A Conscious Decision

This past week was spent in New Jersey comforting a new widow. I only met her and her husband a year ago, though to Gil, a lifelong friend. I did not feel I had the right to intrude upon her during what is obviously a stressful and emotional time. But when the diagnosis was dire, we made immediate plans to visit, not expecting that Lloyd's departure from this Earth would be almost instantaneous.
Sylvia still wished us to visit.
Thus I went to the land of my birth, but do not recognize it anymore. That was very disconcerting.
She was a gracious host and completely at a loss of what to say or do, much like myself, plunged into the midst of her emotional pain.
I was so happy to see the trees had left some of their blazon autumnal color after what has been a warm fall for the area. I was even more grateful for a brief escape to the shore to get that salt air and sand into my lungs, my hair, my shoes. We busied ourselves, if only for a mere hour, with nothing more than picking up colorful scallop shells, our only souvenirs of the trip.

Long Beach Island

Well, not quite only. We came away with the knowledge that we offered comfort, a small dose of healing and a lot of hugs. An invitation has been extended for her to visit for the upcoming holidays, which we hope she takes us up on.
And there is that conscious emotional decision, to have hope, to seek joy and wonder. And thus this inchie within a twinchie:

The prompt for the week is appropriately enough, "Emotion." It's always kind of freaky when the art and the life intersect like so. But isn't that part of art? To explore the present, even if the emotions are raw. Isn't that what makes us insanely human?

(There are SIX "joys" buried in this two-inch square. I found a magazine from last December and it was loaded with "JOY!" For collage freaks, it was made from a single-source).

For the twinchie challenge, TwobytwobyTuesday, that I also host, I made an actual pieced Nine-Patch to go along with this weeks concept. Not my shining hour considering I've been sewing for, well, a long while. But I had to try to do it!

Eventually that'll make it into a much larger patchwork!

I haven't done much else this week. My son was visiting and well, the weather said the high country had a bit of snow overnight, so we decided to have lunch in Flagstaff. (For the record, about 10 inches fell there). Just a quick jaunt...

Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of sunny Arizona, huh? We're supposed to have frost here at home tonight! Crazy!

Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate the company and your thoughts. If you have a chance, check out the other blogs I've mentioned here and the fine artists that participate. And even give them a chance to create teenie artworks!

Have a brilliant day!

I did it! I did the X-Did Challenge!

This past week's Diva Challenge was a real challenge for me. The objective was to incorporate Annette Carlo's pattern, "X-Did." For the better part of the week it was did-not, with a side order of didn't. We were traveling, so there were many miles and a few hotels in between, so I was scribbling on stationery and sketching on receipts. I wanted to do this thing well and good as Annette is a very talented artist and I was not going to not "do" X-Did.
So at home in my normal environs with some index cards and a very sleepless night, the geometry all came clear to me. And all the practice helped me to be able to draw fairly straight lines when I worked out my "real" artwork, no rulers in sight.  The practice rounds on cards looked like argyle knit, so I'll get back to that, but I like the organic feel to the final product.

Kudos to Annette for a very interesting challenge. Check out her blog for her take in a spiral pattern, quite a work and as always, check out the other talented tangly people at the Diva's blog.