Foot Surgery and Almond Brittle

Today I am recuperating from having foot surgery yesterday.  I had a bunionectomy and had to get the 2nd toe straightened out.  The doctor shaved some bone off of the big toe and inserted it into the 2nd toe, after removing some scar tissue and cartilage there.  He also  removed a nerve between the 2nd and 3rd toe.  Sounds like fun, hey.  The surgery went very smooth and all the staff at Sierra Vista hospital were awesome. They really took great care of me.  My husband has been great too.  So I've been sitting with my foot up and putting ice on it.

Knowing this surgery was coming up., I did all my Christmas stuff earlier this year than ususal.  I must have made  about 8 batches of almond brittle to give to friends and relatives.  Everyone seems to love this stuff and it's easy to make.

Ingredients:  1 stick of butter (1/2 cup),  1 1/2 cups of raw almonds ( I get the ones at Trader Joe's for $5.99),  1 cup of sugar.

Put all the ingredients into  a heavy saucepan and turn up the heat between medium and high.  Stir often, towards the end you will need to stir constantly.  It will go through all sorts of changes in texture.  Turn up  heat a little higher after the butter is melted.  Be sure to use a metal spoon to stir it.  I once used one of the white plastic spoons and it melted into the brittle.  It looked like I had added macadamia nuts because of the white melted chunks.  We still laugh about that one. When it looks like carmel and it's starting to bubble, it is done.  Pour it onto a cookie sheet, spreading it out.  Let it cool and then break it up into delicious chunks of brittle.  Soak the pan and spoon in very hot water to clean it.  

Well, back to my other chair with more ice and some pain pills and taking it easy.

Citrasolv Art

Today I was looking through my Citrasolv Experiments, some of which I printed on fabric.  It's a fun, kind of smelly process that allows you to dissolve and distort the ink from some glossy magazine pictures to create great textural papers.  For more info on the process go to http://www.citrasolv.com/  Once there go to their Artist Support section and scroll down to Artist Galleries.  Sarah Winkler,  http://www.citrasolv.com/art/sarahw.html  who had a studio in Studios on the Park, Paso Robles,  was the first artist, whose work I saw utilized these textues in a fabulous way.  She gave a short workshop on how to create them using Citrasolv, which is a cleaning fluid, on National Geographic Magazine pages.  Basically, you brush or rub a rag saturated with the citrasolve over the page you desire and then close the magazine up for anywhere from 20 minutes to 24 hours, putting something heavy on it.   Then you have to dry and air out the papers.  Here's a link to a video about it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5FQ6KAbPOM  Just google citrasolv transfers and there's lots of information out there about it.

Here's some papers I made.  I've transferred some of these to fabrics and am playing around with them. I love the abstract quality of them.

Victorian House Design

I can't show you what I've been working on this week because it's been making presents and I don't want any of my friends to see what they are getting for Christmas. So instead I'll tell you what I've been working on for school.

Every December in Paso Robles, the folks who live on Vine Street between 8th and 21st streets decorate their houses to the hilt for an event called Vine Street Victorian Christmas Showcase. http://www.pasoroblesdowntown.org/paso-robles-events-vine-street-christmas-holiday.html  People are encouraged to bring canned goods to donate in front of the house they like best.  There are performances by local bands,  choirs and dance troupes in front of many of the houses, hayrides, food and beverage offerings. It's a wonderful event for the whole family. The  favorite of many of my students is the enactment of Scrooge, by a Paso Robles local, from the 2nd floor balcony of one of the beautifully decorated Victorians that line Vine Street.

I tie this community event into a project for my 8th grade students. Yesterday I went down Vine Street and a few others to take new pics of the houses.  I'm switching from showing my students the houses via an out-dated slide projector to a power point presentation, since I now have a slick document reader and projector in my classroom.

Here's pics of some of Paso's 'painted ladies', as Victorian houses are often called.

Students learn about Victorian houses and architectural elements as they draw a house from that era.   Then they transfer their drawing onto a piece of aluminum.  Next, they achieve more dimension through pressing in some areas and poof out others, working form both the front and the back.  Lastly, they coat the piece with black, permanent ink allowing it to dry then buffing up the top areas, leaving ink in the recessed ones.

The photos don't do justice to these pieces, due to reflection on them, but they are really fabulous.

New Photoshopped Art Quilt Project

Ever since I took a class from Susan Brandeis http://www4.ncsu.edu/~brandeis/  at the U of  Minneapolis in 2009 as part of the Splitrock Summer Arts Program, I've been wanting to make another quilt from one of my pictures enhanced through the magic of photoshop.  So finally, last week I played with this picture of rust on metal.

I played with it in photoshop until I created something I liked and then I enlarged the image to approximately three times its size.  I printed it out onto nine,  8" x 10" pieces of treated fabric for printing (I especially like Betty's Photos on Fabric cotton Twill)  http://www.bettysphotosonfabric.com/ and then sewed them together.  The sewing didn't go as smoothly as I wanted due to some of the pieces printing out too close to the edge on four sections.  I had to fuse additional fabric strips to those, so I would have enough of a seam allowance.  The fabric must have moved a bit in going through the printer.  Here's the sewn together version.

  In Susan's class I made the quilt below, using the same methods, but only doubled the size.  It was printed on four pieces of silk, I hand-sewed together.  I also printed a leaf on organza as an overlay.  I then embroidered and beaded it.

Here's the original photo that inspired it.

Do you have a favorite pre-treated fabric you like for printing?  What about any tips for "tiling" photos using a Mac and Photoshop, or even even using Spoonflower or another commercial fabric printer.  I tried to work with Spoonflower's website to find out how much it would cost to enlarge one photo to approximately a yard but couldn't figure out how to upload the image  without them thinking I wanted zillions of reprints of the same pic.  Has anyone else tried using them to print one enlarged image?  Maybe you'd be so kind to share your tips with me. They tried to help me with some info via email, but I just didn't get what they were saying.  Sometimes technology and I don't see eye to eye.

Wishing all my readers a very happy Thanksgiving!

Willy's Quilt Finished

Due to the help of some wonderful quilters in my school district and the contributions and encouragement from staff, the quilt for our teacher colleague is done and will be given to him this weekend.  Here's a picture of the quilt and some of our great staff.

Below is the finished quilt with the red binding

 which worked well to pick up all the reds within the blocks. 

Below is the back of the quilt with the machine embroidered block and quilt label, 

listing all those who contributed.

Here is a closeup of the  beautiful embroidered block done by

 one of the talented teacher quilters at my school.

Hoping this quilt brings comfort to our friend Willy and helps him to tolerate his radiation treatments this week and his upcoming chemo. 

 Thanks again to all my colleagues in getting this quilt done so quickly.

Quilt for Willy

As I wrote in my blog last week, a good friend and great teacher at my middle school  is dealing with cancer.  Due to lots of contributions of money and time from other staff members at my school, the quilt for Willy is almost completed.  We had lunch in my classroom last week and pinned the layers together.   Yesterday I machine quilted it and today, one of the other teachers is attaching the binding to the front.  Two other staff members will finish sewing it on, a label will get attached and then it will be off in the mail to him, hopefully providing him with some much needed comfort as he receives his treatments.

Halloween Costume and Quilt for a Friend

Halloween turned out to be a lot of fun at school with the kids.  Wearing the Warhol Soup Can created a very teachable moment for informing the students about Pop Art Style.  I showed them pictures of works by Warhol, Thiebaud, Lichtenstein, and Oldenburg.  They weren't quite sure it was art but they seemed to enjoy it.  Here I am in my costume with another teacher.

Sadly, one of my teacher friends at school, whom I've known for twenty some years,  just found out he has cancer and is facing a pretty serious battle ahead.  He's a Navy guy, avid surfer and just a very fun, nice guy. All his students just love him.  He makes history fun and interesting.  Here's the quilt up on my design wall, that some of us are going to quickly put together for him.  Hoping it provides some comfort. There's 25 blocks and it will have a border.  The Santa Cruz fabric on the right is being auditioned for the border.  The eight Australian fabric blocks look better in person.  They look kind of dull here.