Judy – Page 23 – Dear Liza

Danish Travel Journal

Dear Liza,

Yep, there is a new travel journal, and it’s heading your way! I will be bringing it this week when Grandpa Nelson and I visit you in Denmark.

As usual, I started with a nice thick mixed media spiral bound sketchbook. Their paper is good for writing, collage, and even watercolors, if you don’t get too wet.

My front cover is frenetic and busy, like I am feeling about the trip. I used a weird polar map projection and a compass rose to show travel, a flag and color scheme for Denmark, and words to tell about the excitement of anticipation.

Since most of our travel once we get to Denmark will be by car, my inside cover shows a road trip. The background started as a celestial map, and you can still see some of wording under the grey acrylic. I wanted a grey and red color scheme, and found all those little figures in a magazine ad for Target. Posca marker let me write in WHITE.

Since the back cover represents the end of the journey, it has words like ‘exhausted’ and ‘I had an enormous breakfast’ as well as things I hope to see. And just because I had them, I included the Danish national anthem in Danish and English.

Since every trip is different, every travel journal is different, and I can’t promise anything special. But I’ll show you what I come up with. Heck, you’ll probably see some of what I’m drawing while I’m drawing it.

And I will like that very much.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Slow Stitching for the Adventure

Dear Liza,

Since I have starting drawing, painting, sewing, and generally crafting every day, I have decided that just SITTING on my long flight to Denmark this summer would be a real waste of creative time.

I started up hunting up new hand-sewing ideas and found videos on “Slow Stitching” which looked easy enough to do on a plane, but new and interesting enough to keep my brain busy.

The process is a sort of fabric collage, and some of the stitching is like the Kawandi stitching I learned a few years ago.

First, I chose my colors, which Auntie Bridgett calls “The Scooby-Doo Palette”. I made a sandwich of old sheeting, felt, and my purple background for a nice thick surface to work on.

I watched YouTubers Jo Peaceofpi and Daniela Mellen and got directions and inspiration, and am working on something that I hope, by the end of our trip, will be a gift for you. The piece is about 7 inches wide and 20 inches long.

I cut the colors into rectangles and starting laying them down, not being too fussy, but looking for a good balance. Some slow stitch pieces completely cover their background piece, and others let it show between the patches. For this one, I am going to let it show. I pinned, then basted, the pieces so they would stay where I put them.

I used some embroidery floss to stitch around the edges of each patch. These will all get done before the running stitches get put in. And yes, in Slow stitching, the edges are left raw. It will be fun to see how it turns out.

Then I took my first few rows of stitching, to make sure I knew what I was doing and liked how they looked. They looked like they were supposed to. Hooray!

I collected some buttons, bits of fabric, needles and embroidery floss, and little school scissors into a traveling pouch for the trip, and rolled up the piece into a nice-sized scroll.

Now I can put the whole thing away in my carry-on bag to be taken out somewhere over Canada! I feel like I am giving myself a present with a “Do Not Open Before Take-off” sign on it.

My brain is so happy! See you soon!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Practice Slow Stitching

Dear Liza,

I love learning new things, and this week I have been all about Slow Stiching. This is a new name for combining old hand sewing techniques like embroidery and quilting, and I am loving it.

I have got a project set up to do on my flight to Denmark, but I want to make sure I know the ins and outs before I start it at 30,000 feet.

So I am practicing! I am making a 30 inch long, 3 inch wide strip, quilted, appliquéd and embroidered. I am not sure what I will use it for, but something will come to me. Wall decoration? Head band? Ridiculously long book mark?

Anyway, I am enjoying the act of embroidering, playing with colors and patterns, and feeling the textures grow under my fingers. There may also be buttons, beads, and other goodies as I go along.

I am learning how this sort of project works. A few things I have learned:

*** Keep about half an inch of overlap so there are no gaps between patches.

*** Use a single strand of thread of a light color to sew patches down if you plan on adding more layers of stitching, so it doesn’t distract from the patch.

This is how it is looking so far, on the front….

And on the back.

Maybe I’ll bring this one along with me, and we’ll figure out what to do with it!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Only in Portland

Dear Liza,

I am looking forward to seeing things that can only be found in Denmark when I visit you next week! Here are some things that are unique to Portland.

This perfectly repurposed broken cherub statue, now mounted in a tall bush and oddly beautiful, makes me smile on the way to the market.

This skeleton in a tree, who seems to be haunting the bird feeder, is veeeery patient.

This cluttered collection of stickers on a “no pedestrian crossing” sign (where we crossed anyway). The center one says, in French, “This is not a sticker.”

And on the power pole just outside Books with Pictures, these delightful decorations make the world a little “Portlandier”.

I grant you, these bits of Portland weirdness are not historic like your castles or mechanical marvels like your giant wind turbines, but I like them a lot, anyway.

See you soon, sweetie!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update, June 2024

Dear Liza,

Wouldn’t you know it, just as I am coming to visit you for a few weeks, my garden is getting into high gear! Fortunately, Auntie Bridgett will be staying in town, so she can water and harvest.

The 24 lettuce starts I out in have all done well, giving us enough lettuce to have big salads every day. I only pick a few leaves from each plant every few days, so they just keep making more!

The Black Beauty zucchini plants are coming up, and may be bearing baby Zukes by the time I get back.

Our three cherry tomato plants, (Chocolate Cherry, Sweet Millions and Isis Candy) have doubled in size, and the Chocolate Cherry has three blossoms!

Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are two feet high and very fat and bunchy. They are going to give us some big blooms later in the summer.

And, of course, the lavender is big and blooming, smelling fabulous, and trying to take over the joint.

I hope Auntie Bridgett will enjoy watching the garden grow as much as I do, and share our harvest with our lovely neighbors!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Books with Pictures Comic Con Part 2

Dear Liza,

Besides family, friends, and artist tables at the Books with Pictures Comic Con, there were all sorts of activities. The Garden Stage (in the beautiful garden Katie has been nurturing for a few years) was home to a cosplay contest for kids and adults.

Elias, a very young Jedi, won the kid’s division. He had forgotten his light saber at home, so Katie gave him one of hers, made for Free Comic Book Day from a pool noodle. He was delighted!

There was a cartooning duel, with pairs of artists trying to out-think and out-draw each other. The first contest had a random doodle as the prompt, which led to these awesome drawings….

A windsurfing puffin and a coffee drinking moose.

Douglas Wolk hosted a Trivia contest with really hard questions! Besides being an author of books about comics (“All the Marvels” is his latest), he also teaches classes about them. These were really interesting questions, like “Which American comic strip has run since 1914 and only had three artists?” I’ll let you look up the answer, if you like.

There were also discussions and interviews, featuring Kelly Sue Deconnick, Leela Cormac, and Carl Sciacchitano.

The last act of the day was Lizzy Kirby, who plays guitar and sings lovely songs about love and cats. She sang my favorite, with the catchy chorus of “Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow.”

To make sure we had ann exciting day, between all the art, contests, and interviews, we had a few spats of strong winds that blew in rain and hail and tried to carry away the inventory!

Tents rattled, comics went flying, and folks scrambled to hang onto their banners. Each storm lasted about ten minutes, then we would have sparkling sun for an hour or so.

It was very …. Let’s say entertaining. More tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Books with Pictures Comic Con Part 1

Dear Liza,

This past weekend was the third BWiPCon, an outdoor comic convention held down at Auntie Katie’s book shop. It was amazing!

The event was bigger this year, with the street closed for a whole long block and the garden being used for performances, interviews, and contests. Fifty vendors sold books, art, jewelry, and all sorts of beautiful, cute, and delightfully odd stuff.

Auntie Bridgett had her Auntie Beeswax booth, of course, and met lots of folks who read her comic in The Willamette Week newspaper.

We helped with set up and got to meet a ‘new’ cousin! Grandpa Nelson’s Aunt Bonnie had seven kids, and her eldest was George. George’s son, who goes by D, came up to help with the con. He worked like crazy!

D set up a dozen tents, carried anything that needed carrying, cleared gutters, and set up the stage. I was so happy to meet him and grateful for his hard work on the busy day.

Auntie Katie worked hard, too, before, during and after the event. Her volunteers were so well organized that the vendors felt well-cared for and appreciated.

Andrea Gilroy, Katie’s business partner at Books with Pictures in Eugene, came up to help, and it was good to see her and Katie having a nice visit. Good friends can sure help lighten the load.

I will tell you more about BWiPcon tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Congratulations, Jasper!

Dear Liza,

Cousin Jasper has graduated the eighth grade! I am so proud of him. I am also amazed at how quickly he has gone from quiet, unsure little dude to amazing young-man-to-be.

His promotion ceremony at Winterhaven (called Winterhaven at Historic Brooklyn School) was just right. It was a mix of tradition, like Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance”, and quirkiness, in that we all hummed the tune as the graduates entered. Teachers told stories, sang, and passed on words of wisdom.

Finally, it was time to graduate. Each student took their turn to get their certificate, shake the principal’s hand, and announce their name and the high school they would be attending. Most of the students hurried through or mumbled, but Jasper stood tall and practically shouted, “My name is Jasper Louis Proctor and I’m going to Benson Polytechnic High School!” I practically exploded with pride.

After cake and conversation in the main hallway, there were some unexpected shenanigans outside. Seeing some fellow eighth graders climbing the sign, Jasper wanted to, as well.

It was a struggle, but he kept at it and got to the top, and was rightly proud of himself. Kestrel helped, of course.

After all the excitement, we had a blessedly quiet dinner at Kanji down on Division, hugged, and said our goodbyes. I am so happy to be able to be here for all the Grandma bits!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Fabric Art Piece

Dear Liza,

I am working on a new kind of art with Ruthie Inman. It involves a background field of fabric, bits of fabric, and a glue medium. I am totally learning as we go along.

I decided to use the silk strips I got from a garage sale, and chose colors for a landscape at sunset. But how they were going to be applied was a mystery.

As I chatted with Ruthie and Vimi, I started guessing what to do next, laying down strips (with no glue yet!) in a landscape sort of arrangement.

But as we talked, it became clear that we should be starting with the background… so my landscape bits got pulled up and I started on the sky. I layered blues, lavenders and purples, with a few sparkly strips leftover from my jellyfish hat. I liked it, so I started gluing them down. It was goopy, but had promise.

I love that this is a collage, and so there will be lots of layers, with the overlapping bits being the most interesting. I kept working even when our group time was over.

I worked my sky down to where my ground will start, and then stopped to get guidance from Ruthie. I sent her photos and she said, “keep going!” So I did.

I’ll keep you posted on what happens next!

Love,

Grandma Judy

After the Impressionists

Dear Liza,

Our eyes were pretty full of beauty as we left the French Moderns exhibit at PAM, but we weren’t done looking yet.

Since the Museum is undergoing an enormous remodel, most of it is just not available, but there was quite a bit of young-people noise coming from the first floor exhibit called “Future Now”.

This is an oddly fascinating show of sneakers… yes, athletic shoes. Old and new, functional and artsy, wearable and not-so-wearable. It was interesting, but there were several happy, totally involved school groups there, all discussing, drawing and designing. We decided we’d come back and see the shoes some other time, when the crowds had gone.

We visited the newly-relocated gift shop, which, as always, is filled with beautiful things. They were having a sale of postcards, and we got 30 for just $3.00! They will be useful for all sorts of artsy schemes.

And, of course, no trip to PAM is complete without lunch at Umbria, just a block towards the river. Enjoying delicious quiche, panini sandwiches, coffee and juice while watching the world go by on bike, foot and skateboard, is just about the best thing ever.

A short walk got us to the bus stop to head home. Roses in the City Hall courtyard made sure we had lots to look at while we waited.

Summer in Portland. Nothing like it.

Love,

Grandma Judy