The Sock Thief and A New Painting

Our Tillie - who at the end of this week will have shared our home with us for four months, has a newly discovered talent. Sock thief! I keep my socks in a large basket in my bathroom - since it's always been a convenient place for me to keep them. Lately I have found trails of  socks though coming from the bathroom to the living room. At first I thought that it was a simple matter of maybe dropping laundry along the way to returning it to draws and baskets. Now I have discovered that is Tillie - the sock thief. She plays with them and I often find them trailed from bathroom to bed when she is cozied up next to a pair or two! She is really beginning to become herself now. Although she is still skittish she has started really exploring the rest of the house - and is slowly assimilating herself into the entire house. I think that she will, eventually, become house queen and will make herself comfortable everywhere - though I think it will take some time to get to that point and I think that she will always be a bit skittish with new people. She has developed a fondness for thinly sliced deli turkey and DH spoils her with it and she cries so piteously every time he walks in the door - like she is saying that I never feed her during the day when he is gone! We love her a lot and she was a great family addition!

This a new mixed media piece that I had been working on - highlighting a favorite 1994 quote from E.E. Freeman. The Clairefontaine watercolor paper background (one of my favorite cold pressed water color papers) was textured with a gesso base ,stamped with a variety of text and letter stamps and then covered with Japanese lace paper. I used PanPastels - YES! they really are truly unique and wonderful- for the face and hair, some special decorative paper for the shirt, embossed metal for the earring and a Pitt Marker in brown for the lettering that I over-wrote with Ziller North White ink to tone the darkness in the lettering down just a bit. Ziller ink is, by the way, really lovely ink - sort of a cross between ink and thin gouache or acrylic. I love it!

I've been fulfilling some obligations for ATC's and doing some extra book reviews that were - and still are - long overdue - which is why I have been a bit quiet around here. I see the doc on 8/31 and plan to have the second surgery as soon as I can. My plan is to enter 2011 as pain free as i can be!! I will be back with some new art/fiber work and some book reviews of some wonderful new textile books. Hope You all have week filled with love, laughter and a touch of magic too !

In a close up so can see the texture of the background a bit better. The PanPastels are a bit less transparent than the photo seems to show. They are, as I mentioned a very cool new art medium that I am glad I ended up taking the financial plunge and trying. I have decided that my over riding desire is to return to England and Italy while I am still young enough and soon - I hope - pain free enough - to return to all of the places that I want to see again - and some newly added must sees too! So what small amounts I can save now will be spent less on new fun supplies than I am used to. I need a bit of travel in my life - it feels like such a strong pull to me -  and I think that ,artistically, the places I want to go to will really be a boost for me too!

Here you can see the small, embossed earring and the texture and over-layed stamped letters and text