Go away Gustav

On the eve of Hurricane Gustav's arrival I sit an write. The town where I live is supposed to be a direct hit. Me and my immediate family have evacuated every hurricane here since Andrew in 1992. This one we decide to stay.

Why, you might ask? Well, that is hard to answer. We went back and forth for about three days because it was too early for the weather team to know the most accurate projected path. All the times we left before I didn't like it. You are away from your home and some of your family (that are in the storm) and you don't know what kind of damage you will have to your home or if you would have stayed if the damage could have been taken care of earlier. Also, you don't know when they will allow you back in the city to get back to your home. Where you evacuate to also has some bad weather, usually from the rain bands. It is awful to be away from home and going through bad weather. If you decide to leave you may get caught up in traffic and you could run out of gas on the road with no gasoline available. The gas stations run out of gasoline really quick even miles away. When we evacuated for Andrew in 1992 it took us 9 hours to go on a 4 hour trip. The traffic was so slow on the interstate you could stop your car and change drivers right there. And most of the time you can't find a place to stay. Everything is booked and you don't know how far out you have to go. So you see it is not such an easy decision.

Anyway, we decided to stay for this one. It is supposed to be the worst one so far that is a direct hit on our town. The winds are expected to be sustained 100 mph and gusts of 115-120 mph. I have to admit I'm frightened. We have done all we can to prepare. We have food and batteries and candles and water and we have generator for after the storm. We will probably not have electricity for up to a week or more. So you will not be hearing from me for a while. We might not have water and it will be so hot without air conditioning. I have head phones and music so I won't (hopefully) hear the winds. I will place myself in a safe part of the house and I have my bible. I will read and pray. I have all of my children here with me and also my Dad and Step mom. My sister is right next door and my other sister has evacuated and is safe. We are together and will take care of each other. We are praying that it weakens. We don't want to wish it on anyone else so if we have to get hit we just don't want it hard. Please pray for all of us down here. I will check back in as soon as I can.

We are back from Pennsylvania. My husband enjoyed his woodworking class. He learned a lot of tips and info about trees and how they grow then about how to cut it and make furniture. He made a sofa table but it is not finished yet because he had to bring it home unassembled. When it is done I will post some pictures.

The picture above is a tree that I did for my watercolor class. We were supposed to use one color to learn color value. I used water color pencils and a paint brush. It was kind of fun. The teacher said "The tree has dimension and the trunk is believable. Has visual interest and should be matted and signed. Now try using a full spectrum of colors...". I am happy with it. It looks like a tree to me. My next class is tomorrow night. I missed one class and I they were working on the color wheel so I will have to catch up.

A lot is going on right now. My daughter and her husband are temporarily living in my quilt teaching workshop. They have ordered a new double wide trailer and the company said it would take 4-6 weeks before it was ready so they put their old trailer up for sale and the first guy that came to see it bought it. They had to get busy packing and now they are done and out. Their stuff is in storage except for what they need to live right now. Today the trailer company called and said the new trailer is done and will be delivered to the lot on Monday. Wow! That was quick! The old trailer will be moved tomorrow then cement runners have to be done and a new septic tank before the new trailer can be moved.

And now we are watching a tropical storm that is heading to the gulf and possibly toward us. It is always a scary time when that happens. We will watch, wait and pray.

Trees...

I signed up for a paint class for absolute beginner's. My daughter is taking it with me. I had my first class last Thursday and we didn't paint-we drew! It seems that you have to be able to draw before you can paint. Why didn't anyone tell me this.
It is a watercolor paint class and for some unknown reason I thought I would just go to class and put paint on the paper canvas and have tons of fun. No, that was not to be. Instead he said draw a tree. A TREE! I don't know what a tree looks like in my mind. How can I do this. Oh well, I thought I can put down lines that look like a trunk. I did and the result is in the upper left corner. He said "It looks like a fantasy tree". Huh, it seems my branches are out of proportion to my trunk. He said "Start over and try to let the branches go off the paper. Don't let the paper confine me". WHAT!
Ok, I can do this. The result is in the upper right corner. He said "You are concentrating too much on the individual leaves. Try to think in color value. Blocks of light and dark." So I fixed it. He said " It looks good. Your strength is texture and detail". Didn't he just tell me not to do too much detail? I'm confused.
I try again using a light source this time coming from the upper left of my page. The result is bottom left in the picture above. He looks at it and tells me to try my darks and lights in different places so I do (I didn't take a picture of that one.) His remarks "You did exactly what I said, but it doesn't look right, you were right with the other one". Huh? Ok, I think, a great teacher, not afraid to admit when he is wrong.
I try for another tree at home and the result is the bottom right corner. Our homework was to read this paper he gave us on "line", which made no sense to me at all and to draw more trees. I don't want to draw more trees, I want to paint some trees. It is a paint class, after all. Oh well, we will see what the class holds in store for next Thursday. Until then, I'm drawing trees.

Thank you Pattie!

Here are three blocks that Pattie from
Attitude changes Everything
sent to me for participating in a writing challenge she had a while back (check out June 08, if you want to read it). I think they are well made and I love the bright colors. These will probably become a table runner and a reminder to eat my fruits and veggie's, just like Pattie intended. Thanks again Pattie for the gift and I loved reading the card you sent with it. It was heartfelt.

Mechacon Convention!

Here is my oldest son in his Maes Hughes costume for the Mechacon Convention. If you don't know what that is you are not alone. I've learned a little about it but I still don't understand it all. Basically it is a convention of people that like to watch the Japanese anime shows (kind of like a japanese cartoon-my son will kill me for comparing it to a cartoon but that is the best way I can explain it to you). He ordered the costume to be made from Japan. It was a three day event with films, costume contests, vendors selling action figures and lots of other things like swords (real ones) and large posters and banners. He had fun. This is an annual event that he started going to last year.

I had fun yesterday! I went shopping to spend some money that my husband found that was given to us at Christmas (he had put it on his night stand because we were not sure how we wanted to spend it and forgot about it, he recently cleaned off his night stand and found it). We bought a new photo all-in-one printer, scanner, copier, fax. It will print some really good photos on fabric for my quilting. We also bought a laptop. I fought this for a while because, let's face it, I spend way to much time on the computer as it is, but I wanted one and we could afford it. I will be able to take it with us on our vacation coming up soon so my son can do his school work on it (we home school). Oh well, I justified it anyway. I am liking the portability (except the battery doesn't last that long). I don't like typing on it though, the keys are very smooth really almost feel like one big key. I find my fingernails get in the way when I type. So if there are some typos please excuse them. I'm sure I will have lots of practice and get used to it.

I have to go and hand quilt now so I will write more later.

Hi All, it's Friday, my favorite day of the week! I don't have any big plans this weekend but I'm still looking forward to it. I have had to be out of the house everyday this week for one thing or another and I'm looking forward to staying home today. Tomorrow I will be having some of my quilty friends over to hand quilt and a quilt that was made to commemorate the 250th birthday of the Marquis de Lafayette. It has already been quilted but does not have enough quilting in it. When we put it up on the wall it sagged at the bottom. I love to hand quilt. It is so relaxing to me. My thoughts can run wild while my hands are kept busy.

Here is a block that I made for a project that my mini group was working on. We decided to make a Louisiana quilt. There are 12 people that are making a block and the only rules were to make it about Louisiana. It could be any technique and any size as long as it is divisible by two. I did one on Louisiana music. The saxophone for the jazz music and the accordion for the cajun and zydeco music. The blocks were collected and all the names put in a hat and a name was drawn to win them. I did not win but that is ok because a friend won. We will help her to put the blocks together into a quilt. It will be fun. I used machine appliqué with fusing and I drew the notes with my pigma pen.