Mendocino

I just spent 4 days recuperating from my daughters wedding (pictures to follow when I get them). What a beautiful, magical place that is. We stayed in a B and B and spent our days tasting wine, visiting galleries and of course, walking on the beach. Here are a few of the pictures I took..Above is the Mendocino Botanical Gardens where the flowres all all blooming and the pond was spectacular. Below is glass beach in Fort Bragg where the whole beach is made up of smoothed over the years pieces of glass, apparently from bygone trash dumping in the ocean.

The last 2 pictures are from the beach right across the road from the B and B, a little cove with an island, and otters observing you closely from the ocean. Now that the "event" is over, I'm ready to make some art

Changes

I waited till the very last minute to work on this months TIF challange http://sharonb.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/take-it-further-challenge-for-april/ because I have so much going on this month. My daughter is getting married in 11 days and I'm not ready yet! Anyway whenI saw the theme changes, I immediatly thought of seasons, and this is what I came up with. I used a piece of screenprinting I made in Kerr Grabowski's class and added some handstitching and then some scrap pieces with the embellisher.

The babies are here!

The hummingbird babies are about a week old now and already shoving their beaks in the air, waiting to be fed. When they first arrived, they looked a bit like slugs. Now they are starting to grow feathers and look more like the grownups they will soon become. Mom and Dad are hardly ever home, they're out gathering nectar to feed these hungry beasts.

Kerr continued

We spent 5 wonderful days at Quilters Studio in Newbury Park screening, discharging, working with charcoal and caran d'ache crayons to make beautiful fiber. The weather was perfect for working outside with the Thiox and for batching our fabric. Some of the group opted to cover their Thioxed work with a sheet of plastic and let the sun do the work of the iron and they had some amazing results. This is the last of the class photos.

After the first 5 days, a group of 5 of us met with Kerr for 3 more days of intense desingn exercises, working with india ink, and critiquing and discussiong our work. What fun.

We ended each day with a glass or two of wine, and crashed to start fresh the next time.

Here we are on the final afternoon. Kerr is in the green, and from left to right it's me, Loris, Paula, Rebecca and Jayne.

Kerr's class

I'm fortunate to be taking a class from Kerr Gabrowski this week and even more fortunate to have her staying in my house. We are having so much fun. I've downloaded a few of the images to share, and when the class is over I'll share more

Hummingbird

This is the 3rd year we have had a hummingbird nest on our patio. The first 2 years she made a nest in one of those things that spin around in the wind, but she still managed to produce 2 sets of babies each spring. We put in a hot tub this last winter so we moved her nest. This year she chose our trumpet vine. That's the daddy sitting on the eggs while mom shops at the grocery store.

Here are the eggs. They seem to always be in pairs. We've been watching them for about 3 weeks, so I think we have a few weeks to go until thy hatch. More pictures to follow.

Community challange

In case you haven't kept up, the last 2 months our challange for twelveby 12http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/ has been community. All the results have been posted on the above blog site. This is my piece below.

As you will read on the other site, this was a challangeing project for more than one of us (I guess that's why it's called a challange duh!) I tried something abstract which was painful because I seem to be a very literal person. I tried to convey the feeling of groups. Overlapping groups, groups that exclude, and individuals that feel excluded even within the group. I like it, but I feel I could do better if I keep at it.