home alone, what to do...

cut glass crystals actually refract the morning sunlight! 

After a nice Saturday which began with gay poets at the Out Write conference, I discovered I was in the midst of Dog Days on 14th St. which is a weekend when the stores and shops put up sidewalk tables and do summer sales.  I wondered down the street and enjoyed a stop at Miss Pixies second hand shop where I discovered a great strand of cut chandalier crystals I couldn't resist. My neighbor Dan Vera invited me to come here him read from his prize winning book of poems on a panel of three prize wining poets.

 Keith left for a visit with his family on Friday so I just wandered and enjoyed the great weather. I took my sketch book and got one victim on the metro for a sketch on my way down town.

 Earlier I drew some pretty flowers Keith left for me.  Feeling a little rusty with my drawing skills but they just need some exercising.

all sorts of things from the garden in a cut crystal glass. 

I ended up at Plan B Gallery on 14th and Q.Street. Where director David Kalamar asked about my quilts. He brought up the Rose Star quilt I had posted on Facebook last year. I didn't know which one he was talking about at first, since he didn't know the name. He reminded me by referring to my quest to choose a background fabric on Facebook. Black or white was the question, the answer as it turned out was off white with a printed bright white flower design. The Rose-Star quilt has been laying around for some time now and he made me realize that was a project I wanted to finish up soon. 

trimming the uneven edges of the rose star on the porch table  to prepare it for binding 

sewing on the red and white micro dot binding tape on the straight edges of Rose-Star quilt 

Having the place to myself I intend to spread out another quilt to baste it together for hand quilting in the coming weeks. This top is white and blue Dresden plates laid out in diamond format. I decided to add a white border on three sides to finish it out to a full bed size. 

lay up of off white top piece and white on white side piece for Dresden diamonds. 

Sides added and pressed and ready to lay on the floor for basting 

The garden is doing well and looking great with our new landlord's weekly lawn mower coming round to keep it looking tidy. I was surprised to find a kind of hard seed in the cotton plants flowers and a red freckling on the hydrangeas that normally turn red in fall.

cotton plant flowering 

pods forming at the bottom have a hard nut inside soon to be full of cotton balls

Lace cap Hydrangea is blushing 

Ironweed flowers are so purple this year it's looking great standing at six feet tall

Swamp milkweed flowers were pink now they are pointed pods spewing little fairies 

Lavender summer phlox and a little black and blue salvia

November metro sketching

This has been an exciting month with lots of running around. I went to the bay for a few days to work on my new quilt. Then came home and volunteered for a week  on the Moving Parts box building project at Pyramid Atlantic Art Studios in Silver Spring. Since my time at Pyramid wrapped around Thanksgiving I decided to ride metro up to Silver Spring each day allowing me some time to sketch and keep my daily routine out on the road. Here are some of the sketches that are in my little pocket sketch book from those commuter days and nights at the end of November.

Lady in beige 

Woman with groceries and big circle earrings

The month began with this fellow writing on metro 

early in the month this Asian man was my subject downtown on metro

Lady in hound's tooth design jacket and black scarf 

head to toe figure guy on metro was my favorite 

cell phone dominates the activity of metro riders

night before Thanksgiving travelers showed up on metro this one was so tired she was falling asleep between stops

decked out in lots of color she was wearing knee high boots

best head of the month is the guy in the foreground

Extremely tall guy didn't fit on my page so his neck got tucked in his shoulders 

This woman bugged me by eating fried chicken on the train so I drew her 

elder Asian couple riding metro

Now it's time to start a new month. November was part of the change from the garden months where I transition to indoor working like these sketches from Metro.

July come and gone

I was busy drawing and watering the garden and quilting new small squares in July. I filled every day with creativity beginning first thing in the mornings. One sketch a day, mostly garden drawings with watercolor over my water based ink sketches. They seemed to get better as the mornings progressed. What was really fun about the challenge was posting the pictures on face book every day and hearing lots of positive feedback and seeing the other artists posts too. I also belong to the international group of artists who do sketch crawls and there was one such event on July 23rd when it was 101ºF in DC and no one wanted to be outside to do anything. We decided the best and safest place to draw that Saturday was at Union Station the historic train station of the capitol. It has fantastic air conditioning so we never felt the heat until we were outside and there were lots of different foods to choose from and coffees and bathrooms. Perfect place to hang out for hours doing drawings. Lots of people, architecture, sculpture and shops. I also met a few delightful new artists who came for the first time. I think we all had a famously good time sharing our day drawing and talking and showing our drawings. My best was of a hat stand. I saw a hat I wanted two weeks earlier and did not buy it because I was so sweaty from a long exercise walk on the national mall. That day I didn't want to try it on with a dripping wet head and then decide it wasn't right for my head. It was sold when I returned with the sketch-crawlers but I asked if there would be more. "Maybe next month" was the answer... so I sat and drew the whole stand to focus my memory on the spot and I do plan to return.

4 of the artists who came to international Wash. DC group sketchcrawl #32

first sketch was a sculpture up high over head in the station

Quickly some kids waiting on something with luggage and the "texter" with his mobile

 We took a nice lunch break and shared a big table in the food court. Everyone ate what ever they wanted and then we shared some stories and our sketches. After lunch we went off for some more drawing hour and a half upstairs in the train station.

the amazing hat stand! 

 On my way home I kept sketching and got this tall woman tucked up in a metro seat by the window waiting for the train to pull out on our way north. Tourists from Indiana spoke up loudly next to me to point out to me that I was drawing and offered the news that they were the children of a professional artist in her 80s!

The girl with Express bag on Metro Red line train.

I worked on lots of sketches in our flower garden. A few were done in Manassas while I was out visiting my mother on her birthday and a couple towards the end of the month were of other subjects just to add some last minute variety. I was running out of pretty flowers to work from by the end of July the hottest July on record for DC. 

one of my favorites! Orange of course...

done in a rush before the Saturday all day sketch crawl 

Dan Vera gave me that great turquoise as a sample when I visited to share my sketches with him the day before! 

This daylily has an orange-yellow that has outfoxed me for a couple years in photos and watercolor. I think I finally have it right but the photo doesn't do it justice. 

Manassas has some nice day lilies in pots 

Mom's birthday roses were begging to be in the sketch book

Still life in mother's kitchen ready made. 

August I continue to draw each morning. I am still posting on facebook and my flickr.com if You want to follow along on the daily journey. Keith has begun a year long flower arrangement challenge on his website. He is making an ikebana arrangement each day and photographing it to show on his website. Keith Stanley dot com Amazing stuff he is doing! I am so excited to see him get busy and make his creations without so much stress and worry about getting it all perfect, it is anyway quite perfect but the point is he is sharing his work liberally this  year!