Criusing, Moab Style

We spent the weekend in my absolute favorite Utah town, Moab.  It was the weekend for the Classic Car Show- and I took enough pictures to fill a week's worth of blog entries.  It was fun, relaxing, and really is a weekend for boomers who love their classic cars.

Saturday night (after the big show in the park) everyone cruises Main Street.  All the way through town, people are staking out their sidewalk space to get the best view.  I'm sure the truckers, mountain bikers, and others who are caught up in this wonder what the heck is going on.  So enjoy my night that brought back teenage memories of cruising down Harbor Boulevard with my friends!

Love that asymmetrical spider web grille!

This weekend was my first look at road rats- really low to the ground, rusty body, but pristine engine.  There were quite a few of them in the show.

Ah, yes- take me home, Jeeves!

We have that parade wave down really well!!

One last look, south down Main Street.  One of my favorite eateries, Moab Brewery, is barely visible on the left.  

Low riders and semis- an interesting juxtaposition!

Couldn't resist snapping a picture of this fellow boomer with the cute smile.  That pretty much summed up the weekend!

Spring Fever

That's my excuse for not having more fiber content.  After a week or more of cool, wet weather, we finally saw the sun again.  I've been out walking two of the last three days- oh my, does that sun feel good!

We walked the new (to me, anyway) trail close to our home.  The wildlife must be feeling spring fever, too, because we saw plenty of them.  I saw deer on the trail,

and probably half dozen or more of this critter along the trail.  

 I had no idea what they are- my first glimpse, I thought they were raccoons, but the coloring is all wrong.  Today, however, I saw a sign along the trail that identified them as marmots.  I will have to do more research, I know absolutely nothing about them except they live in holes along the rocky riverbank.  I also saw and heard lots of birds, all too quick for my camera, and a snake or too- stayed away from those.

I did, however, get my tee fabric screen printed, washed, and dried.  I also started picking out fabrics for my next Tangled Textiles challenge.  So far I have this--

and this on the 'maybe' list.

Love the fabrics, just can't decide if they blend well with the others.  Obviously I'm going for the obvious with a theme like 'Green!'

So that's my world this lovely spring day.  Next weekend we are going to Moab for the car show, so no sewing then either.  I will probably be scrambling to get it done by the reveal day from the looks of it!

Hope your week is a creative one!

Inspiration

seems to be coming and going with me lately.  I don't know whether it is our off again, on again spring weather or what.  We've gone from the gorgeous warm days I blogged about before to cold, wet, dreary, gray, and in the 40's.  I wish we could have some spring, not just go from this kind of weather to 90 degrees and summer!

My surface design group has a gallery show beginning this week- I don't have anything in it.  Just couldn't seem to get up to motivation or inspiration to come up with anything I thought was good enough.  I did help hang the show yesterday, and it looks like it will be a good one.  It is the same gallery we've shown in before, but he's moved and is now located pretty close to downtown Salt Lake.  I hope the members get some sales!  Anyway, if you happen to find yourself in Salt Lake in late April or May, here's the show postcard.

I decided I wanted to make myself a summer tee from hand dyed fabric, so I cut off a length of the cotton lycra I got when I was in Reno a year ago.  I dyed it the same colors as this scarf, hoping for a similar result.

It didn't work. At all.  So I overdyed it with the blue dye, and liked it even less.  Too blue, too dark.  No problem, I figured- discharge it!  So it went in a Thiox bath, and after that a Rit color remover bath.  That made it even worse.  The red and left, and it was a flat, grayed shade of blue.  What made it even more frustrating was watching the fabric in the bath.  It would turn a lovely shade of yellow, but as soon as I took it out of the bath, it would oxidize and turn back to the blue.  GGrrrrrrrr!!

After posting to a dyeing group I belong to, I decided I had nothing to lose by dunking it in bleach.  I thought I'd gotten something I would like when it turned a lovely shade of pale grayed lavender.  I want to print on it, so I soaked it in soda ash- and it turned blue again!!!  After it dried, though, I decided I could live with the pale robin's egg blue it has become.  I have it laid out on my table, wrinkled and ready to print.  I'm not sure what color I'll use for that.

I'm going to try something I saw in a DVD workshop I downloaded from Quilting Arts recently, and to do it I will need to steal the trash bag from the shredder.  Don't think they will mind!

And, I finally got around to mounting one of my Tangled Textiles pieces.  I painted a canvas, and sewed the fiber piece to the canvas.  Not easy on the hands, but doable.  I'm really happy with how it looks.  I learned for future reference that painting with a brush is a pain unless you want brush strokes, which I didn't.  So I ended up doing it with a simple little foam roller.

I think the dark border adds just the right touch of definition to this piece.  What's even better, it will be easier to hang this way.

I'm trying to get moving on the next TT piece, which needs to be done in May.  I have some ideas, and hope they might even morph into something larger.  Here's hoping for both energy and inspiration!

Sun, Glorious Sun!!

And we got to enjoy it for a fleeting day Saturday.  It was the warmest day of the year, in the low 80's.  After a busy day at church with the women's ministry, Shilo and I headed out for a walk in the late afternoon.  I have a new favorite walking trail, and best of all, it is close to home.  It starts out by the clubhouse of the golf course, winds through a park and one end of the course, then continues along with the river on one side and farm fields on the other.

We start out crossing a bridge over the river (or creek, as my Midwest friends would say).  I was taken by the patterns of the moss and rocks in the river, and snapped a couple of pictures.  They look like cool abstract art!

I played with light levels some, but other than that, this is straight from my camera.  I love the surreal look.

As we walked, I couldn't help but look up at the gorgeous blue sky- an intense blue, laced with a few clouds.  The patterns the tree branches made against the sky were wonderful.

I tried getting a close view of the new leaves on another tree, with the grays and browns of the other trees behind- hoping to get a blurred background with a shallow depth of field.  The point and shoot isn't as easy to use as my DSLR, but I did get an interesting shot after several tries.  Love the lime green!

 

This is the view I had walking back to the car.  Glorious!!

Today, it is gray, wet, cloudy, and thirty degrees colder.  The whimsy of spring in Utah, you never know what you are going to get.