Smokey skies

My daughter took these photos tonight at sunset. The fire in Burbank has spread across the hills unfortunately in this direction creating a lot of smoke. All the ash in the sky refracts the light and created a spectacular sunset.

Packing?

We close on our house in 16 days. I am procrastinating. I realize I really should start packing stuff I don't want movers to pack. So saturday night I pulled out a box and started to pack it with jars of dye. Next thing I knew I was pulling jars back out of the box, mixing dyes, hanging soda ash soaked fabric on a peice of twine strung between my shelving and a cupboard, and pouring dye over it. This was much more fun than packing. I have now dyed about 12 yards of fabric this way. I guess I really do need to get serious and start packing the studio.

Michele's quilt

This week we had Laura Wasilowski as our guild speaker. What fun she is, I never saw our guild laugh so much with a speaker, people had tears rolling down their faces. She is absolutely delightful. My friend Michele Pusateri and I took the workshop. I enjoy taking a workshop once in a while to see how other people do things, and to have a play day with other quilt pals. But I never do the sample, I don't want to make a quilt like somebody elses. So I just had fun playing with Lauras beautiful hand dyed fabrics and started making leaves. Michele kept telling me she had just the spot in her house where this piece would look great and that I was making it for her right? I came home and quilted it. It was so nice to work on something. I have had to keep my studio clean for the last few months for showings while the house was on sale, and I havn't worked on anything quilt like. Plus stress is not real good for creativity, I have been knitting instead. So I figured I would give this to Michele, she has been a good friend the last two years. And a fellow rabel rouser in the quilt guild, you see we had a hidden agenda to bring in all art quilt speakers while we were in charge of programs. I am so bummed that I won't get to see the speakers I booked now that we are moving.

Laura took this picture of Michele and I in front of one of my favorite mexican restaraunts La Cabañita. I wish I had thought to take my camera and get a picture of the three of us. I don't carry my camera with me enough.

I am going to miss my view

This is the view from our upper balcony in the canyon where we live in Los Angeles, California. In the two years that we have lived here we have seen deer, lots of hawks, owls, lots of lizards, two bobcats and we hear coyotes yapping and howling at night. There are mountain lions too, but luckily we have not seen them. I feel hesitant to even say that I have sold our house for fear it will fall though again. I am crossing my fingers and my toes that it will go through, we are supposed to close on October 12th, just two weeks before Quilt festival in Houston.

The good and the bad

The good news is I have an 8 page artist profile in Quilting Arts magazine this month. I am thrilled to be featured in such a fabulous magazine.

The bad news is the day before I left for Chicago our house sale fell through. The people who bought it brought their teenage sons (17 and 19) to see the house and they didn't like it. So the couple removed their offer. If the kids held so much sway with the purchase, they should have shown it to them before making an offer! Ugh. So our house is back on the market. We did have a great time in Chicago though.