Make it University Samples

I modified the design of the Metal Magic project somewhat for the workshop in Long Beach, making the kits with a piece of white cotton fabric (on right) for making the image transfer. I thought some people may prefer that look to the canvas, but I am bringing squares of canvas for people to use instead if they like that better. I also have reduced the size of the grungeboard, I like the proportion of that backing better than the larger version done in the previous workshop. If you are going to IQF Long Beach stop by MIU and say hi.

Felted Fruits Workshop is Friday at 4:30pm
Open Studios at 10:15 Saturday morning
Metal Magic 4pm Saturday
followed by the not to be missed Surviving the Runway

The Power of the Internet!

I have resolution to my problem with Earthlink! An employee from Earthlink saw my Twitter post and contacted me on Monday. He told me that it seemed like I had a valid problem and forwarded my info onto their Executive Escalations group and asked for my contact info. I got a call the next day and we discussed my issue. He saw nothing in my file showing a cancellation of our phone line in Los Angeles in 2005, so he said he would do some investigating and get back to me. I am happy to say I had a message on my phone today stating that everything has checked out and I will be getting reimbursed for $1900! YAY!!!!! That will really help pay some bills this month.

The kids and I are off to Los Angeles tomorrow to visit family and friends and then next weekend, I will drive down to Long Beach for Quilt Festival.

Garfield Conservatory

On Saturday, I took my son to his origami society meeting at Garfield Conservatory here in Chicago and decided to take a walk around the botanical gardens and green houses.










Many of the plants look like things you typically see in yards and gardens in California, so even though there were many pretty plants there were not that many that looked particularly exotic to me, except for in the Fern room.

It was so humid, warm and incredibly green. I love curled fern fronds, the spiral form is just so beautiful.


I love these, doesn't it look like there are little stitches on each side of the veins?
The coy pond was beautiful with a waterfall and Dale Chihuly lily pads.




I tried to get a good picture of the large coy who kept sucking gulps of air, but the reflection from the greenhouse skylights kept obliterating the fish in most of my photos.


These palm tree stems were so vibrantly orange.

One month until Copper book retreat!

If you are like me you have been feeling that low grade stress building for months. I know I could really use a little creative get away. Want to spend a weekend in the woodlands of Wisconsin making copper and canvas mixed media books with me? The weekend of August 8-9, I will be sharing my process for making these books at Whispering Woodlands in Verona, WI, just outside of Madison.

Besides having a fun, relaxing weekend doing collage (or bricolage), painting, working with fabric transfers and learning to emboss and color copper metal, you will also get a Creative Metal Tool kit courtesy of Walnut Hollow.

So come spend the weekend sharing stories, laughs, ideas and nurture your creative spirit, I would love to see you there.

Earthlink Users BEWARE!

We had Earthlink for 2 years when we lived in Los Angeles, I canceled service in November 2005 when I found that we needed to use Comcast for internet here. In March 2006 I recieved a bill that we owed $123, I told them I had canceled our service and they said they didn't have a record of that. Giving the benefit of the doubt that maybe I had overlooked that in all the craziness of the move paid them with my debit card and cancelled the service. I just took a close look at my bank statement yesterday and saw a chage for $39.95 from Earthlink using the debit card. They had attached my debit card to an account that was closed and have been charging me for 3 1/2 years!

I called Earthlink and they said they had no record of cancelling service and they could not return my money unless I had a confirmation number. Infuriated I hung up thinking I had written the number in a notebook I couldn't find. Later I went and checked our files, pulled out the folder for Earthlink and found that I had written the confimation number on the bill that had come in 2006 and I also saw a second confirmation number on notes from when we had moved in 2005.

I called Earthlink back, which of course took 20 minutes on hold with a direct line to India. I gave them the confirmation number from 2006 and then 2005 and of course neither one were in their system! I would need to fax my documents to some Earthlink phone number. Since it was my handwritten notes, I couldn't imagine they would give that any validity it seemed like just another tactic to stall things. When I talked to the supervisor he told me that I needed to have taken action with in 30 days of cancellation to get my money back!

So what good is a confirmation number when the company does not honor it? They have literally been stealing money for 3 1/2 years by attaching a card number to an account on the day that I had cancelled service the second time. My only guarantee of stopping them now is to change my card number.

Knitting Lace

As the summer warms up, I have set aside my cable sweater project and pulled out some lace weight yarn to knit. I have 3 skeins of Knitpicks Shadow in Jewels that has been sitting in one of my yarn baskets. Things have been pretty stressful and I decided I needed something that would be very relaxing and simple to knit. So I consulted one of my favorite reference books; A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

I came across Ostrich Plumes, a variation on feather and fan, which is a very easy lace pattern, and thought that would be just the right amount of interesting design and easy to memorize pattern.
Being a visual person, I prefer working from charts than reading patterns, so I made a chart from the written directions on this chart generator. Seeing the pattern graphically helps me remember the pattern so much better.Before starting my shawl, I knit and blocked three samples to see what size needles I wanted to use for my lace pattern. These three samples in reality are different sizes, the blue one being the smallest ( 6" x 7"), it was knit on size 5 needles and makes a nice solid pattern. The second sample was knit from the same yarn (but in a different color) with two strands of yarn on size 8 needles. It finished just a little taller and about an inch wider than the first swatch, it was heavier weight and had lost the nice drape that my first sample had. The last sample was knit single strand on size 8 needles, after blocking it was 7" x 9", it has nice drape but the design felt a little too open, loosing some of the pattern definition.
I settled on size 7 needles with 2 and a half repeats of the pattern from the book. I figure I will just keep knitting until I run out of yarn or until it reaches 60 or 70 inches.

Chicago Origami Society

A couple months ago a film crew showed up at the Origami Society Meeting my son Ty goes to. The film makers work for the city and usually film Mayor Daley's activities, but since they were on a hiatus from the Mayor they were working on a few personal projects, including this one. It was so funny to see Ty with his long hair again, he cut it really short a couple days after this was filmed. I think this will be aired on a local cable access show too, for the month of July.

Stringing beads

I have accumulated quite a few beads from various quilt and bead shows over the years. Often they sit in bins for a long time before I get around to using them. I think it is challenging to string beads well, the individual beads are so beautiful, but it can be tricky to combine them together in a pleasing way. I am in such awe of people who do it well.

This morning I wanted to string a necklace with a pendant I unearthed as I cleaned off my table this week. It has been sitting on my table for at least a year.


As I've gotten older I have begun wearing red, a color I never felt comfortable in when I was younger and more introverted. Maybe red is a color that demands some confidence and life experience, lol.I haven't had any red jewelry, until now.

The Irrepressible Robbi

Bonnie has done another wonderful interview, this time with Robbi Joy Eklow. You can see Robbi's engineer mind at work here as she shows how she squares up her huge quilts. Brilliant!

An evening bike ride

We heard some whoops and cheers around 6 tonight and looked out the window to see hundreds of people on bikes. They went rolling by for about 15 minutes. It was so fun seeing all the different kinds of bikes and other modes of wheeled transportation.
This was my favorite.