Big Quilt & Fabric Arts Show in Coos Bay this weekend, from Sharon Leahy

Hi Quilties and Artsies --

The Coos Sand 'n Sea Quilt Show will be Saturday and Sunday, September 18th and 19th, at the Boys & Girls Club, at 3333 Walnut Street in Coos Bay. There will be 12 vendor booths, a member's handmade items sales boutique, and over 200 quilts and fabric arts entries to inspire and delight you.

There will be made-to-order sandwiches at the snack bar this year, along with salads, our fabulous cookies, and hot coffee, tea, and chilled cans of soda.

On top of all that happiness, there will be continuous demos for your pleasure:

Saturday

11:00 -- Genii Robison entertains us with embellished "Rick Rack Wonders" --

12:00 -- Mary Schroeder will demonstrate how to block your quilts (using lasers !!!)

1:00 -- Chris Malone will show us how to do "Easy Padded Applique" --

2:00 -- Carol Clark will demo "One Yard Wonders" --

3:00 -- Bev Gunson will demo "Girlfriend Gifts" --

4:00 -- Nina Baker will show us how to do "Needle Tatting" --

Sunday

11:00 -- Nancy Bordeaux shows us "Steps to Success with Metallic Threads"

12:00 -- Pam Boatright will teach us "Pam's Scrambled 9 Patch"

1:00 -- Merrel Smith will demonstrate "Paperless Paper Piecing" --

2:00 -- Joann Smith will demonstrate "Pinless Drunkard's Path" --


All this fabulousness is yours to enjoy, Saturday and Sunday, September 19th and 20th! See you there!

Print Making Class

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Talk, Talk, Talk

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Outreach

I had the great good fortune to spend some time Monday with the Plein Air group working at the Charleston Boatyard. The Boatyard is a wonderful place to work and if you haven't you should check it out, but be a responsible artist, contact the yard manager and ask. This is a working yard where many large things go buzzing about and they aren't looking for painters. Maybe you should ask Ava to arrange another day for the group so that you can join them.

The Plein Air group works outside in the tradition of the Impressionists. This presents the painter with a number of challenges, keeping the lint, bugs and flying firth out of the paint, staying warm enough to hold a brush and dealing with the shifting winds and people, machines and shadows which insist on blocking your view.

And then you get to paint.

Some of us find working in our studios with no distractions and threats of immediate death to any who dare to enter the Holy of Holies hard enough, just imagine packing up all of your tools and going out of doors. I'd be lucky to remeber to take the lens cap off. (Yes, the Plein Air group is a tolerant bunch, they even allow photographers to join in their fun and they don't whisper behind the photographers back. [At least until after they get their fill and leave.])

So thanks Monday Plein Air group. I hope I was a good guest and that you'll have me back sometime and here are a few of the images I managed to capture.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. ~John Updike

Monday Plein Air Comes to Charleytown

The Bandon plein air group invaded the Charleston shipyard Monday and the faded ships and idle machines seem to glow with a new magic.



Ava was there to make sure everyone was okay and out of harm's way...



Some sat it out,



While others went straight to their work...



Some used an easel,



while some got up close and personal.



some worked quietly...



and some put their heads together...



some just worked by themselves...



some got a hand form the local art critic...



and some went off in search of inspiration.



some waited for a sign,



and the Sage just smiled.

Trouble in River City

Yesterday, while I should have been wadding around in a bog, taking pictures and feeling like Frank Buck, I was fighting a bug, a dirty, nasty, despicable computer bug. No, I did not get it from going to one of those sites. In fact I didn’t get it at all, but I knew about it almost the second it happened, the long suffering wife emitted a stream of most unladylike words and a scream and by the time I made it in from where I was, up to my elbows in cat litter, (Hey, you have to dredge the boxes if you expect to live without the neighbors saying things about the “crazy” cat people.), the nasty was busily send out pop-ups telling the Spouse how her computer was infected.

Now it wasn’t and those pop-ups if activated will take your information and give it to identity thieves and pornographers and used car salesmen. So I washed off the cat litter and began a four hour fight to disinfect her computer.

In the end all was well, the bug gone and the computer restored to its well behaved, pop-up free self, but it was a battle.

Now I know this is a blog about art and I won’t go into all of the Dixie-whistling I did to restore the machine, but I will say one thing, Malwarebytes.

Malwarebytes is a free, that’s right, free program which anyone can download and run and will, if updated regularly beat the tar out of any bug you might innocently pick up.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Sure there’s always a version which you can pay for and the producer surely wants you to do so, but the free version will do all, but the most dastardly bugs to death.

If you use the Net, you should download and learn to use this product. It will keep your machine out of the shop, save you mucho dollars in repair bills, (The shop will just download and install Malwarebytes and run it until the infection is gone so why should you wait and pay them to do it?), and keep you up and running so that you can be creating more art.

It’s for the best and you should do it, but I don’t want to be a nudge so I won’t say, you should download and learn to use this program any more, but you should.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/