Accidental discovery: Tord Boontje

Tord Boontje is a Dutch designer. I found this book about him while browsing the library stacks. I think what really attracted me to the book was the layer of gauze that is glued over the cover. Something told me it had to be cool. I'd never heard of him before, but I can see what a huge impact his designs are having on the general look of things in general. There are a lot of items on Etsy that have this look. What I really love are the wine bottles. The link up there is for his web site. Have a peek.

Easter Bunny and Traffic Circles

Here is the Easter Bunny himself handing out Jelly beans in front of the Fudge Kitchen in Cape May. I would like to salute all of the people that get stuck wearing these crazy costumes for the sake of commerce! I always think of Mr. Bee, mascot of a small hamburger place in Somerville, NJ. He would stand and wave out there on the Traffic Circle as people heaped abuse upon him.  I don't know what bees had to do with anything, but the tables in there had glass tops and there were honey combs inside with pipe cleaner bees. That place has been gone for a while now. If you don't know what a traffic circle is, well maybe you call it a round-a-bout where you live? Quite a few of them were built in NJ as a way to control traffic where a number of major roads converged. As the population soared around here, the traffic circles started seeing way more cars than they were ever meant to handle. It was almost a right of passage to have your first car accident on the circle, partly because we were too busy throwing trash at Mr. Bee. I recall as a new driver, and even later, I would not be able to get through the thing without having someone give me the horn. There were rules about who had the right of way on the circle, but if you followed them you could be stuck there for hours. The traffic circle has changed since then; they built a bridge that sent Route 202 over the top of everything, but I still avoid it if I can. I understand that over 11,000 cars per day go through there!

Hey, that was some tangent, eh? Well, just take a look at the chow mein nests we made and I'll let you go. Have a lovely and relaxing day!

Kinda Slow Today

This is a sign we saw in May's Landing, NJ while on our way to Cape May. It was one of those deals where we had to turn around and go back to take a picture. There must be a lot of turtles for the town to put up a sign, don't you think? I'd like to see that.

I'm feeling kinda slow today. I'm just having my parents over for dinner tomorrow, no big deal. Mom's even making the ham, we are making side dishes. I'm also going to make those cool chocolatey nests that you make out of canned chow mein noodles. There are a lot of slightly different recipe variations on the internet, but basically it is chocolate chips and peanut better melted together. Mix in those weird chow mien noodles and form into a nest shape on wax paper. Add "eggs." I prefer those little Cadbury eggs, but I didn't see any when I was out yesterday. Those malted milk ball Robin's Eggs are good, too.

Artist the Subject of Art

I've been follwing the blog of Susan Lenz, Art in Stitches, for a while now. I got into some kind of conversation as the result of comments made on her blog... well... see for yourself! She explains the whole thing.

Kate and I are pretty excited about being in one of Susan's decision series pieces. We had this big idea that we would drive all the way down to S. Carolina for the opening of her show. I had no idea when that would be, but it turns out it is in about 2 weeks, and on a Thursday, and a couple of days before a Special Olympic Event. We can't make it, oh well.

I really love Susan's work and once again, cool to be part of it!

Blogger is Lame (or is it me?)

I struggled with my Lucy the Elephant post. I had to maneuver the text around the pictures so that they were something like captions. Finally I got it right. A few days later I looked at the post and all of the text was below the pictures. I tried to fix it and ended up deleting a picture. Man, that pisses me! Shouldn't it be easier to create a decent looking post? Do you all know something I don't? I abandoned it until I had time to redo. At first I thought, why bother to redo this, no one will look at it after today. I now realize that is wrong, because I just got a response to a post I did way back on February 10. The Butter Krak post! They were telling me that I was wrong, Butter Krak isn't just average, it's the bomb. OK, OK, Butter Krak is the bomb. Send me some and I will re-evaluate it.

Meanwhile, a couple of posts ago I told you that I was invited to join an Etsy team and I paid some $$ to put listings on their website. That went fine, then they asked me to join their forum. OK, so I did. After I returned from my weekend, I looked at the home e-mail and 4 people had "friended" me! I didn't know it was like a face book thing. (I have ignored my face book page since I created it.) I friended them back, I mean, I don't want to seem rude, but I do not have time for this! I have real friends I don't call!

In other news, I am starting the count down to the start of my art class. I am teaching collage to a group of mentally challenged adults at the ARC starting Tuesday. I am gathering materials to use as learning aids. I'm going to start them up by showing a group of REALLY famous art to see if they recognize any of it. Because, if they don't, they should. I'm talking about the Mona Lisa, The Birth of Venus, American Gothic, The Scream. Stuff like that. I was at the County Library yesterday, paying off my latest embarassing fine and taking out a hernia's worth of coffee table art books. One of them is called "100 of the World's Most Beautiful Paintings." I had this very book in my house when I was growing up, and I am serious when I say it was really my first major encounter with art. I looked at that book all of the time. I remember when I was a teenager, we painted my bedroom pink. We were looking for art for the walls, and we took a Paul Klee print right out of that book and framed it for the wall.


Have you ever seen this? When I came across it in the book, I got all nostalgic. I think it would be way cool to make a quilt based on this. No problem. I'll file this away with all of the other ideas.

Getting Back on Track

Remember the Cocktail Quilt? This post goes back to January. I had just gotten some cocktail related fabric and thought that I might use it with a cool old novelty dish towel I had found. Up until last night it was still pinned to the board where I took a picture of it in the beginning of the year. I had at least 2 good new ideas stirring around in my brain but I forced them back to revisit this old idea. Part of the problem was that cocktail fabric. I could not really think of how to make that work, and ultimately, I think it will end up on the back of the quilt.

I do that a lot. I have an idea of how I'm going to make a quilt and use certain fabric and methods, but when I really get down to it and drag all of the components together on the floor and start playing, often I struggle to make it all work. I start eliminating some things, adding others, and when I come up with something that I think does work, I am in a completely different place than where I started. I'm not sure if this is a symptom of not using a sketch book at all, or just another example of why I don't use a sketchbook. It's all going to change anyway.

This new picture, taken in the basement near the washer, shows my new idea about how to put this together. Another issue is the tea towel itself. It's almost a complete idea, and if I intend this to be a wall hanging, then it doesn't really need to be much larger. I'm going with two fabrics as a border, and some embroidery around the edge. And I can not wait to quilt around the elements in that towel! Good fun.

I am still not finished with the dead baby quilt, but when I get to the point that I am done thinking about a piece and I know how it will end up, I need to start working out the next one.

Settling Back in.

Monday morning after a long weekend. Wish I could have stayed in bed longer, but it was not happening. Also, we were blessed for 2 years in a row with weather that was so fine for April that you just know you will have to pay somehow. The weather for the coming week includes high temperatures in the 40s, lots of rain and even a slight chance of snow. April is indeed the cruelest month. Meanwhile, have a look at some pictures of the beach at Cape May.

Lucy

We had quite a lovely weekend. We started with visiting Lucy the Elephant in Margate New Jersey. At this point the weather was dreadful. It was very foggy and the wind was freezing. But still, it wasn't a bad time to visit, we were told that in the summer they bring up 50 people at a time for a tour. We had exactly 2 other people with us on our tour. It costs $6 each to get in, and you get to see the inside and a video. Lucy was quite a mess when a developer wanted to knock her down in 1970. A couple of women mobilized a save Lucy committee and raised quite a bit of money in a short time. In the end it cost over 1 million to have her restored and she needs constant maintenance. You can see where they had jut fixed a leak inside.

Here is Joe with our car parked in front of Lucy





#1. Here is Lucy's "leg door."

#2. A "pane" in the butt. (I did not make that up.)
#3. I was standing up in Lucy's head when I took this picture of the interior.

#4. This is looking out of Lucy's eye.

I'm glad I got to finally see Lucy! More tomorrow.

Old Art

I've been pretty bad about blogging lately. But here is something: A collage I did ages ago. Maybe late 90's? I was clearing out some files from my computer and came across this image. This collage was pretty big, 32"x20" and framed. It's on permanent loan to the Mark and Judy collection. It just so happens that these are the people we are meeting in Cape May.

I was Invited

I was invited to join Design Style Guide, which is an Etsy team. So I read about this team, which has hundreds of members, and decided to join. They have a very nice and professional looking web site and you can create listings there which are linked directly to your Etsy store. Membership starts at $12 per year for 2 listings. I took the next step up, $32 per year for 8 listings. Hopefully it will bring more traffic to my store, which has been pretty quiet lately. My ultimate goal is for my art to supplement my income a bit when (if) I retire. Of course, this is now one more thing to do that isn't making art. They are picky about the photos you submit, so I have been taking out the backgrounds on my old listing photos. (Most of my quilts were nailed to the garage when I took the pictures, gulp.) Does anyone else out there belong to an Etsy team?