Association of Creative Females...

We had our monthly meeting of the rug hookers at Sydney's lovely home on the water of the Ventura Keys. Everyone showed up for this meeting because we brought our self portraits in brown paper bags and we had to guess who each one was. Some were easy and some were more difficult...All totally wonderful and imaginative. What a fun night! We had tea, coffee, pink lemonade, peach pie and a special chocolate cake. We posed for our yearly group photo for Annie's daughter, Amanda, a professional photographer...and I will post it when I receive my copy. Lots of lively discussions and reports on fiber art happenings....such a fun group of women! These are the self portraits that turned up...and we had decided in advance that "anything goes!"...

Mr. Pumpkin and basket o' kitties....

Did a little more work on the pumpkin and have been making these kitties out of recycled sweaters. Fun to work with the wool, some is really soft with angora and cashmere mixed in. I use different wools or sometimes linen or cotton for the back. Today I plan to make an Owl pattern and try and make a dozen or so...most are for ArtFiberfest and then for Syd's show in Nov....the famous Queen of Arts show! Hopefully I can put a few on the Etsy spot...I have been very bad at putting anything in there....

Syd's Scissor Maidens Class

What a fun day at the ARt ClinIc! Syd taught us her Scissor Maiden class and everyone had so much fun creating entirely different maidens to hold our sewing scissors and pins. She will be teaching this class at ArtFiberFest this October and there may still be room for a few more.

These are mostly works in progress...for finished pieces go to Syd's blog...artnest on links....

I just had to post all the photos because they were all so different and wonderful....oops..got one in there twice...

Been hooking again....

I think I have finished my self portrait for the hooking group...due next Monday evening which is also the first day of school for my boys. I keep doing a little fine tuning here and there...pulling out a bit of color that doesn't look right. For this piece I put favorite things in the background...like my home, the heart has 3 "dots" that symbolize my husband and 2 boys, I love them dearly, although things can get a bit wild with 2 teenagers,our cat Tiger, hot cup of tea, a flower, and the owl...I am a night owl and love to work at night when things get quiet around here...I wanted it to look sort of dreamy and meditative...and I also put some water in the bottom right corner because I love to swim in the ocean....things I didn't include...chocolate, good salads, ice blended mochas, walks on the beach, shopping for fabric and folk art.....

And for some reason...must be that I am thinking of Fall coming, I started a funny pumpkin. Am I the only one that thinks it looks like Homer Simpson?

And I put my favorite rug hook in the photo to show you what I'm working with right now.

Fabulous Fiber Fest 2007

close up to show hand and machine stitching...

by the same quilter..

Yummie roving to play with....

Had a fun day driving down through Malibu to Santa Monica to the Fiber Fest at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with Maren and Barbara, fellow rug hookers. We enjoyed seeing all the quilts, needle punching, needle felting, weaving and rug hooking. Many demonstrations going on...spinning, knitting, hooking, lace dyeing and fabric collage. I especially loved the Japanese fabric collected by Azabu-Ya....things I haven't seen anywhere except online once in awhile. I got some fabric, trims and cool retro-looking buttons and 1 book of Japanese crafts. We sat outside under the trees for lunch and then went back inside for one more tour. Photos of some of the more unusual quilts that were displayed.... Oh..and there was even live harp and flute music!

Party for Pepa and Susan B.

Party table with birdies...

love this gift bag!

party girls...

Pepa with Colleen's embroidery...

Susan with felted pillow from Barbara...she made one for Pepa too....

Had a delightful afternoon birthday party complete with a delicious lunch and chocolate cupcakes at Susan B.'s new home and stables! Well, we were really in the guest house which I think is bigger than my little mountain abode. Wonderful details throughout...large wooden beams and lovely Mexican tile work designed by her son. Felt like a early california hacienda and those horses will be living in style!

W e dined outside on the patio and Susan made each of us the coolest round box decorated with a glittery bird complete with a party hat on a branch and filled it with lots of goodies...fabric, tiny playing cards, a mini-slinky, ribbon, stars and hearts, a little picture frame and wing charms. Susan H. had just returned from Finland and brought us each a gift from Marimekko. Love those party favors!

Lots of sweet gifts, many handmade, and funny cards celebrating the wisdom of being over 50. Such a great group of friends....all artfest attendees...and makers of all kinds of artful stuff.

a little peek....

here is a corner of the self portrait that I am hooking at the moment....due later this month at our rug hooking meeting..

Textile inspirations

I was reading Jude's blog... Spirit Cloth and admiring her beautiful weaving and it reminded me of how much I love Peruvian textiles too. Years ago I decided I wanted to paint something and I thought..."what do I love to look at?"..I came up with textiles...so I painted some textile designs inspired by ancient Peruvian designs on canvas. I found these designs in a wonderful book called,"To Weave for the Sun...Ancient Andean Textiles" by Rebecca Stone-Miller.

Just before I met Dennis, I took a trip to Peru and Bolivia with a group of textile artists from all over the United States. We traveled all over with our guides visiting weavers, dyers and wonderful archeaological sites including Tiahuanaco near Lake Titicaca and Machu Picchu. I loved the city of Cuzco and the museums in Lima had wonderful pre-columbian jewelry and incredible weavings. I would love to go back and explore again....until then I'll just have to get out the books!

Weekend at El Capitan

spent most of Friday, Sat. and Sun.. visiting and enjoying the beach at El Capitan State Beach Park. The reunion group had reserved the best spot overlooking the ocean from a bluff with room for 60 tents.My friend from Hawaii, Cindy put up her tent under a tree and we had a view of the ocean and a cozy spot to hang out in. Folks kept showing up and we had a great potluck dinner with a bonfire. I had to remind myself to go home each night- so fun to see folks that I had lived with while in my 20's on our big ranch. Our next door neighbors were John Travolta and Ronald Reagan....an interesting time in my life......! John Travolta actually came to one of our Halloween parties one year. Someone went up to him and said, "great costume, you look just like John Travolta!!!" He looked surprised for a second and then laughed. I thought that was pretty funny....He lived in the historic Ortega adobe (beautifully remodeled) on 16 acres in the middle of Tajiguas Ranch where we lived and grew organic crops and avocadoes for our natural food stores. The ranch went all the way from the ocean up to the top of the mountains and bordered on Reagan's Ranch and we lived there while he was President...so Santa Barbara had lots of Secret Service agents roaming around at the time....and they wondered what this spiritual comunity was doing meditating and growing vegetables below the President's ranch. I was told later that they had infiltrated our community to see what we were up to...kind of creepy!

Anyway....great to see my old buddies and their kids and hear what they are up to these days....

The ocean was calm and not too cold...I floated out past the kelp and just enjoyed the peacefulness of it all. Later we saw dolphins jump completely out of the water and swimming close to shore all day long. I plan to bring my son, Justin back down for a beach day soon.

Every night we have been watching the night time skies for the meteor showers.....we put down a quilt on our deck and look up into the heavens late at night and see the "shooting stars"...some with long tails....really cool....