This is my Happy Chair, directly from their Facebook page. This is the link to their albums page, where there are many more chairs and goodies for other rooms in the house. Looking at all of the chairs makes me want to do some upholstering. Yeah, right!
The cushion reverses to this navy.
The back is upholstered in mohair.
I forgot this picture at the Country Living Fair. There were a few other weaving things, but this display is great. Notice the other pirns in the basket on the floor.
Yes, I really am weaving…
I drove down south again over the weekend. I wanted to check out the ArtWalk 2012 in Fayetteville, Texas. Even though I’ve been down to that part of Texas many times, Fayetteville has never been part of the itinerary—with good reason. Fayetteville is so small, I had to stay in La Grange, of Chicken Ranch fame. La Grange is also the home of the absolutely worst Mexican food I have ever tasted! I won’t name names, but I should have gone to the seafood place.
When I mentioned where I was going, everyone had the same reaction: “Arkansas?” or “Where is Fayetteville?” I had been told that this was a nice, small art fair that gets knowledgeable patrons driving up from Houston, and I wanted to check it out. The countryside is beautiful and the town square is cute (Do towns like for us to describe them as “cute?”) I wish I had driven around and found this cemetery.
It wouldn’t have any bluebonnets now, but the gravestones look interesting.
I did find an artist whose work I love! Melanie Fain does etchings and watercolors of the smaller living things found in nature. The home page of her website has a horned toad. one of our favorite critters around here, sadly not found very often anymore. I fell in love with the Crane etching, but there were others that I also wanted, like the wildflower pieces or the roadrunner—another animal that we don’s see as frequently as we used to.
Oh, yeah, I plan to weave this week, although I have to admit, it’s tough right now. I keep checking on floor coverings, upholstery fabrics, and paint colors. Let’s just say I’m a one-topic-at-a-time doer.
Many years ago, I halfway considered getting one of these wringers, thinking it would be worthwhile to squeeze the water out of the newly dyed yarns. This one had platforms that fold up when the wringer is not in use. The platforms are for your laundry buckets, of course. Wet on one side, wrung out on the other side.
I really don’t know what these bags are for. The word on them means bakery in French, I think. They remind me of those bags that folks used to hang on the front of cars in summer. Not knowing much about the inner workings of autos, they somehow were for cooling the car engine. Or maybe it was just extra water to put in the radiator while driving through the desert.
The door to the ladies room in
Chuy’s. Below is the wall that greets one at the entrance to Chuy’s. The color seems to come from colored garden balls, or whatever these things are called. At any rate, very colorful.
There were several things that I would have loved to bring home with me from Junkology. Can’t you just see this with flowers in the basket? There were two things against it; besides the cost, it wouldn’t fit in the car. I really wanted the statue below, some sort of religious icon, I assume. I have no idea why I have a thing for religious icons, but I do. I have retablos from Mexico, milagros, and a few other items. I waited too long for this goody. When I went back on Sunday, she was gone. Guess it wasn’t meant to be.
Also in the Junkology booth was the item below. Grids and color catch my eye. The piece below is a metal chair seat, removed from the chair, of course.
Orange setee
In a previous life, about a million years ago, I liked to visit antique shops, go to antique auctions, and the huge antique shows like Round Top and the Dolly Johnson Antique Show. The Country Living Fair always looked interesting, but they’ve never been held in my part of the world. They finally came to Texas, to Austin, a fun place to go! The fair was held at the Exposition Center, a huge place where rodeos and stockshows are held. Vendors were in two areas, the largest in a big barn.
Map
I’m really not much of a shopper, but the friend that went with me is a master shopper. We walked and looked at the booths for hours. I have a few favorite things, and one of them came home with me. I am planning on painting the living and dining room and replacing the carpet. Before choosing paint and carpet, I wanted to find fabric to either reupholster the sofa or to buy another one. And I wanted purple. Not aubergine, but purple. Well, I’ve gone in a completely different direction! All of the furniture on this page are the creation of Shawna Robinson. Her studio is called Happy Chair, and believe me, they are happy! Her section of the barn got lots of attention. And besides being colorful and happy, they are comfy. I’ll post my chair later.
Green setee
Wing chair
No, that is not the sound of a sneeze! Kenaf is a plant that I’ve heard of before in the context of using the fibers to spin thread. It is in the hibiscus family, so it is related to cotton and okra. It was with some amazement that I heard this plant mentioned on my local public radio station. They did a segment about a University of North Texas program to develop a way to use the kenaf plant in materials which would, perhaps, take the place of materials such as fiberglass, Since fiberglass takes a hundred years to decompose, kenaf could be a renewable material to use in construction. As part of the process of developing a new product with kenaf, it has to be retted, as does flax and other bast fibers. Amazing to hear the word retting used on the radio! Here is a quote from the program:
Now Professor Allen is working to further speed up the retting process and test larger quantities of kenaf. Professor D’Souza’s lab assistants are weaving and blending the fibers with epoxy to create fiberglass-like products that are more flexible.
Did you notice that the word weaving is also used?
Computer/website blues
The hosting company for my website has “migrated” everything to new servers. I spent way too much time trying to understand the gobbledygook about that move and the changes in my “nameservers.” While doing that, I developed a splitting headache (I still don’t understand—why do they have to write everything in a foreign language called website-ease?) and got no weaving done. Maybe I’ll weave next year!
Back in October I made a big huge to-do list of things I needed to do around here, and then promptly forgot about it. Last week I made another huge list on paper, at which time I remembered that my other list was in Evernote. (And, by the way, I love Evernote.) When I looked at the old list, I was able to cross off about half of the list. Frankly, that was pretty exciting! Of course, my new list adds to the old one, but, oh, well, progress is progress, right?
A couple of weeks ago I stopped by the library in desperate need of some escapism to read. I picked up this book.
It’s pretty much your stereotypical homegrown terrorist/conspiracy book with the heroes having been “done wrong” by governmental bureaucracy. The plot revolves around a “cutting off the head” of government by taking out everyone in attendance at the state of the union address by the president. Which makes me wonder—How would we, as a society, react if all legislators, supreme court members, cabinet members, president and vice-president died at once. Part of me thinks we would go on with our local leaders and law enforcement, but another part of me wonders if chaos would ensue. Something to ponder….What do you think?
I seem to have an obsession with Matisse. I’ve written about his art before, several times. But something caught my attention in this article in the WSJ.
When confined to his bed, Matisse would sketch on the ceiling by attaching brushes and charcoal to a long pole. As painting became more difficult, he focused intently on the sleek, stylized paper cutouts he had first started experimenting with in the 1930s, using scissors to create the sinewy shapes and swaths of color that he could no longer render directly on canvas.
2012 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
I have read before that Matisse’s cut-outs were the result of his failing eye sight, and I am fascinated by the idea that he would use paper that he had painted with gouaches. But just think of the determination to make art that one would “sketch on the ceiling.” Wow!
I love reading the WSJ! Never thought I’d hear myself say something like that! No, I don’t read all the business news and the financial reports, although some of those articles are very interesting too. What I really love are the “life” articles, which run the gamut from art to creativity to stupendously expensive houses to fashion. I like the WSJ so much that I may have to actually pay for a subscription when my free one runs out. There are two downsides, however. One is that I also ready my local paper for all the local news, so the WSJ means that my newspaper pile gets higher faster. The other downside is the time element. I’m not willing to give up the local news venue quite yet, so reading another paper adds to the time spent over coffee in the morning.
Fabrics for Noh costumes in the galleries at The Textile Museum.
On April 12, WSJ ran an article called Far Eastern Dream Weavers. It’s about an exhibit at the Textile Museum. There are great pictures on both sites of the fabrics and kimono. Check it out. Opportunity for a field trip—exhibit ends on August 12.
