S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 252

Art-o-Carton

Last week in my Book-o-Mat? post I mentioned that I ordered an Art-o-Carton from the Art-o-Mat folks because none of their machines are in my area. Today the FedEx guy delivered it:



It's exactly the same size as a carton of cigarettes, and packed with little boxes and blocks of art, all carefully wrapped:



Each piece of art was fascinating. One fiber artist folded up a tiny fish-themed quilt in her hand-painted, hand-signed box; another artist made an accordion book out of a watercolor painting. Ab

Abstruse, Abstruse

I found this blue jay feather out in the yard when I was walking the dog. It's prettier than this; I just had to sanitize it and it's still a little damp in this photo.

Next to the feather is a cat claw, one that belongs to Jak. I know it's Jak's because I extracted it from a small wound on top of poor Jeri's head. Apparently Jak left it lodged there after their latest rumble. Jeri is a little sore but doing fine; Jak is strutting around like King of The Litter Box.

I'm a great believer in acc

Sparky Ten

Ten Things To Help Spark Ideas

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

Seeing = writing: The Creativity Portal offers 365 picture prompts to inspire you.

Sometimes I key in a descriptive word and watch as Henry Solaass's Dreamlines paints abstract images based on matching images it pulls from the internet.

Frigtool (Flickr random image generating tool) allows you to search for specific images based on key

Book-o-Mat?

Southern Living magazine had an interesting article back in their January issue about the Art-o-mat project, which repurposed 80 old cigarette vending machines to instead dispense original art by some 400 different artists. While looking up a recipe tonight I re-read the article and (since none of the machines are in my area) decided to order an Art-o-Carton to see what they are like and use as little inspirational gifts (and I'll report more on that when my order arrives.)

The UK already has no

Wompets

In quilting we have insider acronyms for projects that we never finish or that we perhaps should never have finished:

The UFO (Unfinished Object): Something like a king-size all-white wholecloth quilt with twelve stitches per inch; in my life time I've only seen one master quilter actually finish one, and it took her seven years (as I described to Darlene in comments to my old Genreality post here.)

The WOMBAT (Waste of Material, Batting and Time): That tumbling block patchwork pattern baby quilt