What a nice find this is. Perfect for a cold, rainy weekend of looking and reading. Beautiful paintings and wonderful criticism, often contemporary. Thanks Bornfamous for the link!

Not sure what it’s doing in your part of the world, but it’s icing (as in rain falling from sky, hits cold surface and becomes ice much to the suprise and detriment of many) here. Happy April!

And in other news, I have caught up with the 2003 Journal quilt project after a period of not having a clue and I’ve even come up with a theme to fall back on if needed: “It’s about the quilting, stupid! Or, variations on whole cloth.” I feel so much better. And last night I spent time again at the sewing machine, sewing the first four columns of pink and green blocks together. It’s all good.

First seen linked in Textism, this has popped up in other sites and now mine. Great read, covers all the bases and well, just explains ever so much about it all.

Somehow much of the coverage about the war in Iraq is giving me flashbacks to the 70’s. Remember that little country – Viet nam?

Whooo hoooo cooking fans. Phone call today from Williams-Sonoma (in the mall where i work) to say “your KitchenAid….” yippppeeeee! Yes, my food grinder and pasta plates came. Not the cool pasta rollers like fortune elkins has. I decided I’d get more use out of a grinder for things like making the hash of my childhood. No no no – not making hash OF my childhood. OK, just stop. My mom made amazing hash of leftovers when we were growing up. I threw in the pasta plates for fun. I’d like to try egg noodles. Not tonight though.

I’m printing up stuff for an exhibit about NYQuilts! and started fussing with the Epson utility because I didn’t like how the first print looked. Lo and behold — out of ink. Don’t you hate it when the solution is just as easy as that? Geesh. Why do I keep myself around?

OK, it’s to give you information like this:

Ock�ham’s razor
VARIANT�FORMS: also Oc�cam’s razor
NOUN: A rule in science and philosophy stating that entities should not be multiplied needlessly. This rule is interpreted to mean that the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known. Also called law of parsimony.

Naomi asked in comments:

In the small section, I saw illusory ‘circles’ of pink that don’t seem to be visible in the larger area–is this an aspect of the design or just something I’m imagining?

When I look at the photos I see some large squares on point. They seem to be 3 or 5 squares on a side and are formed by the on-point “square in a square” of the small blocks. Most of those edges seem to be formed more with the contrast of a light center area of the blocks against the dark outermost triangles. Areas that don’t pop out this way are more muddy contrast wise.

Interestingly, (perhaps!) the stars that I saw in my drawn and early mock-up versions don’t seem to pop out at all.

I’m not purposefully placing color except to keep a lot of a single print from ending up in one place.

Before I started I made three piles of each color block – designated light, medium, dark. Light v dark was pretty easy, medium was not so clear. Both colors had similar amounts in each of the three piles, which I thought was interesting. There are fewer fabrics involved in the greens than in the pinks.

My main thought in placing them really is to make some areas that are appear to be lighted areas and some areas that seem shadowy with of course areas that are neither. Right now I am alternating blocks based on whether they have red or green outer triangles. I figured start out this way and then re-arrange if I didn’t like it. The finished configuration is supposed to be 14 X 20-22 blocks.