Oh what FUN!  I’ve been hearing about these Moo Cards for a while now on the QuiltArt list.  When I got the opportunity to participate in the Open Studios (blogpost here), I decided it was time for something a bit fancier than business cards made on my printer at home.

If you stop by my table at Open Studios on Wednesday, October 29th, I’ll have them there for the taking!  Also when I demo in the Misty Fuse booth on Thursday and Saturday mornings, somewhere around 11 or 11:30 ish……. See you there I hope!

I had not realized the cards were printed in England, but even at that the cost for 200 2-sided (color both sides) business cards and sixteen easel notecards was only $120 including shipping!   The quality of the cards is astounding…. in the photo above, you can see the selection of cards (I had 24 different images, could have had more but decided just to go with these).  One side of the heavy, glossy cardstock is one of my quilts.  The reverse (and of course forgot to include that in the photo) has another photo… I used the yellow-blue Hawaiian quilt since it is also the background for my website and blog plus all my contact info in a coordinating turquoise ink.  They also include a nice black card holder box (on the left toward the back).

The notecards, seen at the back, have a square photo and a trapezoid-shaped white “wing” that bends back, allowing the card to stand up on a desk.  The sixteen cards plus envelopes cost about $25….(that was included in the amount above).  Anyway, I am thrilled with the quality, and will order from them again.  Here’s a closer view of the business cards:

Here’s to hoping the cards will, eventually, lead to some contacts that might lead to some teaching jobs!

Earlier this year, four of us (Deborah was in Texas) were able to drop in and say hi to Natasha Kempers-Cullen (one of the early leading art quilters, been in Quilt National, website here), whom Kate, Hannah and Deborah know… I blogged about it here.  After that visit, we talked about how fun it would be to do a day workshop when Deborah said she would be able to come visit!  Our schedule and Natasha’s fortunately overlapped on just the right day, so on Monday, Sept. 8, we trooped on over to Natasha’s studio at her house.   Our supply list included a square sketchbook / notebook, and art pencils, pens, pastels, watercolors, whatever.  I brought my Prismacolors, some Aquarelle / watercolor pencils, a waterbrush, a few fine-point sharpies (and went to Target afterwards to buy a whole set….ahem!), some old magazines and papers for collaging, and a lovely Canson square notebook.

Natasha has some seriously cool books in her library, including these:

I LOVED the artwork in this last one…good eye candy….

We worked quietly at first…which is of course hard for me.  I enjoy the camaraderie, but our first assignment was to take a half  hour and draw a mandala starting with a free-hand-drawn circle in the center.  Here’s my effort…so-so.  The center is OK, but I clearly rushed to fill in the outside.  Bleah. I don’t work well when rushed.

I liked my second one, a collaged piece, better.  Natasha had a selection of small “centers” from which we could choose one.  I deliberately chose one in colors and texture I don’t normally work with.   Here’s how it looks:

I think the green overwhelms (at least it wasn’t where I wanted to go with this one), but it’s not too bad… I really like the shrimp soup bowl I cut into quarter-wedges….Due to the papers I had on hand, it became more of my Caribbean colors and less of the earthy thing I had intended when picking the center….no gardening magazines around, so no good supply of leaf greens and browns!

Then my words mandala:

So for flexibility my words and phrases are:

(handwritten)

• as water flows around the rock
• the tree that does not bend will break
• as the wind blows as the rivers run
• be open to change, be spontaneous, live

(from magazines)

• folding
• wild
• resurfacing
• clarity, smoothness and luminosity
• explore
• unconventional
• conversations that never end
• of wisdom and knowledge
• convertible
• a rare combination
• rejuvenation

Hmmmm….

Natasha usually works with longer workshops, not one-day classes, so she had to abbreviate some of our projects, but gave us ideas to do for homework and exploration.  Then she had us pick a word…she has these angel cards with words like Freedom, Adventure, Flexibility, etc.   We had to write the word in the center of the page, then cut other words from magazines that interpreted the angel-card-word.  I got flexibility.  Hmmmm. So I used some very “expanded” definitions of flexibility!  Here’s that page:

Here’s Kate’s–seriously improved with color wedges

:

And I’m not sure who did this one…. ladies….help me out here–if I guess correctly from the handwriting, this is Deborah’s:

Our final project was a group exercise, with Natasha participating.  She gave each of us a large square of paper (about 20 or 21 inches).  We were each to begin with the center and draw something in our style and/or colors that interprets Friendship.  Then every 5 minutes we switched off the papers, doing two full rounds on each piece.  I think in the exercise book from which Natasha was working, they suggest 7 minutes or ten, but Kate needed to be home in time to meet her first grader at the bus, so we did the up-tempo version LOL!   at each round you pass your paper to the left, and then continue in the vein of the piece you receive.  The longer the process went on, the more freed up we became, working REALLY quickly to try to fill in and make the imagery or colors we wanted.  I was REALLY glad to have my watercolor pencils… I’d quickly scribble in color into a shape, then use my waterbrush to moisten and intensify the color.

I’m NOT good at translating abstract concepts into specific imagery, or at things like this.  Once I got the first part over, tho, it was easy to simply do a round that was a riff on what someone had done before….   For friendship, I fell back on a tried but true:  I made a circle with an acorn in the center, from which five trees (us, duh) grow.  Here we are working madly, towards the end.  This first shot is of Kate, Hannah and Deborah’s table:

And here’s the table I shared with Kathy and Natasha:

And here is what we had at the end…we all signed all of them…fun!  This one was Deborah’s; she began with the mug, heart, home, and hand:

Hannah’s:

Natasha’s—she began with the hands, Deborah added the arms, torso and chin, so I felt I had to add the skirt… it went from there!

Kate’s:

Kathy’s:

And finally mine:

Then we all split to the winds, kids, families and real life

Our Frayed Edges merriment continued…. starting with mojitos by Kate, made with mint fresh from her garden (as an aside… I may be the only person on the planet who has managed to kill mint….  we got some, but it was in a planter left outside in winter…a large planter, but nonetheless it was too cold, besides which our garden is too shady even for mint, tho we get a bumper crop of moss and mushrooms).  Here’s mine:

And all of us toasting:

I’d never had a mojito before, but I do think I should like to have another, especially in such fine company! Kathy and Kate do seem to be enjoying dinner (a potluck affair, as we didn’t want to muck up the kitchen in someone else’s house!)

Then it was time to swap! we had decided quite some time earlier to do another trade, like our 5×8 memo pad covers.  This time we used a pattern from Jake Finch’s Fast Fun and East Book Cover Art Book:

Here are five journals / sketchbook covers, with pencil pockets inside…. life overtook Hannah, so she ended up not making one, but Deborah had made a couple so she generously gave Hannah one, so now we all five have one.   From left to right these were made by me (lime and aqua), Deborah (painted cloth), Kate (rust-dyed and discharged fabric, with watch parts to be added), Deborah (trademark embroidery!), Kathy (trademark luminous blues!):

I was SO lucky to receive Kate’s!   I love it!

And in Parte Tres, I’ll share our Mandala workshop!

This month was extra special:  Deborah came to visit from Texas!!!!!  So all five of us were together AND we got to have a sleepover AND we did a day workshop (on Monday) on Mandalas with Natasha Kempers-Cullen…Yippeee!  Here we are in the late afternoon…thanks to Kate’s hubby Andy for doing photographer duty…at one point he had five cameras dangling from neck and wrists!

Back row:  Sarah Smith, Kathy Daniels, Deborah Boschert

Seated in front:  Kate Cutko, Hannah Beattie

We were going to bunk over at Kate’s house like we did last year, but Kate had a brilliant idea that made it better for everyone (including her kids who had to get up and go to school Monday morning:  she asked her generous neighbors, who let lots of friends use their summer house, if we could too…so we did!  The house is at the very end of Browns Point, and juts into Merrymeeting Bay (isn’t that the most wonderful name?  Merrymeeting?  I love it….).  Kate showed us one of the secrets of the point…a bald eagle’s nest (look for the tangle of sticks on the branch at lower left):

As we gathered at the house, we took something to sip and something to munch on and went to sit under the trees, near the marsh and we heard this keening overhead.  We had apparently caused the two eagles some concern, so they took off from the nest, circled around the tip of the point, and settled in to some upper branches on a pine RIGHT OVER where we had our chairs!

Kathy’s birthday is at the end of August, so we celebrated and shared gifts…here’s Kath looking delighted at Kate’s gift:  rust-dyed fabrics, plus more fabric and some very rusty nails to do her own rust-dyeing….only art quilters can truly appreciate how wonderful LOL!

While we sat and talked, Hannah relaxed:

And Deborah helped Kate shuck some corn (which she picked from her garden THAT afternoon….YUM):

while I snapped pictures.

Deborah brought gifties as did Hannah…. but I was having so much fun relaxing at that point I forgot to take pictures…. you can see pics of the wonderful journal books Deborah made on her blog, here.

After our group photo, Kate took us to a spot where flotsam and jetsam…AND old shards of glass and pottery gather… Hannah found an old bottle (which of course I forgot to take a photo!).  This is a photo of the bay:

and walking down to the access path:

That’s Kate’s daughter on her back, a neighbor on the far right, and Kate’s son leading the troupe.

I’m always looking for patterns…for quilting, for design….so I got a nice shot of the water:

I’ll be back tomorrow with the evening fun, and the next day with our Mandala workshop!

If it is late June / early July in Maine, that means it is strawberry time!

That is 35 pounds of berries… less than last year. Since Joshua is now insisting on only school lunches, and not eating PB&J (peanut butter and jelly/jam sandwiches for those not living in the US…this is a staple of every school child’s diet… peanuts are also called groundnuts, or in French cacahuete or arachides and are ground into a spread) our annual strawberry jam consumption has dropped. Of these berries, we (ok, *I*) decided to indulge and keep about 5 pounds just to eat, eat, EAT! By the way, they are very good with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce. But I digress. And have gained a pound. Ahem.

First I had to wash and hull (remove the stems) from the berries. Then they are supposed to be smashed. Well… in the past I have sliced. This year, I decided to try something a bit different…and faster! I took the Tupperware plastic cake carrier lid and turned it upside down to use as a bowl (do this for potluck salads a lot). Then I smooshed the berries in my exceptionally well-cleaned hands. Messy but effective, and way faster and simpler than slicing. Like fingerpainting with your food {grin}.

Next you start cooking the jam. I break the rules (what a shock!) and make a double batch. If you cook too large a batch the pectin available for home cooks doesn’t work properly; I like to use Pomona’s Universal Pectin (think there is a picture somewhere on the blog from last year or the year before). It is available in health food / organic stores and you can make low-sugar jam using barely half the sugar / sweetener required by regular (even ostensibly low-sugar) pectins.

One of my favorite jam tools is my mom’s old 1950s vintage potato masher (note the classy phenolic handle with stars… talk about RETRO vintage!). It smashes and stirs well, the handle stays cold, and due to the flat bottom (next picture) it stands upright in the pan!

Here’s what the chaos in the kitchen looks like mid-stream:

When the batch of jam is done, there is… if it is strawberry … a lot of foam (blech) on the top. One way (never told or shared in the cookbooks, passed along by word of mouth amongst jam-makers) to tame the foam is to add some dollops of butter…just little bits… around the edge:

Then you get to do the canning. This year I gave myself a doozie of a steam burn lifting the lid off the canning pot…it turned into a blister almost the size of a dime on my thumb…OUCH! Anyway, then you end up with lots of beautiful jam (where the fruit ALWAYS floats to the top during canning and you have to stir it when you open the jars):

When I lived on San Juan Island (Washington), I always volunteered at the country fair, and particularly enjoyed helping at the judges table for Food Preservation (canned fruits, veggies, meats/fish, beers, wines, vinegars, etc).  There I learned from the certified judges that you should always store your home-canned jams with the rings OFF.  That way, if the vacuum seal (created by heating the jam with the new lids in the hot water bath) breaks, the loose lid will be readily apparent.  This is important because if ANY air gets in, nasty stuff can happen, like invisible bacteria that makes you really sick can grow.  If the rings are on, then you don’t know if the lid is lose because you bumped it removing the ring, or because it has been loose a long time  and yucky stuff is growing.

And finally, the birds’ eye view of a day’s labor: