If you are visiting for the first time or monitoring my activity, a short explanation of my absence of almost a year. My husband and I decided to do a less than traditional transition into retirement and are currently on the road travelling, destinations decided on a whim and end date undetermined. As a result this past year has been a scurry of preparations and adjustments that have limited my will and ability to return to my art work....

Labour Day weekend is usually a quiet one around our house but not this year. I came back from holidays with a long ‘to do’ list! Top of the list was to prepare for a fiber art gallery show that I made a commitment to earlier in August. The first night back was a meeting with the group of artists who are cooperating. In July I was fortunate to have the opportunity to hang a solo show in a local Book Shop and have been very pleased...

Back home tonight. What a busy ten days we have had. First a smooth flight with wonderful views of clouds and the fields and forest below as we flew west . . . Then a walk down Stephen Street in Calgary under wonderful blue skies . . . a rodeo in Airdrie . . . a visit to Drumheller on a day when the thermometer registered 40 degrees Celsius and a brisk dry wind was blowing . . . An afternoon in Banff amidst the glorious Canadian Rockies . . . A...

We arrived in Calgary last night to a warm welcome from the ‘grand-dogs’! This morning we are taking a lazy start as we are still on Ontario time and our planned trip downtown is best left until after the morning rush hour. I wonder what adventures today will hold. The last couple of weeks were a real scurry and culminated in a marathon photography session so I could record the T-shirt quilt before it was packed for delivery. Here...

On Tuesday a friend met me at my fibre art exhibit and later we had lunch and browsed through some of the local shops. I don’t think either of us started out with the intent of making purchases but some of the shops had buys that were just too hard to pass up. Among my purchases was a pair of slacks, regular price $70 for $20. At 5’9″ I often have difficulty getting pants that are long enough but this pair met that criteria. I...

  Earlier this spring I had the opportunity to buy an embellisher but had little time to play with it. Now that the exhibition work is completed, I was able to use one of the recent rainy days to play and here is one of the first pieces I completed. Because this was strictly experimental I just used materials that were easy to access – quilt batt trimmed from the edges of the T-shirt quilt, some odds and ends of wool and scraps from...

The last two weeks are a blur! Work on the quilt progressed quickly once I worked out a system and side two only took a day and a bit! By trimming and aligning logos that were similar in width and then grouping them into piles so that the lengths came out to approximately the 55 inches less the number of borders required – I was able to create the strips to be joined together. I found that I did the sorting after adding inner borders to...

  How I cherish my morning walks! A friend and I meet around 8 am for a walkabout (so far just on nice days) and does it ever make a difference in my day. I am not by nature a morning person and I often can barely put words together when we start out but by the time we return we have walked and talked for 45 minutes to an hour and it seems like no time at all. I’ve tried to motivate myself for a daily walk for years but for me having...

Today was one of those glorious summer days – warm without a lot of humidity, a light breeze blowing and bright blue skies above. Don and I joined friends for an early morning walk that developed into a tour of the classic car exhibition in the local park. I think that everyone is eager to be outdoors after a month of rainy days. The participants were busy giving a last minute polish to their vehicles in hopes of catching the...

  When the student is ready, the teacher appears! This seems a very apt description for my life at the moment. Retirement, travel, opportunities – everything is falling into place. And I’ve just launched my first fibre art show – and its a solo show! Read’s Book Shop in Carleton Place, ON is a wonderful venue and between 50 and 60 friends and shop patrons showed up to get me launched! I am blessed! Now I’m...