Horned Larks and Meadowlarks

It's the day after Christmas, and we decided to do a little birding. We didn't expect to see much, but it felt good to get out anyway. It was a sunny 23 degrees and slightly windy. That last storm left us with a lot of snow. We went out Highway 472 to Stanley and then up North 41. It's a windswept stretch of wide open space. Beautiful in it's own way.

We had fun watching road-hugging flocks of Horned Larks. In fact, at first we got such good, close-up looks that we tried to make them into anything but Horned Larks. That's a bird that we usually just see darting away in a flock, identifying them by their behavior, more than their field markings. Gosh, they are pretty little birds.

Horned Larks

We also were surprised to see lots and lots of Meadowlarks. It was startling to see their vivid yellow and black markings. Meadowlarks always say "summer" to me, and it's so weird to see them in the middle of a snowy winter.

Western Meadowlark

We headed over to Galisteo, a quaint little New Mexico town. We discovered a riparian area there last spring when several rare birds like the Blackburnian Warbler were spotted there and reported on the Rare Bird Alert. It's a wonderful area to hike around down by a nice little stream. 

We noticed a new sign by the wooden bridge. Is it just me, or is it odd to have a memorial sign that says nothing about the person, not even when or where he died. But it sure had the names of the Council members all over it. Hmmm.

Well, we didn't see many birds. Robins were drinking from the stream and Ring-necked Doves were lurking around in the bushes, but that's it. That's ok, though. It was a beautiful day to be out enjoying the fresh air and quiet sounds of nature.

Lorene enjoying a winter day.

How I made my latest hand bag

Since I haven't gotten to work in my studio for a while, I thought I'd look through my pictures of some of the work I did last summer. Here is the process I used for my latest bag. I'm glad I decided to take pictures of the steps that I took.

First, I started with random digging through my stash of scraps. I like to look through my scraps rather than full pieces of fabric. It's more inspiring to me.

Then, I layed out the scraps on my design board until I liked the composition.

When I landed on an arrangement that I liked, I sewed them together. This formed the background for the quilt piece.

After the background was sewn and pressed, I started to layer other elements on top. In my collages, I use small pieced scraps, raw edge fabric scraps, as well as things like yarn, string, buttons, or any 3-D do-dads I can find laying around my studio.

Then, I carefully carried the collage to my sewing machine and free motion quilted over the whole piece. When the quilt sandwich was assembled, I had to decide whether to  bind it to make a wall piece, or turn it into something else like a bag.

I kind of wish I had left it as an art piece, but I wanted to practice creating the elements for a bag. Here's the finished product. What do you think?

Working Hard

I’ve been at La Mesa now for about 2 ½ weeks and I’m totally loving it. Who knew that working full time would make me so happy. It’s scary and challenging, but it’s right where I want to be. I am so happy to be on staff at La Mesa. What a great crew. Everyone who works there has been really friendly and welcoming to me. The atmosphere is refreshingly positive.  It makes me realize how I had gotten used to “making the best” of a somewhat toxic, negative work environment. I love being part of a new team who is committed to creating a culture of respect and helping each other to be successful. 

Today we had the whole sales crew in, and I won’t lie – we just aren’t that busy with customers right now. It seems that everyone is out Christmas shopping, and RV’s aren’t actually at the top of their lists. So, being the busy little elves that we are, we decided to decorate the windows of our showroom. At first, there were only a couple of us painting, but by the end of the morning, I think everyone on the sales crew got into the spirit and picked up a paintbrush for the cause. We really had fun. It turned into a wonderful team building activity. I’m the newest addition to the team, but since we just opened recently, the oldest member has only been here for a couple of months. After the bitter cold and snow of the past couple of weeks, the bright sunshine was a welcome sight. We were all happy to be outside. 

After we finished the windows, we were treated to a catered “quarterly luncheon”. Holy cow, what a spread! I got to see the whole staff including service, detailers, and transport. We had Christmas music and raffle prizes and lots of camaraderie. What fun. All in a day’s work.

A Really Big Change

It’s the end of 2011, almost, and my life is about to change in a really big way. I have been a teacher in one way or another all of my adult life. I’m good at it, and I “get” kids. However, I’ve never really fit the mold of a typical school teacher.  I have always sought out “different” types of teaching gigs. The past few years of teaching in a public school have been a mixed bag of rewarding and disturbing. The state of education is a terrible mess. It’s not about kids anymore, only the bottom line $$$. So, when my position was cut to half time with no benefits, I could see the writing on the wall.

In the meantime, I was getting intensely interested in RVing. Lorene and I started to talk of the possibility of retiring early and hitting the road in an RV. I began to follow the blogs of full time RVers. We didn’t have our cabin anymore, so we had the itch to explore. It started with buying “Charlie Brown”, our big, beautiful one-ton, dually, 4-wheel drive Dodge pickup. Holy Cow, do I LOVE that truck! We bought it with the intention of getting a fifth wheel, but then we chickened out. They just seemed too big and scary. So, we got a pop-up trailer instead. I know, total overkill on the truck. But we had some really fun times. The dogs loved having their own bed.

Then, a few months later, we were realizing that the pop-up was kind of a hassle. Packing, unpacking, setting up, taking down. And the flapping of the canvas kept us awake all night. We began to think about a fifth wheel again. Turns out, the dealership where we got the pop-up would take it back if we upgraded to a bigger rig. Done. Now, we had a fabulous rig to match our beautiful truck. It was super scary towing it for the first time, but we quickly got used to it. We’ve already had some really fun times in it.

 

Our wonderful salesperson, Doug, heard about my salary cut and suggested that I think about joining the sales team at La Mesa RV. I doubted that I would have the qualifications for the position. Well, turns out, I have a perfect skill set. I’m good with people, I’ve had my Shaklee business for 12 years, I love RV’. I guess my whole life has prepared me for this opportunity. Hired!

So, next week, I start my new life in RV sales. I’m so excited. It was tough saying goodbye to all my friends, students, and colleagues, but now I’m not looking back. The biggest drawback is going to be working weekends. Lorene and I are going to have to get creative about how to carve out time together. It’s so weird not to be tied to the school calendar. She’s got 5 weeks vacation, so I’m sure we can work it out.

Now, I will have to revise my blog to reflect my new adventure. I’ll be posting about our travels and about our birding adventures next year. It’s our favorite thing to do, birding. We kept a year list this year of all the species of birds we saw. We will do that again next year, but I will be documenting it in my blog this time.

Lorene with the RV dogs, Zoe, Jake, and Izzie

A Day at the Spa

Lorene and I spent a fabulous day at Tamaya Resort on the day before Thanksgiving. She's been really stressed out lately, so for an early birthday present, I treated her (and myself!) to a massage and a day at the spa. Wow. What a treat that was!

I guess since it was the day before a holiday, we had the whole place to ourselves. So, while everyone else was out frantically getting ready for their turkey dinner, we were lounging and relaxing to our heart's content. The Tamaya Resort just oozes "southwest". With Native American flute music piped throughout, and statues, pottery, and chili ristras everywhere, this peaceful setting is luxurious down to the smallest detail. It even smells wonderful with the scent of sage and cedar wafting around every corner.

After our 60 minute massage, we spent some time in the wet sauna, then the dry sauna, then the whirlpool. After that, we couldn't move, so we lounged around in the private courtyard. The weather was spectacular. This is why we live in New Mexico - it was sunny, with bright blue skies and 60 degrees. Aaah.

There were pitchers of icewater everywhere with cucumbers and lemon, or strawberries and raspberries. Also, we could help ourselves to dried papaya, roasted walnuts, and thin wafers of chile chocolate. Heavenly.

Does she look relaxed?

After a long walk along the Bosque, we topped off the day with a decadent desert of a hot fudge sundae with pinon brittle and chocolate covered biscochitos.

What a memorable day we had. We both decided that this should be our new holiday tradition. We both feel strongly that the world has gone crazy with the consumerism of shopping. This was the perfect way to step away from the frenzy and spend some quality time together.

It's like Christmas

Today I rinsed out my fabric. Boy, that takes a while. I rinse and rinse and then I wash it in the washing machine. It's so much fun to see how each piece comes out. I'm not an exact or precise dyer. I love the spontaneity of mixing colors and keeping my fingers crossed. This time was even more of a gamble because I used up some dye that I had sitting around for months (maybe a year, if the truth be told). I wasn't sure if it would still be good. The colors are perhaps not as vibrant as they could be, but for my purposes they will do just fine.




Ah, Christmas in August. Always a fun surprise to see. It's important to have a helper too!
Stay tuned to see my new project. I might ask for help in deciding what to call it...

"hand" dyed fabric

I did some fabric dying this morning and I didn't realize that I had a hole in my glove.

When I finished, I found that my hand was "hand-dyed" as well. So, I scrubbed it with 3 different kinds of soap and even washed a bunch of dishes, but this is what it still looked like...

Then I decided to try my non-toxic fabric brightener, called Nature Bright. I rubbed the powder on my hand, then soaked my hand for about 5 minutes. Voila! Not perfect, but good enough to go out in public now!

The Process

Here's how I usally start out. I grab some chunks of fabric, in this case, from my hand dyed stash, and randomly piece them together.

Then I start layering on various design elements for a fabric collage. Here I actually used a panel that I used to have on a t-shirt. I cut it off the t-shirt and layed it on the quilt. Then I added some other hand-painted pieces, some fuzzy yarn, some thread scraps and beads. I machine quilted it and used a zig-zag finish to the edges. Voila!

Evolution of a style

Over the past few years, when I have had time to head into my studio, I have found that I really am developing my own "style". I can make just about any kind of quilt, and have worked in, and taught a wide variety of styles from traditional to contemporary. However, a wonderful focus comes from honing a particular technique and developing a certain "look". Most of my creative time happens in the summer when I have a break from teaching school. Last summer, I did several pieces of which I am particularly proud. I'll post pictures soon. I can hardly describe the deep satisfaction that comes from really getting in the zone and letting my creativity flow out of me.

Now, if only I can figure out how to include my pictures in my post. It's been such a long time since I last posted to this blog, that I'm having a hard time remembering how to navigate around here. However, I'm inspired to fire up this blog and start writing again.