Uncategorized – Page 19

Garden Update, August 2024

Dear Liza,

We are getting near the end of summer, but our weather is still warm and I’m not ready to give up my free salads yet, so we picked up 12 new starts at the Portland Nursery and put them in a week ago.

You can see them here, the short new ones among the tall, spindly older ones.

For now, I am only harvesting from the old ones, and pulling them out when they have done all they can do. In a week or so, the new ones will be ready.

In the meantime, I have another zucchini (this makes five, I think) almost ready to come home and get pan fried with lots of garlic and topped with parmesean.

The tomatoes have started bearing, turning red, and generally running amok. I keep having to re-tie their supports and say encouraging things. The neighbors are enjoying second hand fruit!

And, of course, Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, and getting their second wind. We now have about a dozen blooms and buds.

School is starting next week, but summer isn’t over yet!

Love,

Grandma Judy

New Ruthie Project

Dear Liza,

Ruthie Inman has done it again! She has gotten me started on a mixed media project that has so many stages, layers and materials, I can’t even see where it might end up.

Here’s what I started with: three colors of acrylic paint, a canvas board, some tissue paper and tule fabric, and some beads. I added other materials as I thought of them.

My piece is inspired by some Ruthie showed us on line; rich, layered, abstractly leafy backgrounds with something that may be a dragonfly on it.

I wanted some texture under the color, so I glued some thin cardboard shapes down, then some splotchy purple paint, then tissue paper cut in sort-of leafy shapes, which got purposely crinkled. I found some tule from my jellyfish costume and stuck that down, too.

It was a good start, but seemed too pale. I mixed some dark blue in with the purple and dabbed.

No No NO!!!

Way too dark. So I pulled out the white and dabbed some more, just here and there, because I want to it feel like shadowy leafy shapes.

At this point, our class time was over and my piece needed some serious dry time. I’ll think about what it needs, and what I could make the next layers out of, between now and our next class.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Early Fall?

Dear Liza,

We have had a very hot summer here in Portland, and now it seems that Fall is racing towards us!

While some of our linden trees are still blooming (and smelling amazing), other trees have decided to start heading into Fall.

Was the summer too hot for them? Too dry? Or maybe the trees know something we don’t about what this winter will bring.

I’m playing it safe. Alongside my iced tea in the pantry, I will stow some makings for chili. Don’t want to get caught unawares.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Art at Gearhart

Dear Liza,

While we were on the Oregon Coast, we stayed at McMenamin’s Gearhart hotel. We have visited it before, but now we got to really explore.

As with all McMenamin’s venues, the art and ambiance are wonderful. They have a sizable art department that creates wonderful “surreal histories”, as well as preserving actual historic posters. The blurring of factual and mythical history is delicious.

Since Gearhart is a golf course, all the artwork is golf themed. I don’t care much for golf, and it is one of Auntie Bridgett’s LEAST favorite sports, but the art was fun, anyway.

It told of the agony of missed shots and the joy of fresh air and competition. There were so many styles on display, we seemed to travel from religious relics to 1920 flappers to Disney-esque woodland creatures by turning a corner.

There was even a ‘secret room’ painted in wonderfully eerie black-light paints.

We spent a LOT of time looking at art, as well as people watching, fire pit sitting, and beach walking.

And then, after a few days, we were back home, refreshed and cool.

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Break From the Heat

Dear Liza,

It has been getting really hot in Portland lately, so we decided to take a break. We made reservations and headed for the cool, foggy Oregon coast!

A couple of long walks along Cannon Beach got us relaxed and re-hydrated. It was so cool and beautiful. Windy, too!

Bridgett’s hair blew like crazy, and I ended up chasing my hat for a long time as it tumbled, just like Claes Oldenburg’s “Hat in Three Stages of Landing.”

The fog made everything mysterious and delightfully murky. On an early morning walk, I heard the breakers half a mile before I saw them.

Needless to say, I enjoyed myself!

I’ll tell you all about where we stayed tomorrow.

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Little Bit of This….

Dear Liza,

It was my intention to be very methodical about this quilt. First the land forms, then the cities, then the rivers, and so on. But that wasn’t working for me.

Embroidering the names of the cities is extremely fiddley, and hard to do for very long without getting a little crazy. There was lots of squinting and mumbling.

So I started alternating. A few cities, then some easy, sweeping lines on the mountains, then a few more cities. Then start on the Loire!

Then a walk in the park to stay balanced and happy.

Gotta stay happy, after all.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Cities in Cursive

Dear Liza,

I love doing embroidery. It can be restful and contemplative, just making stitch after stitch and feeling a picture grow under my fingers. But sometimes I wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew.

My French map quilt needs the city names, and these pieces of paper aren’t going to do the trick. The names need to be stitched. All 27 of them!

So I practiced a bit, and then wrote, in pencil, each name on the map. You need to squint a bit to see them, I’m afraid.

Then came the stitching.

I used the embroidery hoop because the fabric felt floppy and it gave me more control, and it worked pretty well.

Once the name was embroidered, I used a small blanket stitch to make sure the city “dots” stayed in place.

I’m still working on this, but making progress. Moving Paris and some other cities slowed me down a bit.

I ask your patience, and my own, as well. Breathe and stitch, Judy. Breathe and stitch.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Kestrel’s Art

Dear Liza,

You know that your cousin Kestrel has always been interested in arts and crafts.

Since she was young, she has been designing costumes and clothes for dolls (and herself).

She’s always had a creative bent and a fine eye for drawing. And since she enrolled in da Vinci Arts Middle School, her talents have grown! This year, she made her jellyfish hat for SOAK.

She has had a table at Auntie Katie’s Books with Pictures ComicCon, where she gave people temporary tattoos.

And to share her love of arts and crafts, she had a booth at this years’ SOAK festival called Craft Soup, where she dished out all sorts of crafty supplies and helped people be creative!

This year she had been learning ceramics and yesterday, at her 13th birthday party, she gave ME her latest ceramic creation. It is a dish with a map of my favorite place in Portland, Laurelhurst Park!! It even has a duck swimming in Firwood Lake.

Can you believe it? It’s about 9 inches wide and 5 inches high, and will easily hold cookies, grapes, and other yummy things. It also looks good just sitting on the table.
I am astonished at her skill and humbled by her generosity.

As I tell you all the time, I am one lucky Grandma.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Sticking the Cities on the French Map

Dear Liza,

To put the cities in my French map quilt, I used the same Heat N’Bond fusible interface that I had used to attach the Massif Central and the shorelines.

I traced three different sized circles to show different sized cities. The cap of a vitamin bottle made Paris, a wine cork made the medium sized cities like Nantes, and the cap of a chapstick tube made smaller towns, like Angouleme.

I cut all the circles out during the Olympic beach volleyball matches, which made it much less monotonous. Each one was peeled, then placed and pressed into place.

I realized, once they were all down, that Paris was a bit too far east and north. For a few days, I tried to convince myself that it was fine, and I was going to leave it where it was.

But every time I looked at it, the error bugged me. So I decided to move Paris… which meant I had to move the Seine, the Loire, and all the cities along both rivers.

There were bad words. I’m still in the process of removing and replacing the dots, and you can see where some of the adhesive is still there.

I managed to get “Paris”properly named, so at least I have a point of reference going forward.

I am embroidering each name in a cursive script, much like my own handwriting.

That’s going to take some time, too, but I am happy I corrected the error while it was still possible.

Again, I beg your patience.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Sticking the Land(ing)

Dear Liza,

Once I had the geography for my French map quilt designed and cut, it was time to stick it all down. I watched several YouTube videos to learn about my options, then I took the bus down to Joann Fabrics in Happy Valley (yes, there is a town called Happy Valley!)

I chose Heat n’ Bond lite sewable fabric adhesive and it worked very well so far. I will know more when I start the embroidery and see how easy it is to sew through.

Following the very basic instructions, I ironed, trimmed, peeled, and ironed again.

You need to make sure your iron is hot enough, (or it won’t stick), and avoid ironing the glue-y bits, (or it stinks and gums up your iron), but other than that, it’s easy!

I was slowed down temporarily because I failed to buy enough of the fusible interfacing, and needed to make an extra trip to Joann.

But once that was done and the Massif Central was fused down, all my geology was set!

Next: Sketching the rivers.

Love,

Grandma Judy