I left the Sonoran Desert last spring after twelve years year round. The climate is extreme, the land is beautiful, and the situation was very good to me and to my husband.

About a year and a half ago I formed a plan for one year, three years, and twenty years. I accomplished the one and three year plan is sixteen months. Age indeterminant has been accomplished. I’ve moved back to the ocean as I had to come back to the water.

I’m about eight blocks from downtown Ventura. I can see the Crowne Plaza Hotel at the end of California Street. I can see the pier that was a working wharf fifty to one hundred years ago.

The view of the town, which was built between about 1860(?) and 1920, most often looks as lovely and peaceful as an oldfashioned christmas card. The old gothic church is just two blocks down the hill. I still have not made it down there for meditation.

I can see the ocean from my deck. It is an ongoing vision of solace. I don’t get down to the beach as often as maybe I should. Looking out the door, sitting on the deck, looking into the floor mirror from the kitchen even gives me a view of the sea.

In August I heard an interview on Bookworm on PBS. An author was speaking about islands and oceans. He said that there is something very expansive about facing open water; psychically and psychologically it teaches your body and your soul that there are no limits.

amen

Thanks to my good friend in Montreal all vestiges of the hack attack have been removed. It is a wonderful thing to have friends you have never seen or hugged. Thank you, thank you! ! ! !

I’ve discovered the media file for WordPress.  When I get figured out how to post my own photos I’ll do that.  For this beautiful Saturday morning with a few clouds, a silvery, glistening ocean and 69ºF, have a wonderful weekend.

OH, and a quick ps.  My daughter just phoned.  I had loaned her my Singer 99K about twenty years ago.  She wanted to know what disposition as I told her it was not hers to get rid of.  It’s being placed in the trunk of my roadster later today.

Did you know that sewing machines are like cats?  All are welcome and we don’t count as all are self sufficient.

However, please don’t be surprised if there is a fat message saying website is offline including this blog. We are not out of troubled waters yet. Need upgrading to website and the blog too. If you see the website offline for more than a day, please holler to use the whip on the web administrator.  And while you are waiting for this site to be back up, how about going to this interesting website.

Hope this helps.  Next up, once I find the post office information, will be one year and/or multi year sets of magazines that will include free shipping.

Spent the last week in Mount Vernon, Washington.  I went to attend my son and daughter in law’s yard rave.  Wonderful music, skillfully mixed, mashed?, overlaid, and selected was provided by Berto Ross.  He got a big thumbs up from me for taking The Stones You Can’t Always Get WhatYou Want with a heavy drumming back beat from another group of artists.  Lots of good music!

Deirdre,  the mother of my beautiful grandchildren, is an artist in her own right.  I’m sure if you search the link you will find some lovely images.

My daughter, Gabrielle Windsor, was at the rave. Check out her résumé and if you can provide her with a contact, please do.

Her two nearly grown sons did not travel with her.  Check here for lots more images.  She grew up in Port Townsend, Washington, and was one of the original participants in the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race.

The Mediocrity Award  seemed the best way to reward the artistic efforts at the beginning in 1983.  It remains today.

Enough of old memories.  The Northwest always does that to me.  I am grateful for the years I spent there.  I learned a lot.  It’s nice to visit.  I don’t need to live there any more.

Actually, I need, spiritually and psychically, to live exactly where I am, here in Ventura.  I spent the end of last year and the beginning of this year searching the Pacific coast for just the exactly right small city to live in.

That I found an apartment with an ocean view is a bonus.  I came here willingly and will, no doubt, leave the same way.   No pictures today, the iPhoto says 82 remaining to import.

OH! ! ps,   I will be offering things for sale, here, on the blog.  For the first offering:

White Homespun Barley Cloth

This is 100% cotton; each thread will remind you of kite string.  It has one inch hems on the 92″ wide ends; one selvedge and one zig zagged edge.  It is seven and one eighth yards long.

7 ₁⁄₈  yards

 This  is a spongy drapery cotton.  It is normally used hung crosswize for seamless curtains or made up into drapes.  Homespun House no longer stocks the barley cloth weave; the monks cloth is the closest match.  Barley cloth, originally twice as wide, has more depth and texture.

Contact me if you would like to buy this.  I will scan a sample next week.  I will post the image.   Remember this was originally 110 inches wide and has been washed down to eliminate the shrinkage.  Price is $110 for the whole cut.  Shipping cost (FedEx Ground) will be added.  This is quite heavy; shipping may run as high as $35.  I will charge you my cost plus the cost of the container.   I do take paypal through my website; scroll down from the link.

Sorry for the long sales ramble.  That’s what happens without preplanning.  Keep in touch.  I have a second piece of barley cloth that is similar in size; I’ll have to find the card for that one.

I’m going to see if I can manage the self discipline to write on this blog at least once a week.

I have moved from the Sonoran Desert of Arizona to the Pacific Coast in Ventura, California.  Check out my view:

The days when we have strong sun the view is even better.  Some days we can see all the Channel Islands.

We are really struggling.  The fog comes sweeping in.  Forget little cat’s feet.  This is a theatrical curtain.  Summer comes in bits and spurts.  Some days we have six or eight hours of glorious sun.  Some days it’s cloudy.

I count myself very lucky to have such a wonderful view and such a mild climate.  The desert was a place of extremes.  Being ten blocks up the hill from the ocean is a dream of temperate consistency.

Since I moved from a three bedroom house with a three car garage to a one bedroom apartment with A parking space, the adjustment has been interesting.

I’ll try to begin posting quilt books and magazine collections for sale in the next month.  I would like any feedback and inquiries if you are looking for a specific book or magazine.

Big Sycamore Stands Alone

with

Author Ian Record

Saturday, March 7th at 7:00 p.m.
Dinnerware Artspace
264 E. Congress
Tucson, Arizona

About the book:  In a groundbreaking debut of its New Directions in Native American Studies series, the University of Oklahoma Press announced the release of Big Sycamore Stands Alone: The Western Apaches, Aravaipa, and the Struggle for Place, a trailblazing ethnohistory of the Western Apaches, a place called Aravaipa, and the event known as the Camp Grant Massacre.

Called a “powerful and moving work,” the book represents the culmination of a decade of collaborative work between author Ian Record and the San Carlos Apache Elders Cultural Advisory Council, a tribal organization which works to sustain and strengthen traditional Apache culture and knowledge for the benefit of future generations of Apaches.

Book will be available for purchase at special discount price of $32 (20% off).

Refreshments will be provided

For more info, call Wendy at 808-9237.

end of press release

I know where Aravaipa is.

It’s quite a way west of Patagonia Creek that runs through the Patagonia Mountains to the east of where I live.  The title, Big Sycamore Stands Alone,  instant called to my mind the big sycamore standing in a pulloff from the highway along patagonia creek.

Sadly, this is the best image I can find of the work that features the sycamore.  I have no idea what I have done with my source photographs.

It’s a special place to me.  I know that it must be as special to the, Chiricahuas, the Mescalero, the Tohono O’odham, and the Pasqua Yaqui.

A century and a half ago these tribes, while not friendly collaborators, roamed southeastern Arizona. They foraged not only for food and game, many foraged for the materials to make baskets and containers for daily life.

Although I have not met the author of the book, I know that the reseach backing it has the impramatur of the University of Oklahoma Press.  That alone recommends it to me.

Let’s see if I can find the whole image of the Patagonia Mountains.  It will give you some, faint, view of what this land looked like in the nineteenth century.

Sadly, my digital files and my print files are not in the same place.  They do not duplicate each other.  The best I can find this morning is this WIP, on the wall.  It does not have the fauna nor the sky.  The size and resolution are minimal.  It’s at least a glimpse.