Life, Studios & Purging

The older I get the more I learn, and this past month I learned that loyalty means nothing. I also learned that I'm loyal to a fault, to my own detriment. No my husband isn't stepping out on me, sides he knows what I'd do to him if he did!

No this has to do with old friends and what I thought was a trusted ally, one who bitches about those who use others to get ahead in life, yet she had no problems using me. I told my husband that all bets are off, in business, friendship, etc... I've come to the conclusion that I owe these two women nothing.

I'm cleaning out my studio, I called my friend Brenda and asked her to come over after work. I have stuff for her to go through whatever she doesn't want I'm pitching tonight. I'm tired of this stuff owning me, I don't own it anymore. And that is the said reality of life, objects own people and more often than not it keeps them from moving forward in life. I don't want that to happen to me again. I can't say that it has never happened because here I sit in a house filled with stuff, more stuff than you could ever imagine, and it's dominating our lives.

As a friend from church said "it's all going to burn in hell anyway"! So true. My dad is famous for "have you ever seen a luggage rack on a hearst"? No I can't say that I ever have.

Spring cleaning, gotta love it. The house needs a deep cleaning I'm ready to get back into the gardens, do more pruning and ridding them of last years vegetation.

And this one, Silky, kept me up most of the night. She's very ill, I stood outside with her from about 4 am til about 7 am. It's a good thing I wear wool pajamas! 

Isn't he cute! 

You'd never know by looking at her but she really needs a bath! 

Possum Skull? 

Another shot of the skull, I think it's a Opossum. 

Some head gear, Dh found it on the ground while hunting this weekend. I suspect it was cut off the deer by some hunter that didn't want his buddies knowing he got a buck with that small of a rack! ;-) 

Angora Rabbits

This is why one should never go blog surfing: I want an angora bunny rabbit! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa It's a good thing I don't have space for them or I'd be online shopping right now. Bunnies are devilisly cute little critters, and angoras are like times ten on the cuteness scale. Little fluffy fuzz balls of cuteness!

My dad and my grandfather both raised rabbits, so I know of the work involved, and it's a lot of work. Angoras need constant grooming so they are even more work then the average rabbit. George, a greyish blue angora I had was a lot of work to maintain. But he was a cutie, I still have some of his hair, I should spin some up.

Here's a full lenght view of the yardage, there's about another half yard of fabric hanging off the furthest end of the table. The fabric gets darker, and the pattern more intense as it goes along the length.  

A piece of silk organza I have been working on. It's about 4 yards long and 54 inches wide. 

This is Trouble, a little boy squirrel that lives in my tree outside. When he's not living in the tree he's in my attic, because he has found a way into my house. For entertainment he drags my fabrics out of hte attic and pushes them into a particular gutter on our house, why I do not know. 

What you can't see about Trouble is that his face is really dirty right now, he has a huge glob of mud on the end of his nose. He's also quite aggitated for some reason, maybe it's the weather change, maybe it's the mud on his nose. But he sure is chatty today. 

The Big Stretch. Pepper enjoying the warmth of the sun. 

Pepper basking in the sunlight, or at least I think that's what the yellow thing in the sky is called! 

Wet Studio

It's almost done, and I can't tell you how much work this has been, holy cow! There's a saying, it's only going to get worse before it gets better, so true so so true. My table and counter tops are buried underneath so much stuff it's not even funny. But, this has given me an opportunity to purge like none other before, mostly because I want my stuff to have a place that's not on the floor.

And since I can't store the inventory for the business on the floor I'm being forced to get rid of a bunch of stuff. And that's exactly what it is too, stuff! Stuff I've picked up along the way for some errant technique I wanted to try, and decided I didn't like. So out with the old, and in with organization!

Next stop my studio closet, out with the office supplies and in with nicely and neatly organized fabrics! They are organized now, I just can't get to them. And about half of my fabric is in the attic anyway.

Now to find a place to store all of my fibers, I gotta find the stud finder so my husband can build the loft for my fleeces to live on.

There'll be more pictures later, right now I'm so tired I could care less.

I decided to add some color to my seeds and weeds altered page I was working on. It looks a lot better, the milkweed pods contrast nicely with the background. The monochromatic background, from before, was just too much. I have more adornments to add to the surface, and more treatements to add to the surface. the paper needs to dry at this point before I can add any additional inks or paint. 

It's Fixed!

It's fixed my Thermofax machine is fixed! Now I can make all of the screens I want, limited by size of course but still I'm way excited by the potential this machine offers. This also means I can go another year w/o having to build a light table for developing screens the traditional way.

New counter tops looking east to west. I will paint the base the counter sits on later this evening. Yes I know it would have been easier to paint it "before" the counter top was installed but we won't go there today. the shelves are a blond wood type material that we salvaged from a dumpster, they won't be painted. I'm thinking of painting the base legs green, or some other interesting color other than white! 

And she has the counter filled with stuff already! I found a bunch of little mini pails I bought last year on clearance, for a quarter each at Target, to put my brushes and stuff into. It looks loads better than the old plastic ice cream containers I was using. 

View of new counter and shelves going west to east.