Wet Dog

Well today I spent part of the afternoon bathing dogs. I didn't photograph silky, well because a wet weirmeraner and a dry weimeraner look pretty much the same, she's blue either way. I did get a snap of Angel, before and after. She's wet in the after shot. She doesn't know it yet but she's about a half hour away from a good combing/brushing. I'm waiting for her to dry off a bit more first. I also clipped her nails, she's very shy about this part of grooming, and washed her bedding and her dog kennel tray. John pulled the trays out of both kennels for me. Silky's tray is too big for me to handle by myself.

Exercise Hell

I went shopping, my first mistake, for exercise clothes. I've come to the conclusion that obesity in America is a myth that needs to be perpetuated so that we can have someone to discriminate against.

If it were truly at epidemic proportions as the news claims it is, then there would be more in the way of exercise clothes for fat people. That's right I used that word, FAT!!!

I'm fat, and I can't find a lick of exercise clothing that'll fit me, and by standards of fat I'm not as fat as some, but more fat than others. In order to wear the exercise gear I'm finding at Target, and the sports stores in town, I'd have to loose a hundred pounds, but by then I wouldn't be fat anymore, I'd be what is considered normal wieght for my height and age.

From what I looked at today only skinny people have the right to have comfortable clothes when exercising.

I'm wondering are these companies embarrassed by fat people?

Do they believe that only skinny people have the rights to feel good when exercising???

Personally I'm tired of wearing my jeans to work out in, it's still too cool in central Iowa to wear shorts outside.

So I'm proposing a campaign here: I want all the fat people who read this to write the various sports clothing producers and complain.

And I really mean complain.

Tell them you want exercise clothing in your size that fits correctly. Maybe there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic if we had incentives to lose weight, starting with proper fitting clothes and shoes! And if they don't see a problem then maybe it really is a myth after all and I'm sol on finding exercise clothes that fit.

Signed - your local fat quilter who doesn't want to be as fat anymore

Kitchen Cabinets Etc

Now that John has successfully installed counters in my wet studio I have full confidence that he can install cabinets and counters in our kitchen. I never doubted that he could do this, but it's nice to see that he is incredibly talented in this area. I'm sure he's not looking forward to the ensuing momumental task though.

I'll stay out of his way by focusing on the new zine, The Natural Surface, teaching my online classes, creating my artwork and filling orders for the business. Someday I have hopes to hire a personal assistant to help with the ever growing mountain of paperwork. Paperwork is a lot like rabbits, when you leave the room and come back there's more than when you had left.

Smart cookie that I am though I'm bringing a lot of talented people on board the new zine, I cannot do all of this by myself! It's insane to even try. I'm hoping we will have the website up and running by the end of the week. There I'll post all the info necessary for those who want to submit articles and artwork for the zine.

I'm off for a long winters nap.

Which Artist Should Paint My Portrait?

Who Should Paint You: Andy Warhol

You've got an interested edge that would be reflected in any portrait You don't need any fancy paint techniques to stand out from the crowd!

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

It's a good thing I like Warhol!

Purging Again

I'm pruging unwanted fabrics, fibers and other miscellaneous crap because it's like a noose around my neck. The truth is I'm probably never going to use those batiks I amassed, mostly because I'm visually exhausted from seeing them in everywhere. My friend Brenda is concerned that I may get bored. She may be right but I doubt it, the stuff is so buried that I never see it anyway. My thinking is it's time to focus and I've narrowed it down to surface design, art quilts, collage/bookmaking and weaving. Plus for kicks and giggles I make my own jewelry, knit and spin on the side. If anything I feel I could be even more focused than this.

I've come to the conclusion that all of this other stuff is keeping me from producing works of any real substance. And it just keeps me from producing period.

Life, Studios & Purging

The older I get the more I learn, and this past month I learned that loyalty means nothing. I also learned that I'm loyal to a fault, to my own detriment. No my husband isn't stepping out on me, sides he knows what I'd do to him if he did!

No this has to do with old friends and what I thought was a trusted ally, one who bitches about those who use others to get ahead in life, yet she had no problems using me. I told my husband that all bets are off, in business, friendship, etc... I've come to the conclusion that I owe these two women nothing.

I'm cleaning out my studio, I called my friend Brenda and asked her to come over after work. I have stuff for her to go through whatever she doesn't want I'm pitching tonight. I'm tired of this stuff owning me, I don't own it anymore. And that is the said reality of life, objects own people and more often than not it keeps them from moving forward in life. I don't want that to happen to me again. I can't say that it has never happened because here I sit in a house filled with stuff, more stuff than you could ever imagine, and it's dominating our lives.

As a friend from church said "it's all going to burn in hell anyway"! So true. My dad is famous for "have you ever seen a luggage rack on a hearst"? No I can't say that I ever have.

Spring cleaning, gotta love it. The house needs a deep cleaning I'm ready to get back into the gardens, do more pruning and ridding them of last years vegetation.

Birds & Gardens

Well I got the new bird feeder up, it holds a 2 pound suet block that has all sorts of seeds in it. I went ahead and bought the starling baffler so that the block hangs upside down. I'm doing this as I want to encourage woodpeckers and the like, not starlings. I filled the thistle feeder back up, spilling about a cups worth on the ground, I should have thistles like mad there this spring.

I spent the better part of today cleaning the garden on the eas side of the house. I cut back the grapevines until the trunks were about 2 foot tall with only a few braches on them. I cut all of the large brush down and will rake it really well tomorrow. I had about half of it raked when John and I decided we still had enough light to trim out our trees. I did both of the cherry trees, and the neighbors crab apple, and John did the Red Oak in the front yard, we both worked on the Amber Maple which looks ridiculous right now but will look great in a year or two.

I still ahve the front gardens to do, and the garden - especially my poor herb garden - on the west side of the house. The north side of the house is hopeless at this point, but I hope to remedy that and soon.

I'll take pictures tomorrow, I had hoped to trim out my clematis vines as well but that grape vine thing, WOW was that a lot of work. And we still have the blackberry bushes to cut back hard, they are taking over everything!

Studio Mess

Here's a shot of my rather messy studio.

Here's another shot for kicks and giggles.

Spring Cleaning

I'm doing a pre-emptive strike on spring cleaning. My studio and my house for that matter are absolute chaos right now. I just spent a half hour cleaning the north bedroom, which has hit critical mass at this point. I have a couple more hours of cleaning in this tiny room in order to actually use it as a guest room. that's not the purpose of cleaning it though, I need at least one room in my house that doesn't look as if a tornado went through it, and it helps to find all of my artwork and put it away properly. Plus I have a huge stash of fabrics in there as well.

I plan to clean out my studio closet, no more office supplies in this room, nada, el zippo, it's all going. I plan to use the smaller shelves, attached to the wall, to store my fat quarters, smaller yardage pieces and all of those containers of beads, threads, etc... This doesn't include what's already in my plastic cart units that will stay as is. Then I can put large pieces of yardage, quilt battings and the like on the big wooden, free standing, shelves.

Now to just figure out what to do with all of my fibers, wool fleeces, silk top, etc...

I've come to the realization that one of the reasons I'm so pissed off all of the time is I am not creating art anymore, and that is the very core of who God created me to be, an artist. The fact the artwork also helps to drive sales for the business is another perk.

So from now on, or at least until I can get a store front or a studio outside of my home, I'm scaling back the business, and am upping studio production time. The first key to upping studio time is to get all of the junk out of my studio and get my house in order, so I can actually function.

John is busily building me a screen printing table for my studio, under which will live lots of storage. This is good, it means that the stuff currently living on the south wall of my wet studio (I have two studios) can now go live under the table, and he can the put in a sixteen foot long counter top with shelves underneath, for more storage.

I'm seriously thinking of just getting warehouse space for the business and scrapping the whole storefront idea. Now to just find such a space.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

It's 4 below zero out right now, I'm not sure how that comes up in celcius, but it means it's cold!
The upside to this cold weather means I can defrost my freezers, put the stuff outside, in the frigid cold, in laundry baskets and not have to worry about it thawing. And I have freezers that need to be thawed.

I decided to splurg I turned the heat up in the house to about 65 ! Normally I don't like it so warm in here but when that mercury dipped below -6F last night I decided it was too cold, John was happy with the decision. I tend to be a lot warmer than he is.

I really need to get caught up on laundry, our winter clothes, which I still haven't drug out of storage, needs to be washed, and the summer/fall clothes put back away. I need to thin out our clothing selections as well, we both have a lot of stuff we are not wearing anymore. I will do that right after I get my orders filled and out the door.

If your cold and are looking for a really warm shirt I suggest the Alaska Shirt by Woolrich. It's a thick heavy dense wool shirt worthy of crawling up into and just melting away. Since we went to the local outdoor supply store and they supply warm clothing for the skinny aneorexic types I'm suggesting the Alaska shirt for those who are more svelt in stature. I don't need to look cute or sexy, just like I'm planning on keeping all of my appendages!

Hair

I had my hair cut today, as a perk I had Andrea curl my hair, it's really cute. My hair is getting pretty long, it hangs down the middle of my back now. It'd been over a year since I had had it cut. The last person who cut it cut off three inches, when I specified only one inch. Andrea took off a little over an inch but it's still really long, I needed the dead ends cut off anyway. Too bad it's such a hassle to curl my hair as I'd do it and more often but I just can never seem to get the back evenly curled, as in all of the hair on the back.

Today has been one of those days, where I'm one person screaming at me away from moving to the bowels of Alaska. Salmon and Seal fat sound really appealing right now, there's Baffin Island too and hey lots of lichens to do reasearch on.

My webstore is a nightmare. Actaully my current webhosts are a nightmare. So I'm changing hosts and am in the process of building a new webstore. I bought my own shopping cart this time, with my very own security certificate. Needless to say I had not planned to do this kind of work at this point in my life, yet here I am rebuilding the store. John's comment to me was "look at how fast you will become at building your own store". You know it's not like attempting to set a land record, this was not one of those things I wanted to become good at, ever.

Meanwhile my kitchen looks like a garbage dump exploded in there.

Another View

More Paint

I put on two layers of metallic paint, Jacquard Lumirie Paints. I blotted some of it off so you can still sorta see the base coat. I am almost done, need to finish lining the rest of the box with paper, and get the minature book done.

Another Layer of Paint

More paint, more paper, more glue, more sanding, and maybe some more paint and paper. Eventually the box will be done!

Cigar Box Swap

Here are some in progress pics of my cigar box for the swap I'm in, it was due last week. Needless to say I probably won't have it done until Monday - for mailing that is.

On Surviving Winter

Well unless you live in a cave somewhere with absolutely no contact what so ever with the outside world then you know that heating costs are going to go up this winter. So the question begs to be anwsered how do I keep warm. It's very simple:

Wear lots of clothes!

I keep our house at 58 F. That's right I keep it at 58 degrees F! In the morning I get up, around 6ish, to fix hubbys lunch make the coffee and let the dogs out to do their chores. In the winter I turn the heat up to 62 F and let it run one full cycle. I then turn it back down to 58 F and don't turn it back up until 5 or 6 in the evening. I let it run one full cycle again and turn it down. Sometimes we will turn it up before we go to bed one more time. I personally cna't sleep if it's warmer than 62 F in the house. My house is heavily insulated with woolrock, an insulation material that was used around the turn of the previous century. Woolrock maintains it's temperatures beautifully. I can go several days, w/o running the furnace before the house temp hits 50 F, ask me how I know and it wasn't our choice either.

So by now you either think I'm nuts, full of it, or both. I'm only nuts. I'm also cheap (frugal). And I really hate getting sick, warm buildings in the winter breed disease.

So how do you keep warm Kimberly - we have to ask???

Wool, wool is our best friend. We both wear turtle necks or long sleeve tee shirts, wool shirts or wool sweaters. When it's warmer out we wear cotton long sleeve shirts, flannel or heavy cotton twill, over our tees. We wear lots of wool socks, and I've been known to wear a wool hat indoors on occassion. My head is usually cold but the rest of me is hot. I wear wool socks starting now until spring thaw, I buy them and I also knit them myself.

As for staying warm at night, flannel sheets, wool blankets, thick heavy comforters - get the picture. If you wanna stay warm then cover up!

I heard one source state that the recommeneded lowering of the furnace temp be to 68 F, that's sweltering! Personally I don't take that as a serious drop that would amount to any type of savings in fuel oil and natural gas. 62 F is a serious drop and should create a serious savings. But hey I don't make the rules so what do I know right! I can say this it's only been in the last 50 years or so that we've had these ridiculously high indoor temps during the winter. Prior to that people froze their arses off in the winter.

Old towel

Here's an old towel, that I bought in a box with some old linens, and now that I think about it I should go through that box, I think there's some aprons in there too. The box had old lace, linen napkins and lots of damask table clothes and dinner napkins.

I really like the chicken tracks red stitching around the edge of this towel. It has a lot of stains, foxing, and rust spots on the piece. Overall the stitching is quite fine on a piece that is designated to the kitchen.

Those are silk ladies hankies you see off to the side.

Pink Apron

I"m not sure which style this apron falls under but I bought it because it just screamed "adorable". The pink umbrella just spoke to me I guess. I've been looking for the rest of my aprons, I have lots of them, just not sure where I put them. One of htem, that I shredded, is still hanging in the closet. I should take a picture of that one. It's one of those impossible sheer numbers. I suppose an apron such as that would have been worn on New Years Eve or on ones anniversary.