On tuesday night, a nasty severe storm unexpectedly developed out of a rain bearing depression which was forecast. The system then however slipped out into the R. Plate (which is pretty wide off Uruguay) , intensified, and after dark and without warning, slammed all along the coast, with wind speeds that put it in hurricane 2 and 3 class. It hit us, in eastern Montevideo, around 9 at night, and continued wildly for about 7 hours. At least 8 people died and more were injured, there was a lot of damage to property and in Montevideo civic parks and gardens alone around 2000, two thousand, trees were uprooted. (pictured, a beautiful blue cedar keeled over in the grounds around my husband’s office in a grand old mansion) Buildings were unroofed or lost tiles. Windows were blown in. Phone services, land and mobile,were out for several hours, and over 40,000 homes lost electricity and/or water even mains gas, in some areas for nearly 24 hours. We had water, in the front garden hose only, but without the electricity to pump the water into around the house etc ( we’re in a very low water pressure area) we had to cart water in a bucket until our power came back on early next afternoon, about 15 hours after losing it. We did have gas, though, so were able to make cups of tea, at least. For all that time the house alarm was in beep mode, once every 5 seconds, to let us know it was running on backup battery. I could have done without that feature, at least.

Oh, and the leather stuff?
all the repeat units/blocks are now on the backing, and it is ready to be sandwiched and basted. I discovered that they all needed to be machined around to prevent lifting or worse, fraying. This means really I now need to consider a ‘compatible’quilting technique – free machining; fine hand quilting like seed stitch or birds feet; french knots possibly – they’d look great – nah, I think I’ll procrastinate this afternoon and go downtown with my friend Virginia to look for some leather tools. I need a punch for another idea, and need hand sewing needles at least…and some heavier threads….

No, this is not me getting a bit kinky, it means more that I am discovering ways to incorporate leather into my textile creations, and thinking about its potential.

Forced to make some kind of statement to accompany my quilt “Ora Banda” into the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum collection, I alluded to the great underlying building block of traditional american patchwork, the repeated block or unit. Although I made very few traditional quilts before experimenting in the non-traditional field, something continues to draw me to repetition and block formation. My earliest quilts were the “Ancient Expressions”, I-XIV, which included a lot of repeat patterning drawn from ancient and tribal carvings in and on various materials, rocks and cave walls, and some of the petroglyhic and petrographic renditions of figures of man, animals and essential basic symbols which occur in civilisations world-wide. And of course there are some here, in Uruguay. One of the great artists of this country, Jose Gurvich, sprinkles them with others from his own personal lexicon, throughout his drawings, ceramics and murals. I just love finding something that he has used that is similar to a mark made by a cave dweller in europe, or to one that I know has been marked on a wall in an Outback Australian ravine.

Last week we went down to the sunday markets, and I found some lovely pieces of leather on the leather man’s stall. Although he didn’t have any of the divine gunmetal metallic I have used in the previous work, I will get some more in time, I am sure. What was good value this time was a piece of beautiful fine black suede, and a large piece of good even quality black leather, about half a bull I’d say, for about equivalent of $2o-00. I bought it; he probably thinks at last I am going to stop fooling around with little bits and make myself a jacket or vest or something. There were various dyed hides, too, but none of the pretty dyed lapin that is a la mode just now. eg. DH took a lapin/rabbit handbag, dyed pink, to DD a couple of weeks ago, pink being her signature colour and all, it will go well with the black and cream she wears a lot. People have been wearing a lot of fur scarf/boa things this year, and I have even seeen serious new fox shoulder pieces. Some of these things, rabbit for examble, are farmed, and others are declared vermin and can be taken. Unfortunately despite animal protection laws here, there are lots of instances where these laws are flouted. No honest business would sell black market skins and items made from protected species, but it is amazing what you find and see at times out on the market stalls. As with contraband cds, it is fascinting how quickly and neatly such a stall can be converted into one that sells something entirely different, and innocent, like household pots or alarm clocks….

….tomorrow is sunday, and the large markets downtown will be operating. I have a bit of a ‘shopping/browsing’ list this time; flushed with success using leather bits in my latest piece (below), I can barely wait to get to the leather guy’s stall to get some goodies for the ideas swimming around in my head; DH agrees, lots of potential for something really different….

Today we were out and about, down in the tourist area, and although I had my camera, somehow I didn’t like to take a pic of some fabulous new floor rugs showing outside one of the shops there….they are just so new. They are made from horse hide, originally a bit dappled, but chemically treated so that some of the hair has come away leaving bald patches, the colours vary between natural horsey browns through to yellowy- and grey-greens or greeny-greys. The hide has been cut into approx 8″ squares and pieced, with a 2″ border around. The whole effect to me was quite beautiful, and not unlike a natural slate floor. One would look great in our entry area, but the sheepsy black brown and cream mariners compass design one ( as in April 28th post) we have there is only half worn ….. still, we have some Aus visitors coming in just over a month, so we will be down there again soon, and maybe by then I will feel able to take a pic. Maybe the leather man will have some snippets on his stall tomorrow……fingers X.

I recenly posted a UFO and then mentioned I had several ideas on how to tackle that theme again differently. Here’s one, combining the UFO’s design with other new work I have been doing recently. The piece I finished today , “Desert Tracks 3” is an entry to something I really want to get into, and the documents will be on their way in a few hours time. Of course, I have known of this deadline for many months, and have been ‘thinking’ about it, but only in the last week or so, at the last minute , once again I have sat up late at night, begun quilting early in the morning, hour after hour, and now need to send it by the most expensive method to meet the closing date for entries. Another artist friend and I were talking the other day about this and she maintains being hard up against a looming deadline brings out her most creative, inspired, work. I would like to think that, since I do this so often, I must be of the same type. So, Q: does the the quality of one’s work increase in indrect or direct proportion to the amount of time left to meet a deadline?