It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Hours and hours of TV to watch while I encrust things with sequins--everything interesting gets replayed at least once. :)

Sewing machine is back. The tension still seems weird, or maybe I've forgotten how it's supposed to be.

I could go nuts here. What I really want is a spool cap...

Someone has gnawed on my copy of Harriet Hargrave's "Heirloom Machine Quilting."

Funny how I can go six weeks without going in the sewing room, but as soon as I drop off the machine for a week I get all angsty.

In a crappy mood; had to drive out to Brookfield, which takes FREAKING FOREVER from Glendale any road you take, and I'll have to go out next Saturday. For an authorized service center it was Brookfield or Manitowoc; it might have been faster to drive the 75 mi north. Certainly would have been more pleasant!

That's where the tall corn grows

Drove to Iowa with Bryan this past weekend for my class reunion *waves*. Stayed in Ames at the Gateway, where we saw a quilt by Priscilla Kepner Sage, my fiber studio professor back at the turn of the century, in the lobby.

Then we met my folks downtown, where we randomly found that Kimberly Baxter-Packwood, a classmate in that studio, had opened a physical storefront for The Prairie Fibers Co. on Main Street (!!). I was very impressed--all kinds of hand-dyed and uncolored fibers and fabric, a wet studio/classroom back behind the counter, and several finished pieces on the walls.
She had all the wool 30% off, but I ended up getting some packets of silk dyed with her natural dies and a bunch of silk cocoons (with the worms still inside).

Serendiptious quiltiness, and procrastination fodder for the Journal Quilt. After I took Bryan to the airport this afternoon I finished the machine stitching to the point I can start encrusting with sequins. I think there's something wrong with my machine--it won't sew a stitch of a consistent length; if I don't push the fabric through the stitches are barely a millimeter long (yes, the feed dogs are up). Maybe I'll just buy a better machine....

Progress on the Journal Quilt is slow...

Do I have to credit him as a contributor? He's more of an inhibitor...

(that's the back; did a little machine stitching tonight)

Old-school sausage race

Spending a lot of summer evenings at Miller eating bratwurst instead of making stuff. But the snow will fly soon enough!

Artists are not for the masses.

About a week ago, there was discussion on...an e-mail list about quilt art...about how everyone who wants to make or view art needs to learn to read and write graduate-level philosophy/political science/feminist studies critiques, because "that's the language of art." So much for ordinary people--art is not for them.

Browsing around today, I find an article by the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts:

Most American artists, intellectuals and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

This mutual estrangement has had enormous cultural, social and political consequences.

Read the whole thing. I don't agree with some of the politics of it--government shouldn't force people who want to watch basketball to watch ballet instead--but the part about pretentious intellectual artists elite-ing themselves right out of national cultural relevance? Oh yeah.

I expect this explains Thomas Kinkade, too.

Machine quilting is more fun after a couple of Spotted Cows.

XKCD...

Yes, I'm trying to figure it out.

It's raining.

Binding

My dedicated assistant. His favorite place to lurk--whether I'm there or not--is under the ironing board.