Ta Da!!!

BIG breakthrough yesterday - the culmination of many of your influences, I might add!

Remember my perpetually stalled on the design wall piece, Swoops and Spikes? Here's an old picture of how it has looked since about January:

I wasn't really happy with either the pale yellow background, or with the yellow stripe. Way too blah. So it languished, waiting for inspiration; mostly Melody and the Chicago School of Fusing, and Pam RuBert and her sidekick PaMdora!!! Thanks, ladies!!!!!

SO:
I am WAY happier now. I overdyed the pale yellow ground with two sets of paint washes, and junked all the colored stripes for plain black, and added an extra border of black between the polka dot fabric and the ground, to make it stand out more. I haven't figured out what this is all going to do to my adding a black background to the overall composition, but time will tell.

The piece is actually supposed to be vertical, but I can't figure out how to turn images yet, so turn your head instead, ok? The last, bottom block, needed to be reworked to accomodate the new black edge on the dotted fabric, so it will get constructed today. Hopefully it won't languish for want of a background thereafter!!!

And, since Teri and others have been so kind as to oblige with their clean and messy studio pictures, here's my main desk and new ironing table in need of a real tidy - but I doubt that yesterday's progress would have happened without either the new desk or the associated clutter!

As far as my PIC progress goes, Mr Clean Magic Eraser sponges DO work great, but get GRODY looking after only one use. Ah well. I've made great progress on my main kitchen counter, and even scrubbed the stove. I also washed the plate inside my microwave, but only because I accidentally melted an entire stick of butter on it, rather than from any inate virtue on my part!

I also went to Staples and Barns and Snowballs yesterday, to get magazine holders and to drool, respectively. I got the new QA, and am going to set up new magazine holders for my vast horde today. Hurray!

** All of that said, I was reminded yesterday, by a nest of ants, that we are human BEINGS, not human DOINGS, and I continue to not 'be' very well emotionally due to these stupid hormones. I read the QA mag portrait challenge, and came up with a cute draft drawing for it, but I'm still thinking that a larger, different, 'Hormone Head' will be my piece for Indelible Spirit. I have all these deadlines looming, so it is a TERRIFIC thing that I am actually starting to cruise a little bit! Hurray!