Bittersweet……

this was our last meeting with Deborah, at least with her living here in Maine, who is moving to Dallas on Feb. 17th. Sigh. Sob. Oh dear. Well……..it is in the same state as Houston, so here’s to Houston in October!!!! We will miss having Deborah SO much!

As a farewell, we had a wonderful lunch and Deborah treated us to a prototype of a workshop, working in a series on postcard-sized art pieces. We started the day almost as usual. Hannah Beattie, whom Deborah met recently, was able to come and join us…yeah! Kathy Daniels, alas, had to work—her co-worker had the audacity to have a baby and have to have a c-section on our last day (ahem!). So we were up one and down one….but in spirit we are all together. Morning was coffee and yapping (of course) and sharing (ditto). Then we had a wonderful lunch–Deborah’s a whiz with that George Foreman grill, and actually has me mulling the idea of buying one, salad and fresh pineapple from Kate and Hannah.

And, drum roll, I went waaaaayyyyy off my diet and made my mom’s “Christmas Rum Cake”—the only reason for Christmas is that is what we always made for the holiday. Otherwise it is cake soaked in a coffee rum syrup, with a rum-laced custard between the three layers, frosted with whipped cream topped with apricot halves. DELECTABLE!

The afternoon, believe it or not, was even better. We made art cards! Here we all are:

Kate is contemplating her flowers,

while Deborah and Hannah are consulting about Hannah’s wonderful houses.

I love the roof lines, which for some reason (bizarre way that my brain works) remind me of gnome hats (this is a good, whimsical association by the way).

Deborah worked on these scenics, but since she was the teacher this time, she didn’t get as far along as we three did.

Then, in the middle of it, the phone rings–the floral delivery guy arrived with this vase of flowers:

From KATHY! Gulp….the one time I almost started to cry…we’re gonna miss Deborah so much! But Kathy was there with us in spirit, and we’ll just e-mail, blog, photos-on-the-web, and call when Deborah is in Texas.

And last of all, here are my turtles. Two are a size that will make it to Virginia Spiegel’s fundraiser to fight cancer (sold at the quilt show in Chicago), so I’d better finish them up soon!

Well, it has been insanely busy the past week and a half, but all good stuff:

Saturday, Damariscotta (45 min. south): eco’s 50th b-day dinner party….the first time I can remember in more than a decade where I got to go to a dinner party with only grown ups…what a concept!

Tuesday, Bangor (1 hr 20 min. northwest): taught a class at Pauline’s house

Thursday, Lowell, Mass. (3 1/2 hours south…about 400 miles round-trip): gave a trunk show / talk at the New England Quilt Museum and ladies’ road trip with Cheri and Meg…more on this in another post

Saturday, Augusta (1 hour west): Art Quilts Maine bi-monthly meeting

Monday, Brunswick (1 hr 15 min. south): Frayed Edges, although alas our last with Deborah here in Maine…the movers come next week to take her to Texas……wahhhhnnnn hahhhhnn (more on this in another post, too)
BUT…. on Friday January 27th, Eli’s tae kwon do / karate school had testing for moving up the ranks. Eli and two classmates, Erin and Eliza, had their yellow belts and were tested for their first of two stripes on the way up to green belt. Eli began tae kwon do in Sept. 2004, and took to it like a duck to water. Obedient, focused, coordinated (my son???? Must get that from his dad), enthused….he did exceptionally well to earn his yellow belt at the end of karate camp this past summer, after just one year. Other kids had taken two years and more to get that far. In this first photo, Eli is performing his forms, routines that are mock “fights” with imaginary opponents. Students are judged on the precision of their moves, including angle of hand, arm, foot and back positions.

The kids all lined up to get the results. The parents all Looooovvvvveeee the respect and obedience that is part and parcel of the responsibility taught with the tae kwon do. Every single one of the kids did a great job this time. Eli is third from the right (adult, shortest kid–wee Zach, then Eli).

Eli, Erin and Eliza were all called forward. We were all incredibly surprised, pleased and proud when Sensei Tammy (the blonde) said the kids were all testing for their yellow belt, but that all 9 black belts felt the children had shown they had earned BOTH stripes!!! In the last picture, Sensei Sue awards Eli his stripes.

The head of the school, the guy all in black in the center of the table in the photo above, said there was even talk of the three earning their green belts that night! Fortunately, the teachers who know them well spoke up and said the kids are good, but they aren’t there quite yet! Eli, as the youngest, especially needs to have a good perspective on just how much work is needed to advance to green belt. After green, you earn two stripes to red belt, then two stripes to black belt. And the kids can’t test for black until they are 18, since maturity is part of the requirement–not just the physical moves. He has ten years to that, so no rush. And we’re really proud of him!

Goodness gracious, what a road trip week! Tuesday I drove 120 miles round trip to Bangor to teach. Thursday (yesterday) I drove to Lowell, Massachusetts (about 3 1/2 – 4 hours south if you mind the speed limit, which it appears NO one on I-95 does…..ahem….) to give a lunchtime talk at The New England Quilt Museum (I’ll blog about that tomorrow if I get home soon enough). Tomorrow, I head to Augusta for an Art Quilts Maine meeting, then Monday to Deborah’s house for our last Frayed Edges meeting with her living in Maine…. we are all plugging along bravely (or not) on that one.

I finally had time to watch my taped Project Runway. OK, I was really sorry to see Andre go, especially since Kara hasn’t, to my mind, produced nearly as good a body of work. But, his dress did look rather like a doormat or a dry late summer lawn. I like the bodice on Kara’s, and the braided grasses, but the skirt …yuk.

Oddly enough, I LOVED Santino’s dress…I thought it was one of the nicest, and loved the skirt. I felt he used the materials well, got a great shape out of it, and really (to my surprise) thought it was one of the best things he has done on the show.

Chloe’s dress was lovely, and I know she didn’t have time to finish what she planned, but I thought it was fairly plain around the neck area. I’d like to see what she would have done with more time. The dress *did* look like fabric, and it moved like fabric, which was quite an accomplishment.

I was SO afraid they were going to axe Nick…I love his work, and I thought the use of materials and textures was clever. Glad he’s still in the running!

Daniel’s dress really was a winner….the purple flowers were stunning, and so was the basketweave bodice. I don’t know how many women (maybe seven in the world) could get away with wearing a frilly, fern-y skirt like that, but the contrast of three distinct textures was spot-on. Now, I’m finally gonna go blog-surfing and see what everyone else said! Grin!

I finished the stitching on the leaf sampler yesterday, and hope to quilt it today. In the meantime I took some photos. But, to begin with giving credit where credit is due, I got this idea from Jane Sassaman. She brought a 16-leaf sampler (and drat it all, it was so wonderful I couldn’t think of anything else subject wise that would work as well for a class sample, but at least I made two leaf shapes, both my own, and used my own colors and stitches without reference to hers!) to a class, then I later discovered that a few of her leaves are in her book, the Quilted Garden, on page 121.

Karoda mentioned that she could use a class in the decorative stitches….so I sent her this reply:

Ooooh goodie….that must mean I’ve picked a good subject! The (earlier) post was a quickie, and I intend to get a better photo and some closeups to show the differences. I’m actually thinking of a book proposal…who knows, maybe in 2 years I’ll have a book on it LOL!

To get the freezer paper off, spritz with water bottle (or daub with sponge paintbrush along stitching lines), let it sit a few minutes, peel paper away (if need be, pinch stitching between fingers on the really lacy stitches so they don’t pull), and iron dry. If using poly threads, iron from the back to minimize the possibility of melting your threads with the hot iron. Or use a press cloth. From the back doesn’t require *finding* the press cloth LOL!

Here are some close-ups of a few of the leaves. I don’t necessarily like all the options I did, but I wanted to illustrate how different the leaves can look depending on the stitch and thread color chosen—heck, I only used Superior Threads 40-wt. trilobal polyester (the Highlights, Rainbows, and Hollis Chatelain lines) threads. Imagine if I’d added cotton, matte poly, metallic…etc!