Never enough time!!!

My last entry was May 29 right before I spent a week in Kona. Today is the 18th. I have done very little weaving since my return-a pass or two.

Sunday Pat and I are leaving to teach at Midwest Weavers conference. We are driving. Wednesday evening I have a very short presentation to give at the Falcouner Gallery at the Small Expressions exhibit. Pat is also in Small Expressions and giving a presentation. I can hardly wait to see how badly my framing was destroyed when I sent it. The framing problem cost me third place in the show. I was notified that I had received third prize and that it was being rescinded because of problems with my piece. I have added the letter to my class slides/lectures as a reminder for my students and myself about how framing can make or break a piece. I learned a valuable lesson always make sure the glue is dry on the framing before you send the piece.
One of the big disappointments on this trip is that we had a day between the Gallery talk and when I start teaching. We were making arrangements to go to the Vesterheim Norwegian Museum to view tapestries/Rolaken. They “furloughed” the curator that would have pulled the tapestries I wanted to look at for technical details. Now I will only be able to view them digitally and perhaps not see the details front and back that I wanted to see. It’s disappointing for everyone I know. Everyone-not just me- is losing out by not having this kind of resource available.
I have spent most of the day doing a 60 second animation of the construction of So Between Two. I really enjoy putting together power point slide shows for classes. My daughter-in-law Kathy has been putting together slide shows and DVD’s of family and friends trips to Kona. She’s really quite proficient. I left her my flip Video Camera. I think she’ll have fun with it. To me it was just one too many digital things to carry around. I prefer my new camera which is much more like the SLR’s that I used in the past. I love using my lenses and remote cable. Another great feature is I can set the lens to correct for my vision. I don’t have to wear my glasses anymore to take pictures. It allows me to be a little steadier when taking pictures.
I have over a thousand pictures that I took while in Hawaii. I desperately need to organize them for use in my cartoons and colour studies that I weave. Fortunately, I have almost a month before I teach at IWC. I find it interesting that 10 years ago I would have come home with maybe 7-8 rolls of slides and perhaps 50% of them would have been keepers. With a digital camera, I filled up a 2 gig card in my camera. It will take me months to go through and sort through what is usable and what is not. I have hundreds of floral shots and close-ups, even more sunsets and family pictures.
Several of the shots are of plants that I took at an arboretum near Kona, Hawaii. Several of the flower species have only 3 bushes left on the island.

Originally, all of the hibiscuses on the Island were white with pink stamens and pistils and now they come in every colour. I was also very lucky to get shots of the volcano glowing at night. It was closed on either side of our trip up to the volcano because of the vog.

My favourite flower shot is the multicolour sweet smelling flower whose name I can’t think of at this point. We were given leis of this flower when we arrived. They lasted the whole time we were there and perfumed everything they touched. My Lei is now drying above my computer and I can still smell it’s very slight scent. The flower is plumeria.