What's been keeping me busy?

My winter art class is over, and I have completed four still life oils! I framed all of them wih black plein aire frames and hung them in my dining room and foyer. I think I like painting more than I love to sew. (I can hear my stash calling me to come play with them for a while too) Now that I have learned the technique to create compositions, I see more paintings coming in the near future. I would love to paint some jalopeno's for my daughters kitchen. What do you think?

Two peppers


Sweet and Sour

Red Hot Aubergine

Bittersweet

Long Cold Winter!!

It's been awhile since my last post, I have been busy between vacations, holidays, Monday night class, Thursday night grandchildren and Friday through Sunday recovering from grandchildren and just plain trying to stay warm! It has been a tough winter with over 3 to 4 feet of snow and ice and battling the air temp between -8 to 20* since the beginning of January 2011!! I have to get on a roll again. Over the January break from classes I accepted consignment to shorten 15 mens long shirt sleeve cuffs along with 4 womens wool suit jackets.  Have to admit I was good! Approached them like piecework ripping pinning, color coding threads, gave a quick shot of steam to set the seam, folded and completed within a week (to my surprise) and an extra $202!! Sorry didn't have time to take pictures I always think I should have taken pictures after the fact, why is that????

Here's a 9x12 oil of the Kalalau Mtn Ridge in Kauai. .I think I need to tweak it a little bit more and blend the clouds in lightening up the blue.  What do you think?

Summer is finally here!

It is spring and summer finally! I have been busy cleaning closet and putting away the wools and sweaters! I don't know which is worse, putting away the winter stuff or finding room for the summer stuff! The weather changed so quickly and last evening it was 94 degrees. We didn't even have the time to put up the air conditioners yet! Thank goodness it's a long weekend and we can find the time to do it all. Today it's a little cooler at 74*.

We have been working in the garden and last night I picked two quarts of strawberries.

They are yummie. I'm adding some pictures of the garden. We just planted our summer crop of tomatoes, peppers, cucumers, green squash, radishes, lettuce, egglplant, green beans, parsley and basil.

My herb garden is also doing well. There is thyme, oregano, chives, tarragon, sage, chervil and fennel.

 

The spring flowers poppies. bearded iris and dutch iris are bloom and everything is looking like summer!

This weekend we will put in the seasonal plants, geraniums, pansies, sunflowers, marigolds etc. I wish everyone a safe Memorial Day and enjoy your celebrations!

Saturday is Tag Sale Day

Up and out early to bring the unwanted household and garage items half way across town for a huge family tag sale. I was practically giving the stuff away because I didn't want to carry it back. I was able to sell two 3 yard  pieces of artic fleece for $4.00 each! I still have six left. In addition to normal stuff we all collect over the years I also had a lot of craft items...sewing, yarn, christmas panel cutouts and three years of Sew News, Threads and Sew Stylish magazines.  I didn't end up unloading them, I think it was because the Tag Salers were not looking for the crafty item in the beggining of summer. However I did sell the Rachel Ray magazine collection for $3.00 and ended up with $75 for the day. What I didn't sell and didn't want to hold to anymore went to the local Good Will. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and say goodbye to stuff that was just hanging around.

After we all cleaned up the "Family" of six (we call the "old timers") went out to dinner. We choose "Lenny and Joes" Fishtale in Madison, CT near the Hammonassett State Park. It is only 25 minutes on the interstate and they have the BEST seafood on the shoreline, you can either use take out or dine there if your lucky enough to find a table.  Of course my eyes were bigger than my stomach when I ordered a soft shell crab dinner and a side of whole bellie clams! We were lucky to find a table inside the building and waited for our order. I had #59 and while we were enjoying dinner we heard them announce #59 again! That means they served 100 orders within half hour! I was too stuffed after devouring the crab that I unable to take on  the clams. I had them wrapped for take out to enjoy the next day.  After we were finished we went outside and strolled around to get the food to go down.  Lenny's has an ice cream stand  and a carousel.  And of course we were unable to  resist the ice cream!

The Magical Charity Carousel is a joint charitable venture of the Madison and Westbrook Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tales $ll the proceeds from the carousel goes to the local community food bank and charities. Since 1998 $605,000.00 has been over 11 Seasons! Check out their T-Shirt page. You may see someone from your state who's been there!  http://ljfishtale.com/page/2683-Home

Since it was almost eight pm and the state park closes at sunset we decided to drive back and stop in Branford and walk around the green. It was a perfect ending to long day.   

Painting Class 4/26/10

This is where I go on Monday evenings, over the last six months it has rained three times and snowed once! But somehow we ladies always seem to show up. I think it's mostly to share our talents and work off the stress of the day. This is one of the girls working on a new project. The canvas is blocked her painting with acrylic first and then with oil. This will be a beautiful daffodil when she finishes!

Here we have an out of the box idea..the Tetons with Carousel Horses!

Here is one of the TA's working on a minitature painting, see the magnifining glass she uses as an aid to see those tiny strokes! On the back right is my painting of tomato's and my landscape trying on a frame for fit.  I still need to give it a coat of poly acrylic to seal it before securing it in the frame. I will post that when I get that done.

Here is a cute little painting of a birds nest with an egg. Isn't this cute! This is done with water based oil. I kind of like the look of the water based oil compared to the pure oil I use. It was pretty exciting at class this time as the instructor gave us a lesson on how to frame our pieces. There will be a fair on June 12, on the town green and we are encouraged to have pieces ready for show and tell.

Salsa Skirts

I seen this pattern on the McCalls website and thought how cute this would be for my three granddaughters! I just had to make these skirts for them.  After reading the pattern guide and adding up the yardages required I had second thoughts since I knew this was going to cost me a pretty bundle for the three skirts.  Then I threw caution to the wind and ventured out to find the nine co-ordinating fabrics. My first stop was at Walmart and I don't usually shop for fabrics at Walmart but as luck would have it , while passing by the spring fabrics that was just put on display I found a section of color co-cordinated childrens fabrics!  I was in shock that I actually found all of the colors needed to make these cute little skirts and the best part the fabric was only 1.99 yard!  

I bought eight 1/2 yard pieces of each of the fabrics I wanted for the strips and 3/4 yard for the upper tier for three skirts. I then looked in my stash for jumbo rick-rack and found I had enough red and green for the bottom tiers but had to buy another eight packages of blues, yellows and orange. The cutting went quickly using the rotary cutter and mat method. I sewed the 1/2 yard strips together then cut each 1/2 yard into 2.5" strips then stacked and sewed the strips end to end. After ruffling and sewing the tiers together I finished the seams with the serger and sewed the rick rack on. These skirts came out so cute! You can see two of the girls have them on and they fit perfectly!   

This is my latest finished acrylic 8 1/2 x 16. I still need to overlay this with polyurethane. This is a painting of a reserve in Burnt Church, New Bruswick Canada. My mother was born there and her family still lives there . My Uncle was a Chief there until his death and now his son's my cousins serve on the council. Burnt Church is located on the northern most coast of the Atlantic and the water you see in the picture freezes in the winter and the locals can go ice fishing and drive trucks out on the frozen ice. Starting in April through July the native people have lobster traps and have fishing boats for the seasonal catch.