STASH Yesterday

Was a beautiful, sunny day here. The STASH group met at my house and we met up in the loft of the studio. It was comfortable and nice. It was an extra small group with Gerrie and Beth missing. We are not feeling sorry for them. They are both traveling in warm, sunny places. I have been pushing the group to do more at our meetings than drink coffee and catch up on our lives—not that those two things are not important! But I always like a little challenge or activity of some kind that adds something to our artistic purpose.

My friend Deborah Boschert posted a little video tutorial on her blog several weeks ago that I enjoyed. Deborah uses bits of fabric in her work that has her handwriting on it. I have always liked that, so I emailed the group and told them to watch Deborah's video and bring a permanent fabric marking pen with them. I prepared the fabric and we took about 10 minutes to write on our fabric. It got very quiet! I started writing a sort of stream of consciousness narrative about the beautiful day and summer coming. Reva wrote remembered poetry, Gale wrote about birds. Mine started too neatly and legible, I soon decided, so it got more exaggerated and stylized as I went along. All four were so unique and very personal. Suzy, who loves all things red, wrote in bright red ink in a very small script. It looked so wonderful! Had I remembered to take my camera to the studio I would have photos of all of them, but you will have to make do with mine.

I challenged everyone to now make something using their fabric.

Since my birthday was just a week ago (and I like to celebrate for as long as possible) we went out to lunch after our meeting. Gale brought me a gift of a handmade, felted pincushion. Isn't it great?

Have I told you how much I love this group of women? Oh yeah, about a hundred times, I suppose. But I can't say it enough. They are lights in my life.