The market is all a buzz, its almost Tet and everyone is fixing up thier homes and buying food and candy for the week long celebration!

Check out these colors! If I needed wraping paper and pussywillows I would have gotten them all!

You just never know what a day will bring.

My neighbor/landlady invited me over for lunch to honor their ancestors at noon. There were a few other neighbors and my friend Quyen. Everybody gets in the kitchen and helps cook the food! The duck was alive at 11.00 am and we ate it at 12.30! Not a thing goes to waste, EVERYTHING is eaten, not always by me.....

We all sat on the floor and had a great time!

Quyen was leaving and asked me if I wanted to go get a massage!!!!! Well of course! It was the best massage Ive had here... all for 15.00!

Today was not a work day, it was a wonderful day of surprises!

Here are the fabrics I was dyeing and washing out in the last post! I really like doing the gradations, I get such lovely pales! I have another two colors to dye for a new quilt I'm working on but the weather here has been cold and rainy!!!! I hope to get to them next week. I am a very impatient person so its all I can do to keep myself from trying to dye them anyway.

I am very excited about the new piece, I just need to take my time with it and not force it, let it unfold with an eye on the composition.

There have been so many wonderful comments left on my blog! Thank you all so much, I feel like I am making good things here, but sometimes its nice to hear it from other artists!

I am not sure what I think of this, in some ways I like it but then I look at it again and it just isn't quite there. I love the colors but I feel like there is something missing..... interest maybe, a focal point.... humph!

Yes this is how I wash my fabrics!!! And yes that is the toilet I sit upon! Im glad the Vietnamese have those handy little sprayers next to the toilet, although Im sure they use it for something else entirely! So After the madness of Tet Im going to buy a washing machine, I will still have to boil the water but, the rest will be a piece of cake!

I feel like a crazed woman! I just love this one too and Im already planning the next in this series. I might have to dye a bunch of fabrics so it will take a while because its coooold out! Yes I know its not like Portland but its cold for us!

Ive been having such a great time working on my quilts that I keep forgeting that Im going to Bhutan NEXT month! Ill be there for 25 days, just me and a guide and driver, how cool is that?! I have made this a weaving tour, the Bhutanese are famous for their fabrics! I will take lots of pictures and put them both here and in an album so you will see it all!!!

I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!! I did this this afternoon, its that groupe of colors that were on the floor! I want to do more like this and play with different lay outs, but this one makes me VERY happy! Its simple but I think it works!

I finally finished this, its about 40" x 40" and I am very happy with it! The idea came to me in a dream..... its that weird? Do others dream finished pieces then make them? This is not the first time either.

I now have a huge pile of quilts that need homes!!! Any ideas where I might look to sell them? I think there is a need for a quilts only gallery! Not a quilt show but an art gallery because there are so many quilters out there that are making art.

I really like this one! I had such a fun time making all the stripes, I could have gone on for ever! I look at this and think that I am so far away from what I was doing before I left the States, this is so rigid and constructed, the work I did before was more fluid and emotional with lots of subtle color shifting, I would like to get back to that.

On to other things.... I find my self looking at houses for sale back in Portland, thinking about Valerie, Daves daughter and how she is my only family now, I think about eating at Nostranas with Andy and drinking really good wine, I think about all my quilting and knitting friends and the inspiration they give me. I think about my life and where I am now and how I want to be back with everyone. I have a great life here but its the life of a hermit, its wonderful to have all the time in the world to work on my quilting and dyeing but when I cant share it with anyone what does it mean? Man, I'm getting heavy!!! Lighten up!

Today was a day of waiting!!!

I waited for the electicity to come back on.... that was a 12 hour wait!

I waited to get the flowers taken off my fingernails..... that was a 2 hour wait!

I waited for the man to bring the two book cases I just bought.... that was a 4 hour wait!

At some point I just give into it, there is nothing I can do to hurry it along, just take a deep breath and enjoy the things around me!

These pieces of fabric were just in a pile on the floor, they a so beautiful together that I think they will be my next project! We will see how they turn out! Maybe some kind of strip piecing....????

These are the colors I dyed! Very interesting group, sometimes I dont know why I dye certain colors, maybe to try to broaden my palette.

Today I dyed 15 colors, here are some of them on my kitchen floor! It will take me a while to wash them all out, by hand..... oh my aching back. When I get them all washed, dried and ironed I will take pictures again! When I dye I pretty much use all the dye in a day, sometimes I will put it in the fridge but since its not easy for me to get more I don't want to waste it. At least I'm getting a jump on all the fabrics Ill need for Nancys classes!

I also took a photo of my kitchen.... notice the cooker? Thats right, no oven! Im cooking much more these days, all though it is still cheaper to eat out!

I guess I made some sort of a decision today, my land lady came over and brought a friend that speaks English, she asked me if I want to keep the house for another year..... I told her .... yes! So now I need to buy some shelves for my clothes. Im kind of living here like Im going to leave at any moment. Maybe Ill buy a washing machine too! That will help with the dying!!!

Ill be here for most of the year any way, I dont head back to the States untill September, and I really do like this house!

Its funny how things just kind of happen......

I woke up at 2.30 this morning and couldnt get back to sleep because my brain was busy making striped fabrics!! Im working on a piece that was giving me fits yesterday, hence the dream. Today I went back to it and added some stripes...... I like it much better!

Here is something I was playing with, I want to do a few pieces based on shading, this didn't turn out quite the way I had intended but its a start, I have an idea for another one. I think I need to make the pieces smaller to get a better gradation of color.

I have so many ideas lately, I seem to be very impatient, just want to get one thing done and move on to the next, its rapid quilting! I'm not finding something that really grabs me and spending time with it...... what do you think that means?

Here we are on New Years Eve having a great dinner at Cargo. You know who I am, but you dont know my friends, Gram and Linda. Linda lives here in Hoi An and Gram is visiting her from Australia, Linda is my best friend here.

After dinner we walked along the river to see the new festival area, it was packed with people so we left, we are all to old to deal well with huge crowds!

Today was a very low key day for me, I did some sewing and watched three movies, a perfect new years day!