ninth kinshasha carcinogen

Inspiration and growth only come from adversity and from challenge — from stepping away from what's comfortable and familiar and stepping out into the unknown.

Ben Saunders

I'm going MIA for a few days-  company coming for Christmas and a full plate of life stuff for awhile, mostly fun I hope.  Anyway, I'll post when I can in between command performances, but frankly, if I have a spare hour, I want to head to the studio!  I spent some time there yesterday, framed a few more pictures and threw out a bunch more stuff, got my new Keurig going and tried the chai latte which was a step more than passable.  
Today is my stitch group so as soon as I am back from that I need to start working on tomorrow's Seven Fishes dinner starting with a stop at the fish market.  First I will need to sell all my shoes to find the cash!  We have 8 people coming for that and it does take a certain amount of advance prep to assemble 7+ dishes for 8 folks (the '+' is dessert and bread-  made in the shape of a fish).  

I started with a mentoring program with a woman who asked me to lead her around a bit.  We set up some loose guidelines for working together and she gave me her first writeup of proposals and goals- she had obviously been thinking about this a long time because it was very professionally presented. I need to yank myself upright and get serious so I can fill the responsibility for my end later today.  I was very interested in the mentoring program sponsored by SAQA but got a very long 'contract' that I found to be restrictive and accusatory and refused to sign without deleting passages, specifically a ridiculous over-PC'd paragraph about how I will not judge or malign gays or transgendered or people in the Church of the Spaghetti Monster.  Since I have spent my life trying NOT to do these things anyway, I wouldn't sign and therefore wasn't accepted to that program.  I wrote back that I only wanted to talk quilt making and didn't care who I was talking to and certainly couldn't see any situation where my design expertise would cross any sexual irreligious (HAHAHAH-  gotta love spellcheck! I meant 'or RELIGIOUS') boundaries.  I do not like being legislated at...  I am a Quilting Libertarian, leave me alone with your laws...  So, finally I got that off my chest.

LA-based artist Michelle Kingdom embroiders small, illustrative scenes of people in curious mythological or ritualistic scenarios, engaged in unknown actions or in vaguely defined relationships. From her artist statement:

My work explores psychological landscapes, illuminating thoughts left unspoken. I create tiny worlds in thread to capture elusive yet persistent inner voices. Literary snippets, memories, personal mythologies, and art historical references inform the imagery; fused together, these influences explore relationships, domesticity and self-perception.

A friend sent this the other day, a confirmation class picture from about 1957 or so.  I'm so amazed at how many people I can still recognize and even more amazed at how many I am still in touch with!  I'll give you a clue-  I am the one with the huge forehead.  I can remember being scared out of my wits by the minister-  I somehow equated him with Ichabod Crane, probably reading that in English and got it transferred somehow.  Everybody else loved him, but I had some serious trouble with the ole Presbyterian fire and brimstone even back then.  Guess I am a religious Libertarian too.  I'm seeing a theme.

Off to FISH!