So that is why...

I have been very unproductive as far as art has been concerned in the last few weeks, and last week the explanation for this became clear. I am clinically depressed again.

This one came suddenly, and I am hoping it will go as (relatively) quickly again. I had begun a new medication to try and control migraine headaches which were occurring frequently. After enduring 2 weeks or so of start-up side-effects, I noticed that I was losing interest in my usual passions, couldn't sleep, ate a lot less and just felt more and more down and despondent and less and less able to cope. Then I was becoming tearful several times a day and everything began to look hopeless.

To cut the story short, I went to the doc, she checked my thyroid (normal) and needless to say I stopped the medication. It's been a week and a half and I think things are going back to normal, thank goodness. I'm not tearful and things are not as hopeless. I'm not jumping around for joy and motivation is still low, but I hope I'll get there.

The Inno deadline is drawing close and I need to finish some works to enter this year, so I'm working on that, but not with much gusto. I just feel empty of ideas and if you were to ask me, at *any* given time, what I would most like to do right now , my answer would be "go to bed". So I'm not back on top yet.

But I have some hope.

Kitten cuteness!

And then there were these...

... these Mucha gift bags, which I just had to buy because.... I think I was trying to do some retail therapy. They were just R10 each. I love Mucha. When I got home I looked at them more carefully. Of course, there it was, underneath, in small print, "Made in China". This "Made in China" thing is going to end badly......................... and I know I am supporting it by buying stuff and I should stop.

Flour-resist Batik again

Here is the final product of the green cloth I did the other day.

To tell the *whole* truth, this isn't the cloth I did the other day. That day I was not functioning on all cylinders and forgot a little ingredient when dyeing, viz the fixative, and so when i washed, um... yes, well.....! I spent a few days feeling miffed and then stubbornly began again at the beginning!

It works! Next I tried scrunching up the cloth and cracking the resist well, before applying paint _ I like this much, much better; in fact, now I think the green one looks quite bland!

Great fun to do and super-easy. I've since read somewhere that you're supposed to cook the flour paste (?) - I wonder why. I did notice that it fermented very quickly in the squeeze bottles - had to throw it away the day after. It's been 30 degrees C plus here. Maybe the cooking helps it to keep? Who knows...

I guess I won't ever

... be a kitten photographer, but here is just one shot of the Adorables. They won't sit still, they won't lift their heads for a photo, but I will persevere. They are seeing me through a bad patch.

Ok, maybe just ONE more.... :

Irresistabubble!

I'm not a knitter

... but every now and then I see something so beautiful it just makes me want to knit it. Here is such a thing!

Flour-resist Dye/Painting

I did some flour-resist dyeing yesterday. I will take a pic when I get home (the batteries are just re-charging ) it was fun to do and we had a hilarious moment when one of the cats hopped onto the table and began to lick the flour paste off the fabric! I live in a circus!

This is after the flour paste has dried. I dyed it first, and am now over-painting it. I had already begun, when I realised I had forgotten to take a pic. Below is a pic of the overpainting which now has to be left to dry, while we all hope the cats don't decide to leap onto the table and then prance around everywhere else with little green feet.

Footnote: It's wholewheat flour paste. I tried to sift out the bran, but didn't really succeed. I ran out of cake flour and the wholewheat was so old, I figured I may as well use it up, rather than throw it out.
Below: Part of the flour resist stuff peeled off:

Machine Quilting

I am currently on the learning curve of machine quilting and finding it very steep! I am quilting the full-size leaf quilt and finding it quite a chore, but I know it is simply a matter of practicing and putting in the hours to get better at it. But yesterday, as I was working on it, I found that I kept getting up and putting it off. I do this a lot when something is not going well. Of course, that was breaking my rhythm and making it go worse, but the tension of holding the quilting steady is also not something one can sustain for very long. How does one do it???? I really, really want to learn this.

Feeling that my world is coming apart...

... I went and bought myself a bit of glue.

Well, okay, a LOT of glue. It takes a lot to stick MY world together.

They bring these value packs out about once a year, though not every year, at back-to-school time. They are amazingly cheap: R12.99 for a pack of three glue sticks or clear glue tubes, which normally sell for about R7 or R8 each. They are fantastic for all the craft projects we do throughout the year, so I try to get enough to last for the year until the next time I see them.

Perhaps I could glue a few brain cells together too. That would be enormously useful.

My Quilting’s in the Ditch

That’s right, I have Quilter’s Block.

I don’t even know what to say. I’ve just dried up. We’ve just finished a clinical study and I feel quite, quite depleted. I’ve caught up the sleep, but somehow my soul hasn’t caught up.

I’ve been sewing a dress for my daughter for a dance at her school on Saturday and I’m NO dressmaker so this has been an anxious task. I did warn her I wasn't good at it, but she said she had lots of confidence in me... so I let myself get talked into it.

And then I opened my large mouth last year and said I would make something quilty for my brother. :) That has proved to be far more difficult than it sounds. It was fine up until the point at which I asked my brother what sort of thing he would like. General style, general colour. So he said that he likes minimalist, beiges, browns...

!!!

I am a confirmed colour freak. Bright, bold, lots of colours. I have trouble limiting myself. And I simply do not EVEN KNOW HOW to do minimalist. I've never understood the point of minimalist. O help.

This has been sent as a challenge to me...

... and I am stumped.

A Happy Event :)

We're thrilled to announce the birth of 5 gorgeous kittens to Cassie on Tuesday 16 January. We were all there for the birth and everything went very smoothly. Instinct is an amazing thing and all 6 knew exactly what to do. Here's a picture of the furry black pile. One kitten is all black and the rest are black (mostly) with small patches of white.

And next we have another of the quilt inspectors, hard at work, inspecting another work, which I've got stuck with the quilting of. (I'm sure that is a very bad sentence!) Um, this is how art is made - how mundane! Oi, Abby, how will I get people to take me seriously, when you treat my work as a comfy place to lie???

... and while we're on the topic of cats on my stuff, here's a picture of Cassie, taken while I was making lariats. Could there be a more uncomfortable place to go and lie than right on top of all my knobbly beads?

*What is it* about cats that they feel compelled to lie right on top of stuff?

Random decoration

When I can't think of anything to make and have no ideas, I just make some decoration that I can use in some future work. I have no plans for this, but I'm sure I'll be happy to have it one day...
I've been tired lately, too busy at my day job to have any energy left for new ideas for art, so have just been doing busy-work to keep my hands going, while my mind numbs out in front of the TV.

Fabric postcards

At last I have got to posting these pictures. These were quick and fun to make and I can see myself making more.
( I feel I should apologise for the poor quality of the photos. I am really not a very good photographer and I know I should just RTFM and get to grips with the settings and the know-how, but..... there always seems to be something else to do.)

Well, whaddya know....

You Are An ISFP

The Artist You are a gifted artist or musician (though your talents may be dormant right now).You enjoy spending your free time in nature, and you are good with animals and children.Simply put, you enjoy bueaty in all its forms and live for the simple pleasures in life.Gentle, sensitive, and compassionate - you are good at recognizing people's unspoken needs. You would make a good veterinarian, pediatrician, or composer.

What's" Your Personality Type?

Wage slavery

I should not complain about my job; it enables me to do my art AND have elctricity, eat, pay school fees etc, but since Jan 2 we've been getting ready for a trial which begins tomorrow, which means very little *real work* has been done. And this is all I have time to blog for now. Perhaps this weekend, I will have some pictures. (I did catch the fabric postcard craze, after I posted about it, and made 7 little cards, which I'll try to post pics of).

Fabric Postcards

I have not yet got caught up in this craze, but an article from quilting.about.com on Fabric Postcards has just made me itch to try it. I think it is the small size that appeals to me - I can imagine doing several of these in a series, quite quickly and they would look lovely all hanging together. It could be an art form all on its own.

Why, o why do I have to stay at work all day???

Sigh

I KNOW I will miss my dear offspring when they fly from the nest, but I've realised there will be an upside - I will find my stuff where I left it last, viz. the battery charger needed to recharge the batteries for my camera! Digital cameras seem to devour batteries, so I invested in rechargables, which are GREAT, except when your teen daughter goes to the coast on holiday with her friend, *taking the battery charger with her!* Grrr. I love you, my love, but please don't do this...

So, no photies of what I have been doing. Not that I've done all that much, as we've been covering school books and buying and organising stationery in preparation for the new school year. Now is the time to buy extra glue sticks and pens and glues for all my own art projects during the year, as they all sell at special prices. This is fun, too- I really enjoy my fabric and stationery and bead fetishes! I wanted to take pics of all the packets of stationery goodies, but, alas...

Hilarious cat website

Stuff On My Cat

Cat lovers will recognise the facial expressions, the body poses and the LOOKS! Several pictures just made me crack up laughing. No animal cruelty involved! Just toooo funny :)

Fun has been had...!

Happy New Year to the innumerable numbers of readers of this blog! (Um, that is a joke at my own expense. I think I have perhaps two readers; my two brothers, and I'm sure even they do not read it that often! Still, that is not too much of a problem, since gathering readers is not the prime purpose here.)

I have felt uninspired to work on any quilt projects in the last few days. This was the last week of my vacation (I go back to work tomorrow) and I've been wanting to try some things in beading, so I got out all my beads (really, I have an obscene amount {grin}) and had fun just playing!

These are handbag charms (very 'in' at the moment) or can also be used as keyrings.

And these are lariats, or long rope necklaces. The idea is that you bead a long rope, which is then draped around your neck in various ways. I've wanted to make these for a VERY long time and to have some to wear as my own homemade jewellery and I've been collecting beads for about 20 years, so I'm thrilled to be doing it at last. I had made 3, but my dear daughter liked the orange one so much she borrowed it to wear to a New Years Party, so it was not here for the photo! They're ultra simple to make and look very extravagant. You just string beads on and tie knots between groups of beads to keep them from sliding up and down. These are about 2 metres long, so you can tie them in various ways.

I plan to try and sell the handbag charms (to feed my addiction for beads!), but keep the lariats.

I'm working on...

... this quilt, I loosely called Pebble Path, although that's just a working title.

I'm not very keen on Christmas and try, as far as possible, to avoid it. Today my girls have gone with their dad and his family, which is wonderful, as they all have a rollicking good time (waving to them all - have a good one!) and I can sit at home and quilt, to which I really hope no-one takes offence - (it's not that I don't wish to see you!)

So I am sitting in the lounge today, with the following view out of the window (isn't it great??)

(please excuse the strings dangling in the middle, which I should have untied - those are kitty toys!)
... and here is what is in the machine:
To those who are celebrating today: may your day and year ahead be filled with all you wish for! And I certainly WILL join you in wishing for peace on earth....