Moiya's Quilts

If my sisters and I are lucky enough to get on a three way phone call, we sometimes talk about our hobbies.  And if we Zoom, then Wyona can show her new paintings to me and Moiya takes us down to her sewing room.  I asked Moiya to send some pictures of what she has been doing, for in these cases, a pictures is worth a thousand words.

... Monkey Quilt ...
... some of the little patchwork pieces also have monkeys on them ... 

... at work at the sewing machine ...

... king sized quilt on Moiya's bed ...

Salsa Nights

... strips laid out on the basement floor ...

There you have it: the quilts a metaphor for Moiya's beautiful soul. 

Arta

On the Three Sisters

I stop to take a picture of the first
snowdrops I see in the grass as I walk.

On thinking back this week, I couldn't remember what took up my Saturday morning, until I remembered it was a Directors Meeting.

We met over Rebecca's Zoom account and when the meeting was over she said as she does to all of her students after she teaches a class, “Goodbye. I hope you enjoy the next part of your day. I'll be staying here for half an hour for anyone who's like to stay and ask questions or who has anything that they would like to talk over with me. You're all welcome to stay and listen or go. Goodbye.”

Now sometimes members of the class hangout to ask a question about an individual projects or to ask a question about what they didn’t understand in class.

I stay there, because I like listening in. Most leave quickly, off to another class.

I crouch low with my camera but the wind
is blowing and I can't keep anything in focus.

This wasn't true in today's meeting.

Nobody wanted to be the first to leave so we chatted about our seemingly disconnected and separate lives.

Glen told us that his garden is being devoted to the three sisters this year, a statement which made Rebecca laugh. She knew his allusion to the Kimmerer’s, Braiding Sweetgrass.

Glen will be planting the three sisters by planting corn, beans and squash.

Apparently, the corn grows first and the beans follow trailing up the corn stalk so there is no need to stake them. 

The squash leaves on the ground protect the beans and corn.

Idly, the three sisters chatted, figuring out who we were: Arta, corn; Wyona, beans; Moiya, the squash. I am going to watch how his garden grows.

By now I have twisted my camera
and am snapping wildly, even against
the horizon which no longer matters to me.
I just want a good picture.

During the past month or so, Wyona has been doing so beautiful paintings which she showed us after the meeting.

Moiya took her computer downstairs and showed us the sewing she's been doing: she's finished a child's quilt called The Monkey Quilt because it has that sock monkey with the red face in the middle and is surrounded by small pieces of fabrics that have been cut in pieces and resewn, $100 worth of fabric she said that's just to start with.

I wondered which grandchild is going to have that quilt.

She said all of them for it will be at her house and anyone to can throw it over them when they need a little bit of warmth while sitting by her basement stove.

She has other quilting projects that are keeping her up until 2 a.m. She doesn't watch TV while she sews.

Too much to concentrate on.

I am not sure I have a hobby.

I spend 45 minutes a day playing Azul: Summer Pavilion when Rebecca wants a break, from back-to-back meetings 8 am to 6 pm.

There's not much I can say about the game, except that I am learning to use some of Duncan’s techniques to collect more points.

I forget I am supposed to be using a cane
and I leave it out in the meadow
while I go elsewhere to take my pictures.

This doesn’t help when both parties know the same strategies, I noticed last night I was a bit tired and missing some of the better choices on the board.

Rebecca stopped the game to help me.

I only won the game because she has given herself over to playing my board instead of hers at that moment.

When I pointed this out to her, she laughed and said yes if she wins the game she wins and if she helps me win, then she still wins.

Arta

I collect rocks

... my collection of the day ...

Alice and Michael and I have been out collecting rocks at the parking lot of St Pius Church on the corner of 24th Street and Crowchild Trail. 

Alice puts her rocks in the pocket of her hoodie until it hangs down far below her knees. 

Michael took his biggest triangular shaped rock and put it on his head, asking me, "Do you think my shadow looks like a dinosaur". 

 I looked down.  Sure enough -- a dinasaur. 

Then he asked me, "Do you think I look like a king with a crown?" I could wrap my head around that as well.  His question to me was so close to the lyrics of "Where you ever in Quebec' that I sang "where there's a king with a golden crown" all of the way home.

 ... a 3 person selfie organized by Aunt Rebecca ...

I had encouraged Michael to collect only the smooth, small rocks.  I figure that he can get more rocks that way.   But there is always a big one that gets into the bucket ....

Our adventure made it hard for me not to be reminded of Al Simon's "I Collect Rocks", which I just went out to find at minute 3:08 on this utube segment.

I love that song!

Arta

Writing Music for Film

Sketch by Duncan Carter Johnson

Duncan decided to try to draw anime eyes.  Before he knew it

he had finished an anime drawing.  Is a career as an 

animator is around the corner?

A few days ago Rebecca told me that she was going to spend the weekend at a seminar on writing film for music.

I want to go to every class that piques my interest, but this one being in Victoria, is out of the question.

So I began to watch the subtitles that we run on our TV with new interest, concentrating  on what the subtitle says about the music and ignoring the dialogue.

I have been missing a lot of good plots this way, and preparing myself for a class I can't take.

My goal is to go back to watching TV the regular way soon.

Arta

Lightning Strikes

The night my heart almost jumped out of my chest and landed on the dirt at Shuswap is chronicled in this post on my personal blog.  You will also see the best photos I took of the lightning storm later that same evening.  I am now addicted to storms and figuring out how to capture them in all their glory on film/in bits and bytes.

Wistful Voyages.....Lightning Up My Life

Here is a teaser:

Lightning Flashes near Moiya and Dave's House

A Squiggle in the Sky

Land or Water?  What Was Hit?

Enjoy the story and the pictures.  I really, REALLY had an amazing night.  Thank you shareholders for making it all happen.  Year after year after year after year.....

Mary's Hobby

Designer: Mary Johnson
Lampwork Beads in Blue

From Mary:

I made some beads and turned them into a bracelet to auction off at a work fund raiser. Arta made lots of jewelry from my beads when she was here in the winter, but this is my first time actually making something.

Here is the description for work:

The beads of this bracelet have been made by using a torch to melt the tips of colorful glass rods. As the glass melts, the fluid glass is wound around a mandrel, a narrow stainless steel rod. Once a base of glass is established, more glass is added, creating an endless variety of patterns and effects. Later, when the bead is removed, the space occupied by the mandrel becomes a hole in the center of the bead. Lampwork beads are handcrafted by Infrastructure Canada’s Mary Johnson.

Ceilidh's Hobby

... beading is a good hobby to do with friends ...

Doral and Anita are gone. I am on a cake walk for a week, while I watch their children. These kids pack their own lunches, make their beds, don't fight, create their own suppers, and occasionally ask me when I am going to start making rules, since their parents told them that there will be an entirely new set of rules when grandmother comes to watch them.

Ceilidh got out some craft beads last night and she and her friend worked on them.  Ceilidh ironed the beads until they had melted into place.  I have the skill to set up an ironing board (a tool used in the past, but not much now, though luckily something Anita has).  Ceilidh could work the iron once I showed her how to raise its temperature to high.  So we had some fun with crafts.

I am sleeping in their parent's bedroom suite, which is about half the size of my whole house at home. I may have one rule I want to instigate and that rule will be, when I come to visit next time, please smoke all of the mirrors in the ensuite bathroom. This morning I noticed that the mirrors are arranged so that I can see my body from every angle and was sad to observe that in my case, mooning someone would be giving them my best angle.

Yes.

A new rule I give unto you.

Smoke those mirrors.

Arta

In an hour or less ...

The tiniest beads are connectors

I need tiny connector beads to slip between the larger beads Mary makes when I go back to Sassy Bead next week.

She slipped down to her beading studio tonight to see how many connector beads she could make in less than an hour.

The simple, black connector beads were costing me $.25 a piece at Sassy Bead.

Mary said, "Let's see if they cost that when I make them."

The math goes like this.

Chatting and making beads

Say she is worth $30 an hour and the tube of glass is $1.50 plus tax.

She made 8 connector beads in an hour.

The cost (exluding the propane, the use of the equipment, and the labour of the person who will clean them up tomorrow) is $31.50.

Doesn't that come out to a little less than $4 per connector bead.

I will wait until I clean them up tomorrow to see if they are more or less beautiful than the ones for $.25 a piece.

Mary says she is making the beads to give away.  I say not one of them is leaving this house.

Arta

From the Bead Guru



Want a bead on beading?
Photo Credit: Anne-Marie Bouchard

Bonnie asked some questions about beading.

Here are my answers:

1. Are these photos from the studio? I love the rods of glass against the orange paint on the wall. I am envying the organization of the last photo with the multi-height containers for the different rod shapes.

Yes, this is my studio. I love it. When Leo built it for me, I picked bright orange and blue paint. He also made the glass rod holders. Fun to be able to organize and see the colours. Going to the glass store and buying the glass is so fun. There are so many colours to choose from. It is hard not to buy some of every colour.

2. I want to know if flash photography is allowed when someone has the propane torch going?

Yes, flash photography is allowed. The safety goggles I am wearing are also sunglasses of sorts, so a flash would not bother me.

3. Is it scary everytime the torch turns on?

Yes. I run through the safety steps in my head each time I turn my torch on and then off. There is always a little fear in the back of my mind. A good thing to have when one is working with fire and explosive gases. Once the torch is properly lit, I can relax a little.

4. Does anyone wear protective gloves, and if so how could the gloves both protect and allow the fine motor skills required for the task?

No need for protective gloves. Your hands are far enough away from the flame that they do not get hot. Some books recommend wearing a leather apron though so that if a piece of glass breaks off and goes flying, it does not hit you and burn through your clothes. (if you put cold glass into the flame too quickly, the glass can explode).


5. David is here with me. He asks "How does she not get hurt?"

I do my best to stay safe and make sure anyone in my shop with me is safe. The kids have to stay a safe distance back when they are watching and sometimes they also wear protective goggles. I have burned my fingers before trying to pick up a piece of hot glass. That hurts. When that happens, I put my finger under cold water until it feels better.


6. I like where you are burning with fire. It's really cool. I am not meaning cold. I am meaning "cool".

Yes, the fire is cool. The thing I like most is what happens to the glass when you melt it. It is amazing to me. Working with the melted glass is like holding a knife with honey on it. You have to keep turning it or gravity will make it drip off the knife. As long as you are moving it back and forth, you can keep the honey from dripping. Try it some time.

7. David likes how the metal rod she is holding is black where she is holding it and white where it is close to the bead in the flame. I like studying Mary's face as she is studying the beading task at hand.

The black part of the rod where I hold it does not get hot. The part with the bead on it that looks white is actually a kind of mud. It is called slip. I dip the end of the black rod the some grey slip. That way the glass bead will not stick to the metal rod. When the gray slip gets hot in the flame it looks white. The next day when I take the bead off the metal rod, the slip just breaks off like mud breaks off your boots when it is dry. Then I can wash it off the bead too.

6. Do the rich buy saftey glasses that have their prescription lenses in them? Perhaps Mary doesn't need prescription glasses.

I only need glasses to see things far away (like for driving and watching movies with sub-titles). I guess you could get special prescription lenses, but I don’t think there are any glass bead makers that are rich. So they probably just wear their regular glasses under their safety glasses.

The cool thing about these glasses are that they are not just for safety. They also have a filter in the lens that allows me to see the bead inside the flame without all the red around it.

Thanks for reading.

Mary, the Bead Guru

Sassy Bead

I bundled up Mary's beads and rode into Ottawa with her today. 

She was off to work. 

I wandered down to the jewellery story where Zoe used to work:  Sassy Bead.

When I laid the beads down on the table and asked for help getting them into a necklace the clerk did a double-take and then said, "Wow, where did you get those beads.  I would be happy if I had just one of them."

"This one," she said, pointing to the middle chartreuse bead.

Mary was back at work so she didn't get to hear the compliment.  It is she, not I who can spin glass into beads.

My task to figure out how much irregularity I should use when placing the beads on the string.  No use in defaulting to symetry.

I had 3 sets of black and white beads to string for Mary and I only got to one of them.

While I was threading wire through the beads, the clerk was looking at an ivory and blue set of beads, muttering something about not being able to contain herself, wanting to mix some brass and ivory spaces into that set when I am  ready to string them.

Tomorrow there will be enough time to give this project another try -- another day where I line up beads and put the finishing touch on Mary's interesting hobby.

Tomorrow is the day when Mary will get the first necklace of the intermediate beading class around her neck and wear them to work.

I have hundreds of hobby projects yet to be completed. Feels good to see someone else take the whole thing to the hoop.

Arta

Making Beads

Mary has been making glass beads for a while now. 

She is in the middle of taking an intermediate course. 

I went along to her second class last week.

The teacher nvited me to wear some protective glasses, like the ones Mary is wearing in this picture.

I didn't know enought to swing the side bar away from thefront lense of the glasses ... until the teacher came over and show me how to make it easier to wear the glasses. 

They did feel quite lumpy

Mary is making the technique look easy -- gently holdiong the wire here and letting the bead gently cool out of the flame.

She and I dream that in the evenings we will be able to go down to her work bench and make enough beads that everyone can have a necklace. 

So far, she has managed one night and a couple of hours on two Saturdays. 

Her dreams mirror mine.  I believed that I would sit down and watch a biopic each evening that I have been here.

After 11 days I have seen 4 pictures: A Beautiful Mind, Lumumba, The Social Network and La Vie en Rose (Edith Piaf).

We don’t know if we should see this as the glass have full, or the glass half empty. 

I have seen more movies than none. 

And she has run three beadings sessions.

I am going to count that as both of us being ahead.

Here are the rods of chartreus glass she has been melting, along with some of the beads -- black and white on the left side of the picture and you can see some chartreuse ones mixed in with other colours on the right side.

I hang out beside her on a low stool and we talk – mostly about how to get to Sassy Beads to buy the wire chain on which the beads are to go.
 

As you can see, protective glasses have to be worn. 

There is a blow torch and several wires on which she puts slip.

When I first saw her sitting on the stool, a blow torch firing heat out toward the wall, I had a moment where I thought, "Who is it that takes up a hobby that requires a propane torch.

When did embroidery, tatting and cross-stitch go out of style?
 

The long tubes of glass sit against the wall.

She picks one up, puts it in the flame and with her other hand, spins the wires as the glass falls onto them.

The spin is a slow one. I don't think I have the fine motor control to move my fingers that slowly and evenly.

But I can't say that I am not going to give it a try before I leave.

Arta 

Quilting Frames

Quilting frames are a relic of the past.

At least that is what I thought.

Then Miranda told me that she is going to learn to quilt. The old fashioned way. You could have bowled me over with a feather. I thought my quilting days were over.

Moiya brought her quilting stands for us to use, transporting them in from Annis Bay.

Miranda has some yardage -- cotton that Joan, her mother, gave her to use up. So all we need is some batting, some frames and some quilters.

Frames? Where ever am I going to find frames. Both of my sets burned in the garage fire and I haven't missed them until now.
Already many people have turned us down as to helping us quilt.

What kind of excuse is "I have too much arthritis in my hands."

Do give us a phone call if you are "in" for a weekend of quilting. Or even a few hours will do.

Miranda is not the only one into the fabric arts.

Moiya showed me a picture of a beautiful bag on Michelle Wood's arm, one Michelle had made herself.

Wyona has a new sewing machine ... as of the fall.

Playing with fabric?

Not a bad hobby.

Anyone else joining us?

Arta