Quilting and other Things

Rose with carved effect. One of the squirrels that lives in the complex was playing on my bbq, hose and in the garden near the end of Christmas. This picture is snapped very quickly through the window. I was trying not to move very much as the squirrels are jumpy. The correction is the Auto Smartfix. I tried a number of corrections and the smartfix seemed to do a reasonably good job. The cage and life ring were floating at the edge of the Thames. I wanted to get remove the people in the bottom right but keep the pier as well as remove the little thing under the pier in the top right. The cage and ring were protected so that they didn't get smaller. I did go back and play with the OOB edit. WOW. That is so much easier. This is my sister during our walk at Hadrians Wall last fall.

This is the provided photo with the Sepia action applied. This photo is from a conservation area display. They had a long house setup. I used the Lighten and Darken guided edit to retrieve a bit of the details -- mostly in the log in the background.

I had a chance to go through the terracotta warriors exhibit at ROM twice.  I'd seen a exhibit in London a few years ago during a visit with Karen.  The nice thing was the exhibit was different and focused on other aspects. There were other emperors after the First Emperor who also had warriors buried with them but no where near the scale of the First Emperor.  These are some of the motifs that caught my eye during the first visit. These are some of the warriors that caught me eye during the second visit.

I had a ticket for the symphony on the 13th so went to the ROM for a few hours and visited sections 301 - 303 which covers Africa, the Americas and Asia-Pacific; the Middle East and South Asia.  Most of these pictures are from section 301-- Africa, the Americas and Asia-Pacific.  The descriptions are generally summarized from the tags that appear with the items. Wayu culture, Kashure, Colombia c 1965 The size of the pompom varies with the social status of the wearer.  The pompoms protect the feet from prickly pears.  The big pompon requires a very slow, straight step which helps the women walk with dignity, "as a woman should" Wuramon (soul canoe) Asmat culture, West Papua Province, Indonesia, mid 20th century.  The wuramon combines death and rebirth.  The wuramon represents the great voyage to the land of the dead in a bottomless canoe. Double jar in the Carretas polychrom style.  The shape of this reminds me of the binocular-like object tha...

Last December I joined the same workshop It was fun so I signed up to join Mike Guilbault of Photography Workshops again this year.  We got snow and ice this time. Mike took this picture of me admiring the view and this photo of the group I'm having problems picking favorites this year. The milkweed at the last stop was very interesting but I really like the icy ones too. The photos from both years are here

Yesterday I reached 100 donations at Blood Services .

Yesterday I had two hours at the ROM on my way to the symphony. Since it was the day before Hallowe'en I went back up to the textile area on the fourth floor as I guessed the other areas would be very busy with families (lots of activities at ROM this weekend for families). Also I'm very fond of the textile area. The first set of displays was about different types of fabrics used for clothing. This is a katanga (sp?) from Kenya titled Ancestral Proverb. The words translate to "He who likes doesn't care" meaning don't see the bad in someone or something. Karen has brought us back some Salvation Army katanga's from her travels so it was fun to see some other ones on display. I like the umbrellas which are also to help protect you from seeing the bad. This beaded basket was to commemorate the birth of a child. There's a band around the bottom that reads WHERE VERTUE IS THE CAUSE OF LOVE NOTHING BUT DEATH CAN IT REMOVE. ANNE ROUNDELL ANNO 1656 ...