Hello,

I write with a heavy heart today as one of my best friends died yesterday.  She enriched my life so very much,  We both taught Art int he Westhill School district,    I did middle school and she taught high school.    Many was the evening when we would meet  after school and have a little dinner and then go to her class room and play for several hours.  We painted, drew, dyed and explored anything we could think of to try with our kids and for self enjoyment.  She was a great leader and she ran Art club at the high school. As a part of that she took students to NYC for the Columbus Day weekend for many years and because I knew all the students too I got to go along as a chaperone.    She provided the students with a rich experience there.   After arriving and getting the bags into the Edison Hotel , she would gather the kids together start. Her first act was to give them all a hotel card so they could always find there way “home”, and a map of the city while she made sure they understood that they should never go any were alone.  The next instruction was to find the hotel on the map and tell them to mark it’s location.  She followed that by saying our first destination is Museum of Modern Art at 11 W 53 street.   When they had found it she would. then select two students to lead us here.   I usually walked near the front of the group and she did he rear.  When we arrived she would direct them to an exabit and we  would do it together.    Now we had seen many of the works before, but hey were often surprised by how work looked in reality.   She then would allow the students to wander the museum and we all collected at an appointed time and go to a second exabit that usually involved a second bit of map use and walking.  At about 4;30 or five she would pull them all together and remind them of staying in groups of at least two and say ” Make your own way back to the hotel and have dinner.  Be ready to go to the theater and meet us in the lobby at 7:30.      The evening was usually an  off Broadway show , but we did do the Empire State Building one time and took a boat tour around the Island one year.   Saturday morning we crowed into a bus and went down to SOHO . Stop One was Tower Records.    Then we would visit gallery after gallery.  I recall seeing an exabit of work were very thing was made of Chocolate.   It had among many other things, a life sized chocolate moose head along with chocolate playing cards and chess pieces   too.  One time we visited a show of tattoo art .  That was mostly drawings of pieces and lots of photos of the images on bodies.  Every visit it was different.   She would allow the students to explore on there own  in the afternoon telling them to meet us at the McDonalds to catch the subway at 4:30.   After the subway ride it was dinner on your own with the meeting again for the theater in the evening.   I got to see Meet Me in St Lewis, Into the Woods, and South Pacific to mention a few.   Sunday was always the Metropolitan Museum.      After handing them a map of the museum Her instruction was for them to visit at least three galleries of their choosing and then they were free to spend the rest of the day as they chose be it exploring Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, shopping- what ever, but be in the  hotel lobby at six with dinner in hand ready to get on the bus to go home.    On the bus ride home she would talk with each student about the exabit they had visited in the Met as her follow up.   It was always a great experience for  the students as well us.    Barbara and I traveled on our own too. We went to a Maine and visited her college roommate and drew int the Maine woods and the rocky sea shore.  We went to California to visit her sister and had a good time exploring there as well.  We traveled with  retired teachers to Turkey and Greece.     She introduced me to pastels  and water color as well as encouraging my fabric work.    Her fearless approach to the world was always in inspiration and I loved her like a sister.  I will miss her greatly , and I am so very thankful she was in my life!

The week was full of other action for me too.  Associated Artists had a meeting on Sat.    FAD meant here yesterday and Sharon had a new a bit of work to share with us.

Noel has just started a stitch group too, and I went to that.  I also made it to the Pixie meeting yesterday too.

 

I am working away on Finding Fragments.  I  have started the stitch work on this collage.

 

 

 

 

The SAQA 100 day project is on day 11 now and I have made some blocks.    These are the middle sized ones and they are 12.5 X 4.5.   I am ready to cut the pieces for the smallest ones in the set now so the real fun will begin later this week.  I think now that I will call the blocks Barbara Blocks in honor of my friend.

 

 

  Progress Report: Past Times  I added a  pair of gloves to this square this week.   A new square got started as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Tidewater II  I am going to try to not go so overboard with the textures on this one and just have more space.    I did make some felted “Kelp ” for it however.

 

Ethel 2     I only need to finish the machine quilting on this project and it will be complete.

 

 

Valentines   The shapes are cut and applied to felt.  Now I need to mount them on the cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 Lap 3  I have these pre cut squares of woven purple and so I decided to use them as the focus for the next lap quilt.  I gave Judy two to pass to her friends on Tue.

 

 

 

 

 

Snow Dyeing.   One of the other gals in the 100 Day challenge was snow dyeing and with all the snow we got on Monday I decided to do to the same.

 

 

 

Sense I was inspired by the 100 Day gal, I decided to use the fabric from this experiment as the jumping off place for the colors for the next 100 Day squares.