Marsbarn Designs...

Good morning don't mind the leaf blower, and no I haven't forgotten July.

I love a morning where there is time to wake up slowly.
A morning when I can take take a shower at my leisure and come out of the bathroom to the smell of espresso waiting for me. 
I might be able to hear bickering voices upstairs, but I'm not listening closely enough to notice.  

My brain has been filled with all the leafblower sounds of change.
That rough, all most chainsaw noise of things ending and beginning makes details hard to catch.  I keep missing little things, invitations that need RSVP-ing, scheduling snafus, conversations that start but don't finish.  My mind is busy, but a little sloppier than I like.

The summer is filling itself up with adventures that I will share as they happen.  I'm going to try some new things this summer; teaching a few baking classes for kids,  leaving the month of July largely unscheduled,  and taking Little e with me to Victoria for the annual Nay-Nay pick up.

It is quite strange to see July, stretched out white and empty, sandwiched between the limbo contest that is June and the patchwork that is August.  It looks as if the pages of my calendar were stuck together, and I missed July altogether, and only populated the months on either side with events.

While I try to catch up on the details, I'm going to take a wee blogging break this holiday weekend.  My posts have been sporadic of late, and not as fluid as I would like.  Perhaps next week will be better.

Go hug a veteran, and take a moment to pause on Monday!

Buzz, buzz, buzz...

I just printed out the financial wrap up for the book fair.

Know what that means?

I am no longer Book Fair Chairperson.

(and the crowd goes wild!)

Except, that I do have some thank you notes to write, and I still need to tell my Scholastic handler that she can start calling somebody else about next year's fair.

(And the crowd goes wild, again!)

 

And with the afghan done, the school projects wrapped up,
and a large dice bag order (25 of them!) done and in the mail....

This busy bee is ready to spend her time working on something new!

Why I Love My Wife

From Big E:

This morning, after six hours of sleep,

h woke me up for court

with hot tea and a pastry waiting. 

art for the process

Sometimes making is about product, and sometimes it is about process, and occasionally it is about both.

Last Friday's art time was about making a mess and feeling free to do what felt good.  It was a morning of doing without plan or design, which is probably why I took no photos.  Final products?  Yes, we have some, but really that's not what either of us needed.

This project is another example of process trumping product.

 

I had a huge stash of Cascade 220 that wasn't talking to me anymore, and I wanted to use it all up so I could invest in a new, tastier yarn. My brain said, "Afghan", and I found a wave pattern I liked (found here), but once I was two rows into the pattern, I threw the printout away, and I took off on my own.

 

The final product has no plan, no definable pattern, no reason, no rhyme.  The afghan was started just before Big E was injured in March, and it was a very cathartic project to work on during all of the ups and downs of the past several months.  

The lack of commitment, and the absolute freedom to grab whatever color to work whichever type of curved row, helped me to keep balanced as Big E made his slow and winding way back to full health.

My family has asked me several times who I was making this little blanket for, and I kept saying, "It's for me."  They would look at me skeptically (often projects intended for myself end up as gifts for others, it is like a reverse kleptomania), and then they'd look knowingly at me, and walk away.  Whether or not I keep the finished product,  I was still correct.  This project, above all others I've done recently, was for me and about me.  It was all about the process, not the product.

Art trumps clean

I met a friend at the door Friday morning with this declaration,
"My house is not clean. Keep your shoes on; I have not vacuumed. And, there are dirty dishes in the sink."

She responded,
"I don't care. I want to make stuff."

And that's how it goes, this emergency art time.
Our Ladies Friday Art has suffered a bit under the weight of Life (with a capital 'L'.)
It turns out, we are busy women.  
And that busyness is both why we need time to ourselves to create, and why it is so difficult to find that time.

So, despite the Book Fair wrapping up yesterday, and despite the clutter, we spent 3 1/2 hours altering fabric with bleach pens, fabric pens, and paints.  And damn it, it was good.

they really do exist!

I feel like a bit of a school girl, but... 
OMG, they really do exist!

The highlight of Big E's first week back at work?
NCIS..  It really does exist!  And he met some of their agents!
Who knew?!

I can see the end, but it looks a lot like the beginning

So.

Here we are.
Almost at the end of the school year.
Almost at the end of my tenure as Book Fair Chairperson.
Almost at the end of fourth and first grades.
Almost finished with the Thank You quilt.
Almost done with my school commitments. 

 

And let me tell you, it feels just like the beginning.

(Photo by the Marvelous Auntie O.)

Don't make me itch

I appreciate appreciation, but I abhor undue credit.

It gives me hives and tummy rot.
Honestly.

If I did a collaboration with an adult, and they provided art (the image, the colors, the textures) which I translated into fabric, you would not say the art was mine.    

The same should be true for the work of children.  

If students and I work together on an art project, and they draw the images and choose the fabrics to illustrate their vision, and then I assemble it,  the main part of the art is still theirs.  The heart and the vision that makes the art sing belongs to them.

So, the book made by Little e's class and the award it won?  Please don't call it mine.  What makes that project work did not come from me.  I was a facilitator, perhaps even a collaborator, if you wanted to be kind. 

oh my goodness, oh my goodness! We won an award!

Remember the narrative quilt and book project that Little e's class made with me?

 Well, the book we made won an award!

We entered the project in Scholastic's Kids Are Authors contest, and our project won an Honorable Mention award!  Out of the thousands of entered books, Scholastic awards two grand prizes (one fiction, one non-fiction) and 25 Honorable Mentions.  Little e's classroom will receive a $500 Scholastic gift certificate for classroom supplies, and each student gets an award certificate.  Pretty darn snazzy!

You can see our book here, if you'd like.

smell that? it's the scent of freedom

The school has begun its yearly wind down.

Teacher thank you gifts are underway, end of the year school events are lining up like dominos, and I can hear the sweet freedom of living without an alarm clock calling me.

 

The summer is largely unscheduled at the moment.

This is a phenomenon that will not last, I know the summer will fill up and overflow with events and plans... but... I am luxuriating in the illusion that the summer will be a quiet time of projects and sleep with happy children who will bring me coffee in the morning... see?  Totally delusional.