Thirty years

My husband and I took a quick trip to Italy and Holland early this month, but so much "housekeeping" stuff has come up since our return that I have barely had time to look at my photos, let alone post any.  These are my favorites, taken in Zaanse Schans, a wonderful re-created historical village outside of Amsterdam, and textured with Kim Klassen's "oh my":

linking with Texture Tuesday

We enjoyed visiting friends in Amsterdam, but our heart is in Italy.  My husband and I lived in Milan for the first four years we were married, so Italian habits and preferences have been part of our lives ever since.  We have an academic connection to the city of Bologna, though, and return most every year for meetings, but we also take the time to slow down and absorb just being in Italy.  Bologna is a very special place - known as a major center of intellectual thought, it is home to the first European university (predating Oxford).  Like other Italian cities, it is full of gorgeous art and architecture, exquisite museums, unbelievably wonderful food... but relatively few tourists.  

textured with Kim Klassen's "grunged up"

textured with Kim Klassen's "oh my"

textured with Kim Klassen's "charmed"

Bologna is particularly known for the porticos covering most sidewalks in the city.  It makes getting around in the rain or the summer's heat pretty easy! 

Thirty years ago this week, I met my husband.  I was a first-year graduate student and he was a few weeks away from graduation.  He had spent a transformative academic year in Bologna, and over the years since, this expanded into so many Italian-focused experiences that it really shaped us as a family.  

The only thing is, it just seems like yesterday.  How can time go by so fast?

Ah, Providence!

I am gearing up for the vicarious thrill of my artistic life.... my youngest daughter will be a freshman next year at the Rhode Island School of Design. We drove to Providence on Friday to attend an open house for accepted students, and I am smitten.

textured with two layers of Kim Klassen's "grunged up" (multiply @ 47% and color burn @ 71%)

As a current student wrote recently on the class of 2016 facebook page, RISD is the Hogwarts of art schools. This school is more than just an art school; it is a dynamic community of creative thinkers who happen to express their ideas visually.

Now I know that if you really want to become better at taking pictures, you must bring your camera everywhere. But this weekend was for my daughter -- and while she is usually fairly tolerant of my photographic vanities, she was horrified that I would embarrass her in this setting.... so I left the DSLR at home and used my iphone instead. In the end, though, I couldn't capture any of it because they asked that we not take photos of the students at work. It was OK to photograph inside the nature lab:

textured with Kim Klassen's "Little things" (overlay @56%)

Imagine a huge hall, filled with cabinet after cabinet of natural curiosities, from stuffed animals to specimens of all kinds of plants. It felt like a magnificent Victorian museum glorifying the great explorers of that era.

textured with three layers of Kim Klassen's "Happy heart" (soft light @100%, multiply @100%, and color burn @100% 

Providence has so many historic buildings and architectural gems, and I am looking forward to getting better acquainted with the city over the next four years. One such treasure was the Providence Athenaeum, the fourth oldest public library in America. Established in 1753, the present building dates back to 1838. I loved the fact that visitors are welcome to come in and browse, and I especially loved the mixture of old and new books on the shelves, which makes it a living neighborhood resource with the stately feel of another era. I can see myself heading there next time I'm in town, just to read the newspaper in the armchairs next to the portrait of George Washington.

textured with Kim Klassen's "little things" (overlay @56%)

textured with Kim Klassen's "little things" (soft light @50%)

And of course, no visit is ever complete without good food. I love the internet -- I found Nick's on Broadway by trolling the foodie forums for Providence. We had a spectacular brunch there, all based on  the best locally-sourced ingredients. I had feathery-light poached eggs on a polenta base that was more a lemony-herbal souffle than any polenta I've ever eaten before.... delicious!

no textures here.... pure food, served to you in a straightforward manner!

And here is the neighborhood cat -- I had to take this picture because it reminds me of long ago (way before kids). Back then, I had three cats who knew exactly when to jump up into the window and wait for me to come home from work: 

textured with Kim Klassen's "little things" (multiply @100%)

Linking with Texture Tuesday

Balance

I have been thoroughly enjoying our odd, warm winter, and now, our balmy 70 degree days of spring.  After our out-of-cycle blizzard back in October, I'm sure we'll get ten inches of snow in April -- but what can you do other than just go along for the ride?

So that's what I'm doing right now, going along for the ride, trying to balance my every-day "stuff" with my creative life.  I am deep in the midst of several big sewing projects, which don't really lend themselves to blog posts (it's kind of like watching the grass grow....), but I've got some travel plans coming up soon, so my camera is getting warmed up for action.  In the meantime, here's a shot I took in Thailand over Christmas:

Textured with Kim Klassen's "Thursday" (overlay @100%)

linking with Texture Tuesday

All work and no play......

I have decided to stop fighting it.

I have too many passions, and there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything.  So rather than feeling frustrated because I can't spend every waking moment taking photographs.. or quilting... or making mixed media art.... I've decided to follow what Julie Fei-Fan Balzer calls the "shiny ball" -- that is, whatever intrigues me in the moment, without the burden of expectations.  My creative interests tend to move in cycles, and what I find fascinating is that when I come back to something after being away from it for awhile, the other creative things I've been doing in the meantime add a dimension that was missing before.  You really lose nothing by being peripatetic!

The point of all this is that the great wheel is moving now, back in the direction of my more.... well, nerdy interests.  My brain is whirling as I wrestle with a structure for a genealogical research database I am trying to create -- one that doesn't easily fit into existing commercial database models.  The frustration comes because I have just enough knowledge to know what I want and how to get it, but not quite enough to design it easily.

So, for a study break (and as my submission to Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday), I am offering more images from our trip to Thailand over Christmas.  These shots were taken at a rice mill near the town of Wiang Papao in the northern part of the country, and were textured with Kim's freebie texture, Happy Heart.

"Happy Heart" (soft light @49%, multiply @82%)

"Happy Heart" (soft light @100%, color burn @15%)

"Happy Heart" (soft light @70%, color burn @19%)

Try as I would, this image of drying rice just didn't look good with added textures!

 

And now for something completely different....

Lighthouse at Fort Point, San Francisco --
Processed with Kim Klassen's "Felicity" and a texture I created from a photo I took at the fort,
 using the tutorial Kim shared in our "Beyond Layers" class
(linking with Texture Tuesday)

I'm taking a break from showing images from my trip to Thailand ..... Instead, my husband and I decided to take a quick trip out to California last week to visit family.  The weather was wonderful, and we were outside as much as possible.  One day we explored the parks around the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  

Although I've been to San Francisco many times (I even lived here for a few years when I was a child), I had never visited Fort Point before.  Fort Point was the main naval defense for the city of San Francisco until the civil war.  It is tucked away under the base of the bridge, and probably isn't high on tourists' must-see lists.  Despite my fear of heights, I had a marvelous time -- there were so many interesting angles to capture:

This was the walk back from the fort towards Crissy Field:

Crissy Field was originally an early aviation strip, and is now a well-used park along the beach.  It certainly is a magnet for dogs!  We met my husband's sister and her boys there with their Golden, Brooklyn.  As you can see from the first photo, he was so happy in the water (it would take an awful lot of treats to get our Golden, Jackson, to venture anywhere near it)!  I was surprised to see how many professional dog-walkers were out, too.  I am still a little nervous about taking pictures of strangers, so I only got a few shots of them, but they were legion that day:

And now, on a completely different subject......

My creativity seems to run in cycles, and lately all I want to do is work in fabric.  In the last few weeks I have completed three quilt tops.  I will send two of them out to be finished by machine, but I plan on quilting this one by hand.  Since it might be awhile (a long while) before I am finished, I'll show it now:

It's really big, so wish me luck!

Mid-winter blues (and pinks and purples....)

Right about this time of year, winter starts to gets old.... the novelty of the season wears off and I start thinking about the colors of summer.

Luckily, our trip to Thailand over Christmas gave us a brief respite from the relentless brown of bare trees and dead grass (there hasn't even been much snow here to mix things up a bit).  I loved seeing a profusion of flowers everywhere; but I am used to thinking of orchids as an extravagance, and couldn't quite get used to seeing inexpensive armloads of them for sale in the markets (believe me, I could try.)

Storyboard and texture ("Thursday") courtesy of Kim Klassen
linking with Texture Tuesday

Simplicity

Here are some more in my series of photos from Thailand.  These were taken at Wat Phao, in Suphan Buri province north of Bangkok, notable for the forest of fruit bats surrounding the temple.  I enjoyed its simple lines and gorgeous, warm colors.

All of these were processed with one or more layers of Kim Klassen's "Simplicity" texture --

 linking up with Texture Tuesday

I never did find out why some of the trees were wrapped in monks' robes

Open to the experience

"To receive everything, one must open one's hand and give." 

--Taisen Deshimaru

Linking up with Texture Tuesday over at Kim Klassen's cafe.

offering jars at Wat Pho
processed with three layers of Kim Klassen's "Warm Sun" texture
(overlay @50%, linear burn @75%, and linear light @11%)

Here are some images from our first day in Thailand:  a visit to Bangkok's Wat Pho, the temple of the reclining Buddha.

flowers for sale outside the temple

an offering tree

miniature Buddha beside the great reclining statue

I fell in love with the peaceful, gentle nature of this country! 

 (Is it possible to be a Christian Buddhist?)

Time Traveller

Our family spent a wonderful two weeks in Thailand over the Christmas holidays.  Between preparing for the trip, enjoying the trip, and then recovering from the trip, I've been away from the blog world for awhile.  I have barely begun to look at my photos, let alone play with them, but I will share one now just in time to link up with Texture Tuesday over at Kim Klassen's cafe.  It was processed with three layers of her "Embrace" texture (two in color burn @100% and one in soft light @100%):

Reclining Buddha at Doi Suthep Temple, near Chiang Mai

We had a wonderful time exploring Thailand, and discovered that the Thai people are some of the most heart-centered in the world... there was a palpable sense of kindness and compassion that can only come from their strong Buddhist faith.  The food was incredibly delicious, too:  imagine, Thai food three times a day!!!  I especially enjoyed my holiday from Western breakfasts, and ate nothing but soup, noodles and rice in the morning instead of cereal, eggs or toast.  

On another note, I did have a shopping mission, too: I was constantly on the lookout for interesting fabric to use for quilting.  Here is some of what I found:

cotton

cotton 

hand-dyed hemp

hand-dyed and printed indigo on cotton

a rainbow of silks -- the fun part was that the solid colors only cost about $10-$13 per yard

hand woven silk in a traditional pattern 

ikat pattern in silk

Jet lag from Thailand is miserable, though.  There is a 12 hour time difference between Connecticut and Bangkok -- that's about as much as you can get!  We've been home almost a week now, and I think we are just about back to our usual sleep schedule; I tell you, it's no fun waking up at 3 am, raring to go, and falling asleep over dinner at 6....

Here is one of the first pieces I made for my new online class with Jane Davies on "Exploring the Self-Portrait." Jet lag does a number on you, alright -- I never noticed that I gave myself a beard, until I loaded this photo onto the class blog.

I hope to be back to normal next week!

Gratitude

What amazing weather we've been having here in Connecticut this week!  People were outside in shorts and t-shirts in November!  It feels like time is on some kind of a weird fast track:  it's spring right now, following our 8 inches of snowy weather last month... now I'm ready for summer!  Well, that's just a fantasy, I know, but I am grateful for this short respite from the cold.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday here at home, so "gratitude" is the perfect theme for Texture Tuesday.  Make sure you visit Kim's site to see some really amazing work!

Textured with Kim Klassen's "Chamomile" (color burn @100% and soft light @100%)

I know I've said this before, but my family does NOT appreciate textures.  My husband says this looks like the serving knife has rust all over it.... The pie was delicious, in any case.

"And then some" (soft light @100%, multiply @100%) and "Thursday" (soft light @100%)

Our centerpiece was beautiful, too.  I love how the textures really saturate the blooms here:

"Phoebe" (overlay @100% and color burn @100%) and "And then some" (multiply @100%)

I've been trying to get more intense colors from my photographs, and have been playing with creating high dynamic range images by combining several different exposures of one shot.  This one isn't a great composition by any stretch, but I love how the colors came out, even without adding any textures:

hdr image -- four different shots, blended on soft light mode

original images:  over- and under-exposed

I am grateful for all the wonderful aspects of the day:  the food, the flowers, the weather.... but in the end, the most important thing of all is having family to celebrate with.

My parents