Arts/Crafts: Before and After the Frankenstorm

Chelsea Market carvings

El Quiote supplied the sparklers! 

    Last week, in NYC celebrating Joe's 75th birthday, the grandchildren were a big draw. He and I also went to Neue Gallery, the super Andy Warhol show at the Met, the Morgan Library, Chelsea Market, and I, the City Quilter thrice. We enjoyed El Quixote in Chelsea that is mentioned regularly in Just Kids, the book for Cambridge Art's book club. It is fun when a book you are reading covers the ground you are visiting. Things are different in that Lower Manhattan now, but the marathon was canceled and electricity has, thankfully, returned to son's place!

  

    This week, the evacuees, that same little family, are here in Boston, with other son Bill's working out of the Boston office. The children enjoyed Halloween on our street. What do you do with three children, ages 8, 6 and 3 for days (weeks?) when school like their electricity is OUT in NJ:

Live Pumpkin, Fireman and Goldfish

      So far, Hannah's picked up the ukulele fast. I hope to capture her on my new free Apps: Video Star and VideoFX Live. Check them out! (Fast and Easy) Both girls made headbands using ribbons. David and I played kazoo/piano duet train songs. Erika learned to knit.Today all three worked with  polymer clay that wore me out with the pasta maker's being used by the three to condition the clay. But I made myself some beads for a necklace! Joe took them swimming;  and tonight, while they were visiting old friends, I set out the sewing machines for projects tomorrow. Watching Hannah on the uke, I decided it is time for her to take her Hello Kitty Janome sewing machine home. She is finally ready to figure out what to do to solve problems that arise. You might know I gave it to her when she was four.With a twisted ankle I will skip the quilt show in NH. Next. the election! Click photos to enlarge.

In the Beginning...a Journal quilt

     When the Journal Quilt Connection met, they decided to let each member choose a theme for a month of the year for members to quilt. We decided to start in July, and members pointed at me to choose a theme. I said, "That is my birthday month." "We'll do 'birthdays' then...birthdays apply to lots of things: people, nations." Later I suggested "beginnings" to avoid cliche.

       Although the "Beginnings" theme starts in July, this is my third in June. I seem to compulsively enjoy making one a week. This too will pass, I feel certain.

In the Beginning...

        Joe and I went to New York City this weekend where I always get so many ideas, I hardly know where to start. We get our Metro Card and hop on and off the buses and trains at museums, book and crafting areas. This weekend we hit the Morgan, the Folk Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Met and MOMA, and Montclair Art Museum on the way home. I also got to The City Quilter 3 times and the beading area on 6th Avenue near the New York Public Library. The Strand and the book store in Grand Central were not missed either. Plus, I discovered near Rein's Deli, on the drive down, another fabulous quilting store where I got the pencils. It is Quilting by the Yard on the Hartford Turnpike, in Vernon CT.
        I think this pinwheel journal quilt with no area to rest the eye shows the exhaustion, chaos and excitement of searching out new ideas from books, places and art before I finally get to work in many new directions! In the beginning is chaos, stitched in the ditch, bordered and backed by the wrapped yellow brick road. The dots are my brain and the subway lines you see as well if you click to enlarge.