Feeling Summer's End

George & I took a one-day outing to Gossip Island, off of Galiano.

Wonderful being on a ferry in the sun and looking at the expanse including floating Baker.

 

I loved this rock. It's a glacial erratic, left
behind in glacial retreat.

Then there was a spectacular artichoke
plant. What yummy extremes the thistle plant goes to!

Coming home I got shots of the cranes at Tsawassen.

The mix..... industry & nature. Congtrasting silhouettes.

Today I'm working on a new quilt.
Later for that.

Thant's it for now.

Here's Looking at Euclid

Alex Bellos answered my reader appreciation letter about his book, Here's Looking at Euclid. Now I am writing him back like an excited Tigger-that-I-can-be with my enthusiasm. I hope I don't bounce him into the stream the way Tigger bounced Eeyore there.

I am really enjoying the book & generally reclaiming my mathishness. His book is full of all manner of ideas that are lighting up my thinking.

These are two images from an app on my iphone. It's called Geome-trees.

Well, the next lot youmight not look upon as math, but you better believe it, I see it that way. Folds & Wrinkles!!

Oh My!

These were taken at a once-in-a-lifetime farm auction.

WHAT A SET of images!!

The origami of jeans.

That's it for today.

Rain & change of pace

Not that we haven't had a lot of rain this summer, but that was in July.

I'm fully unpacked from my trip to New Mexico, and am facing the MUST DO lists that have been hidden away & out of mind for a while.

 

Guan Yin [but really Tara] [but I really don't care about the distinction that much, except I really like Guan Yin better as a name] arrived last week from Beijing. She came to me via eBay which was my maiden voyage in that deparment. 

Am I a grown up now? 

I know how to 'do' eBay and I have her around to remind me to be compassionate with self & others.

I think she has a lovely calm face. That helps. It amused me when I was looking at all the Guan Yin's available how very formulaic they are: after a while you get to know the attributes. It's rather like the thousands of paintings of The Annunciation. Mary is always on the right, there is usually a dove, Gabriel carries a lily ... and so on.

I wish I could put her in my garden, but I'm afraid someone would take her.

That's it for today.

Learning to do New Things

I read Gretchen Rubin's popular book, The Happiness Project. She decided having new things in her life was one of the 12 things she would do during her year of the HP. She started a blog during the year, and it was very helpful in adding content and ideas for the whole book.

She was part of my inspiration for doing one myself, but I'm only in Kindergarden, blogwise. I want to bite off just a bit at a time & improve. The instructions are quite complex, so it's very daunting.


I thought this might be a good time to show the stripe-series that I did in Maui. These quilt tops are nearly all quilted up, all by machine. Though my pictures of them are a bit spotting. One of my goals is to find a simple way of photographing my work in the new apartment, now at the beginning of year 3. I've done quite a few in this color zone. Very comfortable, very summer.

               

 This shows the idea of color chords. I was pressing my seams open & in such a way that I was putting a curve into the long rectangle of stripes.
SO.... Wedges were inserted to make things more intentionally straight.

For Erica, with love

Back in Vancouver

Well, it's sunny still [mostly] & not nearly as hot as in New Mexico. It feels great to be home. There are piles of slightly unpacked things all over the house, so I'm not fully back yet.

I am thinking ahead to projects I want to do. I'm taking three surface design classes with Maiwa in September, & I am beginning to work up a proposal for a show I want to do called Oh, Solo, Double Trio: Numbers in my Life. I've got 15 or so quilts and I am thinking about whether I'll do any more. I have 2 fermenting ideas.

Here's  a detail of the quilt about zero.

 It's a Zero Zodiac. The idea came from an other quilt I did called Dragonfly Dancer. It was an alphabet quilt.

I need to photograph some better detail shots before I submit the application.

For fun here's another--well two, I couldn't stop myself.

 Double,Double

 Fingers & Toes, 10

I have also been doing some writing for this proposal or show about my life in mathematics and the gradual shift towards art. 

Recently I have started to reclaim myself AS a mathematician.  This is really almost a choke for me, until I realize that I do call myself a dancer, even though I never danced professionally; I do call myself a choral singer, even though I am not right now in a chorus. So suddenly it is clear to me that all those intense years of studying in mathematics made me into a mathematician. I have stopped arguing with people about being called that.

And I have just picked up a wondeful book called Here's Looking at Euclid. Last night my friends were laughing at me because I didn't even 'get' the reference to Humphrey Bogart's line in Casa Blanca, I think it was. 

Does that make me a math nerd? 

My favorite sentence in the preface is something like this: 

The history of mathematics is mathematics.

The author goes on to point out that Euclid & Pythagoras's discoveries are as true now as they ever were, and that by the time we graduate from highschool we are operating in the mathematics up to the 1600's. He says his graduate work too him up to the 1920's, and he's a man in his 40's I'd guess. So there you go!

One surface design classes I'm taking is with a famous quilt artist, Susan Shie. It's called Diary Painting for Quilts.

Another one is on Stitching as Mark-Making. I've taken another stitchery course, so it will be a revisiting; and the other one is called Monoprinted Cloth & the Stitched Mark. These two are with Ilze Aviks, who I had never heard of before. New Zone Department.

That's it for now.

sense of place

 These are all from what I like to call ABQ

                                                                        near Golden, NM

 Great trading post-- George knew the owner. We both bought stuff there.

 The lotus patch is NOT pure N.M., but all the photographers went nuts for it!!

                                                                That's it for now.