Glowing Pathways

This past weekend Wayne and I headed up to Philly again. This time we had the pleasure of helping hang the quilt Renee commissioned from Wayne's Mom. The photos show the quilt once it was up. Wayne and Dave used a laser level so we know it it is level but when I was taking some of the pictures I realized that I was holding the camera just off level and it made it look like the quilt wasn't quite hung straight, I liked the idea and so took a photo that was intentionally crooked. Since I was making fun of their hanging job Renee and Wayne thought this was funny.
The quilt was a huge success and everyone really liked it. With the photos it is hard to appreciate how much the quilting adds to the piece and that the buildings have screen printed texture on them. We saw the original photo, the to scale drawings and fabric choices along the way so it was neat being able to see the finished piece. If you would like to see more of Wayne's Mom's quilts check out her website. ( Marti Plager )

Speaking of websites I spent some time and have totally revamped my website. There are still some things I need to do to it but the new and improved version is up and running. I have added my class lists and will be adding to that as I develop new classes and get photos of some of my other classes. All of the classes that I teach at Bead Boutique currently are up with their descriptions.

Another thing we did during our trip to Philly was to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Cezanne and Beyond exhibit. It was very much worth the money and a trip to see.  I really want to go back and spend more time there since of the main exhibits we barely scratched the surface.  I always felt I could take or leave most of Cezanne's work before but seeing his watercolors and some of his landscapes I found a new appreciation for his work. I even saw a Matisse I actually liked (a geranium not a person). It was really fascinating to see how other artists were inspired by Cezanne and yet many of them took that inspiration and made pieces that were very much their own.  I found pieces by quite a few of the 18 other artists that I really liked. I really liked pretty much all of the pieces by Charles Demuth whom I had never seen before. He has some wonderful watercolors. Over all although the show was full of more modern and abstract art which I don't always appreciate as much.  I could have taken quite a few pieces home quite happily. I was tempted to buy the show catalog but was trying to be prudent since it was $50 and unless I used it a fair amount wasn't sure I would get my moneys worth out of it. One of Cezanne's pieces that could probably most readily inspire me was "The Forest". The way it was painted with his distinct brush marks and the feel of the piece I could easily envision something along those lines done with thread embroidery or other fibers. All of the watercolors make me want to take some time to play with watercolor since I haven't done much with watercolors for a while. Very much an inspirational show.

Wayne's Box

Hard to believe I started this project in October and I am still not finished but life has been crazy and it is getting squeezed in between my BJP and other projects. Each photo show 2 sides of the box so that you can see how the sides relate and the pattern move across the sides of the box.



I have added a fair amount since the last time I blogged about the box. I added snowy hills for the penguins. Using the lazy stitch to fill in those spaces worked really well and filled a fair amount of space fairly quickly. I added more patriotic and plane buttons and also recycled some foil from a scotch bottle and wine bottle.



Wayne's friend Renee gave me a couple of things to include on his box. I took one of his swimming ribbons and cut it up so that I could include it. She also had one of his old swim medals. I put the ribbon part of that above the wood rectangle and the medal part below the wood where it worked really well next to the circles that I already had near there.


I am really enjoying how the box is coming out and I think about Wayne a lot while I am working on it so it has lots of my love for him in it, every stitch contains my love for him. I think he is looking forward to it actually getting done so he can use it. I think it will end up being mostly covered when I finish it with bits of fabric peaking out here and there.

Fit for a Queen

For Christmas Wayne commissioned me to make a necklace and bracelet for a friend of his who he had recently gotten reconnected with. We have visited Renee and her family several times since his return from Iraq.

Blue is Renee's favorite color so it had to be blue. It took a bit of back and forth to figure out what to make but Wayne had all of my other jewelry to look at to get ideas on what he wanted. Swarovski had just come out with a new color "Indigo Blue" which is a nice deep blue and we both decided would be perfect.
Wayne liked the single spiral ropes that I had made using 3mm crystals so we decided on that and to make the front the spiral rope and the back with stones and other beads. After auditioning several stones we both picked lapis. That led to gold filled beads for the spiral ropes and accents with the stones.

Wayne inspired me to try something a bit new and I used crystals in the core of the spiral rope as well as for the accent beads. The bracelet in a flat double spiral rope with Dk Sapphire crystals for the core and the Indigo Blue for the edges. Once the set was finished I picked the name for it. Being made with gold and lapis it was really easy to choose a name since in the past only royalty could afford them.
Renee wore her set for the first time at their Christmas party that we went to and got lots of compliments on it and has gotten several since then. She really likes both pieces. Wayne was also very happy with his commission.

The picture to the left shows some of the other flat double spiral bracelets that I made for Christmas gifts or for myself. The flat double spiral is one of my most popular classes.

New job, colds and other excitement

Once again way to long between posts. It seems like time keeps getting away from me, just as things were starting to settle back into a somewhat more normal routine with Wayne starting his new civilian job I caught a wicked cold that took me out for the count. At 3+ weeks I am still fighting off the last of the congestion and coughing fits. I am sure Wayne and I will both be glad when I can manage to get through more than one night without a coughing fit.

Life hasn't been boring since my last post. Wayne went to more interviews and had to figure out what kind of job he was interested in most since he had more than one offer. February 2nd was his first day on the new job at ASEC a small local contractor. Having both P-3 and UAV experience was definitely a plus for him. One of the founders of the company was one of his pilot's from his first deployment in P-3's, it really is a small world sometimes where the Navy is concerned.

While Wayne was busy in January job hunting I decided to work on one of my goals for the new year and spent a fair amount of time reorganizing my bead collection. I put off working on my BJP January block so that I could do something I had been wanting to do and knew would leaving me feeling I had really gotten something accomplished. I am quite happy with how the organizing went. I still have a goal of organizing the rest of the house before we end up moving but for now the bits I have done make me feel a bit less behind.

January was a good month for me class wise since I taught 2 regular classes as well as a couple of private classes at Bead Boutique. I didn't schedule any for February since I don't have my own car yet (Wayne is looking), that worked out for the best since I was sick for a lot of the month. I do have a Meet the Teachers reception on the 28th so hopefully it will get more students interested in classes.

The last weekend in January Wayne and I headed up to Washington DC to have a romantic weekend. We didn't go anywhere when Wayne came home from Iraq so when we knew he had a job we took a trip to celebrate and just be together. We took it easier than we normally do and still managed to go to the Udvar Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum and some of the newly reopened American History Museum and an exhibit at the Art Museum. We stayed at the Palomar Hotel. They were having a special on their suites so we got a Spa King Suite which was really nice. Each evening from 5-6pm they had a wine reception in the lobby. We had some really nice suppers including a romantic meal near the fireplace at the Iron Gate Resturant and a really nice meal at the bar at Mourayo a Greek resturant. We also enjoyed a couple of the brew pubs we had visited on previous trips. I got a quick stop at Beadazzled the bead store that was near our hotel. we also found a really great liquor store right near the Hotel that had an amazing selection of wines, champaignes and everything else (including to Wayne's delight some of Kentucky's finest bourbons).

Although sick I did manage to get my January BJP block done in the first couple of weeks in February. I have now gotten a good start on my February block and will try to get my BJP blog updated soon. The photo at the top is of the background with the first 5 blocks pinned onto it. If you want to see more photos go to my Web Gallery which has all of my most up to date photos on it.

Life keeps going

I am amazed that I have managed to not blog for more than 2 months,  I feel so bad but life just got really busy and with Wayne working from home most afternoons and evenings spent catching up with each other after 18 of 24 months apart I really have fallen behind on all computer things and many other things.  

I worked at Bead Boutique a couple of days a week for November and December and was working for beads  I almost ended up paying to work there but managed (just) not to.  I also taught a few classes and sold a couple of my class samples.  It had been years since I had worked retail so it took a bit of getting used to but it is much different than working for a big fabric or craft store.  Lots of great people.

Wayne and I are on our 3rd trip to Philly since Thanksgiving.  Wayne has been doing some consulting for a UAV company here and he has been able to combine trips here to do business and reconnect with an old high school friend that he got back in touch with over deployment.  We have been staying with them and we are all getting along really well.  Since everyone else is working I get the house to myself while they are at work until the boys get home from school.  It has been a good opportunity for me to do some catching up on things I haven't found time for at home.  Last trip I worked on my November and December BJP blocks and this time I thought I would try to do a bit of catching up on e-mail and blogging and some creative work as well.  

Besides the consulting that Wayne is doing he has had a couple of interview, more coming and his first job offer.  It looks very likely that we will stay in southern Maryland although we could move if we wanted.  Wayne is officially retired although he will still be on active duty until April 1st.  He is hoping to start his new job in February once he goes on terminal leave.  I think the hardest part for him will be figuring out what he wants to do sine I expect more job offers to come in the next week or so.  

We had an unexpected health crisis with Wayne and a few days in the hospital but he is all better now and back to his old self.  In November he got in a car accident with his Integra and since it is a 12 year old car it wasn't really cost effective to fix it.  Wayne was fine and it could have been much worse but we are currently working with 1 car which made it kind of challenging to juggle both jobs for 2 months but once he knows he has a new job he will probably buy another car.  Still have the Integra in the garage so he needs to decide if it is going to become a project car or if he will part it out.

With everything going on I have been a bit stressed which hasn't been good for my headaches but I know that we are really very fortunate and that it could be so much worse.  

The photo is where I stand on my BJP project.  The first quarters blocks are pinned on for the photo, I won't sew them on until I am done stitching the background.  I just wanted to see where I stand.   I still really love it and how it is going.  I really haven't had much time to work on my art the last couple of months but I am sure that I will do better as I figure out a new schedule that works with Wayne being home.  I think that all of the time we have spent together and talking has been much more what we have both needed lately.  I will try to write more soon and not go near as long between posts.

I have added new photos to my website and to my web gallery (including all kinds of new photos of my BJP progress) feel free to check them out.  I will also be working on getting new posts to my BJP blog in the next day or two.  

A Beading Muse and New Techniques

The first weekend in October I got a wonderful opportunity to go up to Baltimore and meet Robin Atkins in person. I had one of her bead embroidery books before I first heard of the Bead Journal Project. In May of 2007 Robin had the wonderful idea for this project and I was lucky enough to have heard of it in time to join the first year.

The Bead Journal project was were Robin and I first met through each other's blogs and then through e-mails. We liked each other's work and although our work is very different in many ways we are very much alike. (From the picture you can see we both love purple.)

When I found out that robin was coming to Baltimore to teach for the Embroidery Guild I was so excited and wanted to go so that we could meet, I could take her classes and anything else I could do.

I went up on Thursday so that we could meet and bead together. I met her and her hostess Carolyn Everly at Carolyn's house where we played show and tell, talked and beaded. This was the first time I had met someone that I had met online and it was an amazing experience for me. Robin is even more wonderful in person than online.

On Friday we started her 2 day class on Improvisational Bead Embroidery. I got to help set meaning I got to be one of the people to see everything first. Being able to touch and look at all of her pieces in person was just so neat. They look so much better in person. Photos just don't do them justice.

Since I have been doing bead embroidery for about 4 years now I had a good start and having all of her books I had read about the rest of the techniques she was teaching so I had a bit of a head start. There were several techniques or variations that I hadn't tried yet and was excited to try.

Having read Robin's books before I left I was inspired to make a piece while thinking of someone I loved. Sort of a portrait of that person. Since My husband was coming home from deployment in a couple of weeks and I had been thinking of him a lot anyway he was the obvious choice. I picked out a fabric that I loved and that sort of reminded me of him. I decided that I wanted to make something useful that he could use so I chose a box that he could put things into. I made the sides of the box out of EZ-Felt and attached them to the fabric and connected it all together so that I could "work in the round."

I went through my beads, buttons and trinkets to pick out things that felt like possibilities for the piece. The most unusual thing that appealed to me was a slice of wood that Wayne had given to me when he was doing one of his furniture projects. I added a pen drawing of the center of a propeller to it and used acrylic medium to seal it.

On Friday afternoon in the class we got to start our improvisational pieces. Since most of my bead embroidery pieces are representational I usually have to do a fair amount of planning things out at least to start. Working completely improvisationally was new for me and in many ways very freeing. I started with the wood slice and just went from there.

Using some of the techniques and variations of techniques that I was trying for the first time in the class my box looks different than any of my other work but I still have never gotten stuck, when I finish one bit I look through my goodies and something will say "me next" and off we go. I found that I really liked the bugle bead pathways and the short stacks with 8/0s or 6/0s as the bottom beads. On Sunday when we went to Beadazzled I just had to get more 8/0 and bugle beads as well as some other seed beads for this and future projects.

I worked on this piece on Friday and Saturday during class and both evenings with Robin after class as well as Sunday during the day. As you can see from the photos the piece really came along well in just those first few days. Working this way was very freeing.


I didn't exactly plan for the piece to have quite as much of a patriotic feel as it has turned out but I guess 20 years in the military does color your world. I hadn't worked on the piece for the last couple of weeks but worked on it again some yesterday so it is further along than the pictures show.

While in Baltimore I also met Susan Elliot who is also a BJP member as well as all of the other students there. It was a wonderful weekend and so fun and fulfilling and getting to meet and talk to Robin was the best part.

Welcome Home

First a welcome home to VC-6's Echo Platoon. I realize that none of them will probably ever see this it is good to have them all home safe and sound. All of these guys either extended or went back to do an important mission and I am proud of them all.

I am sorry I have been so long in writing it has been an interesting month. I spent 5 days up in Baltimore at it's beginning getting to meet Robin Atkins and the Baltimore Embroidery guild. I took Robin's classes and ran her store for her. We also had time to sit and bead together which was great. I will write more about that in a post tomorrow.

The next week saw me spending 27 hours over 3 days in vehicles. I went up to New England with some friends for another friend's wedding. The wedding was nice and I wish Wayne could have been there for it. I spent a lot of my time in the car working on my October BJP piece.

I spent the first half of the month running errands, going out of town, teaching a couple of classes and when I was actually home trying to get ready for Wayne to come home. On the 15th of October we all went up to Baltimore's airport for the Welcome Home. The second half of the month has mostly been spent being together and then getting ready for a party at our house to welcome everyone home. Wayne has spent a good part of his workday working from home meaning on the computer writing up awards, evaluations and all of the other paper work that needs doing.

Anytime he comes home it takes me a bit to get used to having someone else around. I spend months alone only seeing other people when I go out and then I have him home and it takes a bit to readjust to that. I am very glad but I have found it hard to keep up with my blogs, e-mails and my art. I have not done much in the way of creating, I did get my October BJP done and spent time yesterday working on a piece that I am making for Wayne which you can read about in tomorrow's post about meeting Robin.