Yesterday, I received my artist’s copy of Four Word Self Help by my dear friend Patti Digh of the blog 37 days. I answered the call for artists and am honored to have been chosen.

I used one of my dad’s photos from the 50s and created the piece RIP Stella. The pic is from Stella Podharsky’s viewing and when I asked my dad who Stella was, he said “Probably just some immigrant my mom and pop knew from the old days.” I have subsequently asked other family members about Stella, and no one knows (or remembers) who she was. And now she has been memorialized in printsome 6o plus years later.

Awesomeness.

It is pretty straight forward in terms of process: insert hook, pull up loop, repeat. My challenge lies in finding a happy point of focus. My glasses are tri focal and I absolutely hate them. Well, hate might be too strong a word. I don’t find they work as they are supposed to. Rather than shifting my eyes to find the correct focus for the part of the lens I am meant to be using, I still find myself sliding the glasses up and down my nose or moving what I am reading closer or farther away. It’s no more a pain in the ass than my old single focus lenses were and honestly, that the focus changes in the lens isn’t a help at all.

For my rug hooking effort, I can manage the loops at what you might think is the obvious standard way to use the hoop, at arms length or in or around my lap. But then there is the backing material with its tiny grid pattern. To be slear in how I am using that, it is a bring it close and look over the top of my glasses thing. So the hooking goes much slower than I thought it would, and it becomes something needing a very deliberate concentration. There is a Houston group that meets the third Saturday of the month and I might join them this month to see if I am maybe overlooking the obvious.

All in all, it isn’t unpleasant, it is just slower and requiring more attention that I thought.

It isn’t like I haven’t looked before. I have. I just haven’t found an old school butcher like I am looking for. Ideally I want a neighborhood place that is actually in my neighborhood, but I am not oddosed to driving across town if I find the right place. It isn’t like we eat beef often, but I want to know what I am getting and where it is coming from. I want local well cared for beef.

I know the farmers’ market has a few local ranchers hawking their wares. As far as I know, a quantity of beef needs to be purchased. I will look into it further when we go tomorrow morning.

Also on the shopping list is some fresh local tomatoes. The ones at the store are hit and miss. While they aren’t dreadful, what we had at Rancho Loma was superb. There is a standard that has been set. The salad course of our meal was heirloom tomatoes from their garden with fresh mozzarella and basil with a flavored olive oil and white balsamic granita. I am not about to be making any granita any time soon, it is more laborious than I care to be, especially when I have made a close enough approximation with the aged balsamic vinegar I already have on hand. I just think we need better tomatoes and I think it won’t be a challenge to find them at the market.

The other fresh meal we have been having is guacamole salad. I hesitate to call in guac because I don’t use the traditional spices. Again it is a close approximation. Last time I made it I added the corn cut from three ears, pre-cooked. Heavenly. and Gone.

I think we will have the guac tonight and the tomato salad and steak tomorrow night.

Life is good.

Young at Heart is a birthday card I made for my mom and it went out in the mail today which means she will get it late, but she will get it! The florio piece is on the back of it and I did that and blogged about it before(click for the full view). It’s images of my dad from his photos from the 50s. She. might. just. cry…

My only hope now is that I got the year right and that she id in fact turning 78. If she is turning 77, well then, I might just be in trouble.

Of course there is knitting going on. And art journaling (not one but two online classes at the moment with a list of several more I am interested in). I am also taking an online workshop for Carla Sonheim’s book Drawing Lab. And a less intensive online class called Delightful Doodles.

Both the drawing and doodling classes are through the Artists of the Round Table site linked to the left.

If that wasn’t all enough, let’s just take a mini-vaca weekend away into the Texas interior. On the way to the best meal ever, we stopped in Fredricksburg for lunch. While there, we also stopped at a yarn store. Truth be told, I checked the yarn store map and the only one on the way to Coleman, TX was in Fredricksburg and that determined our route. I went to this charming little yarn store and I didn’t buy yarn! I did, however, get this kit for my intro into rug hooking. And guess who got a similar kit?

Not one, but two hookers in the house!!

I am not sure I am finished, but for purposed of this challenge, I need to call it finished and get it posted. I might do some further embellishing with pen and stuff.

I used one of the beer six-pack panels on my ring journal for this because I sometimes like the stand alone nature of a piece not bound into a journal. The heavier weight of the cardboard as a base offers a little more freedom to accessorize.

If you go to this link you can scroll down a bit and see what others have done with the images. The images in my post are thumbnails and you can click on them for a bigger view.

I worked on a second Remains of the Day journal. This one is 99% recycled materials. The cover is made from a piece of junk mail and an old blouse, embellished with stuff from the stuff stash. The pages are made from security envelopes salvaged from the mail trash and scraps of paper from various other projects. It isn’t what I want as an end product, but much closer.

Time to eat my cake.

Last week, I started Mary Ann Moss’ Remains of the Day class. It’s a different process and I am having a hard time in my brain separating the two as different. I think ultimately, I will be combing the two as my own. I am not sure what preconceived notions I had about the ROD class, and I am  in no way saying I am at all dissatisfied as there is plenty of new information an d technique I am soaking up. I just feel like I am missing some connection. So while I wait for my ROD a-ha moment to happen, I am going to just keep plowing forward in my own little process until something clicks into place.

These pages are the front, inside cover, two random spreads, and the back. When it is colsed the journal is about seven inches square. The largest spread is 5.5X13. some of the pages feel too plain, some too busy. I think part of refining the process will come in actually working in the journal and finding the balance. That is part of personalizing it and I get that.

Ultimately, I would like to offer these journals for sale in the ARTreach gallery/store. I think it would be a good low-end item for that. My goal is to make them mostly recycled materials and I am going to get a few going over the weekend in an effort to refine the procedd to a point where I feel it is something worth selling. I know by the time I am done with this journal, it will be much cherished, but today it is in the meh column.

The list so far? Cheddarwurst, Velveeta mac and cheese, Pepsi, chips, sushi, ice cream(maybe), and I am thinking of maybe having a nice juicy burger for dinner unless something else catches my eye. I think I might actually walk the aisles and see what else sparks my nostalgic indulgence radar.

Adios muchacha…