Tulips, real and paper

Here's a reflection-filled shot of the tulip Elliot made out of a coffee filter on Sunday. The picture shows bits of our living room (including the radiator that Astrid and Elliot sit on all winter), my silhouette, our porch swing and the plastic table we use for outdoor art projects, the houses across the street, and our Mazda 5. There's also a pastelly butterfly to the left of the tulip--I think it's one of Astrid's.

Of course, as nice as Elliot's flower is, our *real* tulips are the stars this week. Elliot and I (with some help from Astrid) planted about 250 assorted bulbs in October; so far, we've enjoyed yellow and purple crocuses, big and small narcissi, dark blue hyacinths (my favorite!), and now this explosion of tulips. We're still looking forward to purple allium.

Elliot has *another* baseball game this evening. We'd all be excited, except that it's currently about 45 degrees out, and will probably be more like 40 by game time. Brrrrr. It's weird to walk past beautiful spring flowers when we're wearing winter coats.

Finally, here's the picture Astrid took last weekend from our picture window. I like the angles in this shot.

One More Thing on Sunday Night

I found my camera's memory card, so I'm going to post one more thing:

This is what I'm sending my sister Lora for her 40th birthday (gee, I just typed "30th"--even my fingers can't believe that we are 42 and nearly 40!). I worked on this linoleum block print (called "Sisters and Moon") for....hmm....at least a month. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I don't think Lora reads this (if you do, Lora, please let me know!), so the surprise won't be spoiled.

Window Garden

When Elliot was much littler--actually, before Astrid was born--he and I used to put up seasonal displays in our living room's picture window: autumn leaves, paper snowflakes, and his favorite, the springtime garden. He started asking me a couple of weeks ago if we could do it this year; I could understand why, as we had such a long and miserable winter that the springtime has really seemed like a time to celebrate. But I was so busy with other things--work, starting up my own sewing again, and most recently, helping with the round of baseball-related rituals (Elliot's season started April 19, and he's already played four games!)--that I didn't see the window garden happening this year.

This morning, though, Astrid wanted to make some art, so I got out a little stack of Mellitta coffee filters, our liquid watercolor paints, some crayons, and eyedroppers, and we made lovely butterflies for the window. Elliot joined us about a half hour into our work--today was the last day of religious education (what we used to call CCD), and his class got out early, so he had time to play around with us before he had baseball practice--and he suggested that our butterflies really need some flowers to visit. Before we knew it, we had about ten butterflies, grass, and four different kinds of flowers to put up in the window. While Elliot was playing ball, Astrid and I taped everything up.

Afterwards, she and I walked to the supermarket to get $50 worth of fruit and vegetables for her school. We both had our backpacks (hers is very small) and two nylon shopping bags; she didn't fuss once on the five-block walk home, and, as she emphasized, she "never put her side of the bag down, even though it was really heavy." (This picture, incidentally, is a charming shot of Astrid when she was about 19 months old--she was skinny, REALLY fussy, and almost unbearably cute, even when filthy with ice cream, as she was during much of the block party at which this photo was taken. Now, she's no longer so skinny, she's somewhat less fussy, but still quite cute.)

I digress. Back to what I want to say: I love midday on Sundays. The day feels nice and long when it's 12 or 1. Around 3, though, I start to get anxious, because there's just so much to get done, and I've usually already tired myself out doing what I felt like doing. Tonight I made a dinner that was way too ambitious: chicken kabobs with lots of vegetables, rice, and cinnamon-squash muffins. While the chicken was marinating, I took Elliot to Old Navy to choose a bunch of t-shirts (he is sad because he has outgrown many of his favorite ones; he brightened when he saw that we were buying his new shirts in the men's department....I can't say I was as excited....). We enjoyed analyzing Wilco songs in the car. Then, when we were home, he was famished and I was absolutely hustling to get dinner together....while doing laundry and getting the kids' lunches made for Monday. By the time we were done eating and cleaning up, I was grouchy, grouchy.

The other day I put the memory card for our camera somewhere in my backpack, and I haven't found it yet. Once it resurfaces, I'll have pictures to post. I made four peasant blouses for Astrid this week, finished a slinky-knit top I started for myself back in December, and completely redid a black, pebbled-crepe bias-cut skirt that was way too big for me. Both the top and skirt look great. It's been a very happy week for sewing.

Happy Birthday to Me

Sunday was my birthday (#42!). On a bit of a whim, I decided to go to the International Quilt Festival at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. (People who live in or near Chicago may have the same Rosemont associations that I have: it's a mob town, it has lots of strip clubs because of its proximity to O'Hare Airport [I'm not sure why stripping and big airports seem to go together, but it was the same way in Denver, where I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s....].)

I've been wanting to go to a big sewing or quilting expo for a couple of years, but the timing has always been bad--either Elliot had two baseball games in a single weekend, or my boss needed me to attend meetings for her on the days when a convention was in town. I found out about this one just a couple of days before it happened, so there was no opportunity to worry about whether I'd be disappointed at the last minute.

Cut to the chase: I had so much fun! I was there for about five hours, totally on my own (though I found myself wishing that my sister-in-law Carrie was with me--I think she would have had fun looking at the amazing art quilts, especially the nature-themed ones). I loved the quilts--even though I'm not a great (or disciplined) quilter--and I got ideas for new quilts to work on. I'd be lying, though, if I said that the exhibits (which were *totally fabulous*) were the high point of my trip. It was definitely, definitely the shopping I enjoyed most. There were vendors selling everything from the divine (Burmese silks, vintage Czech glass buttons, sewing patterns from the 1890s on) to the tacky (Poo Pourri toilet deodorizer, rhinestone studded reading glasses, lots of American flag-themed quilt patterns) to the intriguingly technical (YLI fusible thread [which I bought], $7000 long arm quilting machines, environmentally friendly batting made of corn).

My favorite booth by far was Color in Stitches, where I bought cloth-covered buttons by Lilac Bow Yoke. It took me forever to decide which sets of buttons I wanted to go home with; not surprisingly, I bought too much. At other booths I bought a grab bag of vintage cloth, fat quarters of Judie Rothermel's Art Deco series, plus some fat quarters of Japanese cottons and smaller bits of cotton kimonos.

The selection of vintage (and antique) patterns at one vendor's booth (and I'm blanking on the vendor's name) was amazing. I came away with one for me , and one for Astrid (I can't get the photo to load, but it's an early 60s pair of clam diggers and a "shallow necked sleeveless over top with patch pockets"--the kind of thing I might be able to adapt to make it reversible. I will do almost anything to avoid having to make facings....I hate wearing clothes with facings, so it seems like useless work....)

Perhaps my favorite moment of the day--the one that made me feel like I'm part of a real, not just virtual, community of sewers--was when a 20-something young woman said, "Hey, Mom!", and at least five women answered "What?" Only one of them was *her* mom, but they were all mothers of daughters. Everyone was laughing, and then I heard an older voice call out, "You should hear what would've happened if she'd said, 'Hey, Grandma!' We outnumber all you moms!" I thought about the summer playclothes I was dreaming up for Astrid at that very moment, and I felt close to all those mothers and grandmothers in a way that I usually don't, because I don't usually get to talk with them.

Speaking of mothers who sew with and for their kids, today I received my very own copy of Amanda Blake Soule's new book, The Creative Family. Thanks, Carrie and Tony! I can't wait to read it.

My art-making fuss

This weekend was a long clean- and chore-a-thon----WAY overdue, to be sure----but I confess that the good feeling that usually comes from really, really cleaning the bathroom maybe didn't last as long as I'd hoped it would. I finally fixed the towel racks (I'm so embarrassed to admit that one of them has been broken since before Astrid was born....when the other one broke last week, I decided that I had to fix both of them). I also put down a new rug (which can't happen, of course, until the floor has been scrubbed) and put up rosy pink linen curtains that I made on Saturday morning. The bathroom looks great now, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the glow lasted only about 28 hours.

(Not coincidentally, perhaps, the kids and I have been watching a lot of 1970s TV commercials on YouTube. Astrid's favorite is the "Ring Around the Collar" ad for Wisk--the one where the dingy shirts taunt the perky-haired wife.

Maybe I've been watching too many of these. Since when did having a *really* clean house [as opposed to a not-so-dirty house] actually make *me* happy? A rhetorical question, to be sure....except for the times when my mother came to help us after the births of Elliot and Astrid, I probably haven't spent any time in a *really* clean house that also belonged to me.)

Anyway, all of the weekend cleaning (and shopping and cooking) left me too tired and dispirited to work for more than about 30 minutes on art. Feeling "put upon" (my favorite Thomas the Tank Engine descriptor) led me to behave rudely to my family, which made for a lovely Sunday evening all the way around. Tonight, when I actually did have a bit of time to work on my collage, I felt too tired, so Elliot and I watched a documentary about the Pixies 2004 reunion tour. (I enjoyed it a lot....Elliot got bored after an hour.)

Been working, just haven't been blogging

I was startled when I saw that I last posted on March 7....life has been full and challenging since that time. My husband had surgery about 10 days ago, so I've been extra busy with the kids and the house (not to mention my paid job....dear God, will things ever slow down?), but I have also spent a good deal of time on two art projects: the collage I started on over a month ago (I think.....feels like forever ago) and an 8 x 10 linoleum block printing project (I'm about 60% done with the carving). I'm posting some pictures of the collage as it's developing; I'm nervously pleased about the two faces (detailed here), as I rarely try for realism, and I rarely stick with the attempts I do undertake. In other words, I'm proud of my doggedness, even if the painting itself is iffy. The face on the darker-skinned woman looks better "in real life" (that is, on the canvas) than it does in this photo.

Speaking of iffiness, here is a picture of Astrid on the new scooter she received from the Easter Bunny a few days ago. The iffiness in the image takes several forms, some more obvious than others. As you can see, there's SNOW everywhere--we got about five inches two days before Easter, but a lot of it melted by Sunday. We are soooooo (SO!) sick of snow. We had our egg hunts in the messy living room (much more challenging than in the backyard--- the kids seemed to like it that way). It's hard to see this, but Astrid is also a bit iffy, never having ridden a scooter before. She should have been even iffier than she was: less than one minute after I took this picture, one of the back wheels fell off the scooter, because I didn't exactly assemble it correctly. She and I had a good laugh over *that*. Really, the scooter falling apart was emblematic of the past couple of weeks we've had: things don't feel like they're put together quite right, but we're doing our best, and leaving plenty of room for do-overs and necessary repairs.

Collage in progress

Here are two details from my collage-in-progress, a big (36"x24") canvas incorporating image mosaic, traditional collage composition (using paper and fabric), and acrylic paint (click on the images to see bigger versions). The collage shows tired men in a medical office waiting room (not pictured here), women worrying (together and alone), and other images connected to the U.S. crisis in health coverage. My main sources of imagery for the large figures are depression-era photos from the WPA and U.S. health service agencies, and for the mosaic components I am using tiny bits of posters from countries that have socialized healthcare. The big idea is that, in spite of what Republicans and too many Democrats say, socialized health sounds mighty fine (sounds like a human right, even!) to the millions of people in the U.S. whose access to doctors, nurses, hospitals, and medicines is criminally, unconscionably limited by a system tilted toward profit for insurance companies. End of speech. (But, hey, Obama, please listen up! I sure want you to win--*and* I want you to do something big and responsible about the healthcare mess we're living in. Please, no halfway measures.)

The photo below shows my new use for my mini-muffin tin--as a sorting tray for image mosaic pieces (Elliot's collage-in-progress is underneath everything). I had this idea a couple of years ago that I'd start making mini-muffins at dinner time (instead of regular-sized muffins) because they bake faster. But they don't bake all that well, at least in our oven, and they aren't as satisfying as a nice big muffin that you can slice in half and butter. (We really like muffins with dinner at our house. I make them probably twice a week, often with Bisquick, but sometimes from scratch. I usually dump a baby-food jar of squash, carrots, prunes, or some other vitamin and fiber-rich goop into the bowl. The whole process, from light-bulb-over-Mom's-head to dinner table, takes less than 25 minutes, and we often have enough left over for breakfast the next morning.)

This is one area in which I truly do feel like one of those cookin', nursin', husband-pleasin' women I read about in my mother's early-1970's copy of La Leche League's cookbook Mother's in the Kitchen. (I love, love, love that old cookbook. I especially like reading the lengthy section on the importance of including organ meats in the family diet, as well as the zillion and one uses listed for creamy canned soups. No, I don't make those recipes, but I have *very* happy memories of eating that stuff--especially the recipe for "Glory-Fried Chicken." Thanks, Mom!) Though I never attended an LLL meeting when I was a nursing mother (all the meetings were while I was at work....what's up with that?), I can't tell you how many I attended as a kid (my mom was an LLL group leader in Denver). Between two kids, I spent five and a half lovely years as a nursing mother. Hurray for the lessons of La Leche League!