A great summer

I've been really enjoying my summer, my first full summer since "retiring" from vending at Quilt shows. I haven't even been to a quilt show in the past year! I sometimes miss the routine of daily production in the studio, but am much happier just dyeing and printing fabric when ever I want. The best part is doing what I want ,not what I hope will sell. When I was vending that was always on my mind, what will sell, what samples do I need to make to get something to sell. I don't miss that at all.

I will be teaching a class in Studio B on Monday evening July 26 from 6:30 - 9:30 p.m., on paintstiks. So if you happen to be in the Weiser, ID area and are interested let me know.

I've added more small pieces to my rust collection this summer. The photo below is stuff that I have found in the past 2 months, most of it from my garden area. I keep thinking about using some of it as embellishments on an art quilt. I have a rather large collection of rusty stuff and use a small part of it to rust fabric. For some reason I'm just attracted to it and keep picking it up.



I've also been working on my "This is not a sketchbook" project. These are some recent pages I've done.




I'm using scraps of fabric that have fusible on them already (I have a large box of them) and I have at least one circle in each composition. I like doing several at a time, so I'll do three or four pages several times a week.

My favorite thing I've been doing this summer is water aerobics. It's every afternoon at 5 p.m., the hottest time of the day and I'm in a nice cool pool. Today is suppose to be near 100 degrees so it is going to feel so good! The pool here is only open until the middle of August so I'm taking advantage of it while I can. Our instructors for the class are all about high school age, in fact all the employees at the pool are, that's why it closes when they go back to school.

My big bummer for the summer has been squash bugs. They have totally destroyed my squash plants that on Monday were looking very healthy. I had read somewhere to plant icicle radishes along with the squash to prevent a problem. I did that and things were looking good until the middle of this week. Oh well, I can buy squash at the fruit stand down the road a bit.