Seamless Skin

It was a smoky black indigo day...

Yesterday was a really looonnnnnnngggg day...I was out for over 12 hours straight.  After taking my oldest grandson, Adrian, to his school bus, I kept going and a headed to the studio, (by 1:00 I was ready for a nap and thought about my comfy chair which I miss).  I worked on trying to redeem my bruised ego from last week's disappointments.  I started 3 new cloths and reached the point were I was ready to steam them before going any further.   Here they are wrapped in newspaper with the ones I did last week and forming a sculpture in the window...

While I was there Petra called me to remind me of a presentation at The Filson Historical Society that started at 6 which I thought was going to be on Thursday.  My shirt was filled with dye stains. Petra lives close to Mellwood and the presentation was also not far away.  Petra agreed to loan me a shirt to keep me from having to go all the way home.  So I stayed at Mellwood until 5 and headed to the presentation...Two Centuries of Black Louisville: A Photographic History.  These 3 authors are powerhouses alone in their respective fields and the book represents 15-20 years of research on their individual efforts and 5 years of working on the book collectively.  

After the presentation Petra treated me to dinner at Smoketown USA.  A place I kept promising myself to go to but have never tried, mainly because it is not in a high visibility area.  But the food was good, the joint was crowded for a Tuesday night, and the back room is a yard sale room where you can purchase other people's junk that you don't need.  Cool.  

I'm not sure if I'm going to the studio today...the spirit is willing but the body is weak.  I might just stay home and curl up with my laptop to read a downloaded book, Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World, by Catherine E. McKinley.  

 

Life is like a 1000 piece puzzle.

Last week I actually sat down and looked over prospectuses for 4 shows and for the first time I have enough work that I would want to submit to without the worry of the shows overlapping.  Now with that said...I'm horrible at being prepared...not wanting to sacrifice any time at the workshop to rearrange to photograph properly and handle the paperwork...as the book is titled I'd Rather be in the Studio doing what makes me happy.  I missed a deadline this past Monday for a local juried show that the Embroidery Guild is sponsoring.  My  goal remains to be in 4 shows a year which means about 12 shows to submit to.  I'm trudging through these marketing books and have enrolled in a short presentation on the subject through the local art association but I'm continuing to question myself on how much commitment I hold towards this aspect.  So I learn a little but question a lot more...if nothing else, I'm committed to understanding the marketing side of art...l'll do what I do and see where the road goes.

Here is the link to the shrimp and grit recipe I used.  I used Alouette brand of cream chesse with garlic and herbs.  My food adventure this week will be to make Arnold Palmer cupcakes

On Monday I free motioned stitched on my little Sankofa bird.  Sorry about the hazy photo, my daily camera is not functioning well (remember it was broken about a year ago).  I'm thinking about moving to a lightweight small camera for daily use and pull out the D40x and finally learn to use it.  Technical learning seems to require me to dig deep down to focus and absorbs all my energies that I've been reluctant to add another thing under the title "something else to do".

 

My plan from here is to go bead crazy on it since its all for play and the beads just sit there hollering to be used.  I started with these small donuts and plan to fill in the ground with green, brown, and cream coloured sead beads.  The size is 5"x5" and I'm gonna fuse it down on a canvas. 

oh, and here is the puzzle we finished on Sunday...we're waiting for the next one to arrive which is also a Frank Lloyd Wrigt image of various coloured pencils.  Design wise, this kinda puts me in the mind of a Gees Bend quilt...the linear patterning maybe? or kente-clothish? 

 

Mean-spirited posting

Don't think I've not noticed all the recipes on blogs over the holidays that included the drug of sugar!  I have and I just think its pure meanness that compels one to share such horrible things with others. So in keeping with the spirit of things, here goes my contribution:

Princess' Potato Chip Cookies:

Cream together:

1 cup butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup of sugar

(if I remember to, I cut back to 3/4 cup of each sugar)

Add 2 eggs and mix well

Sift and add:

2 1/2 cups flour w/ 1 tsp. baking powder

Add:

2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

1 (12 oz.) package butterscotch morsels

2 cups crushed potato chips (crush them in a ziploc bag and work out your frustrations)

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet.  Bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden.

Makes about 4 dozen.

Everything I attempted to bake over the holidays came out a mess. Finally, I decided to fall back on a trusted favorite and go with these cookies!  This recipe was first given to me by an online buddy from back in the day when I was a member of an online board for the book The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood.  At the time my daughter, from the age of 10-12yo, ran a cookie business which was all her idea!  She did this alongside her cousin who is one year older and they employed me for free as I had the vehicle to deliver the goods and access to paying customers.  Anyways, she was reluctant to try this recipe but it turned into one of her most requested.  Their business was called Mo and Jo's Cookie Bakers...and just where are they today?????? 

Speaking of family, more about my beloved bro, UpfromSumDirt.  First, here is a podcast interview of him by Elijah Saint:   Real As It Gets  Its 30 mintues long and Elijah does most of the talking which translates to my bro being a "mush mouth" but since he's-family-I-still-dug-his-words-even-though-I-had-to-read-between-the-lines-and-because-I-know-him-I-knew-what-he-was-trying-to-say. 

And here is a down and dirty opinion of cell phones written by him: (but if you're offended by bastardization of the english language or profanity, stop here and come back another day)

cell phones: it can no longer be justified
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

and neither should it be condoned any further, but after several years of using one ive finally reached the conclusion that CELL PHONES IS EVIL! ...or cell phone COMPANIES actually. i firmly believe that the expense of maintaining them has SINGLE HANDEDLY RUINED THE ENTIRE ECONOMY! back in the day we all came up in households that had one (and if extremely privileged, then two!) phone lines - biggo yellow, tan or black boxes that clung to the walls of our mama anem's kitchens like ceramic fungus... one phone for the distribution of one family of maybe 4 individuals. one bill. it wasnt perfect but it was a damn good system. and now? nowadays, a single home averages 3 cell phones each one EQUATING TO A CAR PAYMENT PER MONTH! in some cases, folks ARE MAKING THE EQUIVALENT OF A MORTGAGE PAYMENT per month just to send 'i luv u baby' by way of text messaging... this shit is crazy. folks who have lost their homes still have cell phones. ... the system has conned us that we need to have our phones be the ultimate machines, but who continues paying indefinitely on a luxury good? want to play games? buy a playstation handheld - pay it off in a couple months. want to watch a movie? rent that shit/stick it into your dvd player/return that shit. wanna listen to music? go buy a walkman or an ipod, PAY THAT SHIT OFF and listen to your jams all day long... wanna make a phone call? go into the kitchen, dial 7 to 10 numbers say "hello" hang up and go on about your business. but we need to stop giving these cell phone companies carte blanch authority to run rampant thru our bank accounts... WHERE'S THE CELL PHONE WITH JUST THE GAHDAMN NUMBERS ON IT?!?! sprint: this is what i need my phone to do: make a call, receive a call. voice mail is a good option. but who needs to download beyonce's latest hit onto a phone when you can buy the damn cd and listen to it on the music player of your choice with no further financial obligation to your PHONE COMPANY or anyone else... this shit is illegal. they use humor to placate you! you've all seen the ads where some poor joe drops a phone book on the table and threatens to bury his family in the backyard for all the outrageous charges forced on them - it aint their fault! i cant even call it BAMBOOZLED... this is straight up piracy. they got us focusing on wall street and detroit - but one of the biggest drains on society today is being carried around in the pockets and purses of 75 percent of the american population. ...beyond 'gangsta' this shit is terrorism! and yeah, I'M CALLING SPRINT OUT! what are they gonna do? drop me? not until my contract is up you can believe that! consider this a call to arms!

 

Productive Piddling

   

It took me two days to put the dye supplies away and I just could not get started on the quilting of the piece I have ready and waiting once I finished.  So I piddled around this week.  Carved the stamp above based on some doodling I found flipping through the pages of one of my journals.

 

And these tiny squares of ink pads are perfect for repetition.  I selected these colours to duplicate the colours of contemporary kente cloth.

 

And this cloth I made has been up for weeks now.  I decided this week that it isn't going to work as one of 3 panels in the up coming quilt...too garrish and muddy on the left and upper right corner.  It felt good to come to that conclusion.  It was something about it that disturbed me after I put the blue/green/metallic circles on it...so I thought the red circles would "brighten" it up...that didn't work so I added foil and left it to stew and stew and stew and it looks like a cheap knock-off of what I had in mind...so I'm moving on and its outta here! 

 

I also covered a makeshift printing pad.  Its foamcore with 2 layers of batting and a denim like material on top.

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The weather is turning cooler and the Farmer's Markets will be closing soon for the season.  Although the cold weather is not my friend I am looking forward to more hearty meals.  I've got a taste for cabbage with onions and green peppers and black-eyed peas in a tomato sauce over rice and some hot water cornbread.  Thats what I hope to prepare tomorrow for dinner. I cook my black-eyed peas in a chicken broth, saute onion, mushrooms, garlic, basil, oregano, salt and pepper then add to the peas along with a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste and finish cooking.  Sometimes I add spinach to it but since I'm cooking the cabbage I'll skp the spinach.  I use to make a spinach quiche that I lost the recipe for years ago and attempts to make it from memory have not worked to my satisfaction.  The crust was made of whole wheat flour, butter, and cream cheese.  The filling was spinach, stewed tomaotes, colby and jack cheeses, mushrooms, eggs, and the Italian seasonings.  I have food on the brain...gonna go see whats in the fridge because today is a "catch is as catch can" kinda day...meaning I'm not cooking so eat whatever you can find.