The heavy rain continued this week. Unfortunately, some of it wanted a tour of my art studio. This happens all too often for me, usually after the ground is saturated and rain keeps coming down. I even had rain running in through blocked up windows in my storage area. That created a whole new problem. The good news is that none of my weavings were affected. I like to turn adversity into a positive, so I took the opportunity to review all the treasures in my studio that came upstairs to evade the water and purge the items that have sat around for years. I’ll find them some new, dry homes. Before the rains, I had been making some good progress, finishing the background weaving for my latest commission. I stretched it out on its frame, and next I’ll launch into the dimensional crochet component where I build the foreground further forward. I’ve already wrapped a mountain of reeds and cattail leaves while watching the final episode of Face Off, one of my few television guilty pleasures. The contestants create dimensional make-up, prosthetics and costumes that stretch the imagination. I love the program because of the creative problem solving and challenges in the art making. I’m just a sponge for new techniques. You just never know when some technique will be useful, which is how I look at my big supply of yarns and materials. The boys have been on their usual after school circuit, so this week I have been needle felting cherry tomatoes. I think they’re just adorable little plump balls of sugar, and I’m looking forward to completing enough ingredients to create my Salsa weaving. Speaking of tomatoes, I have been making more beefsteak tomato slices for my felted tiles. I’m looking forward to showing them for the first time in Madison Wisconsin at the Art Fair on the Square, July 8th and 9th. And speaking of dates, next weekend I will be in Toledo Ohio doing a two-day workshop and giving a talk and trunk show for the Fiber of Our Being felting guild. I will pack up about a dozen of my weavings, along with a load of my felted tiles, most of my re-shirts, some felted sweater petals, and about a dozen of my costumes from Beauty and the Beast to display at the trunk show. That will happens on the Monday night, the 15th of May. It’s going to be a lot of fun to see all my work displayed together. I’m especially looking forward to sharing my work with an audience that hasn’t seen my work live. I spent a little time this week reorganizing the costume studio at South. I was ready for a change after finishing up the 34 girls’ chorus costumes. I gleefully launched into creating the principal’s costumes for Hello Dolly. At the top of my agenda was creating Dolly’s opening number costume, and so I pulled out all of the clothes, fabric scraps and trims that I had accumulated over this past year in the color story that I was imagining. I hung them on the closet doors of the costume studio and just spent a little time taking everything in. From there I started designing and I have pieced together the design for the dress. I hope that this week I can pull all the elements together and watch the talented sewing faeries take over and turn it into a beautiful costume. I really love and depend on my faeries, who bring my costume designs to life and fit them on the cast. On the family front, yesterday morning we made a delightful but slightly damp trip to the farmer’s market. We arrived a little late in the morning, but the weather kept away a lot of people so we got our strawberries. Poor Tommie missed the trip because he was taking the SAT test, but he got some strawberries at home. On Friday he took an AP test in US history, and next week are the AP tests in English and calculus. We are all looking forward to the end of the school year and the start of the family vacation! Oh, and my last lonely solitary slice of pie was consumed this morning. It was a wonderful apple cranberry pie that appeared on Monday, but now it’s gone. I do hope the next one appears in time for Mother’s day. If anyone is listening, it would be better for it to appear around Tuesday when I get back! Until next week, Martina Celerin