A little pre-Christmas studio work

These could not be posted before Christmas, as they were made for Jordan and Julie.  Is there anything worse than a spoiled Christmas surprise?

Both the pieces were worked in hand rather than with a hoop or frame.  That allowed the stitches to be a little uneven and not so precise.  This first one, particularly, would be deadly boring if it had been stitched firmly and tightly.

As Jordan is devoted to hiking and camping, especially along the Appalachian Trail, the mountains are for him:

Although there is only one stitch used, there is a variety of textures and color in the thread and little scraps of fabric that lie under the undulations of the mountains, all of them from my dyeing in the garage this past summer and fall.  The smallest scrap of fabric can be such an interesting thing to work with.  The sky is an overlay of cotton organdy that was bundled and rusted several years ago, and the linen that is the base fabric was a dinner napkin, splashed with color.  The scraps of cotton and linen that are the mountains and valleys lie on top of these two pieces.

Below is the piece for Julie, also worked in hand.  Is it an act of redundancy to give an English woman a garden piece?  I hope not.  Here I added beads to the mix of hand-colored materials.  This piece was not held to only one stitch as the mountains were, but a garden would be a little more riotous, even uncontrolled, wouldn't it?  The blocks of layered cloth make this quite textured, and by continuing to stitch around the side to the edge of the cloth, the energy of the garden (as with the mountain piece) wraps around and to the back of the frame.  The truth was that I was having too much fun stitching this to let a little thing like the parameters of the frame stop me.

Best Christmas and New Year's wishes, dear family!

Rainy Day in the Neighborhood

Obsessive stitch.  Neurotic stitch.  The sorts of stitched pieces that have their roots in a succession of rainy days.  About 4" x 4".  Layers of different fabrics, stitched experimentally-- part of this was stitched and dyed prior to the appliqué and addition of more stitching, which gives it great textural interest.

Conversations With Silk Thread

I have a great weakness for silk.  Silk fabric, even tiny scraps.  Thread, in all its manifestations.  Throwster's Waste.  Ravellings.  Cocoons.  Carded Batts.  Loving the tactile quality of silk has even encouraged me to take better care of my hands, which can grow quite rough from the day-to-day activities of washing, doing laundry and cooking, dyeing, gardening, even stitching on rough fabrics.

The most interesting quality of silk, though, is the conversation that come from winding the newly-dyed thread onto plastic bobbins, the wondering what the future of a thread might be and auditioning all sorts of scenarios for that future.




The box of Yellows is ablaze with happy possibilities-- the Yellow of sunlight pouring through a summer sky is tucked next to what must be a zinnia in waiting.  How many lumpy, bumpy things could come from the coarse silk-- a silk most unashamed of its rude beginnings outside of the mulberry-fed circle of elite threads?









Orange is not always for pumpkins.  Saffron robes of Tibetan monks, the day lilies growing beside the road in patience and peace, and the pale tints that run to Salmon and Coral all borrow from that much-maligned color.











Then there are the Reds, Empresses every one!  Not modestly pursuing a quiet place in a corner, but brashly pushing forward to take seats at the front of the room and making a lot of noise fluffing and shaping themselves as they are seated.  The color of boldness and power.  Of complete confidence.  Synonymous with happiness to the Chinese.










Moving from Red to the Violet family, we pass through fields of wildflowers, bergamot, field thistles, four o'clocks and coneflowers.  Delicate wild geraniums lean toward the shaded, quieter areas.  And Magenta dances through all these Red-Blues.











The Royal Purples take their place, waking sedately past all gathered in the room to seats especially set up for them in front of the haughty Reds.  Centuries of awe and obedience radiate from them, the color set aside for the rulers, movers and shakers of older worlds.  Even their diluted hues are noteworthy-- the moodiness of a stormy sky is here, the strike of a last, dying sun slicing through the darkening sky.








After all that tussle at the front of the room, the Blues emerge, a breath of tranquility and peace.  Sky.  Sea.  Eternity.  The promise of safe harbor and clear skies.  Moving from the truest hue to the shared Aqua Marines and Turquoise, recalling water and life.









The Greens spring from the earth beside that watery Blue.  Green of leaf, grass, stem, moss, mountain and curving field, where strong stalks support the heavy sunflower heads floating above all as they turn their faces to follow the sun.  Fields of lush grass for grazing animals.  Heavily forested mountains.









And so we have wandered to the Chartreuses who lie at the door of Yellow, the bridge between earthy Green and Blue sky, the first colors of the spring emerging after the long and almost colorless winter.







The Greys and Browns are the step-children of the color wheel, but really deserve their own kingdom apart from the hues.  From the sum of all colors, Black, to the almost-absent tints of Grey and Ecru, they are the toning mechanisms that give some dignity to the babble of the primaries and their offspring.

It is a wonder-filled thing to have conversations with a bowl of silk threads.

Two Trees, Moon

Roughly 5" square.  From sketches of the early autumn trees in the moonlight.

Topographies of the Mind

I had an idea about stitches suspended above a surface, and to this end I experimented with a block of wood, nails, wire of different gauges, strips of cloth, yarn of various sizes, a woven ribbon of some stiff, natural fiber, and a couple of tubes of blue and white acrylic paint.

The block of wood was a scrap of 2" x 6" lumber, painted in layers of blue, slightly distressed-looking.  When it was dry, I planned paths across the surface and  began to nail into it.  With the nails in place, I used different materials, including picture hanging wire, to begin wrapping and stitching the posts.  Before this, I would never have guessed that I could actually shape stitches with picture hanging wire.

The circular forms took shape as I connected the lines with stitch.  After the stitching was finished I hammered the nails further into the block.

The result is akin to a topographic map, some of the hills quite tall and broad, others lower, more like islands in a stream.

When the call for entries came in August or September for a mixed media international exhibit sponsored by EGA, I was still working on this piece in fits and starts, so I set other things aside and began working to finish it in earnest.  And two days ago, I got word that the piece had been accepted!

Now I have only to package and mail it to Louisville after the New Year for the photographing and set-up.  The show runs between February 3 and July 15 of 2016.

Which is by way of saying that you just never know where curiosity will lead you, or what odd materials you might find for making stitches.  Mixed Media, in the words (or near words) of Jean Littlejohn, is anything you want it to be.

Some stitching

Garden, with weeds.  A true garden.  Those tidy gardens without weeds belong to helicopter gardeners, the ones who hover and gasp and rip up the offending "weed" as if the garden police were knocking at the gate, ready to write citations and name names.

And, because I grew peas in a pot (a very large one) a couple of summers ago, I love remembering the fresh-cut smell of the pods between my fingers.   I've given them a little whimsy here with Mother of Perle buttons:

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Etsy Shop is open for business once more!

Finally.  I have begun to put things in the shop.  Yesterday some hand-dyed yarn and a group of buttons, and there is a pincushion, maybe a second one, to come.  Then there are some small pieces I did in the late summer . . .  When I get a chance, I have some hand-dyed fabric to sort.

But not today.  Today we are making the round of the bookstores with The Adorables!  Wheaties for breakfast.

I'm here:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/studio508.  Would love to have you drop by.  Bring cookies.  I have tea.

More Blue Vases

The break from social media, blogs, Etsy shop-- I have seen how much energy goes into all these things.  I plan to be very particular where I spend that energy in the future.

Through diligent shovelling in the boxes of past work, more pieces in the Blue Vase saga surfaced.  To my amazement, I had missed them, scattered as they were amongst the several boxes of work stored under a table in the studio.  If these pieces were plants, I would say they were self-sowing.  That said, I have added to their numbers with two new pieces.

Here the Blue Vase (which seems to resemble a flower pot more than a vase, I was told at a recent FreeStyle meeting) is having a rough go of it.  The flowers seem traumatized and are leaning and reaching and doing their best to be somewhere else.  This is worked on a heavily-layered fabric ground.

In response to the frenetic escapism of the first piece, this Blue Vase is shown sans flowers, a much calmer little setting.  This feels like a Joe Friday interrogation:  "Just the facts, ma'm.  Just the facts."

After looking at this for several weeks, I decided there was more to a blue vase than "just the facts."  In little nibbles of time over several days, it became a little more decorative, and the background was free-motion machine stitched:

There was a time when I simply stitched flower pots and vases in all color combinations and the dreaded Demise Of The Blue Vase had not yet burst into my life.  A long, long time ago.  This is one of those Other Vase stitcheries.  The fabric is a delicious piece of chartreuse linen, and the stitching is all the simplest of stitches-- there is even a flat satin stitch, which I rarely use anymore.  It was stitched to brighten a small, dark corner of the place I lived at the time, when my son was quite small.

The newest is a mixed media interpretation of the Blue Vase.  On Arches watercolor paper, with ink and watercolor ground, machine stitch, wire, acrylic paint (on the fabric), and hand stitch.  The paper was given a momigami treatment, but I think 140 lb. watercolor paper might not be the best candidate for that process.

Of course, after some thought, this one needed a little more personality.  Sequins, beads, a wire flower . . .  Much improved, don't you think?  The original was much too serious.

And there is yet another in progress!  This is becoming the Season Of The Blue Vase(s).  6" x 6", or near that.  That small-ish format remains my favorite.  12" x 12" is still a little scary.  The next step is, of course, to gather up the unmounted pieces and have a great, long session with fabric and stapler and needle and thread and get them onto a substrate.  Where are My People when I need them?  In an effort to lessen the chores of studio life, I am thinking I should return to simply pinning the pieces to an open spot on a wall in the house.  There is a small amount of that shrinking real estate available.  In truth, I like that look of unframed, almost unplanned wall arrangements.  After all, I am the one who needs to be entertained more than anyone else living here.  One day some years hence, my son will be puttying up the nail and pin holes and selling the house.  In advance, I apologize, Jordan.  And I promise not to be too dramatic if you break anything in my house.  Just a few tears, minimal whining . . .

Taking A Break

Thank you for visiting my blog, for your kind comments and for allowing me to drag so many of my stitched pieces into the light with you.  For now, however, I am taking a break to do some thinking and planning and a bit of experimentation.  Hope to see you again soon.

Meanwhile, be well and take the odd moment to simply be.

Nancy

Blue Vase

Many years ago, I committed what was to become a life-long mea culpa: I broke a blue glass Art Deco vase that belonged to my mother.  She handed the albatross to me and asked me if I could pull the plastic flowers out that were quite firmly wedged in place.  Of course, coming from Mother, this would not be an easy thing to do, but I had not yet lived long enough to understand this.

I still remember standing in the little laundry room at the back of the house, trying to understand why the (stupid) plastic flower on the (even more stupid) wire stem wouldn't come out of the (beautiful cobalt blue) vase's narrow opening, and I tugged at it, turned the flower, tugged again-- and the vase broke into pieces in my hands.  The break disclosed the truth:  the stem was a very long one, so Mother had simply folded it back on itself and stuffed it in the vase.  The end of the stem caught on one of the bulb-shapes of the vase and could not have been extracted without x-raying the vase, then having the Bomb Squad come in with intricate tools to work the wire out.

The drama that followed this little scene made an indelible impression on my younger self, and one day decades later, I began to embroider blue vases.  None of these stitched vases looked like The Blue Vase I so vividly remembered, but photo realism was not the point of applying needle and thread to linen.  I never put all the ensuing pieces in one place, never "collected" them on a wall.  They are scattered through my house, and occasionally I come across one in the studio stored in a box of old work.  I numbered them, at first, and there were more than thirty pieces before I stopped numbering.  Some I cannibalized for other projects, some were made into greeting cards (but not for my mother), so they are lost to me.  I will post pictures of these little pieces as I come across them, and maybe they will finally be together, if only in the world of the internet!

These pieces, however, I do have, and I begin my exhibit:  The piece at the top of the page, "Sansevieria" was first posted in 2010, but as it is part of the series, I include it here.

Below is the first.  I remember carrying it in the pocket of my jacket, along with a needle and a little clutch of DMC matte cotton that had been cut into 12 or 14 inch lengths.  I would work on it as I walked downtown at lunchtime, in traffic when I was stopped at a light for 45 minutes at a time . . .  in all the odd moments in a busy life of wife and mother with more than one job.

These two were done using more scraps from the same piece of very loose, rough linen as the first.  Once it came to filling the vases with flowers, the rayon bullions couldn't be stitched while walking in downtown Atlanta, and I needed good light and a quiet place to work.

Here the blue vase got a rug-like setting, with the felted triangular shaped appliqué in the border.  The tassels are made from DMC cotton floss.

This rather mis-shapen piece is a combination of Machine and hand embroidery with vintage cotton appliqué.  The rusted ground cloth was from a flurry of rusting fabrics I did in 2012.

The Blue Vase needed a break, so this one was called "Blue Vase on Holiday."  It is on hand-made felt with tassels, beads, stitch, and the vase itself was cut from another Blue Vase piece that hadn't worked very well, then applied to this one.  I always thought the vase had chosen a far and cold country for this trip-- there seems to be ice and pale sunlight in the felt, icicles dangling from a lower corner.

Next is one of my first machine embroidery experiments.  I did not know how to set up my old Viking for free-motion embroidery, and I don't know if there was even such a name as that for this work.  The metallic and rayon threads are stitched on a piece of commercial felt, and with the beads and the funky stitched framing, it is a glitzy little piece-- yet, it is not the size of the palm of my hand!

As the Knoxville Freestylers are beginning a study on drawing with a sewing machine, I did a quick machined piece for a demonstration.  This latest Blue Vase is on a piece of hand-made felt.

This, however, may be my favorite in the Blue Vase series, which I back-stitched and titled, "Blue Vase in Black and White."

I will come across more pieces, or at least I hope so, and when I do, I'll update this post with pictures of those pieces.  Meanwhile, enjoy!

Garden, early June 2015

Doug Green, a Canadian gardener whose blog I follow, recently wrote:  "I am more myself in a garden than anywhere else on earth."  Yes.  Gardens are magical places.  The peace of the early-morning garden and a cup of tea start my day. That might be my favorite time.  Or perhaps the end of the day, sitting in utter tranquility amid all that eager green dotted with little splatters of color as the night falls and the colors deepen for one brief moment before the last of the light is drained away . . .  I think you have something, Doug!

Winding Thread

A couple of months ago I had the Adorables busy winding thread onto long, narrow bobbins for weaving shuttles.  Ethan was (of course) managing the brass thread winder, and Bethy was guiding the thread.  When I asked if everyone was having a good time, she looked up and told me she was having a "Threadful Experience."

Hmmm . . .

Silk Thread

Silk threads are a different set of dyeing techniques than cotton.  And linen, rayon, ramie and tencel all have their own rules.  I am navigating the silk maze now, still finger-painting, still in love with the colors that emerge by accident or design.  And there are a lot of interesting textures in silk, either 100% silk or silk blended with other fibers.

I did these boxes of silks in two dyeing days, though it took me several days to get the thread wound and tied into little hanks for dyeing.

The new bump in the road is finding a place to dry so many skeins.  They can't hang outside, even if there was sun every day.  They would collect pollens and airborne allergens that would keep me from using them.  And the space inside this house is all pretty well spoken for.

But all I need is a temporary drying rack-- no more new equipment!  And while dozens and dozens of skeins of thread soaked and waited to be rinsed and dried, I prowled around the downstairs looking for solutions.  The answer was folded up in a corner, behind a door:  my walker.

Think about it:  Light weight.  Folds away.  On wheels that can be raised so I don't have to bend down so far to claim the dry skeins.  And side bars for support.  The side bars can also be used to support dowels stretched the width of the walker-- dowels filled with skeins of wet yarn.  And because we have bookcases downstairs, we already have a de-humidifier in that room-- Bingo!  Here is a glimpse of the way I now utilize my walker:

Pretty expressive, isn't it, I mean, can you see how much I loathe the idea of ever again needing to use a walker for ambulatory assistance?

Several days have passed since that first attempt at drying silk thread there-- and I have made a number of improvements.  I also have an idea of using the Adorable's Legos to make a support for a second row of dowels to hang above the ones shown.  I always have an idea.  Making it work is sometimes the challenge.

The best part, however, is how neatly it all comes apart and can be stored out of the way when not being used.

Three cheers for Grandma!  Next is to figure out how the skeins can hop down on their own, climb into a basket or large wooden bowl and somehow make it up the stairs under their own steam . . .

Color, Thread, and Bethany

This little project of dyeing threads for hand embroidery has swelled to the point it has shaped the pattern of my days.  As the colors are intoxicating, I have divided dyeing into color groups:  warm colors in the morning, cool colors in the afternoon.  This way I can move along without dwelling too much with my favorite colors, to the neglect of the rest of the color wheel.  First thing each morning I begin rinsing out the thread and fabric from the previous day's work, one color group at a time.  Then to let them soak, rinse a second time, soak in more clear water, and a third rinse.  Some of the colors need a fourth and fifth rinse (I am thinking about the seductive reds and deep blues), but eventually the water runs clear enough to hang or lay them out for drying.

I do not dip the threads in dye pots.  I paint them with my (gloved) fingers, occasionally using a brush.  I do not want consistent color-- the commercial manufacturers are quite good at doing that, thank you.  I love the subtle variations of color in the skeins, and I have discovered a way of layering the colors to give a soft effect to the pastels.  A lot of work, yes, but the effect is so lovely.

As I rinse the warm colors, the resulting threads are like liquid flame in my hand, intertwined oranges and yellows both bright and subdued . . . scarlets and aubergines to make the mouth water . . . blues that recall the Georgia coast or the little glimpses of sky through the trees here at home . . . a shade of persimmon that brings memories of finding the fruit beneath a tree on the playground of the elementary school I attended . . .  All this in a handful of wet thread!

Dyeing is hard work, I have discovered.  So many steps in the process of setting up, dyeing, storing the threads so the color develops overnight, cleaning each bottle before it is returned to the refrigerator, the drips on the table (and me!) . . . and the long rinsing process the next day before the drying begins.  After the first several hundred skeins of thread were dyed, rinsed, and dried, I began to have second thoughts about doing this on a production scale for my Etsy shop.  And when I had wound the skeins of soft silk on little plastic bobbins, I knew that dyed threads would not be mainstay of the shop.  Some threads, yes, but not en masse.

Bethy has been my helper in sorting the threads.  At nine, she has a good eye for color and enjoys walking around the large table to lay the skeins in position in the color wheel we have made of them.  She is learning the difference in touch between the various fibers and knows the silks, rayons and linens go on their own special rings.  She and I are both tactile people and do an awfully lot of squeezing the bundles.  Last weekend she was so excited by the color and the feel of the threads that she cried out, "Oh, Grandma, I could do this forever!"

Her enthusiasm was the impetus I needed to dye two large batches of threads for her to sort after school today.  She allowed Ethan to help, and assigned him his favorite blues and greens to sort.  In this last day of dyeing, I also did some experimenting with black where even though I didn't fall in love with the results, I learned.  That is life: we learn by doing.

Enjoy this photo of our color study in the garage (no; drippy dye will never make it to the studio with its white floor).  Bethy is so careful to match hue and value, while Ethan simply wants blues with blue and greens with green.  Does this sound like a typical male attitude?

Hand-Dyed Thread

After an amazing Fiber Forum (EGA) retreat with Carol Soderlund at the Atlantic Center for Art (New Smyrna Beach, Florida), my love of dyeing has been revived.  Hand-painting threads and fabric is now set for "game on" status. As I have an embarrassment of riches in cotton weaving thread (a beautiful textural addition to many of my own pieces), I added these to my Etsy Shop. I have loved and used them for years, but when I began dyeing them, I liked them even better-- the colored ones overdye to form color families, the natural whites dyed in deep, rich colors . . .

I have one more thing to take care of before I start dyeing in my normal obsessive manner, and that is to present a program to the Knoxville Chapter of EGA next week.  Cynthia has been my indispensable guide and editor in setting up the Power Point Slide Show that is the heart of the presentation.  The program discusses the eighteen months the FreeStylers spent studying Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn's "In Stitches" DVDs, with our samples as the centerpiece.  We have been pressing against the boundaries of traditional embroidery in this year and a half, and the colorful and exciting results are quite worth sharing with other stitchers.

After the Tuesday evening presentation, the bottles of dye will come out.  Carol's class, besides being immensely inspiring, touched on the way to organize and manage materials and supplies for dyeing, as well as introducing a much-streamlined process from the one I have used in the past.  She has blogged about the class here.  Check out her very colorful blog for pix of the class and notes about her own work and teaching schedule.

Ashford Country Spinner 2

For years I have been a fan of art yarn but never thought I could take up spinning because of my allergies to air-borne particulates.  At some point, we all have to decide how much we want to follow a dream, then think, think, and think some more of ways to make it possible.  A few months ago, in a great Storming Of The Brain, I realized that the simplest of solutions would be to take the spinning wheel outside and spin on the patio or on the walk just beyond the studio door.  I have bags (b-i-g bags) of roving, shelves of yarn for core spinning, and assorted boxes and drawers of throwster's waste, beads, chips of interesting fiber and embroidery thread snips, Angelina fibers . . .  Spinning would seem to be a way to combine all the lovelies in the studio in one interesting form, with the bonus of having Mother Nature sweep up after me!  Isn't simplicity always the best way?

Of course, this wheel would have to be an art-yarn-specific because the chunky, lumpy results of all this enthusiasm need to be accommodated by an especially large orifice.  After reading about different wheels, talking to spinners and watching videos of the process on different wheels, I settled on the Ashford Country Spinner 2 wheel.

The large, flat box of parts arrived, and Ethan was at least as excited as I.  As it was unfinished, he and I first set about rubbing Tung Oil over the lovely wood pieces.  We had practiced learning the names of the parts of the wheel, and he handled the pieces with great reverence, reminding me of the names of the pieces as we worked.  When it came time to assemble these parts, I started Saturday morning, and Ethan and his dad came after lunch to help with the difficult part-- getting the drive shaft through the hub of the wheel and hanging it in place.  Ethan screwed the treadle hinges in place, and stood back to admire his work.

Saturday evening and Sunday I spent trying out different techniques, realizing immediately that plying and drafting are the two things I most need to learn for making sturdy, interesting yarn.  I've read book after book, watched hours of You Tube demonstrations, but when I sit at the wheel, it all comes down to manual dexterity and control.  My first yarn was an exercise in knowing what I didn't know, but after I'd soaked it in hot water to set the twist and the wool slightly felted, the ideas for using this yarn started popping up.  I'll post pictures of the yarn along the way and you can laugh with me at the results.

Zen Tangles and Stitching

Besides the Knoxville FreeStyle EGA group, I am a member of the Atlanta EGA group, Stitching With A Twist.  This group is working on a project that will require our developing zen tangles that we stitch-- "tangling," it is called.  My problem is that I can't draw a tangle and then stitch it.  I think in reverse.  To me, it is easier to think of stitches that will work in a zen tangle and then draw the tangle based on those stitches rather than the other way around.

This is the beginning of my little sampler of possible tangling stitches (somehow, calling a stitch a "tangling stitch" sends the wrong message).  It is stitched mostly in a single strand of cotton floss, and, at lower center, with some DMC matt cotton the weight of a wool tapestry yarn:

There as many stitches on the "won't work" Doodle Cloth as this Sample!  A nice occupation for a snowy February day.

Fine-Thread Stitching with Beads and Ultrasuede

Recently I needed to go through things to loan pieces for a small exhibition of work for a new FreeStyle group just taking root in Knoxville.  When the box was returned, I found some small pieces to share.

These two 6" x 6" pieces were both done in the fall.    The first, with the green background, was an exercise in tiny stitching and texture.  Sometimes neat, tiny stitches do not have much textural interest.  There are beads and Ultrasuede to help the textural considerations along.  Most stitching is a single strand of floss, with some sewing machine cotton.  I used Beading needles on both pieces.

Below is a design worked from a mark-making session with the FreeStylers.  We experimented with different tools for making marks on paper with a water-based printer's ink, then chose a section of our mark-making to translate into a stitched design.  There is charcoal, medium and light grey thread used for the stitching, along with Ultrasuede, Bugle Beads and antique glass buttons.

Both pieces were labors of love.  We had been stitching for months with heavy yarns, and this lighter -weight stitch was a break in texture.

Waiting for the Spring to Come

We will make a trip to the beach with my sister, son and daughter-in-law and The Adorables.  This is always a magical time for us.  Until then, I have this picture, a snapshot in cloth, to remind me of how much I will enjoy the change of scenery and softer air.

Surrounded by the tidewater river, there is a lighthouse between the mainland and the islands that can only be glimpsed briefly from the road, but that glimpse is very worth the waiting.  I have set the old lighthouse in moonlight and taken all sorts of artistic liberties with color and shape.

Hurry, Spring!

February Is Rolling Along

Since Thanksgiving I have been cleaning out and sorting in the studio.  This is meant to be a thoughtful clean-out, where I open boxes or drawers and handle things (some I haven't seen for years!) and make decisions about how this may or may not fit in my future studio plans.  Things that are lovely and useful, though not what I am interested in (or need) anymore, I put aside for the Etsy Shop.  Unfortunately, what is happening is that as I pull things out they start talking to me, and the sorting stops while I sit and work with them.  I have several small pieces that have come from this clean-out!

This is the curse of the tactile person.

Things that are too heavy to ship out, I am offering to my grandchildren's art teacher (whom they really love).  Things too esoteric for elementary schoolers are for my FreeStyle group next week.  But, this is such a small amount of stuff!

I decided I would use my sketchbook and work on putting ideas there instead of stopping all progress by beginning projects.  Well, that was a bit of tom foolery-- I simply made more fuel to fan the flames, filling page after page, starting a new book, working out the details of a stitchery and then sweeping out a spot on the work table and-- yes:  starting a new little project.

Yesterday I sorted a foot-high stack of fabrics I had painted, dyed, discharged, printed.  Some are colored from several processes . . .  and some are small pieces left-over from other projects.  Of course, I set right to work with a little stack I had pulled out for myself.  There was a small Etsy pile (not nearly large enough), and I am going straight out there this morning and go through that stack again with the shop in mind.

This is where I need people.  My people would take me firmly in hand and say, "We'll handle this for you.  Go inside and have some tea.  We'll show you the results in an hour."

People--- where are you?????

January Musings: Stitches and Poems

The New Year is always a time of looking-- looking back over the shoulder, looking forward into the unknown.  I do not make resolutions anymore, but I try to take up projects or ideas in small doses, giving attention to one thing at a time.  Well, maybe two things.  Never those long, impractical lists that are more wistful thinking than reasonable expectation.

One thing I have decided to explore this year is mark-making in all its aspects.  We did a bit of this in FreeStyle last year, and I discovered how peaceful it is to take up some improvised tool and dip it into ink or paint and see what mark it will make on a piece of paper or fabric.  The marks stretch into a rhythm that slows down my day, as if I am marking out a pool of quiet around me, a place to work and uncover ideas.  And in the quiet, the ideas simply pour out.

After the mark-making, the needle and thread come out.  If I were mute, I could explain myself to the world with that ancient medium, but the world would have to slow down to "hear" my answer.  Slowing down, of course, is the key.

In the Ways To Slow Myself Down, I add this story:  I fell onto the patio, via a metal chair, in early January.  Since that time, everything in my little world has slowed, sometimes to a grinding halt.  Stitches were put in and taken out (of me, for goodness' sake!), more doctors, the re-defining what is important . . .  I am so grateful for stitches that held me together while my head healed.  Grateful, also, for the stitches that kept my hands busy between the first accident in November until now.  From that time of slowing down, I have this piece, which is a sort of poem to the winter.

Poems are ways of slowing down-- reading meaning in the spaces between words is not so different from finding meaning in the little spaces between stitches.  Both words and stitches can be layered, thick with meaning.  They can be frivolous or deeply serious.  Terse or chatty.  Fluid or choppy.  What perfect complements they make!