I'm here and I'm there

One of my friends just told me that my "Detours" quilt is on the Quilts Inc. media page! Cool. This was a quilt I've had to keep under wraps. Check it out! Scroll down, I'm near the bottom of the page.


http://www.quilts.com/mediapage/

Also, I've been meaning to mention that I am a participant in an online sale on the California Fiber Artists website. Here's the link:

http://www.cafiberartists.com/gallery/gallery.asp

Scenes from Rayna's workshop

Here are a few photos from Rayna's class, just to give you the gist of it. The walls were really colorful with our fabrics!

Next is a photo of my rinsed fabrics on the dryer, waiting their turn to dry.

I had only mixed four dyes, which limited my fabric palette. I wish I'd had time to mix more. I'll probably do some overdyeing.

Finally, here is a photo of the baby hummingbirds on Sunday morning, reunited in the palm tree in the atrium. Today I saw one of them flying around the atrium, from one palm tree to the other. Woohoo!

rayna gillman workshop

I took a 2-day workshop with Rayna Gillman at Fullerton College this weekend, organized by Carol Henke. I loved it, it was amazing. Although I am familiar with screenprinting and procion dyeing, her method of deconstructed screenprinting with thickened dyes was new to me. I learned so much, and I am eager to do more on my own. I came home with a ton of cool fabric, which I still need to rinse out. Rayna was such a great teacher, and the students came up with such beautiful stuff!

I promise to post photos tomorrow, but tonight I'm pooped.

On the hummingbird front, there have been some sightings in the atrium of both babies and mama bird. I've seen the babies both alone and together sitting in the palm tree, perched upon the stems of the palm fronds. I've seen the mother feeding one of the babies. They have abandoned the nest, and there is evidence of the feathers being removed from the inner lining. I can't imagine the mother would be building the babies a new nest at this point, so I really don't understand what that is about.

Empty Nest

About six clock this evening, my husband noticed that the babies had flown from the nest. One of them was on a branch above the nest for quite some time. Then the mother lured him over to the palm tree. Now who knows where they are. All we can do now is wish them well....

It's been quite an experience for us. I feel inspired, to try making a mixed media nest, or a mixed media book, a quilt, or???

Getting Ready to Fly

Here are the babies earlier today. Look how squashed the nest has become! It was a first to see the birds perched on opposite sides of the nest, facing each other.

Hummers, Tortoise and Quilts

These photos were taken Tuesday, Wednesday and today, Thursday. They seem much more alert than before. So jaunty! It's as if they're saying, Mommy, teach me to fly right now! I can see their little hearts pounding away.

I should mention that their nest is visible to our living room, which is the center of our house. The mom couldn't have picked a more public place to raise her babies! The cats and we are enjoying the show and dreading empty nest.

I've been reading up on them. It takes 3 weeks from when they hatch until they fly. Since I don't know when they hatched, I can only guess they will fly in the next few days. When they have learned to fly, they're called fledglings. Their eggs are the size of Tic-tacs. Oh - and hummingbirds don't walk! When they want to move somewhere else, they always fly.

Here's something non-hummingbird. My tortoise Grampa T attacking his ear of corn.

Here's something else non-hummingbird. I turned in my Edges quilt to be hung at Long Beach Quilt Festival. It's five weeks away! I can't wait.

I am working on my "Sweet Dreamy Dreams" quilt and it's been challenging. The sides refuse to be symmetrical, so I'm finally deciding to embrace the asymmetry. Hopefully, I can begin embroidery soon. I wish I could show it here, but I would like to enter it in something, so I can't yet.

Watch the birdies!

Please indulge me with some more hummingbird photos. They'll only be here a short time, and it's a magical experience watching them grow. They are getting so big that they now lie across the top of the tiny nest, next to each other, sometimes head to head. Other times head to tail. Sometimes they lie on their stomaches, and sometimes they lie on their backs! Their eyes have opened and their beaks are getting longer. Dave swears that they're getting bigger than their mother! That may be a slight exaggeration ;-).

Just in the past day or so they seem darker to me and less downy. More like their mom: she is a dark brownish gray with irridescent green on her belly. I looked at photos of several kinds of hummingbirds, but I couldn't find any that look like her. Can anyone tell me what kind of hummingbirds they are???

Another thing they've been doing is fluttering their wings. I look for signs of the camera-shy mother teaching them to fly. Am I imagining that she is standing further back from the nest to feed them, making them reach outside the nest?

This is my favorite photo. Aren't they cute?

One more observation is that the window in front of the nest is getting so dirty! Enough said? I snuck out once to clean part of the window, so I could still take photos. The babies seemed as if they were in a trance and didn't notice me. They do not fear me like their nervous mother.

The hummingbird babies are still thriving in my atrium. The first photo was taken on Tuesday morning: they look hungry! The mom is kept busy, thrusting food down their mouths.

The second photo was taken on Wednesday. You can see two beaks on the right and a tail sticking out on the left. The third photo was taken this morning. I've seen them wriggling halfway out of the nest, but by the time I grab my camera they're nestled back inside. So sweet.....

When I came downstairs this morning, the hummingbirds' nest had disappeared! I assumed a large bird had swooped down and carried it off. But my husband went out into the atrium and found the nest, just out of sight of the window. One baby was still in the nest and the other was nearby - both were still alive.

So I called Irvine Animal Services, and someone was at my door in 20 minutes. He simply put the bird back in the nest, and put the nest back into the Heavenly Bamboo. Matilda my cat watched the whole process with interest. She's an indoor cat and is innocent in this crime. But she may know more than she's saying! ;-)

Thirty seconds after he left, the mother appeared and tended to her babies. Amazing! I was worried she would reject them after he touched them, but she didn't. So she has been feeding them and they're okay.

I sure hope there are no more mishaps until they're ready to leave the nest! They're getting downy and cute. I worry about the crows in the area....