Huntington Beach, California

When I started having problems with my mobility, I started realizing how many of the places I had taken for granted, have problems with access. There may be a way down to the beach, with a ramp, but I didn't see it! It was all steps and bars, down to the sand. Then, of course, it's a distance walking through sand to get to the ocean. I always have loved the ocean, but at least on this day, I couldn't get to it, even though the weather was beautiful. B*B, Ysabeau 

George James workshop last Saturday

I overdid it Saturday, but it was worth it! I went to a George James workshop all day, took lots of notes, while he demonstrated watercolor technique, then gave a second demo on Yupo synthetic paper, with lots of ideas about how to use it to get effects you are just not going to get on regular paper. I don't know if all the watercolor contests will allow this stuff, but it looks like a lot of fun to try, and a way to express things that you can't get any other way. Woohoo! she said, with ice on her ankle, missing her Monday classes... but it was worth it! B*B, Ysabeau

a busy week!

These are some of the paintings I did in watercolor, all in the last couple of weeks. These are in the school display case right now, along with wonderful paintings by my fellow students. I feel really honored to have my paintings up for other art students to see, and some people have told my teacher they like them. In fact, one of the teachers was really enthusiastic, and had my teacher introduce her to me, so that was nice, because she seemed to see what I hoped to put into them.
B*B, Ysabeau

Creativity resistance!

I have spent many fun hours doing immersion dye on extra-high quality cotton, comparable to the tightly woven fabrics used in Batik work. I have washed, dried, pressed, and hoarded my results, and gifted a few special people with a piece here and there, for a birthday or special event... but I have had a terrible time using any of it myself!

I used a bit of my early pieces to make some small items, bags, but I just couldn't bring myself to slice it up into parts for a quilt, so yesterday I started cutting pieces for some Seminole style strips to put into a quilt. There are glowing shades of yellow, turquoise, green, cobalt, purple... and wonderful muted tones with streaks of magenta or crimson, and I'm just wacking it into strips of 2", 3", or 4", which should be adequate to play with the patterns in my Seminole book, and the advantage is that since I intend to machine quilt it myself, I can work up the quilt one strip at a time, and hope to manage the super-Cal-King on my home machine.

Why is it so hard to cut the fabric? Do I feel like I don't deserve to use it? I have no problem cutting the fabrics I don't really get the big charge out of, so why not use them on my projects when I'm going to spend lots of my limited time and energy, so my results will be as good as possible. Hmmm.

B*B,

Ysabeau