Alternate Reality in Mendocino, California

I recently took a week-long trip to visit friends and shoot photos in and around Mendocino.  I was trying to relearn how to shoot video with my Nikon camera.  Even with a tripod, the footage is shaky.  Once home, I combined the Nikon footage with Google Pixel cell phone footage and added other elements using Adobe Premiere Pro.  Then I added a soundtrack with some of my late mother's recorded music, syncing it up to the footage in Cubase 11.  It's frustrating.  A million files are opened and saved all over the computer taking hours to figure out what has gone where and why.  And all I ended up with is this short tidbit.  But, I kind of like it!

A Round-Up of Photos of The Farm in Albion

San Anselmo Creek Meets Albion Forest

I was invited by the San Anselmo Arts Commission to paint at "Music in the Park" - a weekly Sunday event at Creek Park in downtown San Anselmo from July 31 to August 28.  So yesterday, I packed up my pen & ink & watercolor gear and headed out.  I was the only person doing any art that I noticed, but there were a lot of other people enjoying themselves.  The band was the Lonestar Retrobates - playing retro big band style music.  It was all very enjoyable.  My result was the 7"x10" image above. This was scanned and enlarged to approx. 13" x 20" and merged with a forest picture shot in Albion earlier this month.  Two nice memories merged into one!

A Story of Three Quilts

Quilting takes a looooong time, at least for me.  Here is the story of these three new quilts:

Top #1:  Florida Spoonbill, 85 1/2" long x 80" wide.  I started this quilt a year ago and only finished it last month.  Then it was too big for me to photograph, so I took it to the exceptional Jay Daniel at Black Cat Studio (link here), which took a bit more time.   The quilt was put together in 9 pieces to accommodate my small Bernina sewing machine, and is intended to represent the elusive spoonbill in a Florida swamp, with the blue sky above.  I stopped planning as much as I had with my earlier quilting efforts and cut and sewed most of this quilt without doing too much measuring.  I also learned to cut and sew curves.  I went to Florida in 2014, to Singer Island, looking for a Spoonbill, but never found one in the flesh so had to create my own.  The brown & blue batik fabric in the quilt was brought back from India, where I had the good fortune to buy it directly from the Mundra artist, Shakil Khatri, who designed it.  This was the 3rd quilt I made with his beautiful fabrics. Unfortunately, I sold the 1st one before getting it photographed.

Middle #2:  Amber's Marathon Quilt, 85 1/2" long x 72 1/2" wide.  This quilt contains only about 1/3 of all the winning T shirts won by my marathon running daughter.  Sewing stretchy jersey was a pain, as was the dot minky fabric backing.  To personalize the piece, I took photos on various trip to Seattle of Amber's awards and sewed those fabric photos into the quilt, along with various drawings I did of running shoes.  It came out a bit lopsided, so you can tell it is hand made!

Bottom #3:  Albion Bird in Window, 30 1/2 x 30 1/2.  Now that I'm taking a lot of photographs, my desire is to do something practical with them, such as printing them on fabric and sewing them into quilts.  This is one such example, having taking various photos of the windows in a shed in Albion.  I combined the photos then added an applique and embroidered bird before quilting the entire piece.  This is a new wall hanging format, rather than my traditional 'lounge on the couch' size.

Albion Pic and the Google Nik Collection

While editing over 300 photos shot on my latest trip up to Mendocino, I discovered the newly free Google Nik Collection.  This image of the forest in Albion was edited in Lightroom CC then layered with a B&W copy created using the Nik Collection's Silver Efex Pro.  Great fun!  I could spend all day doing this.

Albion Pen & Ink & Watercolor Paintings

A few quick pen & ink and watercolor studies done at Kathleen Price's house in Albion of her apple trees, and a red stool in the Yoga room.