One month until Copper book retreat!

If you are like me you have been feeling that low grade stress building for months. I know I could really use a little creative get away. Want to spend a weekend in the woodlands of Wisconsin making copper and canvas mixed media books with me? The weekend of August 8-9, I will be sharing my process for making these books at Whispering Woodlands in Verona, WI, just outside of Madison.

Besides having a fun, relaxing weekend doing collage (or bricolage), painting, working with fabric transfers and learning to emboss and color copper metal, you will also get a Creative Metal Tool kit courtesy of Walnut Hollow.

So come spend the weekend sharing stories, laughs, ideas and nurture your creative spirit, I would love to see you there.

Artomatic Deinstallation

All went well at Artomatic last night. I probably did more than I should have, but it took less than an hour. The hardest part was removing the vinyl letters. It is good to have my "children" home and now the process of going through the guestbook begins.

Most of the comments were positive, a few beautiful poems, a criticism, which is well taken, and a few bizarre things (including the aforementioned poorly drawn male genitalia, which apparently, was inflicted upon other artists as well.) The pornographic sketch also came with this comment:

"Eliminate the infantile expressions of artistc resonance in your work!"..spelled like that, in all caps. Anyone care to translate?

OOHH! And a cool drawing:

Earthlink Users BEWARE!

We had Earthlink for 2 years when we lived in Los Angeles, I canceled service in November 2005 when I found that we needed to use Comcast for internet here. In March 2006 I recieved a bill that we owed $123, I told them I had canceled our service and they said they didn't have a record of that. Giving the benefit of the doubt that maybe I had overlooked that in all the craziness of the move paid them with my debit card and cancelled the service. I just took a close look at my bank statement yesterday and saw a chage for $39.95 from Earthlink using the debit card. They had attached my debit card to an account that was closed and have been charging me for 3 1/2 years!

I called Earthlink and they said they had no record of cancelling service and they could not return my money unless I had a confirmation number. Infuriated I hung up thinking I had written the number in a notebook I couldn't find. Later I went and checked our files, pulled out the folder for Earthlink and found that I had written the confimation number on the bill that had come in 2006 and I also saw a second confirmation number on notes from when we had moved in 2005.

I called Earthlink back, which of course took 20 minutes on hold with a direct line to India. I gave them the confirmation number from 2006 and then 2005 and of course neither one were in their system! I would need to fax my documents to some Earthlink phone number. Since it was my handwritten notes, I couldn't imagine they would give that any validity it seemed like just another tactic to stall things. When I talked to the supervisor he told me that I needed to have taken action with in 30 days of cancellation to get my money back!

So what good is a confirmation number when the company does not honor it? They have literally been stealing money for 3 1/2 years by attaching a card number to an account on the day that I had cancelled service the second time. My only guarantee of stopping them now is to change my card number.

Artomatic Closing

Tonight is deinstallation at Artomatic. I can't believe it is over! I don't know how helpful I can be to Craig who will probably have to do it all because of this neck and shoulder issue. I am going to make some calls about deep tissue massage tomorrow. At this point I am ready to try anything. Thanks to all for well wishes and great advice. Today has been challenging. I have a studio full of work calling to me. I can't even read because holding me arms in front of me aggravates, so lots of lying down staring at the ceiling........wasting time! Depending on how things are on Monday, I will be back at the easel.

Update

Today has been a bit difficult because I am still having trouble with my shoulders and neck. I am at a place now where I may need to take extended time away from painting, which I cannot afford to do.
I managed a few hours today, though, on three paintings, so, all is not lot yet.

On a humorous note, Bravo TV is having auditions for a new reality show staring "emerging and mid-carer artists" (whatever that means.) That should be a complete train wreck. This will solidify in the minds of Americans every myth and stereotype about artists that ever existed. We all know these reality shows choose personality extremes for this stuff......

Knitting Lace

As the summer warms up, I have set aside my cable sweater project and pulled out some lace weight yarn to knit. I have 3 skeins of Knitpicks Shadow in Jewels that has been sitting in one of my yarn baskets. Things have been pretty stressful and I decided I needed something that would be very relaxing and simple to knit. So I consulted one of my favorite reference books; A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

I came across Ostrich Plumes, a variation on feather and fan, which is a very easy lace pattern, and thought that would be just the right amount of interesting design and easy to memorize pattern.
Being a visual person, I prefer working from charts than reading patterns, so I made a chart from the written directions on this chart generator. Seeing the pattern graphically helps me remember the pattern so much better.Before starting my shawl, I knit and blocked three samples to see what size needles I wanted to use for my lace pattern. These three samples in reality are different sizes, the blue one being the smallest ( 6" x 7"), it was knit on size 5 needles and makes a nice solid pattern. The second sample was knit from the same yarn (but in a different color) with two strands of yarn on size 8 needles. It finished just a little taller and about an inch wider than the first swatch, it was heavier weight and had lost the nice drape that my first sample had. The last sample was knit single strand on size 8 needles, after blocking it was 7" x 9", it has nice drape but the design felt a little too open, loosing some of the pattern definition.
I settled on size 7 needles with 2 and a half repeats of the pattern from the book. I figure I will just keep knitting until I run out of yarn or until it reaches 60 or 70 inches.

Today's Painting on the easel

It has been at least nine since I have painted a self portrait. I have never done one in oil so, I must have been is a brave head space today. Really fun, really challenging. I have a lot of ideas about where to take this. I did the initial blocking in and some tightening today, but the paint needs to set a bit, so time to lay off.