Craft Night

Because of so many other things going on, we haven’t had Craft Night at The Compound for a few weeks. Friday night, The Brides came over. Tom sketched while Lindsey began painting her boot (her “boot” being that thing she seems to wear a couple of times a year after ankle injuries–so why not, in her words, “pimp it out?”), and Rhonda knitted. I usually take Friday nights to work on my Project Runway design, but I actually finished that on Thursday night within a few hours after the show aired.

Jo-Ann Fabrics had a big sale on sample squares of fabric items they’re discontinuing, and I picked up a bunch of squares that, yes, can be used for doll fashion. However, on Friday night, I also used some of those samples to make these four throw pillows for our bed:


Flip side of pillows.

Give a woman a sewing machine, and she’ll fish for a lifetime, or something like that. 😉

Pranksters Show

I thought some of you might like to see the photos I submitted to the Montrose Softball League’s Pranksters Art and Photography Show “The Contemporary Woman.” The first photo, Mounted Patrol, hung in the show. It and the other two photos will be part of Pranksters’ future book compilation of the show’s works. Sales of the art and photos benefit Aids Foundation Houston – Camp Hope, Bering Omega Community Services, and Live Consortium.

I’ve also included my statements that were submitted with the photos.

Please click here to see my photos.

Hump Day Happy

How do you talk to a giraffe with one ear?


You’re talking to a toy? That’s just crazy.

Two hundred-plus dolls in the attic agree with me.

However, to humor you, if you give me a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, we’ll pretend it’s the giraffe looking up something in this book to make you happy. Because as Emily Dickinson wrote, The Possible’s slow fuse is lit by the Imagination.

Whatever happened to Fay Wray?

Fay Wray died in 2004, a little more than a month before her ninety-seventh birthday. She was such a memorable and beloved Ann Darrow in 1933’s King Kong–the first actress to earn the label “scream queen”–that two days after she died, the lights of the Empire State Building were turned off for fifteen minutes in her honor.

When Kong came back to life in 1976, he dumped Ann for another beauty named Dwan.

The big ape nearly ended Jessica Lange’s career before it began, but thanks to The Postman Always Rings Twice and Frances in 1981 and 1982, it was revived. So was Kong, who’d forgotten all about Dwan and traveled back in time for Naomi Watts’s version of Ann Darrow in Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake.

My own particular favorite Ann Darrow is the one on the desk in front of me. That face, that beautiful face.


Mattel, 2002

LJ Runway Monday: Hey, That’s My Fabric (PR 7:10)

On the most recent episode of Lifetime’s Project Runway, the designers were given the opportunity to create their own fabrics. Each designer was presented with an HP All-in-One Desktop PC to use to create a textile design, then their designs were digitally printed on fabric overnight. I was dazzled by some of their creations and found myself at odds with the judges’ evaluation of who had the winning and losing designs. I believe my views were more in line with Tim Gunn’s and am starting to wonder if Nina and Michael aren’t being deliberately difficult for some nefarious reasons of their own. Stay tuned, huh?

Unfortunately, I don’t have an HP All-in-One Desktop PC at my disposal, nor do I have a budget for getting fabric digitally printed. What I do have is fabric, brushes, and lots of paints. I WISH I’d remembered to take a photo of my fabrics after I painted them and before I cut them to my patterns, but I overlooked that step. Here are the scraps, however, if that helps you visualize an early phase of my process.

As always, you can see my paintings on the One Word Art and True Colors pages.

I know it will shock you to learn that Summer was once again unavailable for this challenge. Her agent mumbled something about shooting a Volvo commercial and having a cold one, whatever that might mean.

But the world is full of gorgeous models; click here to see a new one.

Hump Day Happy


Moo Cards make me happy. These small-sized business cards reproduce fragments of my paintings on one side and contact/web site information on the other side. Moo did such a good job that I plan on another order featuring my novels. Check out their web site linked above. (No, I’m not getting anything for this endorsement.)

Meanwhile, if you give me a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, I’ll be glad to find something in this book for you that’s almost as good as Moo Cards.

Oh, wait. Did somebody say “Moo?” Hi, Rhonda!