Jan 31
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The end of January. I feel quite pleased with myself.

The edges of this one are ragged, and I think I’ll zig-zag the edge, but I will be sorry to have the edges of the circles disappear.

Another long day today. A barn day, and I rode the red pony rather than the yellow one. He is a knobby Appaloosa with no spots, looking a great deal like a quarter horse instead. He has not done a lot of dressage, so he is unclear on many concepts, and we are working on them together. This generally means a lot of transitions, and a lot of leg yielding – sideways motion while maintaining forward motion. I tapped him with the whip to get him off my leg and he popped into the air bucking and snorting! I didn’t plummet, just dropped my whip, but we proceeded to attempt some very advanced moves until I convinced him it was inadvisable. It was kind of fun having him so lively, it is easier on the legs not to be pushing so hard. I was very proud of myself that I didn’t fly off. I’m sure my day will come, it is inevitable, but I’ll enjoy my triumphs until then.

At Dave’s Soda and Pet Food City (a Valley institution) Little A and I  stocked up on hamster food and bedding, and a red and blue parrot kept talking to me, so we got a person to help and Lola the parrot climbed up my arm and nibbled on the snaps and zipper on my coat, talking all the time. It wasn’t English – more "narp, murble squawk, grunch" but we had some kind of communication going on. I expected her to be fluffy and soft, but she was quite stiff, almost armored in her feathers. It was odd talking to an individual with such a great deal to say – like listening to children in a foreign language and knowing it is important, and unable to crack the code.

Jan 30
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

On account of Red Kate I corrected the title for today’s post. I was really just guessing on the german for blue horse, but she put me right. All Hail the Mistress of Languages (deep bow).

A blue horse from Franz Marc, for which I (finally) figured out how to use transfer crayons to transfer a tracing to the back to embroider heavily. I used felt for the background, so it really sinks into the surface. I didn’t fuse the felt to the postcard, it is only stitched together, so the edges walked a little, and the corners are rougher than I like, but when I irond the felt first, I lost all that loft and it looked too flat. So next time maybe glue the edges and bind it later.

Long day today too – emptied Little A’s room completely, shifted the bed, and tried to put back <1/2 her stuff. Three garbage bags of treasures, projects and papers, gone gone gone. I photographed some of the best, like her version of a Mars Rover from kindergarden, with googly eyes and coffee stirrers for antenna and giant pompoms for airbags. She really heard a lot about it, and thought hard about the parts she put into hers! And some writing from kindergarden and first grade. They kept journally things with illustrations. She clearly had help with some writing, but she always has a great picture to go with it. Anyhow – tons of stuff into the cellar, and a goodly amount gone, and the astonishment of floor space. It looks pretty good for the moment.

Jan 29
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Circles. Keys. It all comes together.

As for the rest of the day: Sick kid. Lunch out (hi Kate, Hi Abby!). Supper out. New glasses for Cathy (that her family will HATE!! – but they are so cute!). Non-sleeping child. I’m amazed this is here before midnight.

Jan 28
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

More simple circles. It looks like a radiolaria, one of the little planktons with great shells. Really. The shells look like blown glass Christmas tree ornaments of the most baroque and swirly kind. Like Dale Chihuly glass pieces. (A friend of mine who will remain nameless said although she loved the look of his pieces she always fantasized about cutting them loose and turning them into a giant, extraordinarily noisy performance pieces.)

I nearly didn’t make it today. Woke up migraining, and then spent a lot of time fracheting about over the journal quilt. I felt itchy and grumpy, tied to my worktable, and as though I was over-thinking it. I kept having to work on it, instead of just THINK about it, or worse, think about working on it. I’ll post it Jan 31, When January is properly over. Then I get to start over-worrying the Feb page, woot!

February will be Hardware. I don’t have a color, but it’ll be nice to move away from all blue, almost all the time.

I need more fusible web. I used up a roll of soemthing that was great. It fused easily, peeled easiy, and didn’t gum up the needle. I’m using up a roll of wonder-under and it drives me bats. I don’t know if I am over fusing it to the first piece, or under fusing it, or what. I routinely have trouble peeling the backing off and it leaves tons of little paper wisps. It seems to work best if I can fuse the stuff on one day and use it the next. I have been attempting to get around this by throwing the pieces in the fridge or freezer (although at 2 degrees F, I could just wave it out the window) to see if cold helps, which it does. But then just as I put the roll in the trash in frustration, I get three pieces that peel perfectly. So I let the pices stew overnight, and I stew gently myself.

Jan 27
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Two key sun prints, from the Pebeo paint experiments, three rubbings using the Crayola fabric crayons, and one stitched from the back, making a ghostly reminder of keys lost. Or something.

Saturday is Family Circus day, we all 4 go to Brattleboro and take a circus class at Nimble Arts. We stretch, then do handstands and bridges, and practice acrobatics together, tossing small children about and balancing the larger ones. Then we do some aerial things, trapeze (not flying, just static – pretty poses on a bar) fabric, lyra, and sling. I managed to twist a friend’s arm into bringing her family too, so today there were twice as many of us. It was great!!

Here are all of us – I am the up-high grownup, although we all took turns, this is the picture the teacher took of us:

Jan 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

More of the keys from yesterday’s photo session. What a strange concept, thinking of myself having had a photo session! I printed them on fabric, then trimmed them out and fused them onto the postcard. I like the colors of them, and the contrast with the orange ribbon, and the way the ribbon flows off the card. I added the little gold one as an afterthought, but now it is clearly the postcard of the golden key.

I spent more time this morning working on fabric-for-the-future. This morning was experimenting with Pebeo paints. The use of keys as texture underneath the fabric was not a huge success. Sunprinting worked best with the flat keys because the contact with the surface was cleanest. I think some really bright lights would make shadows that would do interesting things, but working with the relatively diffuse light in the kitchen doesn’t quite cut it.

There are a couple of experiments with taking rubbings from some keys. The round barreled ones don’t work at all, nor the ones with the open heads, but the classic Yale-type ones do quite nicely. I ahve both Crayola fabric craons and Pentel fabric dyes in sticks which feel and work like oil pastels. I could also try the Shiva paint sticks. The rubbings mostly resist the paint as it goes on, making the images pop in a cool way.

A day at home yielded a lot of pictures of my box of keys. I have been hoarding this box for a couple of years, and now I have finally taken keys out of it, taken them off the rings, and started arranging them. I made circles, and found circles, there is a set of keys with a beautiful engraved plate that says who lost them. Today was mostly taking pictures and then messing with them in Photoshop. That is how I got this lovely x-ray looking image from this picture:

I still have thoughts about these keys. I want to use the Pebeo paints to sun-print the keys on fabric, and Pebeo also does interesting things when draped over objects to dry. The higher parts get darker, and the lower, shaded parts get lighter. It is a great way to get texture off things. I still dream of using on the ripples on the beach, but I haven’t had a chance yet, and I think someone would holler at me for polluting or something.

Jan 24
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Old joke – time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

Or the post on my mom’s (Hi Mom!) fridge – Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not.

I am bringing back the keys, I miss them.

I am completely exhausted. I have been getting up early, 5:00am, to hit the gym before getting the first kid off to school, then the second kid off to school, then I start to make a postcard and then go to the barn where I clean 4 stalls, which is enough to feel like exercise but not enough to wipe me out completely, then I ride two horses. Today it was a little golden palomino, doing dressage figures; he is SO CUTE I’ll try to get a picture sometime. He is spooky and worried, so my job is to wear quiet clothes and ride steadily and keep him from getting over the bit or stiff or resistant. We worked on transitions today, staying round and forward in walk-trot/trot-walk transitions. Then the geezer horse, who is old and stiff and needs a half hour of walking every day. He was a level 4 dressage horse in his day, before he pulled a suspensory twice, so he knows great stuff, but he always starts out slow and jerky and crooked. We can do anything and everything, only at the walk: half pass and leg yield and shoulder in and haunches in and tiny circles and turn on the forehand and on the haunches. I spent a happy 10 minutes working on steering him without using the reins, just legs, with my hands in my pockets to keep me honest. And then I came home and walked up to get the little girl at school and came home and sat on the couch. Amen.

Jan 23
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I found another doodle, filling a plane with circles of differing sizes. It seems more on topic, but – meh. I liked the keys better. May I go back?

Jan 22
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I like the way I can make the darks sink into the page using dark thread. different from the way I marked all the mid-tones yesterday with the mid colored thread. I also like the way the orange circles disappear on the orange fabric, and reappear on the blue parts.

Technically, I think the keys are more hardware, and I am going to have to postpone the rest of the key concepts for Hardware Month. Which I think is February. So I am still thinking about Circle, Blue for January and probably going back to some graphic design questions. Using regularly sized items, show opposite concepts; heavy and light, fast and slow, easy and hard, ordered and random. I have to get cutting on the circles!