Meeting of the Crones

     Last Monday, my fav group, studioQ...or as I like to call us...the Creative Crones...met and had our usual fun and inspirational time!  We have been examining the elements of art, especially how they relate to art quilters.  This month the element we discussed was value.  We have been taking turns researching the different values and coming up with an activity to match.  Kay had brought a lot of hand-dyed fabric that we chose from to do an activity with light, medium and dark values.  Here is a composite of what we did:

Fabric glued to paper showing value.

     And we had our usual show of work done since last time.  I am posting just a little bit of what I showed...the challenge for the blog of Art Quilters Around the World for this time is "Carnivale" but the reveal isn't for a few more days so I can't show the whole thing until next week.

Part of my Art Quilters' Challenge-"Carnivale"

Beth shows a journal page

Susan with one of the many dog mats she has made for  rescue dogs.

A page from Lynn's journal

Heather's Tuning Fork #11

Wendy showing one of her small quilts

The back of Wendy's quilt

The front of Wendy's quilt

Kay showing her dyed shirt..an accident that turned out well!

Kay showing our activity from last month

Kay's quilt

Memory Monday #12

 

Not our house but a picture of one very similar to it.

 Another memory I have of living in the country was an occasion of very strange weather!  The house we lived in had a door and porch on the side of the house facing west and across the living room was another door going outside, facing east. One day there was one of those quick unexpected summer storms...out the west it was just POURING and yet, out of the east, the sun was shining...very freaky!  A very small but intense little thunder cloud overhead!!

      Another weather related memory I have took place the our first winter (and as it turned out, our only winter).  That year we had a terrific ice storm...the kind that coated all the trees and fences; roads were practically impassable; and our power went out.

Ice coated fences and trees

     As I remember, this happened right after Christmas.  My cousins, who were in their teens, were spending the holidays with us and Mom and Dad had gone into town to a party when the power went out.  We had to light candles and sit in the dark until they came home....not knowing we had no electricity...the telephone lines were down also so we couldn't get in touch with them. (No cell phones, yet!)  But they finally were able to get to us... It was going to be days before the power would be restored so we packed up and moved into town to stay at the hotel. (This link will take you to the hotel's current website with another link to a you-tube showing of the hotel.  It was known as the Parkway when we stayed there...and has been quite nicely renovated!)
      We kids thought it was quite an adventure to stay in the hotel...not so sure my mom and dad thought the same, having to deal with living out of a suitcase and worrying about frozen pipes, etc at home!!

Memory Monday # 11

My sister, Judy and me with one of our cousins  sitting on the grass "on the farm".

     I am a little fuzzy on the exact dates of my early childhood...but I do know that after my dad came home from WWII, the four of us..my mom, dad, sister and I lived in a small one bedroom apartment for probably close to a year.  Then we moved to a farmhouse on several acres of land not far from town.  I think it was mainly my dad's idea because he had always had horses when he was a kid; and he wanted to raise some calves, have chickens for eggs, raise a big garden.  My mom, on the other hand, was a "townie", having always lived in town, near stores, movie theater, library, and her friends.  But she gave it a try!!
     I LOVED living there...we were able to get kittens; we had a couple of ponies; a calf, chickens...we had acres to roam around on and pretend to be where ever we wanted. I really loved the great outdoors!  Now the "horses" were perfect for a six and eight year old who had never been around horses before.  We had an old brown horse which we named "Brownie"  (great imaginations!) and a little shetland pony named "Pokey".  Brownie was so old that the only way could get him to run was to put corn on top of a hog shed, drag him down to the end of the field, and he would run up to eat the corn!  And Pokey was so slow (thus his name) because whoever had him before us had never had him shoed so his hooves were all splayed out and he couldn't walk very fast.

Me, on Brownie
In fact, Brownie was so dependable that we could ride him backwards around the outside of the house.

My sister on Pokey

Spring Break...almost over!

     Even though I am retired from teaching...spring break is still a factor in my life!  My granddaughter was home from college for the week..my grandson and daughter who are both in public schools in the area...one a student/one a teacher...were both off.  So we got to see a little more of them than usual!
     Last weekend, they went to Missouri to visit with "Grandma" better known to them as GG...(Great-grandmother!) to distinguish her from me.  So we kept their dog for them...and they all came to pick her up and stay for lunch on Tuesday.
     Then Thursday, we took the grands with us to see the Bernini exhibit at the Kimbell in Fort Worth then met their parents for lunch.  If any of you local readers have not been to see it yet, it will be on display for about a month then gone.  Fort Worth and The MOMA are the only places in the United States this exhibit will be shown..so worth seeing...just fabulous!

Playing with clay at the Kimbell

Me and my grands!

Memory Monday # 10

     Growing up, we had no television until I was in high school...some had it sooner than that....but my dad was never one to go for the new fad things!  As a result we spent many hours outside...one of my favorite activities was riding my tricycle...This is very much like my trike that I had from the time I was four until probably six.

Then I graduated to a larger tricycle...this is a picture I found online....I think mine had all its spokes!  Our town had sidewalks everywhere on both sides of the street so there were miles and miles of riding paths.  Those tricycles were my charging horses...my speeding cars...my wheels to the universe!  We had races; we could make our trikes into anything we wished...and did.  Without the "benefit" of television, we could really stretch our imaginations!

In fact, my memories of adventures on my tricycles are of such happy times, that I have a small collection of tricycles as decorations around my home....indoors and out!  I even purchased a life size one that is a replica of my first small one at an antique store in Hico, Texas a few years ago.

February Bead Journal Project

     The month of February was just too short!!!  I really needed those extra days that other months have....I am a little late in getting my "Yin-Yang" beading for the Bead Journal Project challenge.  If you hadn't read my January blog on the Project, I will be doing the Yin-Yang shape each month with the plan at the end of the year to put all twelve together in one larger art project.  You can click on the link to see my January project.  And here is my BJP challenge for this month!

February Bead Journal Project

     Hopefully, I will be able to get my March BJP completed and posted at little earlier!!!

Memory Monday # 9

Me with my dog Fuzzy

      In an earlier memory blog, I told of getting a puppy...a border collie.... when I was probably about four.  When I was six, Fuzzy would have been two.  We were still living just two doors down from the school.  I am sitting in front of the house that was between my home and the school.

     So another memory that I have when I was still in the first grade involved my furry friend, Fuzzy!  When all of us kids were outside for recess, some of the dogs that lived nearby would come into the schoolyard to play also. This would have been well before "lease laws".  I loved it when Fuzzy would come down to see me!!

     But apparently not everyone was as excited to have the dogs in the playground because one day the Superintendent came to our classroom to announce that we were to go home and tell our parents that the dogs just HAD to be kept away from the school!!  Now I don't know...there may have been a problem and he had the safety of the children in his care to be concerned about....but in order to really impress us with the need to keep the dogs at home, he said that the next time any dogs were found in the school yard, they would be SHOT!!  Well, I was a total mess, running home crying to my mom that Mr. V. was going to shoot Fuzzy!!

     My parents who grew up in the same town that I did, and went to the same schools I did, were also friends of Mr. V...knowing him when they were all young people.  So my mom immediately contacted him and, very respectfully, told him off!!!  That he should be ashamed of scaring little children....that she understood the need to keep the dogs away from the playground...but he didn't need to be so insensitive to say the dogs would be shot!!  As a result, he came back to the classrooms and rephrased his mandate....that the dogs would be captured and held until the owners could claim them!! A much kinder solution in my mind!!