Schedules

Found out Friday that my husband's work schedule is going to change in June. June marks the end of school for the summer. It also marks the leaving of 2 employees and 2 prego ladies. He'll be working swing shift - 2pm till 10pm tues - sat. I am not pleased. There is not anything that can be done to change it until school starts again in the fall. Basically this means he'll be getting home when i'm going to sleep. Unless i throw off my sleep schedule, which i'm not completely rejecting the idea of adjusting it a night or two, we won't really see each other tues - fri.

The only silver lining is he'll be available to go on Saturday mornings art adventures. I have a group of friends that do summer field trips on Saturday for artsy stuff. We'll be going to lots of gardens this summer for photography, painting, drawing and the like.

On happier news I went to The Dancer exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. They are show casing works by Degas, Forian, and Toulouse-Lautrec. It really made me want to buy color paper and pastels for sketching. They showed a number of sketches by all the artiest - i have to say i liked this best. While the paintings were great and to see a real poster from the time of Toulouse-Lautrec was great - there is something about seeing how they worked quickly in a sketch, or how with ink and water color wash they gave such strong impressions of placement. I almost wouldn't mind going back before the show closes on May 11th but i doubt i'll get there.

I went with 4 other people and I liked it when we were all going at about the same pace. We could wander from one piece to the next and bump into each other to give a though. But when one of the guys and i started talking about art and longevity and making a living out of it half way through the exhibit - the other people moved on and finished up before we did. I have to say i felt a pressure to hurry along on the second half of the exhibit because they were waiting. So, i'm not really sure museums are the best for group socializing. Or maybe we are all to socially polite and we should have said our goodbyes so the faster group wouldn't feel they had to stick around.

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Oh, yeah!! I have to share the new books i got:

Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith

Figured out pretty fast that I'm afraid to get this book wet. Now, I like the idea of dribbling my coffee on a page but to take it into the shower?! The pages will get all warped! So we'll see if i get over the fear of that. I've already added a piece of lent to one of the pages, it's from the drier the towels were in, it's this cool teal color - don't worry that's the color of our towels. Those that love texture will also love that the tape on the front of the books is embossed and glossy *drool*. I'm pretty excited about toting this thing around and beating it up, as long as it doesn't get too wet, lol.

Doodle Stitching: Fun and Fresh Embroidery for Beginners by Aimee Ray

That's right i'm going to learn how to embroider! I use to cross stitch when i was younger, so i at least know that one. The book has great pictures and clear instructions, now if only i'd start. I have an idea to incorporate embroidery into my art. I'm very excited that she also includes directions on how to incorporate beading. It'll be exciting to see what happens.

A cool thing is you can buy more patterns from Aimee's Etsy shop "Little Dears" as pdfs.