Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Chris & Robyn came to visit for Thanksgiving, which was wonderful for us. We spent 3 1/2 days together, and did some good touristy stuff, and ate a lot of our traditional Thanksgiving foods. On Friday, we visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. You can't take your camera beyond the lobby, but they do take your photo as you enter. So here we all are...Gerry, me, Robyn, and Chris. We were all having a photogenic day! Gerry didn't get the memo about wearing blue jeans, apparently.

Chris is my oldest child and only son. His wife, Robyn, is a wonderful person, and I love her as if she were one of my own. Their visit made it a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am thankful.

Final Touches

My son Chris and his wife, Robyn, have headed back to Boston after a lovely Thanksgiving here with us in Ohio. I had a great time visiting with them, and we did some fun things like visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and of course, we ATE a lot.

Now that they are gone, and the house is still clean, I feel pretty good about spending time in my treehouse. Today I swapped out the fibers for we six participants in the CPS swap. I also finished my parts for a teapot doll swap on the FDA list, AND I finished my Inner Gypsy from Sherry Goshen's class...which I've tied to my Medicine doll work. More details later, but here are the end results:

Handles:

I also did some spouts:


Gypsy:

More details later.....

Triptych

I've had a couple folks drop me a line and say they want to see more detail on the triptych that is on my fireplace, so here it is:

This is three separate panels on board done by Olga Lipats, a Russian born painter now living in OK. I first found Olga through a friend, selling mystical/whimsical paintings on ebay. I now own several originals, used to sell her prints in my store, and would love to own a few more! She still sells on ebay, though many of her latest works are larger, abstract types.

At any rate, I love this painting, and bought it before I moved here, with this fireplace in mind.

It's certainly not art...

...but it may be artistic. I get great satisfaction from home decor work, and I think it's how I expressed any creativity I felt I had in my early years. We've been working around the house making it our own, and getting ready for my son and his wife to visit at Thanksgiving. When I moved here last year, I didn't bring any upholstered furniture from the house in NC, and the only seating my DH had in his apartment was second generation used that he bought from a young couple who got it from their parents. The sofa had lost its cover over the cording, so stabbed you in the back of the legs when you sat on it, AND one of the dogs had tried to cover the scent of the previous owner's dog.

All that is a long way of justifying why we got new living/dining room furniture. I'm delighted with how it looks, even though we haven't painted the walls yet. I do have to say that I love the way my Olga Lipats triptych looks on the black marble tiled fireplace. I think I will be doing a different fabric piece to replace the red one to the left of the fireplace. Eventually, we hope to have a window installed there, as we have NO windows on the west side of the house, and that looks out over the bulk of our lawn, and the new pond.

I also wanted to point out that I have the one thing I was most concerned with when we joined our home dogs and store cat -- a peaceable kingdom!

Buddy, our cocker spaniel is my constant companion now that his eyesight is so compromised. He looks good on the new rug, doesn't he? Though out of the photo, the other two dogs are on the floor directly behind where I'm sitting.

I played with Paverpol!

What a fun product this is. And to think I've been so fearful... I must have asked a million questions in the class before I took the plunge, and now I just want to dip everything I have.

I did two things here. I dipped an old, stained doily, and then tucked it into the "sash" and draped the front edge over a balled up plastic bag to give it the feeling of puffing out and hopefully looking like a swirling skirt. I'm pleased with that, and anxious to see it after I do the spray paint thing.

The other thing I did was dip a piece of used sari silk that I just adore, and draped it along the top and down the right edge, allowing it to smooodge off the edge, looking, to my eye, like a theater curtain. I was assured by Grasshoppa, and he was right, that the Paverpol would actually darken or brighten the fabric. I'm very happy with how this is looking. More layers to follow!