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!

 

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

On the road to Mandalay

My grandfather was a great fan of Rudyard Kipling, and one of his favorite poems was The Road to Mandalay (although it was mandatory in our family to substitute "Wild Bill Robie" for "British soldier" in the 4th line).  My son had a Kipling fixation when he was six or seven, and memorized every word of "Mandalay"-- you might say that it has been an undercurrent in our family's collective memory for many years.

So when we visited Thailand recently, Kipling's words couldn't help but run through my head at every point along the way.

......from the "tinkly temple bells":



.....to the hathis "piling teak":

" .....If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else.

                                                          No! you won't 'eed nothin' else  
                                                          But them spicy garlic smells....."

"...For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be —

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea."

(all photos processed with The Coffeeshop Blog's "Butterscotch Vintage" action)

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!