User:Jrkriehn

I am (in no particular order) a grumpy, retired, smartass, right-brained, creative, liberal, overweight, hard-of-hearing female, who shares her life with:

(1) A grumpy, retired, smartass, libertarian/conservative, overweight, hard-of-hearing, Medicare-qualifying guy,

(2) A grumpy, senior citizen, arthritic, opinionated female brown dog (well, largely white now), and

(3) A mostly happy, bouncy, goofy, six year old female dog of unknown origins (looks like a mix of German shepherd, dachshund, and corgi)

My mini-me, Sasha, is the brown dog on the left wearing the purple/blue/green fleece sweater. Dweezil is grumpy-guys' goofy little dog. She's out of focus, as she's always moving.

I joined DMS in October 2018, shortly after being introduced to the space by the aforementioned grumpy old guy. Since I do few things half-way, I dived into classes big time. (to the tune of 30+ completed as of my six-month anniversary.) Discovered unknown fetishes for wood turning and sewing leather. Which augment my fabric fetish in a bad way. As in waaayyyy toooo muuuccchhh. (sigh)

My passion in life is quilt making. I used to say specifically art quilt making, but now it's a mix of art quilts, contemporary takes on traditional designs, and plain old utilitarian quilt making.

This is my most recent quilt. It is a portrait of Moe - the dog owned by the grumpy guy mentioned above when we first started dating. Best. Dog. Ever.

At the space, I'm probably either printing something, attending a class, or cleaning up a mess - be it mine or (more likely) someone else's.

My observations: (1) we need bigger dumpsters, more plentiful dumpsters, or more frequent dump pickups. I'm 5'3" and apparently shrinking. (I used to be able to stretch to 5'4 on my right leg. But no more. In any case, I am unable to even touch the lids at the top of the dumpsters, much less flip them backwards so I can fling a bag of trash inside.

(2) Geeks are apparently not as smart as they want the rest of us to believe. The "founder" types are in love with these DMS Wiki pages - never mind that an awful lot of the information is not just out of date, but YEARS out of date, and full of head-scratching "why is this even HERE" pages. (to wit: a list of names and photos of people possessing those names, listed as "members" and prefaced with a "updating of this list was discontinued..." notation; pages describing committees, SIGs, and projects that apparently passed away quietly in their sleep some time ago, and more.)

(3) People here LOVE to armchair quarterback. Particularly via the TALK forum. Now, I _love_ reading TALK, because it's like watching a freeway wreck that you can't resist looking at. But it blows my mind the people on there that feel compelled to rule the kingdom, despite rarely darkening the doors of said kingdom.

(4) There are also some AWESOME-AWESOME-AWESOME people here, who will help you out anyway they can, be it finding the right classroom, getting your lathe project off the lathe, carrying a heavy item, or just tell you you're fabulous.

(5) It continues to blow my mind how much STUFF we have to work with. I find out about new equipment available all. the. time. But, I have to admit that it all intimidates me as well. So not much makering happening in my court. Yet. But, I am working on my biggest (literally) project to date right now - a gigantic wood block print "negative" for the spring 2019 Steamroller Printing event.

UPDATE: So now it's July 2019, and since I wrote this, I've become Sewing SIG leader and Printmaking Committee Chair. I've concluded I have "sucker" tattooed on my forehead in some sort of method that is visible to all except me...

This is a 30" x 48" MDF block I was working on. It was my "block" for a steamroller block-printing event on May 19, 2019.

This is a quilt I made entitled "Blue Plate Special". It has a fried egg in the center, scattered with salt and pepper-colored beads, and is surrounded by bacon, tomatoes, toast, and sprigs of parsley. Real flatware hangs off the bottom of the quilt.