That's Clever

Here's the purse that I made for That's Clever. My five minutes of fame airs/aired on February 12, 2009. It took about 4 hours to tape my segment. I'm used to talking to juries and judges, so I figured video would be easy. I was wrong. I kept talking to the people and not looking into the camera. I kept forgetting to wait for someone to say, "Action!" TV is nowhere near as easy as it looks! But I had fun making the purse and lots of fun learning a little bit about television. Thanks to all who watched.

'Struder Man's New Sculpture

Jim grabbed my ^6 clay (comparable to Laguna's Speckled Buff), his extruder and started to play. He used a white ^6 clay to make the little people. The piece is glazed with Coyote Clay's pistachio shino.

Stanley, Falkland Islands

My grandmother was an avid gardener as were her brothers and sisters. Every time we would visit one of my aunts or uncles, we would be taken on a tour of the gardens. Seeing these gardens reminded me of that.

Puerto Madryn - Gardens in small spaces

Meeting the Most Important Man on the Ship

Here I am meeting the most important man on the ship - the chef. The food was magnificent. If you're a foodie or if you just love to eat, a cruise is a wonderful way to travel.

Sewing Machines

We arried in Usuhuaia, Argentina on a Sunday and all the stores were closed. We did a little window shopping, and found sewing machines. The rate of exchange is about 3.5 pesos to the dollar. Notice the Toyota quilting machine.

Beagle Channel

Part of the cruise was through Beagle Channel at the bottom of South America. These are glaciers, and yes - that is a waterfall coming out of the bottom of one of the glaciers. Alas, the color in real life surpasses the color in photographs. The glaciers are more white with lots of blue - something that would look lovely done in watercolor.

Deb & Jim Take A South American Cruise

We started in Buenos Aries, went north to Montevideo, then went south, took a little trip to the Falkland Islands, went around Cape Horn, through the Beagle Channel, through the Straights of Magellen and then north to Valpariso, Chile. We were going to see the Patagonia Coast and the Chilean Fijords, but the sea was too rough to navigate the channel safely.

When we went around the Horn, we were about 350 miles from Antarctica. The day was 17 hours long and twilight lasted more than an hour. I got to see the Southern Cross. The sky in the Southern Hemisphere is very different from the Northern Hemisphere.

I was seriously relaxed during the trip and got some great sketching done. I've got art ideas to last for about six months. I also bought some great fabric in Montevideo and bought wool yarn in Stanley. I even got to see penguins.

We took about 1000 photos, and I've included a few below.

Day 2 - Montevideo, Uruguay

This is where we found a wonderful fabric store with far better quality dress fabrics than I've ever seen in the US. This is also where I discovered that the Mexican Spanish I use at work is different from the Spanish spoken in Uruguay. Uruguay, Argentina and Chile each have their own dialects and I had problems communicating. I couldn't have done too badly. I didn't start a war and I now have some wonderful fabric to work sew.

Day 6 - Stanley, Falkland Islands

The penguins live in what may well be a mine field. The penguins aren't heavy enough to set off the mines and tourists are kept well back from the penguins. Stanley is a gorgeous little town with lots of gardens - both flower and vegetable.

Day 8- Ushuaia, Argentina

If I've got it identified right, the poppy is an opium poppy. It was the size of a peony. There was a kind of memorial for Eva Peron. She must have been an amazing woman.

Day 12 - Chacabuco

It was cold, raining, and windy. We walked a bit through the town and headed back to the ship.

Day 14 - Valpariso Chile

We stopped for lunch at a little restaurant beside where llamas are raised. My sandwich is a typical Chilean lunch - thin sliced beef, tomato slices and green beans. The bread is shaped like an oversized English muffin. This was an incredibly good sandwich.

Jim's New Jammies

I bought this fabric last summer when it first arrived at the fabric store - but it took me a while to turn the fabric into jammies for Jim. It's actually a scrubs pattern. The photos are a little rough - we were having a stiff wind at the time.

New Outfit

The black batik is fabric I bought when we were in Hawaii. Fellow Quiltart poster, Diedre, lives on the Big Island and offered to take us around and show us the good fabric stores. I bought this at one of the stores Diedre took us to. The rust died fabric is from DellaJane Hand Dyes. I played with the pattern a bit and made the outfit I wanted. I used some of the rust dyed fabric for godets in the skirt.

Of course, I then needed earrings for the outfit. So.... I got out the pliers and the crystals and made earrings.

One more sun face

Jim's Sun Faces

See what happens when the Clay Monster gets loose! Jim decided to make some sun faces. He used a mold he had made for a platter and used slips to create the facial texture and features. Having learned painting before ceramics, he approaches slip from a painter's perspective.

Female Sculptures

I made a series of female figure sculptures. Originally there were five, but one lost her head in a salt firing. Alas, her head landed in the cone pack. The rest are glazed a fired in electric kilns. With each one, I tried to make the faces more realistic. The last doll I made was the one with the extruded arms. When I painted her eyes and lips, I was amazed at how much personality the sculpture had.

The shortest sculpture is the one with the really angry face. I think that sculpture, more than any of my other work, shows what I was feeling at the time I made it.

Female Sculptures