Eating (book) club

I haven't written about book club lately, but we had a good meeting last night. We even talked about the book for more than a few minutes, maybe ten. It was "Killing Floor," the first in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. It was way too violent, but I did get caught up in it.

Beth picked a Mexican theme, so we started with Margaritas ... with frozen cherries if you wanted!

For an app, there was tuna with jalapeño and avocado in tortilla cups. Delicious!

We had so many Mexican dishes that I can't remember them all. I made a Mexican street corn salad and there were also quesadillas, enchilada casserole, corn and black bean salad, Mexican rice, flautas, raw veggies for dipping and all the traditional Mexican toppings.

It was Meegan's birthday and Beth made a tasty blackberry crisp, served with vanilla ice cream, instead of a cake.

Not that this happened at book club, but sometimes I do this.

Have a colorful day

She's done!

I finished my latest photo/fabric piece, featuring my friend Linda looking at the saguaros. It will be wrapped around a 16x20 stretched canvas, but I'm going to hold off on stapling it just in case I decide to work on it a little more. But I think I'm done. 

My last step was to add bronze beads around the sun. That was after finishing outlining the frame with a back stitch.

I think I'll continue the sun hat theme and use this photo for my next piece. It's from a hike in April 2021 with the Shady Ladies.

After I finished, I went outside to do a little yard work because it was overcast and only in the 80s this morning. All of a sudden I felt a few little drops of rain on my back! We didn't get much -- just what you see below. My little lady is doing a rain dance for more because the desert is parched this summer.

Here's the sunset colors a few nights ago over Pusch Ridge by my neighborhood. Pretty pink clouds in the east.

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Stitching, stitching

I had the perfect rustic beads to sew on my latest piece, but I had to space them out to fill all four sides. I finished with one extra -- that was close!

But it still needed something, so I did a backstitch along the inner border.

Still needed something, so now I'm backstitching around the outer border as well and I'm pretty pleased with it. I love the meditative stitching, so I'm in no hurry to finish it.

Over the weekend I went on a little hike on Mt. Lemmon at 9,000 feet to escape the heat in the desert below. That's a fire lookout, but I don't think it's being used. It was over 100 all week in Tucson, but two days ago we finally had a good monsoon storm and now the highs are "only" in the 90s. 

I like this quote -- it takes the pressure off of feeling that I have to do something monumental or meaningful or important every day. Sometimes the best I can do is stitch and scroll Instagram and give in to a third cup of coffee. And the parting shot is my little Juniper meeting a neighborhood cat.

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Aging like sea glass

A friend asked me about boro stitching today and I referred her to a post I had written about it in 2019. The post included this poem by Bernadette Noll, and I thought it was worth revisiting.

My mother in high school and now 

at 93, beautiful as ever.

I Want to Age Like Sea Glass

by Bernadette Noll

I want to age like sea glass,

Smoothed by tides, not broken.

I want the currents of life to toss me around,

shake me up and leave me feeling

washed clean.

My daughter and granddaughter,

still early in their journeys.

I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass --

not weak, but supple.

I want to ride the waves,

go with the flow,

feel the impact of the

surging tides rolling in and out.

With my mom and youngest sister, 

rolling along.

When I am thrown against the shore

and caught between the rocks and a hard place,

I want to rest there until I can find

the strength to do what is next.

Not stuck -- just waiting, pondering,

feeling what it feels like to pause.

And when I am ready,

I will catch a wave and let it carry me

along to the next place

that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion

by an unsuspecting soul and carried along --

just for the connection,

just for the sake of appreciation and wonder.

And with each encounter,

new possibilities of collaboration

are presented, and new ideas born.

Mom and my middle sister, seven years ago.

I want to age like sea glass

so that when people see

the old woman I'll become,

they'll embrace all that I am.

They'll marvel at my exquisite nature,

hold me gently in their hands,

and be awed by my well-earned patina.

Neither flashy nor dull,

just the right luster.

And they'll wonder, if just for a second,

what it is exactly I am made of

and how I got to be in this very here and now.

And we'll both feel lucky to realize, once again,

that we have landed in that perfectly right place

at that perfectly right time.

Me at 69, silvered hair,

wrinkles, uneven teeth,

tumbling along.

I want to age like sea glass.

I want to enjoy the journey

and let my preciousness be,

not in spite of the impacts of life,

but because of them.

Me, smiling although I'm in a creative rut, haven't ditched the extra weight and still haven't found a romantic partner. Just tumbling along, surfing, going under now and then but always coming back up. Who knows what tomorrow will bring!

And in case you're wondering about boro stitching, here are three posts that I did about it:

boro-stitching-and-aging-like-sea-glass.html

japanese-boro-jackets-in-shibori-dragon.html

snippets.html

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A new sewing project

Yesterday I started my first art project since February, when my dad got sick and I spent the next four months shuttling back and forth between Tucson and LA. Now, with my mom safely settled in her senior care home I can finally focus on my art.

It started with a photograph that I took of my friend Linda when she visited a few years ago. We were at the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum, an amazing place. I printed the photo on a piece of 8x10 silk, above ...

... and decided it would go with this piece of fabric that I painted last summer.

The silk is textured, which gives the photo a painterly quality. It's from a sampler pack of fabric ready to print on that I bought -- I am not exaggerating -- about 20 years ago. It takes me awhile to embrace new things! 

Here it is on the fabric (different lighting conditions on the two photos) ...

... and framed with some more of my painted fabric.

I tried covering some of the orange with extra frame fabric, but I don't think that works.

After I do some embroidery and maybe beading on it I'll stretch it around a 16x20 frame like the other pieces I've done, above. I do think I have to tone down that orange, though. Maybe I'll sponge another color on top, or stamp some patterns.

It's so darn hot lately -- over 100 -- that I've switched from regular coffee to iced coffee in the mornings. And if I'm not outside by 6 AM it's too hot to walk.

To close with some love, here's a picture that my daughter-in-law, Rachel, just sent of her with Keith on their 11-year wedding anniversary vacation to Lake Michigan! Here's the link to their wedding blog post: wedding-on-farm.html

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1971 sewing and other tidbits

 

In a desperate stretch to blog about something sewing related (I haven't sewed in months), I found some old photos at my parents' house featuring clothes that I made 54 years ago!!!

This is my dad in 1971 wearing flannel pajamas that I made for him for Christmas. The craziest thing is that when I was going through his clothes after he passed in April I found them in his bottom dresser drawer! They appear to have held up pretty well over half a century.

I also found this photo of me from the same time period wearing a shiny, stretchy minidress that I made to wear to my high school's Christmas dance. 

In the same pile of photos I found this one of my daughter when she was about the same age as I was in my minidress, and it was the day of her junior prom. I convinced her to have her hair and makeup done, which she resisted with all of her might. I took this photo before she washed it all away before the prom. 

Twenty-five years later, here she is with her own little girl who may or may not go to her school dances.

I miss little Juniper SO MUCH, but I'm going up to Spokane to visit her in August.

Some of Julia's Instagram posts about Juniper. She likes to wear the bucket on her head.

On my last visit to my parents' house my sister showed me a beach near their home that I never knew about in 40 years of visiting! It's only accessible by a long walk down the cliffs, and it's beautiful and wild.

Have a colorful day