Margaret Atwood: In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination
Daniel: Stray Sock Sewing: Making One of a Kind Creatures from Socks
Diana Taylor: Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Ficklesticks: Art Sticks to Bend, Wrap, Weave & Wear
Kim Schaefer: Cozy Modern Quilts: 23 Easy Pieced Projects to Bust Your Stash
Karen Seiger: Markets of New York City: A Guide to the Best Artisan, Farmer, Food, and Flea Markets
Have I mentioned my family history of debilitating arthritis? No? Good. It is a boring tale that includes a lot of whining about pain. I'm breaking from family tradition (not the whining part) and starting out on what will probably be a series of joint replacements. Everyone else has just toughed it out.
The plan is to replace this with some smooth moving hardware:
so I can get back to the dance floor.
I like buying handbags and lately even shoes. Probably because I don't have to be in a plus-size department to get something that fits.. But anyway, expensive handbags are a temptation that I have resisted for the most part. I recently bought a bag at the Plaza Art Fair that cost a bit over $100, and that seemed quite extravagant to me. Prices on designer bags are often shocking and I guess that is most of the appeal. Carrying a bag that cost thousands of dollars shows that you are wealthy and successful (or that your consumer debt is out of control). Well, a few weeks ago I ended up in the local hospital ER and then spent the next 36 hours in the hospital. I am now the proud owner of this bag that I now use to carry my towel and suit to water exercise class. It cost just over $16,000.00
Top that Prada.
I have been saving this picture of a wall that plays music until I could find video of it in action:
If you click here they say they have that video, but honestly I could not hear anything. There are some good additional photos of the wall, though.
Also, I was looking for an app that I heard of somewhere that would let me edit the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster that is everwhere. I didn't find the app, but I found what I had hoped to create already available...so enjoy:
Now that there are toasters that burn faces on bread, I guess Jesus has to start appearing on other surfaces...
Although the first image I saw was a sphinx, and sometimes I see Jane Eyre. It all reminds me of one of my favorite cartoons:
We have been consumed with college basketball here, deep into March Madness. It has been so much fun watching a team exceed expectations-which is rare here. We are so spoiled with a great coach and very good teams year after year. This year my long suffering husband and I got off the sofa and went to the first two rounds of games, first to Omaha and then to St. Louis. It was a lot of fun! Here is a self portrait of b-ball fans in Omaha:
Now, a shout out to Portlandia fans... We had breakfast in an Omaha coffee shop/bakery one morning, and lets face it, I always clean my plate and have never really understood what folks are talking about when they say something is "too rich". BUT the lovely cinnamon rolls we bought for breakfast had double frosting and no noticeable cinnamon. I couldn't finish my near tasteless blob. Possibly a first.
I decided we has stumbled upon a "Cup of Joe, Side of Dough" special.
To complete the Portlandia theme, the coffee shop had a nice exhibit of bad art:
Do you have too many magazines? Is your book collection out of control? Are you being hounded by the "Hoarders" production crew to be featured in the next episode? Well, here is the product for you:
It can be purchased here. You may have to brush up on your German. I think I'd have seating for 50. Wonder if they make a sofa model?
We have some "love" triangles in my house.
One Amazon parrot (Gladys) loves me. The second Amazon parrot (Major) loves Gladys, hates me. Gladys hates Major, and will not allow him within 24 inches of her. This is measured rather exactly. After each rebuff, Major attacks me. Gladys hates my husband. Major might be friendly to husband, but husband only tolerates birds and does not want any bird friends. The third Amazon parrot (Nana) is not fond of any of us.
Every day I let Gladys and Major stroll around the house for exercise (Nana prefers to stay near his/her cage). Just like a couple of human children, if these two are out and not fighting, they are probably doing something they shouldn't. A couple of days ago they were out and very quiet. Too quiet. I should have investigated faster. Major stood guard while Gladys destroyed a pair of long-suffering husband's shoes. Well the shoes are still usable, but husband refuses to wear shoes with pinked edges so carefully created by a bad bird's beak.
Bad bird! Bad, bad bird!
March 19 at about 10:30, Deb Rowden and I will be giving a presentation about Kansas Quilt History at the Topeka Shawnee County Public Library. I will, of course, have my book available for purchase.
How much do I enjoy getting up in front of a group and trying to be coherent? Just a little bit more than I would enjoy this job:
I've got a million excuses for not posting.... I did the program at the two meetings of my quilt guild. I made a quilt for a local halfway house. (But didn't get around to photographing it.) My book came out and I've been doing some feeble attempts to promote it.
Oh, and I adopted another parrot. I now have two pairs of parrots, but they are not paired. The sunroom (aka birdroom) has all four cages occupied by a single noisy bird.
This is Nana, a 30+ year old Blue-fronted Amazon parrot. Probably a male, but he has a high pitched voice and Nana seems like a girl's name. So I am having a hard time not referring to him as her. Like my other Amazons, Nana outlived his owner and was passed around as an unwanted inheritance a bit before ending up in a parrot rescue. I need to put up a no-vacancy sign on my home for unwanted geriatric Amazons....don't want to end up on an episode of "Animal Hoarders".
Did I mention I have a book out and that it can be ordered here?
p.s. Buy my book. Buy my book. Buy my book.
To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself. - Anne Rice
Happy Birthday to my blog which I started... lets see... four years ago today.
Remember how I was wishing I had added a party hat and noise maker to the meadlowlark on the cover of my "Happy Birthday Kansas!" book? Well, check out what my daughter did:
Perfect!
Happy Birthday Bird, Happy Birthday Blog.
Tomorrow Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are having their Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear. I will be there in spirit, but not in person. Here are the two posters that I loaded onto the Sane or Not site:
This one for the Reason part of the rally.
This one for the Fear part of the rally.
I just emptied out my camera and found that I had taken a couple of pictures of the K.C. Plaza Art Fair that I was going to talk about. I don't remember what I was going to say other than I liked this year's banner (skyline of the plaza with a giant bird) and that the weather was beautiful and we had a great time.
I stuck to my pledge to spend as much on art as on food and got a couple of things. A promise to spend twice as much is not hard to fulfill. This may be only resolution I have ever kept.
Here is another picture of the fair and one of the many Kansas City fountains.
I went to pick up my piece from an exhibit at the 1109 Gallery Monday and was pleasantly surprised to find that it had sold. Here is what I had entered:
Fabric designer Barbara Brackman gave me the fabric for this quilt, so I mostly had time invested in it. The gallery workers gave me some good natured trouble about pricing my work too low. They pointed out that the gallery and I would both make more money if the prices were higher. I replied that the reason my work sells is that it IS priced low. One of the workers said that she had sold one of my pieces from the previous show to a homeless man. He had the $25 that it took to buy the piece, and it just fit in his backpack. Does my work help the decor of a space under the bridge? Or add just the right spot of color to the inside of a car? Funny to think about... or maybe a bit sad. Either way, it is a better fate than being stuffed in my closet.
Major Bird wonders if the owner of this blog has flown the coop...
No, she has just had little to say. I suspect this will be a temporary situtation.
Just a post to keep in touch. This short movie is one of my favorites:
There is information on it here. I like it because it depicts how I often feel about life passing me by, and it is even more appropriate now that I am trying to get a book written! More on that later.
Unless I get even more motionally challenged...
Remember how I have been talking about procrastinating on a project with a deadline? Well, I shipped off the quilt yesterday... almost two weeks before the deadline. So, good for me. After thinking about what I was going to do on the quilt for over a year, I finally got to work and put it together. Unfortunately, just as I put the last piece of tape on the box, I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of the final product. But I do have one detail shot and a bit of advice... If you are working on deadline and have wasted most of your lead time, Do Not decide that the quilt needs a lot of individually sewn beads and don't decide at the last minute that the project needs to be hand quilted.
What the heck have I been doing lately? Just wandering around putting my foot in my mouth. If I was wearing bread shoes made by R. and E. Praspaliauskas, it would be a lot more fun.
As seen on Dezeen and Craftzine:
