Lunch

Last Saturday I had to deliver some work for jurying for a show in Evansville.  After that I met up with my friend Julia.  We had planned to try making our own silk screens using stretcher bars and some sheer fabrics. Julia had already gathered everything together so that we could do this project.

But first we had to eat lunch.  She made popovers and I prepared a salad with romaine, grilled chicken, dried cranberries, pecans, onions, feta cheese,  and a sweet balsamic vinegar dressing.  yumm.

We did get the screens made too.  And now this week I am trying mine out.

About Food…And Right Brain Thoughts

Warning!  If you don’t want to read about food, skip this post!

I am home today!  I don’t think I have been home on a Saturday for the last two months!  So today I am making our “weekend meal”.  Yesterday my husband brought home some fresh picked turnips from the farm, dirt and all.  I cooked a small pan of those and mashed them with butter, salt and pepper, and sugar.  Yumm.  I am also fixing “Deviled Baked Steak”…how appropriate for the season! (I just thought of that while I write. :=)  Round steak dredged in a seasoned flour blend, then browned in oil.  Topped with sliced onions and a tomato-brown sugar mixture, this steak dish bakes for 2 hours into melt-in-your-mouth wonderfood. I will be serving it with mashed potatoes.

I am also trying out a new bread pudding recipe called Caramel Bread Pudding. The caramel sauce prepares in the bottom of the dish while the bread pudding is baking on top. (I’m so domestic today! :=) Actually, I’m probably avoiding cleaning the garage, a task I really need to get around to!)

Since I haven’t been home on Saturdays for so long…we have been just grabbing whatever is in the house to eat on Saturday nights and Sundays (that gets boring), so this will be a treat.

So…what have I been up to this week?  One of my goals was to get my Etsy shop loaded up with my ArtFul Cloth bags since I am having a showcase on Tuesday, October 27th.  I needed to have at least 10 of them listed just to be ready.  Since I have recently gone through a hard drive crash with SOME of the bag pictures on the desktop, I had to do the photography and editing all over again. :=(  This is my first showcase and I have no clue how it will all go, but I am ready.

I have had a textile piece on the wall for a long time that I felt inspired to work on yesterday.  By that I mean, I had some ideas on how to proceed!  So I spent some time with it.  Why is it, when the urge and inspiration hit (and it’s been awhile since I’ve had time or the frame of mind for it), the phone rings.  I could have not answered it, but felt I needed to.  But the whole time I’m finding myself irritated and wanting to get off the phone, which I finally did.  I didn’t want to “lose the moment” or the time.  These times are precious when they come and with the weekend coming and the prospect of my husband being home, I wanted that hour and I wanted it uninterrupted and my mind free to create.  I’m beginning to see that in the left brain world that we live in, no one (except artists, of course) understands the right brain world. The society we live in is not extremely willing to give it place, to give it time or attention.  We are a left brain society for the most part and give honor to the left brain achievers with regularity.

I believe to be successful, an artist needs time to think, really think, to dream, to ponder, to meditate, to notice, to scrutinize.  Coming from the work oriented background that I do, I find it difficult to even give myself that time.  It seems “wasteful” somehow.  When I was growing up, I remember being accused of “daydreaming”, but now I know what that is…it is the right brain wanting to create something.

I read about all these artists creating in their journals every day and it seems totally unreachable to me.  I do spend time online every day “enriching my mind” mostly with news articles and some artists’ articles as well as picking up email and taking care of business.  Perhaps I spend too much time there? I’m a one woman show…with marketing and office work and all promotion on my shoulders as well as creating new work and trying to earn an income to pay for my business expenses. The time may yet come when I will let some things go…I don’t know yet.  All I know right now is that I have an art fair coming up in December that I would like to have some new work for, but I have no ideas.  I think I must be taking a breather after being so busy for the last two months. Perhaps my brain needs a rest…zzzzzzzzzz.

New Year’s First Fun…

My husband purchased a weekend quilting retreat for me for Christmas/birthday.  I had a wonderful weekend!  The retreat was put on by The Village Mercantile quilt shop in Boonville.  This is a huge store run by Betty Cummings (who just happens to be my friend and sometimes roommate at shows).  Her husband Steve used to run Victoria’s Tea Room above the Mercantile.  Steve loves to cook and he is quite good at it.

Anyway, the two of them put on this quilting shindig at a campground in Newburgh, IN. For anyone not familiar with what a quilting retreat is, I will give you the low-down.   We arrived on Friday by 3 p.m., except for those eastern Indiana people who live in the next time zone…they got there early.  Set up and start sewing.  I think dinner was at 5:30 or so.  Steve’s tomato pie and broccoli salad…awesome.  And there was dessert….Italian Creme cake (also awesome) and Chocolate Chocolate cake (I didn’t get to try it).  Then more sewing.   We slept in a dormitory with bunk beds.  It’s hard sleeping with 16 other people, but Betty had supplied everyone with earplugs.  How thoughtful!  She really took care of us.  There were bags on our beds with shampoo, bar of soap, a bandaid, some other odds and ends and a candy bar.

Up the next morning, with a breakfast of scrambled egg casserole, salsa, biscuits, o.j. and then more sewing.  There were breaks during the day for small demos, a game or two, and door prize announcements.  Lunch: bacon/potato soup, beef barley soup, grilled cheese on texas toast, then more sewing.  Supper was Italian lasagne, garlic toast and salad with homemade creamy Italian dressing.  Dessert was ice cream and all the fixin’s.  Then more sewing.  Sorry I don’t have pics of all these wonderful meals…what was I thinking? (It just never occurred to me. I guess I was busy eating.)

Then a trip to the Mercantile that evening.  More sewing, as late as you want.  Sunday morning breakfast was odds and ends of muffins, biscuits and apple butter, coffee and juice, cereal, and more sewing.  Lunch, and then a bit more sewing before packing up for home.  I made some wonderful new friends from eastern Indiana.  They were loads of fun and I am glad Betty assigned me to their table.  At the end of it all, I remarked to Betty that there was not a man on the planet who had managed to satisfy so many women in such a short time…I was referring to her Steve and his cooking.

I think I will be doing this again.  I even got a couple of projects completed.  The large Bossa Nova Bag by Cedar Canyon Textiles in, what else?….hand dyed fabrics.  I also completed a sweatshirt jacket in a Valentine’s day theme.  Picture of that to come later.

Then…because I never received my Quilting Arts magazine for December, Pokey promised me an issue PLUS some of her fun fabrics.  Yea for me!  And thanks, Pokey, for being so sweet. The package was waiting for me when I arrived home. Ahhh……life is good.