, I went to the local hardware megastore and, being a public holiday blessed with the most glorious weather, struck every man and his dog there (which made me feel better strangely - as if I was being given the cosmic message that outdoor work was what was really intended for me that day). I purchased some bits of trellis for the climbing stuff like my passionfruit vine that is threatening to encroach the entire world, like the others that have also shot off with a magnificent burst of spring enthusiasm. I really hate when they need to be cut back so I decided to simply extend the support for some of them, including the bright ruby climbing pelargonium that is inching across my back lawn at the moment. Also got several punnets of petunias, encouraged by the "bushes" that have developed from last year's lot and a trailing snapdragon that I haven't seen before and some penstemons that I have always wanted to try.
Back to the horror of the quilt. I know this is definitely not a new thought, but I really think it's time to say, quite firmly, to myself STOP - it ain't never gonna work and you hate it therefore you are not going to do your best with it. Then, I read the rules again and noticed that they want not only a photo of the front, but the back as well and that was truly the last straw for me. I don't know about everybody else, but I rarely if ever pay any attention to the back (which I know breaks the cardinal rule of traditional quilting where the back must look as good as the front.) Now, given that the front of my quilt looks like hell in a handbag, can you imagine what the back looks like?? So, rather than distress myself any more and feel obligated to at least finish the bastard, hoping some miracle will occur and it will suddenly transform itself into the most amazing creation, it will be stopped immediately. I have decided that I am going to follow the lead of Arlee and , instead of stressing about all the UFOs I keep creating, I am going to relabel them "Components for Future Use". In fact, I might even cut out the good bits and just keep those. Whatever I do, I am definitely going to spend today being a lot more free flowing and playful. If anyone feels like letting me know about any brilliant ideas they have for dealing with unco-operative projects, please share!!!

PLOUGHING THROUGH

I feel quite remiss, having not blogged for a few days. The most frustrating thing is not having my camera at hand to include pics of what I have been up to - not that it is very much. Mainly I have been working on my entry for a competition. I feel most ambivalent about the piece (camera returns to Oz shores tomorrow, fingers crossed) and will post pic ASAP. What I was trying to achieve was ridiculous, when I think about it. I tried to blend an art quilt (of a type) with smatterings of traditional styles, whilst still complying with the competition rules. Trouble is, those sorts of things end up being a huge excercise in compromise and I doubt the result is a "winner" in anyone's eyes. Of course, it may well be that I am just fed up with the sight of the damned thing and in other circumstances it would have definintely become another UFO. Competition closes in a few days, so I have to get my shit together - luckily all that's left is to quilt the thing (maybe something magical will happen in that process), measure it finally _ God let's hope it finally meets the dimensions requirements because that bit has taken me the most time - every single time I measure it I get a different answer and I am definitely not good at maths. I just want to move on to another more exciting project - or several of the thousands currently backing up in my brain.
Being Spring and delightful, I have also spent copious amounts of time in the garden - a necessary pleasure because pretty soon it gets far too damned hot to venture outdoors and I am determined not to get a tanned face this year (although the mirror tells me it's too late). Yes, it looks healthy and so on, but I am very sick of that older Australian ritual of having little bits of one's body burnt, frozen or cut off every time I see the doctor. Being a fair skinned, blonde haired blue eyed person with eyelashes and brows so fair they look invisible without makeup, and of Irish/ English extraction - I have no business even walking out the back door without sunscreen. Trouble is, as a Baby Boomer, I was encouraged to run around naked in the sun as a toddler by my mother who had a morbid fear about rickets. Apprarently rickets was rife in England post-war because the sun hardly ever shines there anyway and everyone had spent so much time inside due to the bombs. Common sense would tell you that the fact you can get about 165 times your daily requirement of Vitamin D by walking to your mailbox in Oz - but the powers that were back then had little understanding about such things.
MUst away to the sewing machine - hoping like hell to finish the competition entry today.