Rayen

Although I'm finished with spring cleaning for the year, I decided to redo the walls in my home office, and hang up some new pieces. This is fun, and since I haven't changed the art on the walls in a couple of years I had a lot of new pieces to display. My art quilts and totes look nice, and although they're a bit unconventional, they make me happy -- and isn't that the point with a creative space?

The other day I was making ziti for my nephew (it's his most requested dinner) and prepping garlic toast and cucumbers on the side and in general cooking as usual when I turned on the oven to preheat while I was walking the dogs. Yes, I still multitask. Only when I got home from walking the first dog the oven was still preheating. I slid the ziti in the oven and walked the other dog, but when I got home the oven was still preheating. It wasn't coming up to temperature; in fact it barely got above 250F (we have a temp measuring gun that my guy used to confirm this.) I cook every day, and I use my stove every single day, so this was mildly distressing to me. I also take good care of the appliances and regularly clean them, so it wasn't from neglect. I finished dinner in the microwave (ziti turned out fine) and air fryer (ditto on the garlic toast) and let the oven cool enough for my guy to check the heating elements. The broiler was fine, but the baking element brok...

With much careful and strategic sewing I've applied all the crazy quilted fragments on the black canvas foundation for May's tote. I had to go very slowly because the pieces are literally shredding, shedding and splitting apart from being hand sewn to the backings. Not unusual for 126 year old quilt bits, but a bit hair raising. I intended to add some beading and trims to the pieces, but now I'm rethinking that. These fragments won't take much more handling without self-destructing, and the whole point of using them on a tote was preservation. I might do a bit of beading on one piece and see how it goes. Anyway, stay tuned to the blog to see how it works out.

Learning to Love is a Japanese romantic drama series that I probably shouldn't have watched, as I'm not a fan of the Japanese version of lounge lizards. Also, an average-looking teacher who is thirty-five falling for said extremely dramatic-looking lounge lizard when he's twenty-three (even thought he has a learning disability) seems like a stretch. Still, I wanted to see if they could pull it off, and for the most part they did. Ogawa Manami (Kimura Fumino) a high school teacher who still lives at home and is being pressured to get married by her overbearing father and dishrag of a mother, meets Kaoru (Murakami Raul Maito), a 23-year-old nightclub host who dropped out of school and cannot functionally read or write. This is at first to save one of her students from Kaoru's clutches, but the two gradually become friends and Manami tries to teach him how to read and write so he can improve his life and get out of the host business. It goes about how you'd exp...

One of my creative pleasures is using a card deck for writing inspiration. Back in the day I reviewed quite a few that were created for just such a purpose, and even gave a talk about how to use them to get ideas for stories at a conference. I was intrigued when I saw the In Dreams storytelling card deck by Jamie Thul and Mike Berg on Amazon, especially as it was billed as "slightly surreal". I decided to invest in a deck to see how it worked. The deck comes in a gorgeous case, and has a little booklet of instructions on how to use the cards. There are 36 prompt cards and 18 event cards. You draw a total of eight prompt cards to determine the main character of your idea, creating them out of the prompts in the booklet and on the prompt cards. My character draw produced this: "I am from far away, and am lost, and before this dream ends I must return to another dreamer." You then draw up to 2 to 4 prompt cards to generate an encounter, which is a...

Because I have an urge to paint again I put in a bid on this lot of art supplies. Alas, I was quickly outbid and the lot went to the winner for $34.00. This 20 journal lot I bid on was to cover and make gifts. In the last few hours another bid came in, and they got it for $11.00. This little quilt has the most charming primitive applique work, and I would have loved to add it to my collection. Unfortunately I was quickly outbid, and war ensued, and the winner got it for a whopping $76.00. As always not winning any of the lots isn't a problem; I'd rather stick to my maximum than overpay. There's always a next time, too.