I spent all morning  packing things here in our condo, so I'm taking a break for myself for a while.    As I noted in my last post, I had finished the machine work for my Threads of Resistance entry.  I am happy to say that I got it all finished over the weekend and yesterday I submitted it to the jury.  It's always a nerve-wracking thing to put your work out there for judging.  It's like applying to college.   There are so many factors that influence whether your piece is accepted--it isn't just how well done the piece is.  So I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I won't hold my breath.

Here's my entry:

I titled it Word Power.  I keep struggling with the axiom "Actions Speak Louder than Words" these days.  I see so many instances of words thrown out there causing chaos and often real harm.  I worry that words are being used too carelessly without consideration of their very real impact; that words do not deserve the same consideration as actions.  But my heart cries out that saying something is an action in and of itself. 

Those thoughts were on my mind when I stitched in the following (after taking the photograph). 

• Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can break my spirit
  
• Words inspire the sticks and stones that break my bones.
  

Words are important and my aspiration is for my words to bring people together, not tear them apart.

This is the view from my desk as I sit down to write this.

What a mess!  Though it is not really as chaotic as it looks,  getting all this packed up and ready to go to Virginia is a daunting task.  We finished cleaning out our house in Maine on Monday so the rest of this week is for studio cleaning and packing.  Next week it's our condo.

We've got takers already for almost all the furniture we are not taking so that's a huge relief.  Still have 6 portable display walls available.  (Seen in the top right corner of the picture above.)  They are each 4 feet wide and about 6.5 feet tall - in very good condition.  We did not buy the feet for them, so they need to be connected together at an angle to stand alone.  We have the hardware for that.  Email [email protected] if you want them or know someone who might.  We are asking $25 per panel.  Original cost was $130 each.

Yesterday I took time to work on my Threads of Resistance piece - adding the edge binding and constructing the sleeve for the back.  I needed the sewing machine for that, so I had to get it done now so I could pack up my machine.  That's done so I'll proceed to the rest of this stuff today.

Putting one foot in front of the other...Ann

 Coloring and drawing seems to be the manageable way to squeeze some creativity into my life at the moment. My "Threads of Resistance" piece has been untouched for a while. Since it isn't a toddler friendly art project, I haven't figured out an easy way to make the project easy to pull out and work on and then easily put it away out of toddler reach. It's too big and has the hanger pointy bits.

​Mom and I have been cleaning out the Western Avenue Art Studio so I am sorting through lots of art supplies to decide what to do with them and where to put them. It's fun to think of projects to do with the art supplies, but it's a daunting and time consuming task.

​This health care coloring sheet is about insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions. Their have been proposals to replace the current arrangement created by the Affordable Care Act with High Risk Pools. High Risk Pools are very expensive. State run high risk pools that are already operating have all experienced significant financial losses. See the Kaiser Family Foundation's report: "High Risk Pools for the Uninsurable Individuals" ​ by Karen Pollitz.

​In the coloring sheet I'm attempting to show how finances get balanced or not to people getting the health insurance coverage based on the different models of insurance. The people are supposed to be holding something like gold bullion bars.

Below is Tyler's and my attempt at coloring the drawing. Colored pencils or markers would definitely have been easier than crayons. The people are too tiny. Tyler enjoyed coloring it so much that he colored the original drawing, this copy of it, and my planning sketches.

I just discovered that this post I wrote last week never actually got posted.  Here it is now:

Getting ready for this big move has been taking up a huge percentage of my time lately.  Last week it was the beginning of the clean-out process for our house in Maine.  We had to chip away a couple of inches of ice to get access to the crawl space underneath, but we got the water turned on again and the house heated up.  The movers will come this Wednesday to remove the things we're taking with us.  Then we hope to get everything cleaned up for it to hit the market at the end of the week.  We've got our fingers crossed that by then the weather will have warmed up enough for people to start thinking how nice it would be to have a house on the lake this summer.

Though most of my time has been spent on move-related things, I am still managing to carve out a little time for my art.  I've been concentrating on my submission for the Threads of Resistance show--stitching on it while watching TV at the end of the day.

I've noticed again with this one, that each piece really takes on a life of it's own.  I don't always know where it will go when I start.  I think I explained before that this work started with four panels of words recycled from a piece I did in response to Trump's call for a border wall.  The four panels represented:

• The power of words
• Words of "welcome" and acceptance
• Words of exclusion and hate
• Groups of people targeted and excluded

Now I am stitching in even more words.  I keep a diary of words and phrases that occur to me about the current political and social situation and then add those to my quilt.  As I go along I am finding that it is a chronicle of my longing for harmony, cooperation, and working together.  I don't know how we are going to get there, but we have to keep trying.  If we're not moving forward, we're falling behind.

When I did the Trump wall piece, it was really the negativity of that idea that loomed for me and came through in the piece.  But I am an eternal optimist, always tending to a positive outlook, and it is coming though again in this work.