chinese transmission sandwich

I guess if you take yourself seriously as an artist there starts either the problem or the beauty of doing good artwork. Bill Griffith 

Today Robert Genn sites a passage from 'Art and Fear', that classic art text we can all refer to time and time again for pithy information:

'The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of the work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: On the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work in the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B" and so on. Those being graded on "quality," however, needed to produce only one pot--albeit a perfect one--to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busy turning out piles of work--and learning from their mistakes--the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.'

Again, the end is 'do the work'. There isn't a shortcut.

And speaking of work, I really must start stitching this Koigu yarn into something, just don't know what will work yet since I have such different colors.  I refuse to buy more yarn until I use up some of this that I've been hoarding.  The image above remember is only the tip top of a giant plastic tub full of this stuff.  helllllp!

IMPORTANT WARNING

TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THESE PRETTY CANDLES

They are wax tea lights stuck down inside a hole dug into the birch log.  The tea lights have a tiny tin bottom on them.  My dad made some that had full steel safety cups that went down into the wood because we had lots of fallen birch longs at our cabin.  He gave me a bunch, and then I found some at a shop in town and bought more.  Then, one night as I was preparing dinner in the next room, one of the kids came yelling to me that the mantle was on fire-  I raced in and sure enough the birch wood had caught fire from the tiny flame probably because it was old and dried out-  like I said you have to use fallen birch.  Anyway, I was fortunate that I had come running with a bowl of water and flung it at the wall because the pretty greens (also very dried out, probably when I bought them) went up like I have never seen a fire grow.  We had an old Victorian with 12' ceilings and the flames were up to that.  I grabbed what I could and threw it in the fireplace and fortunately that helped put it out.  Needless to say I needed to re-wallpaper above the mantle, repaint woodwork and crown moulding but we were very lucky.  I THOUGHT I had put safety first with the candles, had them standing well away from the wall, not near the greens, etc., but when one piece caught fire, the whole thing simply exploded. 

Be Careful Out There.

So I'm telling you, if you have these candles or you buy some this year, yank out the wax and replace with one of those battery operated flicker lights (Oh geesh, do that ONLY if your kids are older because those have the button batteries in them!).  If your kids are little just use them for display, use a few red ribbons on them and you're good to go.

Bunny looks just like my old bun, Br'er, my house rabbit for many years.  He traveled with me in a covered basket and logged quite a few air miles during his tenure.  A great pal.  We took him to Provincetown on vacation once and the motel housekeeping help wouldn't enter the room!  One day I will have another rabbit, but I doubt that Molly or Pepper would agree just now.  

I hear pumpkins are real cheap today.