COVID19: Happy Valentine's Day

COVID19: Sketchy Bernie

By now, y'all have all seen the photo of Bernie Sanders at the Biden-Harris inauguration. He was bundled up in a Burton parka (made in Vermont), hand-knit gloves gifted to him by a school teacher, a disposable blue mask, and regular-looking trousers. 

When he first walked down the steps from inside the Capitol, he carried a large manila envelope, like he had stopped by the office to grab his mail for a look-see while waiting for the big event to get underway. I feel that to my bones because it's exactly the kind of thing I'd do during the pre-game for a wintry hoedown and needed to keep mind off how freaking cold my ears are getting.

I use the word delightful a bit much, but it most accurately expresses how I felt the first time I saw #comfyBernie was trending on Twitter along with the photo.

For the sake of history and to practice my figure sketching a bit, I added this quick doodle to my little green sketchbook of current/events politics. I decided I needed a separate book for things that might distract or detract from the chill vibe of my regular sketchbook.

COVID19: Cousin Marcie

Jack's cousin Marcie is a hospital social worker in Ft. Myers, Florida and among the handful of people that Jack and I talk to semi-regularly on the telephone. She's also among the handful of people who have spent the night here.

She's a kind and thoughtful person, and COVID19 has made her job a whole lot harder in an area which, like Tennessee, is seeing a surge in cases with no real end in sight. 

Marcie grew up in McMinnville and has the mountains in her spirit, but she's at her best in the ocean breeze. 

To let her know how much we love her, I painted this picture for her. It's big - 12 inches square - and based on a photograph her husband, Chad, took one day when they'd paddled to a stretch of isolated beach somewhere off the Gulf of Mexico. The canoe was hand-built by one of her grandfathers and is one of her most treasured, cherished possessions. It's also a hell of a canoe. 

COVID19: Collecting Leaves from the Buckeye

A few years ago, Jack dug a pretty little buckeye tree and planted it in the front yard. The trunk was barely more than a straight stick with some roots and a handful of dirt at the bottom, but it likes the spotty sunlight and slightly acidic soil where it lives now and is thriving.

Long before our oaks and beeches think about putting on leaves, the little buckeye flutters with tender, yellowy-green foliage on  skinny, branch-y "arms" which now stretch nearly four feet in every direction, and by mid-summer - this time of year - those leaves are a scattered across the ground like curls of caramel colored parchment.

The little buckeye is always a step ahead of most everything else in the yard and has become one of our favorites for that reason. Reminding us that spring or the relief of cooler weather is just around the corner, showing us the direction of the breeze, providing a perch near the feeder for our hummingbirds during summer.

For the last couple of years, I meant to preserve a couple of leaves somehow to use in an art project or incorporate into one of my journals, but they're always dried up and done by the time I remind myself to save some. 

The same thing happened this year, but I collected a big crunchy handful of them anyway and dug out my bottle of vegetable glyercin to see it if was possible to bring them back to life enough to paste into a scrapbook.

Google and Pinterest pointed me in a basic direction, but I carried it my own way. Instead of dropping the leaves into a bath of glycerin, I applied a few big drops to each leaf and let it "soak in" for a few minutes before massaging the gylcerin into the tissue of the leaves. 

They were initially resistant and felt like they might crack, but gently spreading the glycerin with my fingers and in a couple of cases a small brush - mostly to see if that worked better than my fingers, and it didn't - worked to loosen them up, and they were initially super-shiny and still pretty rigid.

I put two-fers and three-fers inside folds of waxed paper and tucked them into a book for a few days before taking them out.

Using an old textbook which will never be of use to anyone as a textbook again was a good choice, because the glycerin did leak out and make a little bit of a mark, but it isn't greasy or weirdly-colored, but it does leave a mark. 

The leaves turned out beautifully and their beautiful deep lustre returned in the moisture of the glycerin.

When I bought the glycerin to make do-it-yourself hand soap, I knew there were other ways I could use it, but I never considered resuscitating leaves, but here they are.

COVID19: A Goodie from Sis

I meant to share about this weeks and weeks ago, but I got distracted by other things and never did until now.

Sis sent me the nicest surprise for my birthday and Mother's Day - a surprise box from Parnassus Books with items selected especially for me by author and Parnassus co-owner Ann Patchett herself.

If you don't know about Parnassus, the quick and dirty is that prize-winning author and long-time "local" Ann Patchett saw a need for Nashville to have an independent book seller after Davis-Kidd and a couple of other long-time Nashville bookstores closed their doors. The big chains had taken a chunk of their customers, and the internet took a lot of the rest of them and left people who wanted a more personal book shopping experience with few places to turn. Ann and a partner opened Parnassus in 2011 and now have a couple of locations in the Nashville area.

If you want to read more of the Parnassus story or shop its website, click here.

The Vernons had already gifted me with a sturdy new palette and two new tubes of watercolor for my actual birthday, so I was super-surprised when I received another special goodie in the mail.

On the day it arrived, Jack and I also received two or three other things from Amazon, so I tore into the box without realizing it was a kind of birthday/Mother's Day gift that coordinated with a similar gift she'd sent Mom.

Sis had asked me questions about what kind of books I've been reading and some vague explorations into my current preferences, but I still didn't think anything about it until I opened the box and found this --

I dug a little more and found this before I closed the lid and waited until I'd gained permission to go deeper. 

The rest of the gift was gorgeous and special and perfect.

A hand-written note from Ann Patchett,

a beautiful little sketchbook with a bee motif (perfect) and a copy of Madeline Albright's autobiography (also perfect),

and a delightful set of colored pencils in a pretty tin. 

I am incredibly fortunate to have such loving, generous people in my life, and my sister is one of them.

Rabbits in My Sketchbook

I had Easter thoughts a few weeks ago and drew some rabbits in my sketchbook.

I posted some of these on my Instagram and Facebook pages and ended up getting my first commission for a pencil drawing. It will be a gift for the bunny's human, and the woman who commissioned it loves it.

The little sign says, "all you need is love and a bunny" and has special meaning to both the giver and  recipient of this gift. 

Because of COVID, it's still wrapped in birthday paper waiting for a party, but don't worry bunny rabbit. One day you'll get your chance. 

Real Life with Real Storms

Jack and I thought we were in trouble Saturday night. Actually, it was early Sunday morning when a powerful line of thunderstorms with straight-line winds, constant lightning, and some of the hardest rain we've ever seen cut a path through our part of the mid-state. In discussing it later, we came up with memories of one or two terrifying storms in the 23 years we've been together (one here at home; one in the car on I-16 in Georgia on our way to visit Jack's parents), but this was the worst.

Only last month, horrible tornadoes ripped through communities in Nashville, Mt. Juliet, and Cookeville, killing twenty people and leaving hundreds injured, homeless, and devastated, so we were hyper-aware when our electricity clicked off and left us with only brilliant flashes of lightning and bowel-quaking thunder to gauge the progress of the approaching storm. The rain began as a torrent so strong, I was afraid our western-facing windows would break, and moments later, Jack said, "We may be about to lose our roof."

I could hear the wind pummel the side of the house and feel it rush through the space between our roof and the metal roofing, which was being constantly pelted with sticks and limbs. The windows rattled, and the howl of the still-bare winter treetops was eerily high-pitched. The lightning and thunder were constant and intense like a blitzkrieg.

The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood straight-up and my skin tingled. My ears started to pop a little bit, and I could sense that the pressure inside the house had slightly changed. If everything in my world had suddenly exploded, which is pretty much what happens when a tornado hits your house, I would not have been surprised. 

At this point, we all knew were were in a serious situation, and by all of us, I mean all of us. Poor Josie was so frightened she peed the floor and then hunkered down in it. Kinky-kitty, who always heads for additional shelter under a chair or our bed whenever we have any kind of thunder or hard rain at all, let out a couple of screams before going into a state of catatonic shock. Phoebe, the new cat, was the exact opposite. She ran wildly from room to room, leaping from the dining table to the couch to the hearth before racing to the bedroom and back again in a frantic circuit.

I picked up our emergency lantern and said, "Jack, I'm heading to the bathroom."

"Do you need to go?" he asked from behind his flashlight.

"No. I'm going to ride this out in the tub," I replied, wasting no time hustling down the hall.

Moments later, from the perceived safety of our bigger bathroom, we could hear the gears of the storm slow with a slight easing of both the wind and rain and a noted lengthening of the interval between blasts of lightning and explosions of thunder. The house seemed to sigh with relief, and we did, too.

Flashlight in hand, Jack checked the ceiling for leaks while I made sure none of our pets had died of fright. Everybody but Kinky seemed jumpy and relieved. Kinky was frozen in place with stiff muscles and mostly not responsive for a couple of hours. I put him near me on the bed, and he finally repositioned himself on his side sometime around the beginning of daylight.

After the first hard line of storms had moved past us by several minutes, I drove through the sticks and debris up the hill and called Mom and Dad from the nearest place with cell reception. Their home phone, like ours, was out, but Mom answered her cell phone on the first ring and said she and Dad were fine and hanging out in the basement.

Two or three more clusters of storms rolled through, but nothing was severe, and we were finally able to calm down and relax enough to go to sleep.

Our power came on around 1:00 on Sunday afternoon, roughly eleven hours after it had gone out. The phone and internet interruption lasted longer - until almost 3:00.

We feel fortunate to still have a home, especially since we're sheltering here during the COVID19 pandemic.

On an unrelated note, here are some muscaria (grape hyacinths) I painted. They're one of my spring favorites.

Dragonflies

 

Late season dragonflies. They're one of my favorite things to paint.

Bea's Birthday - 2017

Y'all know what this photo means. Yes, little Bea has flipped another year on the dial and is sailing toward six. She was just a baby, wasn't she? Like last year? 

Not any more. She'll always be the baby of the family and all, but she's grown way beyond anything resembling a baby and has become her very own girl. Beatrice and Lucia are tight and about as close as sisters come, but they're as different as different can be. As with everyone else on the face of this planet, the older they get, the more we see unique personality characteristics, and boy, do these two have some. They agree on being barefooted and are more fun to watch than TV.

Bea's birthday party on the farm was great - the weather was uncooperative, so we had to punt plans to go fishing or do anything outside, but the weather didn't matter.

I used my art skills to create a watercolor of one of Bea's favorite snuggly things, Bananas the cat, and was all the way satisfied, because it DOES look good. I did something similar for Lucia's birthday back in December, and she LOVED it - the more she looked at it, the more my little painting looked like kiTTen. 

Beatrice? She recognized Bananas right away, but the longer she studied the painting, the more differences she found -- 

"Pammy, this cat is BROWN."

"Mommy, this cat's eyes aren't anything like Bananas'." 

"Papa, where's Bananas?" 

"Pammy, look - this cat is BROWN. And it's tail is too short."

No exclamation points. No disappointment. Just the facts.

And seriously... The card I painted for Bea is at least ten times better than the one I pained for Lucia. I 've had a dozen watercolor classes since December and actually kind of understand what I'm doing now.

Maybe she has a future as an art critic.

In other news, I turned 52 on the 27th, and Jack and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary on May 1st. 

Now... who wants cake?

Eggnog and Art Therapy

Once a week, I get together with three good friends to do art and have real conversation with real people. 

Some people have a therapist. I have Ann, Betty, Deb, and a big sack of art supplies. 

This past week, we had a makeshift Christmas party with homemade eggnog and Pirouline cookies - Jack and I laughed about how his mother would've fit right in. 

Note: That bottle was less than half full when I showed up with it - one good serving (with fresh nutmeg) apiece. 

I spent my art time painting a card to send in thanks to our friends, Jeff and Betsy, who treated us to a delicious holiday lunch at our favorite seafood joint last weekend and gave us a lovely set of flameless candles. 

They have a whole pack of little Schnauzers, so I painted one.

So far, the cards I have painted for folks have been well-received, and I think theirs will be, too. 

Aunting and Arting

A few weeks ago, Sis called and said Beatrice needed my help with her Halloween costume. She'd decided to go as "Sparkle Queen" and needed a fancy dress and cape to make it happen.

Luckily for me, "Sparkle Queen" is a product of her own imagination. There was no pressure to replicate a cartoon costume or copyrighted design, because those rarely look the way they are intended, and I used all the luck I had coming to me a few years ago when Lucia wanted to go as Princess Leia, and I nailed that sucker. To. The. Wall. 

This year both girls broke free of established characters and the typical witch-cat-zombie-Disneything, coming up with unique ideas for a couple of sincerely cool Halloween costumes.

Lucia hatched her idea for "Peacock Princess" back in the summer. I don't know the whole story, but apparently Sis ordered a peacock print tunic online and didn't like it, but before she could return it, Lucia fell in love and decided that with the addition of some peacock feathers and a headpiece, it would be a perfect Halloween costume.

Beatrice was more fluid and abstract in her idea for "Sparkle Queen." 

She and I had several phone conversations about her expectations for the costume I would create, and they boiled down to:

Sparkly.

Rainbow-colors.

Twirly.

There needs to be a cape.

Since Hancock Fabrics went out of business back in the summer - I'm still crying about that - I've been in somewhat of a sewing slump and was hard-pressed to find what I envisioned for her costume. The internet came through, though, and an etsy seller set me up with some most awesome fabric - better than anything I could've found at Hancock's.

No, it wasn't cheap, but when your client is only three feet tall, $15/yard goes a long way when the fabric is 56 inches wide.

The "sparkle" is more of a shimmer, but it's bright, colorful, and flashy, and when I started sewing this stuff, I fell in love.

Unlike some knits, the fabric held its shape between the cutting and the sewing. There was no weird, unexpected stretching, and while I stay-stitched the seam-lines of every piece to make sure they came together the way they should, I now realize I could have skipped that step. 

With our without, Beatrice had a beautiful costume to wear for Halloween, and "Sparkle Queen" is a real thing now.

In other "aunting" news, nephew Jack became a teenager on October 27th, and husband Jack suggested I paint him a birthday card instead of purchasing one, since I've been all into doing art lately. 

I played around with a pencil sketch first, then translated it into a watercolor for his card. I actually like the pencil sketch better than the painting, but he loved the card almost as much as the cash stashed inside it and has already asked his parents to have it framed for him, which warms my heart in all kinds of ways and gives me a reason to not hate all teenagers for being unappreciative jerks.

The Heart of the Art

This is an apology.

Back in the summer, I posted about re-discovering how much I love drawing and painting and shared about the people who taught me the basics and who continue to inspire me, but I forgot someone very important - my mother.

I hadn't really thought about it until a couple of weeks ago when Jack and I were at the farm for a visit. During the course of a conversation with an architect friend, I'd mentioned how little my parents' house has changed over the years. The carpet, the color of the walls, the sprayed-on ceiling texture, the wood paneling, and the bathrooms are all pretty much the same as when our family moved-in back in 1978. Appliances, TVs, a set or two of den furniture, and the kitschy late 70's print kitchen walls have fallen by the wayside since then, but for the most part, the house is like a time capsule, and the older I get, the more I appreciate the TLC required to maintain burnt-orange shag carpet in the main living area.

In that context, I looked at what I still refer to as "home" with fresh eyes, and I saw something I'd never really seen before - my mother as an artist. 

Every room, including the bathrooms, has handmade art on the walls, and much of it is hers. She painted the pair of river boat scenes which hang over the sofa and the violin still-life on the wall by the piano and the Italian street scene beside Dad's chair. Little pastel drawings Sis and I did "back in the day" are sprinkled here and there as are a handful of paintings by Bettie Jo Smotherman, but Mom is truly the heart of the art in that house.

Even here, Mom's work is prominently displayed. Her watercolor of an owl has hung near the front door since I moved here in 1992, and this still-life in acrylics has been on the wall over the hearth for just as long. 

So, if I'm doling out credit for my love of art (and art supplies), I must give my mom her due, and when people ask where I got what talent I have, she really is at the top of the list. 

Art Inspiration

Back in the spring, Lucia was selected to represent her school's whole first grade in an art show at The Factory in Franklin. The annual event highlights music and the arts throughout the Williamson County School System, and according to Sis and what I saw from checking out the website, it is a big deal.

Sis explained that every first grader was given the same assignment - creating a "royal" self portrait, which was completed over the course of several art classes. Once the works were finished, the best ones from each class was presented to a jury of teachers who selected the piece to be exhibited at the show.

Lucia was ecstatic.

I wasn't that surprised to hear that she'd won, because Lu is, as Sis once described her, "fearlessly creative." She has never been afraid to cut, paint, draw, glue, fold, tape, and get way outside the box in her pursuit of art. And even though she's only a little girl, she really is good at it.

Her painting is beautiful - bright and bold, and her attention to detail is obvious. I love it.

She says she wants to be an artist/veterinarian/farmer when she grows up, and if she keeps being this fierce with pen and paint, she has a great shot at acing the first one.

In thinking about "Creative Lucia," I was reminded of a fun day she and I spent together a couple of years ago. We spent hours playing in her art box. We cut random shapes from construction paper and glued them into collages. We made jewelry from chunky Lucite beads, and I almost remembered how to fold an origami crane. 

Since then, I haven't given much thought to being creative aside from my sewing pursuits, but something about hearing Lu talk about her art and seeing her painting from the school exhibit inspired me. I was reminded of how much I loved art when I was her age. When I was elementary school age, Mom's boss, Bettie Jo, sat me down with a piece of charcoal and a big sheet of newsprint and showed me how to draw a simple still-life - an apple, a banana, and a bottle - and add shadows in the right places. 

I took more lessons from her over the next several years - Mom did, too. I learned a little bit about using pastels and paints, and after she retired, I took weekly pastel lessons from another lady in town. Judy, my second art teacher, was cool. There were maybe five of us in the class, and if we wanted to draw cats or horses or motorcycles or people, she was OK with it. Bettie Jo always stuck with tablescapes or copying pictures of classic paintings and was quite unwavering in her approach to "art." 

After Judy and her husband divorced, she moved away, and by that time, I had a full plate of extracurricular activities, so I rarely picked up my art supplies unless a project from school required it. 

I never abandoned my love of drawing. Years upon years of meeting and class notes have been adorned with doodles and sketches, and I've periodically picked up a sketchbook and pencils or a box of crayons to explore my creative side. The little girls gave me a beautiful adult coloring book for Christmas, and I used the gift card Sis and Chris included with it to Amazon myself a nice set of high quality coloring pencils. I enjoy the relaxation and meditative rhythm of coloring - I always have, whether it's Barbies or the intricate designs included in the book I received - but it's a completely different thing.

A few weeks ago, I dug around in the closet and found TWO old sketch books with more than half the pages blank. I looked back through cats and flowers and koi and peaches I drew in the early 90's and thought, "Those aren't half bad."

I pilfered my stash of office supplies for sharp, dark mechanical pencils and soft, mellow Dixon Ticonderogas. I discovered all kinds of stuff in drawers and boxes - a couple of kneaded erasers, a full set of colored Sharpies, glitter crayons, a China white stick, and almost a whole ream of black card stock leftover from Mom and Dad's 50th Anniversary reception.

Since then, I've found all kinds of interesting drawing and sketching tutorials online and am making a genuine effort to draw faces and figures and improve some of the skills I already had.

Last week I splurged on a set of "recommended for you" oil pastels ($3.38 - ha!!) and a couple of other artsy things when I ordered cat litter from Amazon, and I'm having a ball with my "new" old hobby.

Nothing comes close to Lucia's gorgeous Royal Self Portrait, but I'm trying.

Female Cardinal (colored pencils)

Tomato (semi-hard pastels)

Josie (oil pastels)

Coneflower (oil pastels)

Started out as Beatrice (oil pastels)

Avocado (oil pastels)

Trumpet Vine (oil pastels)

Hummingbird and Trumpet Vine (#2 Pencil)

A Trip to the Fabric Store

I told Beatrice about this outfit a couple of weeks ago when the family celebrated my birthday. A few days later, she demanded to wear her new dress with the dogs and moustaches. Sis had no idea what she was talking about, then Bea explained, "Pammy said..." Needless to say, I got busy and finished it. The leggings are rolled up twice at the bottom. She may still be wearing this one in kindergarten. Lucia is modeling her "Dragonfly Prairie Tunic." I put that together on Saturday evening and Sunday morning before Mother's Day lunch, so she would have something new, too.

When my sister and I were growing up, our Ma-Ma Harris made a lot of our clothes, and I've written here before about her influence on my life and in my love of sewing.

Smithville has never had much of a fabric store - back in the day, a couple of downtown businesses carried a small selection of basic material and notions, but specific projects required a trip to a real fabric store. The Cloth House in McMinnville was the nearest, and bigger fabric stores in other towns were frequent stops when family travels took us there. 

I have been fascinated by literally everything in every fabric store I've ever visited - the rows and rows of fabric in every color, print, and texture imaginable; the racks of thread, arranged by color like a giant rainbow; ribbons, buttons, scissors of every shape and size, dressmaker forms, the pattern books and huge drawers of patterns; the "whap, whap, whap" of a bolt being unfurled.

Little has changed since the time I was a child but for the addition of bar code technology to replace pad, pen, and calculator on the cutting table.

Ma-Ma Harris didn't always know what she was shopping for when she hit a fabric store wide-open, and neither do I most of the time, but she taught me that having a general idea of what you want and how many yards you need when you find it goes a long way. She also made me unafraid to take advantage of a good sale and bring home a frighteningly big pile of fabric as long as you have plans for everything in it - well... at least most everything in it.

Last weekend, I hit the mother lode at Hancock's Fabrics and Crafts in Murfreesboro during the Mother's Day Weekend Sale.

I normally shop at the Hancock's in Cookeville, because it's convenient to my work, the people are nice, and I've patronized them enough in the past six months that some of the employees kind of remember me and my purchases:

"Yeah, you were getting stuff to make a poodle skirt."

And every time Jack has been to the store with me, a member of the staff has approached him to say a friendly word and thank him for browsing so patiently while I shop. Maybe there's a section in the employee handbook about being nice to husbands and making them feel comfortable - I don't know, but they're doing it right.

The Murfreesboro Hancock's is a whole different ballgame. Finding it was a trip through Dante's ninth circle of hell, because well... Murfreesboro is just kind of like that on Saturday afternoons over by the mall, but once we got into the store,  the shopping experience was worth the close calls with really bad drivers and death-wish pedestrians. Three times the size of the Cookeville Hancock's, the walls and floor are lined with spacious racks of well-organized fabrics, notions, and crafting supplies.

My list was mostly fabric for new outfits for the girls - knit for leggings and colorful summer prints for breezy dresses and separates. The girls loved their last jumpers so much, I knew I wanted to shop for more of the seersucker-like plisse I used to make them.

Here's how it all went down.

Right off the bat, I spotted some wonderfully bright, rainbow-striped cotton jersey, perfect for the soft pants the girls love so much, and a matching floral in the same jersey knit:

Jumper fabric was next on the list, so I cruised to that table and found a cool paisley with a coordinating floral for the hem band and casings. At 60% off, I had to throw it in the buggy, and this happened:

Yes - a spot-on match for the rainbow striped knit.

My next stop was the aisle with the batik prints. I'd already decided to make Lucia a "prairie/hippy tunic" in that kind of fabric and wanted something to match a not-quite-finished pair of yellow leggings. The dragonfly fabric said, "Pick me first!" so I did, and another amazing thing happened:

While I was perusing the other beautiful batiks, I thought about a flutter-sleeve summer dress and found a gorgeous, bright-hot print. I pulled it out of the rack to look at it, and BOOM!

Everything was on sale, plus I had a 20% off coupon for my whole purchase, so I got liberal measures of each fabric to make both girls several pieces that match/coordinate, and I AM STOKED!! When I get finished with everything, it's going to look like a real "collection." of clothing.

I don't know where these creative efforts will lead, but one thing is for sure - Lucia and Beatrice are going to have awesome and VERY colorful summer wardrobes!! 

Here's a closer look at Bea's "Moustache Dogs" outfit, and another I made using the fabric leftovers from Lucia's last jumper, which looks fabulous with the rainbow leggings.