I am so behind on my blogging...we have been so busy and had an Artgirlz At Home class, a Memorial Day party to watch the Charlestown parade that goes right by the girlz house, sent out product, worked on the website, on and on, and then there is the garden...The Charlestown Garden Tour is June 17th, with tickets available at the Cross Mills Library...so, we are going from one project to the other. We would be doing that anyway, but there is a focus...Here is Sue dividing the lotus for the pond. Projects are moving along, but there is still lots of compost and mulch to hump!

Al and I taught a class in the studio to work out some kinks in a class that we are offering at Quilt Festival in Houston in November. We decided to make shrines, and actually managed to pull off a Fun Friday a couple of weeks ago....worked on structure and materials. Our "students", who have said that they will help us work out kinks anytime, were great, teaching us as much as we taught them...as it should be!!










We are very excited about our new charms! I think that they will do very well, and we have a few more up our sleeve...am working on getting them out into the world...pdf's for reps, and putting our first newsletter together to send to the lucky people in our address book. Waiting for the new website to be done before we send that out!
We are getting samples together for classes that we will be doing in Connecticut and Boston and will put info and links in tomorrow. I guess I'll go and have some breakfast and get ready for another day at Artgirlz World Headquarters. My goal is to get back here tomorrow morning and add links to some other spots!

Well, it has been raining for days and the good news is that the plants will be happy, and I am grateful to say that our basements etc are dry. There is bad news further north. We...Al, Midge, Sue and I did some damage at the North Stonington Plant Sale on Saturday...it was misty but there was a great selection of goodies and lovely, helpful people to help. We managed to load up the back of the truck and make a stop at Stonington Gardens. We gathered a few things from there. They are also very knowledgeable...The photo above is a tree peony that Sue and I snatched up. Below is a shot of the back of the truck upon our return!


I puttered around in the green house on Sunday morning...Mother's Day...working in the rain for a couple of hours. It was great to be out and know that it was too wet to haul soil or mulch!
#2 son Pete came over in the afternoon and we all had soup...had a call from Don....Heard from Norma, who has been working on our new shopping cart and some changes to the website. I can't wait for them to be done!



Back to building Artgirlz nation today. Taking care of emails, trying to get product for our CHA Summer Class...things that seem like they should only take a couple of hours, and then it is 5 o'clock and there you are asking yourself what did you really do today? Al spent some time this afternoon working on a couple of pieces for Cloth Paper Scissors. We have a full blackboard wall that is filled with things to be done. I guess I'll go watch bad TV...catch up on the Sopranos
and see what trouble Jack Bauer gets into...

Friday evening, just before Sue's 3rd birthday celebration, I did a tour of Midge and Al's botanical paradise...on the way were our first year crab apple trees...

The bunnies should be the first to be introduced...they are sisters, and came to live on the compound last summer. They were tiny little things and have grown up and seem to be very happy!

Now there is a mother robin living in the newly stained wood shed. She has been sitting on her 4 lovely blue eggs for a couple of weeks....will keep you posted on that situation. The birdhouses seen above will go back onto the shed...

Yesterday was an all day graduation extravaganza for Sue's niece. We had a great day driving around, cleaning out ascary dorm room, driving some back roads of Conn and finding some new garden shopping spots....and then a great dinner! Sue is doing a couple of hours of work this morning and then it will be out to shovel compost etc. It is a beautiful day and am looking forward to heading outside...just had a red winged blackbird fly by the window.

Yesterday was Sue's 49th birthday and she got to do her favorite thing for part of the beautiful spring day. We got these pictures from the studio window. She was planting cosmos seeds that had sprung up happily in the greenhouse! We then had another spectacular Artgirlz Birthday Bash with BLT's, potatoe salad and JoAnn's most excellent Whacky Cake with white frosting...

This is my third attemp to post some Artgirlz news today. My other two were lost in cyberspace, much to my dismay. So with new energy, I will try again. Above is the current state of Midges' shed. With a bit of early help from Don, she was off, creating a 2nd story deck on the back, side garden and rocky front patio. With the Charlestown Garden Tour (to raise money for the library) only 6 weeks away, the four of us have been shoveling dirt, mulch, moving plants and rocks, buying and sharing plants, painting, staining on and on...Sue and I finished a bench mosaic project that we wanted to do 5 years ago


We finally got our fancy press kits off to Starr Hall. We have been trying to get those out the door for a couple of months and just couldn't get to it. Now we are having our shopping cart overhauled and the website tweeked, working on new charm designs, fabric designs, making samples for distributor sales people, projects for a couple of magazines, and hoping that we can get it together for Summer and Winter CHA before chaos sets in. We are also looking forward to going to Houston for Quilt Festival and perhaps the Market portion of the program.

We are going to NYC in June to check out the Licensing Show and to take a couple of classes to get us thinking.

We have been trying to have Artgirlz Fun Friday's for about 2 years, and can never get to it for one reason or another. Consequently, we never have any new work, or learn new tricks, and scramble to get models made for shows. So, two weeks ago we grabbed about an hour and a half to spray some Ranger products onto water color paper. It was very windy so the paper kept flopping over, so we now have some very fancy rocks in the pile...got about 5 minutes in last week and maybe this Friday will be filled with many exciting creative moments for all!!

The bees arrived at the post office yesterday afternoon, and Al went and picked them up. Sue and I were quite surprised to see them in the garage, in 3 boxes hooked together, buzzing very loudly!! I don't know how I thought they were going to come in the mail. You can see the Sue and Al taking the boxes apart. After lunch today, we put them in their new homes.

The queen is in her own little box with a screen on one side so that her people can feed her. There was also a can of food...some mixture of sugar and water for the trip. Once the can was pulled out of the box, the bees wee dumped into their respective hives. We made up a batch of sugar water for them so they have some munchies while they get settled.

This is Sue and Al dumping the bees into the hive

Earlier this week I took a photo of our mini tulips that we are loving...the squirls didn't get too many. The special treat this week, is the intoduction of two more of the scary baby family. Clearly they are loving it here in the garden by the pond.


















Sue and I spent time on Sat am cleaning out the green house and planting seeds. The greenhouse looked like this for less than 5 minutes... They are popping up already, and we are all keeping our fingers crossed for rain this weekend. Every thing is so dry!
Well, tonight is a dinner party for Sue's mom's 80th birthday, and my sis is madly working on our fancy press kits that we wanted to have done 2 months ago for Starr...so I should go back to work!

Well, Al and I made it to the quilt show in Chicago and back and had a great time. It was wonderful to around stitchers who "got" our product. Our "make and takes" went well, we met new wonderful people, bought a few great beads, and I have to admit I bought another bag...I really try not to, but I just couldn't help it!!
My sister was tied to the "cash register" area, because I was too lame to add and figure tax without my brain freezing. It is a sad situation, but that is just how it is. She is great at it, and I appreciated it very much. I did my best to be the restocker person and chat with customers.
We were very tired when we got home, but had to jump right back into the Artgirlz business mode...production...had to get the Dada kits to the National Gallery...phone calls, data entry, emails, shipping, ordering, planning, whirling magazine project ideas around...I bought these roses at the grocery store when we got back. They are so beautiful, I was carrying them around so that I could see them all day.

The garden is getting very exciting. The daffies are blooming, including some very sweet miniatures. The miniature tulips are also starting to bloom...the ones that have survived squirrel attacks...will get photo's tomorrow. The pulsatilla's are also starting to bloom...the purple variety seems to pop out earlier than the white...

I also want to introduce our scary baby collection. The first one that you will see has been sun bathing all winter next to the pond, and is now gazing into the pool and watching the fish...the ones that weren't consumed by the great blue heron. There seem to be four fish out of fifteen. The good news is that we didn't buy the very expensive koi last fall!!


Happy to be home to my house, my girl, the garden and moving forward with the nation!

There is a hint of spring today! Our first daffodil emerged this morning! Great day to rake leaves if I didn't have to move Artgirlz Nation forward!! Midge and Al went to Florida yesterday for a few dayz to check in on the family.

The Gilman show was good. Met some new people, saw customers, will be setting up some classes. Sue and I got the pallet for Chicago wrapped last night. Working to get orders out...Kate is coming today to help out.



Took this shot of one of shelves in the studio filled with Tracy's massive collection of "little things"...It is filled with things I just can't get rid of...top piece was a gift from Pam Hastings...still have a few boxes in the basement to spread around. Better go and glue things on blank books!

The "Button Pusher" (made by Al a few years ago and I immediately suggested that it should be my birthday present! and it was) was speaking to me earlier in the week as Al and I worked on some communication issues! Things are moving along smoothly as we prepare for two shows and watch the boys in the lot outside of the studio window start to build a house.

Just finished the setting up the directions for one of the classes we are teaching this weekend at the Sue Gilman show. We are packing for that and for the quilt show in Chicago...the M and A will be in Florida next week...

The weather here in Rhode Island is sunny but still cold. Sick of it!

Happy Equinox!! At precisely 1:26 P.M. EST , the Sun will cross directly over the Earth's equator. This moment is known as the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. For the Southern Hemisphere, this is the moment of the autumnal equinox. It is still in the twenty's...but we have another tiny flower up and surviving the cold nights...The sky was beautiful this morning while I was doing some yoga...

Figuring out Artgirl head sizes for classes we are teaching and product we are selling...Tracy II on the phone giving Al a report...

These are the said iris...They bloomed March 14th! There is hope.
Should be lots of action in the studio this week. Trying to get fancy press kits done for Starr. Sue Gilman show this weekend, and lots of product to prepare for the Quilt Show in Chicago. If you click on www.quilts.com and then on the link to the Cloth Paper Scissors/Chicago event, you will see one of our little characters!

International Quilt Festival-Spring in Chicago
April 7 - 9, 2006 (Preview Night Thursday, April 6)
Donald E. Stephens Convention Center

5555 North River Rd

Rosemont, IL 60018

Miss big shot blogger can't seem to get her great iris shot onto said blog...drat...will try again.
Got it!

I think that I have made it to the magical page that actually allows me to put a message onto our newly created Bloggggg... We are finally making it into a new phase of our technological life!

The other girlz are chopping wood and getting things into the truck for a dump run. We have had tiny iris popping for a couple of days. Have to get the camera out!