Fall in bloom

These are some of the plants currently blooming on our patio. Top to bottom: Caladium bicolor "Pink Beauty"--the flower is the ugly brown thing to the left; Portulaca grandifloria, variety unknown; Hosta lancifolia--the flowers are pale purple; Kalanchoe "Flaming Katy"; Tacoma stans "Esperanza"--known as Yellow Bells; and Crinum powellii "Alba". DH has two green thumbs for sure--hostas and crinums aren't supposed to do well in South Texas!

On Saturday afternoon I went over to my friend Carol's house. A friend of hers had a friend who was a quilter who had recently died leaving a huge stash that her family was not interested in keeping. Carol agreed to liquidate the stash for them, making sure the bulk of the proceeds go to charity. Her dining room is full of boxes and bins of the most beautiful fabrics you could imagine, as well as books, magazines, kits, and patterns. I helped her sort through about a quarter of the boxes, drooling as we went. It was a lot of fun, even if it wasn't my stuff. It was like going on a shopping spree just to browse. The quilter was obviously very knowledgeable, and didn't hesitate to spend money to get the good stuff. I want dibs on some of the things when they go on sale! Although Carol asked me to take anything I really wanted, it wouldn't have felt right to take much. I did, however, take 4 magazines that I had been trying to find on eBay. I figured that was "pay" enough for two hours of work (even if it was more like play to us!) The poor woman, a former nurse who was just my age, died of myasthenia gravis. I'm sure that near the end it must have been very hard for her to do any quilting, but it was obvious that she did her best to continue as long as she could. I felt that it could just as easily have been myself who had been affected, so I really felt good about helping Carol out, and will gladly help her again to sort out more of the boxes.

In a similar vein, on Sunday DH and I went to the storage unit that holds the lion's share of my stash (temporarily, while DS and DDIL are living with us.) I had a list of six things I wanted to search for, and I expected it to take at least an hour. To my surprise, I found four out of the six within about twenty minutes; as well as a few other things that I didn't know I wanted until I saw them. I found all my silk ribbon and embroidery floss, some perle cotton balls, some Dye-Na-Flo paints, two quilt tops that I want to finish soon, and a case of spools of punch-needle yarns. I didn't find the blue-green fiber sheets I mentioned here before, or the book on fabric dyeing which is something I want to try soon. I know they are in there somewhere, but I wasn't willing to tear up the whole place just to find those two items. I have another dyeing book on order from eBay anyway, and hopefully it will get me started.

I haven't forgotten my promise to try to become more artistic in my work. I have started on a small wall piece with a Buddha theme. I am finding it hard to let go of the perfectionist side that wants everything pristine and exact, in order to work more freely and casually with the fabrics.

I also bought a children's board book with large sturdy pages. I intend to make it into an altered book piece, using mixed media collage to express the theme "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The first step will be to paint over all the pages with white paint--and even that is hard for me to do. Once that is done I think it will be much easier to work on it. I will keep track of my progress on this blog.