Sunday, November 26, 2006

YHQG Show

Yesterday was a great day. The weather was so balmy that I didn't need a coat, just a sweatshirt cardigan.

We started off at the York Heritage (i.e. Toronto) Quilters Guild Show at the Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre. Nice venue, plenty of room.

Most of the pieces were traditional style, most machine pieces, some hand quilted, some machine quilted. If we used to go the quilt shows, stand back and admire the patterns, now we go up close to examine the stitching techniques. And when I say "we", I mean both Menachem and I. I wouldn't be surprised if he does take up quilting. He certainly has the patience for it. And then he could use all the bright highly patterned fabrics he likes and I don't... Anyways, in the quilt show booklet there was an advert for the new quilting store which opened in Toronto. Cock-a-doodle Quilts. It's located at Castlefield and Dufferin which is near to my mother's so we decided to pop in to see what it's like. First of all, it's very spacious. They have a huge showroom and another large room in the back for classes. The class room has a gigantic cutting table, individual work stations, each with it's own ironing board. It's not quite finished but getting there. And because it is an industrial space, they have high ceilings so they have quilts on display which aren't obstructed by shelving.

I wasn't intending to purchase anything but I bought a pigma pen for writing indelibly on fabric for labels and three pieces of fabric which on second thought may be too loud for what I intend to do with it. Oh well. Something else for the stash.

Then we popped into California Sandwiches for lunch. They have a grilled vegetable sandwish with sauce on a Kaiser bun. The bun soaks up the sauce and is delicious. Those of you who know me well know that I don't like messy stuff -- I don't like working with clay or anything else with a liquid texture. I'll make an exception for the sandwich. BTW, the sauce comes in hot, medium or mild, they call the mild "sweet". People kept coming in and asking for what sounded to me like "the sweet deal". I kept looking for a sign indicating what the seet deal was. It was "sweet veal".

From there, we went to my mother's. She has a collection of coins, or rather my father had a collection of coins -- Canadian, British Mandate Palestine, French and other. My mother wants to divvy them up among the grandchildren for Chanuka as gelt but wants to be sure that we're not sitting on some rare coin. Yunkie and I had made arrangements to meet at my mother's to go through the coins, Yunkie had already gone through some of them and catalogued them in an Excel file. Yunkie has a cold and didn't want to bring it to my mother's so he didn't come. I ended up brining the coins home and hope to work on them later today.

After we came home yesterday, I was just too tired to stitch or do anything else. I ended up having a nap, a light supper and going to sleep early.

But not before I had done my round of blogs I read. Sharon of Inaminuteago discussed the concept of being recognized as artists. She basicly said that if we don't recognize ourselves as artists, we can't expect others to. She said that we have to treat our art as work, putting in the hours in our studios, whether we are inspired or not, the same way that a writer sits and writes for hours each day. If we treat our artistic endeavour as simply a hobby, our creativity will not be sufficiently stimulated.

This makes sense to me and I am going to do my best to consider myself an artist and act accordingly. I'm not quiting my day job just yet but wouldn't that be amazing if I could?

Sharon's blog was particularly apt because I am making cq pieces for sale and am debating what price I can charge for my work. My work is highly labour intensive. I don't want to price myself out of the market nor do I want to underprice myself. It's an interesting dilemma and one I hope to resolve shortly.

Anyways, I did spend about an hour in my studio this morning, working on a WISP (work in slow progress). Some of my internet acquaintances have set themselves a goal to finish up WIPs, WISPs, and UFO's (unfinished objects). I don't have that many of them, but I too shall strive to work on and finish them. I also have the stash of fabrics I purchased to make a quilt from my Inbal's birth housecoat. It's technically not yet a WISP, but I should get started on it and move on.

I have a translation to do. I've done a lot of it but the last bit is a transcript from teacher's college. The names of educational concepts are different from those used here so it's a bit time consuming. I hope to get back to it later today.

And I want to do finish cataloguing the coins and then do some more stitching. So I will leave blogging for now and get back to working.

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About Me

I am in my mid 50's, have been married (happily) for 38 years, have 3 adult children who live an ocean away... By day I am a legal secretary. The rest of the time I play with fabric but I still won't run with scissors...