From Art is You to Kauai

It's already October? Where did the time go ......... well I prepared to teach at Art is You Petaluma, my sister came from Dallas to help me. This was my first event since my eye surgery back in April. I could not have done it without her! Seriously, for five months I had to do almost nothing and then to suddenly be on my game to vend and teach was a big jump! I was so happy to be there though and I feel it went mostly smooth. But again it's because Jan was there to help me from stitching up last minute garments to sell, sewing in labels, loading the car, setting up classrooms, fetching and lifting, hauling and packing. Whew! Here are some photos of my nuno felt scarf class. Alas we were so lame at taking photos. We both had our cameras but on vendor night we failed to snap one picture, in my ribbon dyeing class we did not get one darn photo so the last day of class we remembered and Jan did a wonderful job of documenting. See? I really did need her.



























The day after class we drove back to my house in the Santa Cruz Mnts. and we unloaded the car. The next morning we were up very early to take Jan to the airport. I came home and finished unpacking, figured out my inventory and made my list for the St. Louis Weavers' Guild show the end of this month, paid my overdue (eek!) AZ taxes, and packed fabrics and dyeing items to bring to Kauai with me. 6:00 a.m. the next morning we were leaving for the airport for a direct flight on Alaska airlines to Lihue. No flying to Honolulu to take the WikiWiki to inter-island terminal and wait an hour and a half to fly over to Kauai. It was nice.

Now I'm on island and the weather has been fabulous.

I went to my friend Connie's yesterday to do some eco dyeing. We had both collected flowers and leaves to use. We took a walk down the road that fronts her house and onto a eucalyptus tree lined path. We collected the euca leaves and barks from 3 types of trees. Alas I do not know what kind they are. We bundled euca leaves, tulip tree flowers, different colored hibiscus, plumeria, gardenia, plumeria leaves, croton leaves, and flowers and leaves not yet identified and all sorts of rusty items. We hot bundled so we opened them fairly soon. We were wanting to know what would dye and what wouldn't before we did larger pieces to leave bundled for longer periods of time. I bought a two tiered large electric vegetable steamer at a thrift store for $4.00 and that made me very happy. Isn't it great that something that simple can make a person smile? I was so tired when I got home from Connies! Hubby and I went out to eat and came home and I swear I was asleep by 8:00.

Today I'll iron out the samples we did yesterday and take some photos to post later. The larger scarf bundles I won't unwrap until the coming Friday or Saturday before I head home on the 10th.

Thursday I had another episode with my eye. I know I sound like a broken record, hey I feel like a broken record! So yesterday I spent most of it seeing doctors and having tests run. The good news is that my retinal tears have healed and it didn't appear I had any new ones. The bad news is my eye had hemorrhaged again and filled with blood. WHY? No one knows and that is the mystery. So ........ I can't keep harping about this here on my blog. It's frustrating and I hate having to go through the hoops but it's the only way I can hopefully get to the bottom of this whole issue.

I also wanted to thank everyone who left a comment about the webiste/blog questions. I have a lot of information to process and when I have time to formulate my decision I'll be back to post about it. Thanks again to all.

That said here are the items I forwarded to be juried for the Weavers' Guild of St. Louis annual show. I sent four items but unfortunately didn't take a picture of the shirt with a velvet flounce because I thought I had already taken pics of it. Obviously I didn't. I hope these new eco dye print pieces are accepted and if you live in the St. Louis area please come see the show. I plan to be there and always look forward to seeing the members I've become such good friend with and catching up but mostly to see all the wonderful items these very talented members create!

silk crepe tee top, eco dye printed





silk chiffon cape, eco dye printed and a dye printed habotai silk piece (cut from a print I bought from Arlee Barr) appliqued and stitched on the back.








silk noil eco dye print scarf with embroidery stitching and gemstones

Website and Blog question

I have a website but it has not been updated for years. I keep the website because I feel it gives a visual of my work for people who want to see that BUT if I'm not updating because I have to pay someone to do that for me OR I would have to change it to another service and pay someone to do that too it doesn't get done. I do not have the time or inclination to learn how to do that myself. My question to you readers is this: Is it necessary for me to have both a website and a blog? Renewal for my website is coming up to keep my domaine name and I know it needs updating so I'm wondering if it's worth it to spring the money for. Would really appreciate your input on this subject. Is a blog enough? I could start uploading more images of my wares to my Flickr account and have a link to that from the blog. Would that be sufficient and make the website not necessary?

Today I'm packing up a few items to send to St. Louis to be juried for the Weavers' Guild annual sale and to be entered in the fashion show if they're accepted. I will post some pics of those later this afternoon or evening.

Hope you have a wonderful day!

September the month of Fall

We have had an unusual summer in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Summer arrived late on the tails of cool and very rainy weather. My garden got planted late and seemed to be reluctant to grow to fruition. But finally the tomatoes are starting to ripen, the green beans are overproducing and the lemon cucumbers are the best! I've frozen the jalapenos and chilies that are waiting to get added to the salsa I hope I can make this weekend.




I am so happy to see that we have honey bees!




I've also been busy gathering leaves, flowers, and plants to experiment with more eco print dyeing. I'm totally hooked on this but there is so much to learn! Just a few pics of the small pieces I've been trying out.

update on eco dyeing and works in progress

The short periods of time I am able to work in the studio I am. My eye doctor says I can do focus work for 30 minutes at a time then take at least an hour break. I can work up to 5 hours a day. You know how hard it is to be focused on creating something and have to stop at 30 minutes? Very hard. The creative juices get flowing and then I have to cut them short and it's very frustrating but I know it's important so I'm doing it.

Slowly, slowly I am getting things done ............. eco dye samples unbundled and colored, embellishing scarf lengths with embroidery and beads, class samples for applications to art retreats, and garments I'm upscaling.

ceanothus on silk



cotton shirt and eucalyptus





Yerba Santa on silk - The leaves gave nice prints but the purple flower not so much



manzanita bath yielded a soft pinkish tan color






eucalyptus on silk noil



ripe elderberry





green blackberry leaves on silk, wrapped on copper pipe. Funny how the leaves didn't leave any color at all but the copper tinged the outline of the leaves




sweet vintage glass buttons I considered adorning this scarf with but I couldn't bring myself to cut them off the card. Is that silly? I have these cards of buttons displayed in my studio and think they are little works of art in themselves.