I hear that

Ontario is having a heat wave -- I know how hot and humid it gets there. HOWEVER, we

are having lots of snow - can you believe it! We have such a short summer under normal

conditions that we don't need a week of rain and snow at the end of May!

I am so tired of it! We had a lovely month of March and since then it has been yucky!

Here in Alberta we get winds from the North as well as winds from the Pacific and if the two run into each other it means lots of bad weather.

Oh well, at least I am getting some work done. I am also getting ready to go to two retreats

starting June 17 I will be gone for a total of 9 days - I will be teaching my little humming bird

Challenge quilt (with the babies in the nest) as well as a little winter scene. They will learn to

do a l2 x 12 miniature which will be thread painted on fabric backed by heavy timtex-

One of the retreats (Western Retreat) I started l0 years ago and women came from all over.

We have made many lifelong friends from it., The other is another retreat which originated with the first one. Between the two we have over 60 people meet each year.

I am working on a series of fish studies from underwater deep diving. They are wonderful and will be given as gifts for an upcoming event. I am really enthusiastic about them and have the first one well under way. I really like doing the miniatures that are completely thread painted.

Well, off to the library and then back to thread painting.

Shirley

Older work

Here are a couple of pictures of some of my older work. The first shows the greeting cards, I taught to a class in Arizona in the 90's. The cards were on display at our 'Art Show' that is me on the right. The second picture was from the New Zealand Women's weekly magazine in l971! I did copper tooling and usually the subjects were the
Maori faces, which are tatooed(?). The
one I was working on was a well known
Maori Chieftain, from when the treaty with the Maori's was signed many many years ago.
I did commission pictures and my husband framed them. We went back in the late 80's and many of my friends had copper pictures of mine on the walls. As you can tell from my dark hair it was over 30 years ago! It was an honor to be featured in their magazine.

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Another beautiful day today- I am heading out to do some shopping for the two retreats I am going to this June - need some goodies for the secret sister gifts. I am looking
forward to them both.
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I worked on another timtex picture last night - I made an underwater scene and what fun!
I am really enjoying making small wall hangings, and they take so much less time.

I think I might do another underwater scene so that I will have a pair.

Well, it is time to head out. Talk to you all later. Shirley

February 1st!

We are slowly getting through winter, day by day! I decided, as it is February to change my background and title picture to represent Valentines - a nice change from the darker, and
Christmas theme. The wall hanging shown is my
first 3 fabric wall hanging and I thread painted the humming bird.

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Now that I have the top finished (Flower garden), I am binding 3 wall hangings that need finishing.
The picture of the 'floral bouquet' which is a class project I taught to 3 groups, including Learningfa
last year, has been waiting to be quilted. I don't know why I have put it off but today is the day I quilt it. I also will be doing the binding on my forest scene which I finished recently. I hope to sew it this after noon as my gd is coming over so that her Dad can watch the big game with his friends. He is such a good father, and as he doesn't get too much time to himself, we are going to have her here while the game is on. My DH
would rather have her with us than sit and watch the game. We are both pulling for the
Arizona Cardinals as we used to spend all our winters in Arizona.

It is not a bad day here in Calgary - it is above zero C so that is nice. I am thinking of
the ice storm in Kentucky - I hope that everyone is safe. What a weird winter we have all had this year.

Well, that is it for today -- have fun watching the game and take care if you are in an area where the ice storm hit. Shirley

Thread painting

Here are a couple of pictures of my thread painting. One is the next project in my thread painting class - I painted the leaves and then thread painted over some parts of the leaves. The other is a peacock which I really enjoyed working on. Click on both to see the close ups. I beaded part of the peacock -- it is 13" x 13".

I am working on a landscape to be used as a prize on my learningfa group. I hope whoever wins it will like it. I am having lots of fun doing it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Winter is here, I am sorry to say. Brrrrr !! Actually we are fortunate that it took this long as I have known it to turn very cold in October, so I guess it is to be expected.

I have been fighting bronchitis this past week and am finally feeling better. I have to venture out to get some variegated thread, some 505 spray for this wall hanging, and something for the border of the wall hanging I am working on. If the roads are too
slippery I will just wait until tomorrow. Gone are the days when I would drive in all
kinds of weather. Eight winters in Arizona cured me of that and now I hate to winter drive. Luckily my husband doesn't mind and as we are retired we can pick when we want to go out.
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The kids got us a mattress cover that can be regulated to different settings of heat and can be used on one side or both. Why didn't I get one of these before???? It is absolutely wonderful. I am always cold and I turn on my side about l5 minutes before I
go to bed and it is toasty and warm! I don't leave it on all night but it sure is great. I would recommend it for anyone who gets cold and has trouble thawing out like me.

Well, I think it is time for me to read my paper. I seem to have so much time now that the US elections are over! I got to the point where I couldn't turn it off and even though I
am a Canadian, I found it drew me in. Our election came and went and wasn't nearly as exciting as the US.

Shirley

More of my work -Southwestern theme

When we were in Arizona I decided I would like to try hand building clay. I enjoyed it very much. Here are 4 of the pieces I did. The first two are 'Story tellers' the 2nd one is a story teller vase and the
3rd one is another story teller. If you have been to the southwest you will have seen many different types of clay story tellers. I also did a lot of other subjects - it was lots of fun. I was especially interested in
the southwest carvings and history- Below are more pieces of my
clay work. As you can see, a lot of my work at that time was southwestern.
The far picture is a stained glass candle holder from a class I taught in the stained glass room at the park.

The three indians were out of my head- one of my friends was working
on a navajo indian - I decided to do a wall with 3 heads on it.
The interesting part to me was that as I was doing it one of the
indians BECAME Chief Standing alone of the Morley tribe - I had seen him at every Calgary Stampede parade since I was a little girl. I was so impressed with his wonderful feathered head dress. I had no problem with the other two heads that represented the Apache indians from
Arizona. I have kept it and it brings back an interesting memory for me. (click on the
pictures to get a close up). Our visits to Arizona were wonderful-
Practically all the work I did during that time and for a couple of years after we stopped going down was southwestern. I still have two of my SW wall hangings on my wall, and just recently taught a southwestern wall hanging class to my learningfa group.
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I also got very interested in making pine needle baskets using the long needles found near Tucson. I sometimes made a clay center, with holes around the edge and made baskets that way. The bottom basket was used with dyed pine needles -- with cream raffia - and the centers were walnuts
that a man from the park sliced and put together with epoxy. I really enjoyed doing them. I picked up some Ponderosa Pine needles in
British Columbia and have made a couple since we got back. Hard on the hands though!



===================================================================Here are three pictures I did on plastic canvas size l4 - I also
taught a class using plastic canvas to design and make our own bags - we had lots of fun doing them. If I remember correctly I taught over l00 people over the years we spent in Arizona. Here are some of the bags we did in class. We used wool and each person in my class had to draw their own design - Most did soutwestern but some did other subjects. Lots of fun!

Hmm - I wonder whether the girls in learningfa would like to do one of these--?

Well, that is enough for today - I have been gathering pictures of my work over the years and
can't believe the different things I have done! Enjoy! (I hope!).

More of my work

Over the years I have done a lot of different things - and here are the results of some of my efforts.

In l971 we emigrated to New Zealand for 3 years - We took our three kids with us and had a wonderful time there. We lived north of Auckland on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula (Hibiscus coast) - Prior to going I had started doing some copper tooling and took some copper with me to NZ - I discovered the wonderful Maori designs, tattoos, etc. and started doing some of the faces of the former Chiefs - they had moko on their faces and were most interesting - Here are 2 pictures of My maori copper carvings. We ended up in business selling my original copper works and I was fortunate to be featured in the New Zealand Womens' weekly in l972. I did all sorts of different original scenes and that was the first time I really knew that I could do something that was appreciated by others. My husband was one of the first 'outsiders' to be accepted into the Volunteer fire Brigade - (90%) of the country had volunteer departments. They travelled all over NZ in competitions and what a great time we had. I admired their beautiful brass hats and so did some in copper. Here is one of them. We went back a few years ago and most of our friends still had their copper pictures on the wall with the writeup behind the pictures - which really tickled me.

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I'VE BEEN awarded the

Kreativ Blogger Award!

How wonderful! I have been awarded the "Kreativ Blogger Award" by SUSAN at Sunrise quilt studio. (see side bar and click on Susan's name) she does beautiful work. I am really honored. I am new at blogging and I didn't expect this wonderful surprise !I will
have to figure out how I nominate five other blogs - grin but I will check with her. This blog life is rather confusing - I am thrilled as you can imagine! My friend Deb and Susan have both been so helpful while I tried to get this blog up and running. It is such a pleasant surprise.
THANKS SO MUCH SUSAN!

The rules of the award are:

1. The winner may put the logo on her blog. (I will have to figure out how to do that!)

2. Put a link to the person you got the award from in your blog. (It is already there!)

3. Nominate 5 blogs.

4. Put links to the blogs.

5. Leave a message for your nominees.
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Here is another donation

it is called Underwater world - it did very well at last year's (2007) auction.
The second one was one of my first winter scenes and one of m y first donations.- if you look carefully you might see a moose peeking out of the forest.
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The QUILT PROJECT FOR BREAST CANCER

SUPPORT is a project I have been involved with for the past 6 years.
Each year I have donated two wall hangings - and have worked both at the displays showing the quilts that are to be auctioned in Calgary and have attended the auctions. The forest scene will be auctioned in Toronto and 'Once upon a Winter Morn' will be auctioned in Victoria at their auction. Go to
www.thequilt.com to check out the beautiful quilts that have
been donated. They are traveling to different parts of Canada and are on display at different LaZboy stores across the country. The auctions will be held during October and November.


Here are some of the other pieces I donated
to the Quilt project over the years.