Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Clive Wearing
An interview and brief discussion of the case of Clive Wearing, who has severe anterograde amnesia as a result of viral encephalitis that caused brain damage. He can't remember anything for more than about 30 seconds or so -- the only constants in his life are his love for his wife, Deborah, and his music. It's both sad and sweet all at the same time.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
What do you do with "found time"?
Your meeting has been postponed; your client just canceled; it's a snow day. . . In short, a day that had previously been all booked up is now gloriously, splendidly free.
What do you do with this "found time"?
Do you decide to make some progress on that big project you've been working on? Or spend the day playing? Maybe you read that trashy novel you just bought. Do you rest, recuperate, and nap? Maybe you take the day to pamper yourself. Or possibly, you just fritter away the day with no plan or purpose and wonder where the day went at the end.
I love found time. It feels so liberating to have a vista of uncommitted, unscheduled time open up in front of me. I often feel positively giddy. (This is probably a sign that I am over-scheduled and over-committed, but holding that aside. . .) I feel that found time deserves special activities -- something unusual, something I wouldn't ordinarily do or that I haven't had time to do. Sometimes I recuperate and take a guilt-free nap. Sometimes I play in my fiber studio. Sometimes I get a chunk of work done on an ongoing project and feel virtuously productive.
Tonight, my gig canceled, and I cleaned a room that I haven't had time to clean for a while. So I feel virtuous, and I have a sparkly clean room now!
What do you do with this "found time"?
Do you decide to make some progress on that big project you've been working on? Or spend the day playing? Maybe you read that trashy novel you just bought. Do you rest, recuperate, and nap? Maybe you take the day to pamper yourself. Or possibly, you just fritter away the day with no plan or purpose and wonder where the day went at the end.
I love found time. It feels so liberating to have a vista of uncommitted, unscheduled time open up in front of me. I often feel positively giddy. (This is probably a sign that I am over-scheduled and over-committed, but holding that aside. . .) I feel that found time deserves special activities -- something unusual, something I wouldn't ordinarily do or that I haven't had time to do. Sometimes I recuperate and take a guilt-free nap. Sometimes I play in my fiber studio. Sometimes I get a chunk of work done on an ongoing project and feel virtuously productive.
Tonight, my gig canceled, and I cleaned a room that I haven't had time to clean for a while. So I feel virtuous, and I have a sparkly clean room now!
Friday, July 20, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Many pictures, no title . . .
I'm taking an online art quilting class at Quilt University, and our second assignment was to design a small quilt from a sketch through to completion, using at least one supply item we really liked, noting our responses to each step of the process.
I began with a rough sketch of eyes on plant stalks, with the idea that I would use the inkjet printer fabric sheets to print out the eyes.
Then I pulled together some fabrics -- the blue-green piece is one I hand-painted years ago, using salt crystals for additional texture.
I fused the purple fabric to fusible web and cut out some freeform stems. I hiked up to the computer to print out some of the facial illustrations from Old-Time Anatomical Illustrations by Dover onto Jacquard InkJetPrinting sheets (cotton, pre-cut and stabilized, so one can just use them directly in any inkjet printer). I printed out two full faces, and cut out the facial features from one. I thought it might be cool to have different facial features, not just eyes, almost as though the whole face was there in different pieces on the stalks.
But I didn't like this design. The features seemed too big, too faint, and too disparate in shape and size to work in the design. So I went back to my eyes idea, and printed out some different eye illustrations onto another fabric sheet (hey, it's just fabric!). I cut these out and laid them out on the stalks -- much better! They just need some flowers to make them complete, so I put fusible web on a few different pieces of red fabrics and cut out some freeform flower petals from one of them.
Then I played around with the shapes, moving them around to see what I liked best. I cut out a new flower petal shape to replace one I wasn't happy with. Here is the final design, all fused together and ready for quilting.
I hunted for a suitable backing fabric, layered and pin-basted the quiltlet, and chose threads and quilting designs. I ended up with a purple rayon thread for the stems, which so closely matches the fabric that the quilting is very subtle, in ovoid spiral patterns -- I like the pattern, which is new for me, and it contributes to the organic feel of the stems. The flower petals just got some light channel quilting in metallic red thread, and I did a bit of outline stitching in invisible thread around the eyes, just to secure them. The background is quilted in aqua metallic thread in spirals and curves -- I pondered doing more waves or ocean-type quilting, but decided to follow the lines of the stems rather than create additional design lines for water or waves.
You can see the quilting lines more clearly from the back of the piece:
Finally, I bound the piece with a narrow, dark blue-green binding.
Now all it needs is a title, a label, and a hanging mechanism. Any ideas for a title?
I began with a rough sketch of eyes on plant stalks, with the idea that I would use the inkjet printer fabric sheets to print out the eyes.
Then I pulled together some fabrics -- the blue-green piece is one I hand-painted years ago, using salt crystals for additional texture.
I fused the purple fabric to fusible web and cut out some freeform stems. I hiked up to the computer to print out some of the facial illustrations from Old-Time Anatomical Illustrations by Dover onto Jacquard InkJetPrinting sheets (cotton, pre-cut and stabilized, so one can just use them directly in any inkjet printer). I printed out two full faces, and cut out the facial features from one. I thought it might be cool to have different facial features, not just eyes, almost as though the whole face was there in different pieces on the stalks.
But I didn't like this design. The features seemed too big, too faint, and too disparate in shape and size to work in the design. So I went back to my eyes idea, and printed out some different eye illustrations onto another fabric sheet (hey, it's just fabric!). I cut these out and laid them out on the stalks -- much better! They just need some flowers to make them complete, so I put fusible web on a few different pieces of red fabrics and cut out some freeform flower petals from one of them.
Then I played around with the shapes, moving them around to see what I liked best. I cut out a new flower petal shape to replace one I wasn't happy with. Here is the final design, all fused together and ready for quilting.
I hunted for a suitable backing fabric, layered and pin-basted the quiltlet, and chose threads and quilting designs. I ended up with a purple rayon thread for the stems, which so closely matches the fabric that the quilting is very subtle, in ovoid spiral patterns -- I like the pattern, which is new for me, and it contributes to the organic feel of the stems. The flower petals just got some light channel quilting in metallic red thread, and I did a bit of outline stitching in invisible thread around the eyes, just to secure them. The background is quilted in aqua metallic thread in spirals and curves -- I pondered doing more waves or ocean-type quilting, but decided to follow the lines of the stems rather than create additional design lines for water or waves.
You can see the quilting lines more clearly from the back of the piece:
Finally, I bound the piece with a narrow, dark blue-green binding.
Now all it needs is a title, a label, and a hanging mechanism. Any ideas for a title?
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
I'm outstanding, and I have the certificate to prove it
One of my faculty colleagues nominated me for a Faculty Outstanding Service Award, and I found out today that I made the cut. Not only do I get the nice certificate and the extra line on my vita (very prestigious), but it comes with a cash award, too, which is always welcome. ;) Yippee!
Monday, May 7, 2007
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