Jan 12
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Real pennies and dimes, little wooden wheels, and a couple of buttons. I have this incredibly cool punch from a couple birthdays ago (my amazing husband! I adore him) that has enough leverage to punch holes through nickels. A Roper Whitney No 5 Jr. hand punch. I love that I can make dangles out of almost anything that I can punch holes in. Although some materials work better than others. Shells sometimes punch well and sometimes shatter. Glass always shatters. Rock doesn’t work at all. You can see what I have always wanted to punch holes through so I could sew them onto things! Or string as beads.

Today I walked into Ikea for the first time ever. It was kind of cool, and profoundly overwhelming. I am thankful I had a good guide and friend, and we packed snacks. Mostly I looked at things, and thought about exactly how small our house is, but I have some concepts for the closet finally, and a bunch of things to think about for the rest of the house. It is important to get stuff OUT of the house first, and then organize what is left.

It reminded of the old Design Research stuff in Cambridge in my youth, that became (I think) Crate and Barrel. It is nice to have scandinavian design for cheap, and while it is true the stuff may only last for 5 years, at the rate life is changing, that could be a good thing, right? I mean Whoo hoo!! New furniture in 5 years! Could work. The alternatives are expensive new, expensive antique old (which makes me so nervous to use it I can hardly breath) and cheap old which frankly is what we have now and I am sick of.

But I digress.

Jan 11
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I feel like I am almost done with the grids and the filmy fabrics. I like the feeling of in front/behind (why does so much of art come down to Sesame Street? Grover is IN FRONT OF the truck….)

I was afraid I’d get bored, or run out of concepts, but I seem to be able to spin off ideas from here, and once started I am realizing it feeds itself. Phillip Pullman, whose books I adore, says that inspiration waits for him at his desk. He shows up and picks up his pencil and starts working on the story. Sometimes it flows quickly, sometimes it flows slowly, but it doesn’t get done at all if he isn’t sitting at his desk. Certainly inspiration is waiting in my room.

According to the points scale of yesterday, I may only get 4 for this one. Nothing I made in it, but I hit the stash, I cleaned, and it certainly looks related to the last couple days. Now I have to figure out how to tally the points, and what they are good for.

Jan 10
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I wanted to hang sequins off some of the circles, but couldn’t find the ones I had been thinking of. But then I remembered that I had made handfuls (handfuls I tell you – what was I thinking?) of dangly bits from shrinky plastic. Some were stamped-then-shrunk and others were shrunk and then embossed with the stamp. I think there might have been embossing powder involved as well. I was so pleased to see them again, and delighted to use them.

I am thinking of awarding myself points for the making of these things. I get a point just for making one that doesn’t suck. I get two more for using something else I made in it. I get a point for thematic unity from day to day. I get a point if I put stuff away too, either after I am done with it, or because I am desperately looking for a particular thing that is under a pile o crap on the table. I get extra credit if I cut into something I have been hoarding into "because I don’t want to waste it". 

Given that scale, I think I get 6 points for today. Dunno what that means, but I’ll take it!

It feels so good to use things I made to use, and bought to use. It is nice to see these fabrics coming out into the light again. Even tiny pieces of them are great friends. I guess that is what having work space is all about – you go there, and find the stuff you bought to make things, and then you, well, make things.

Jan 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I had a good name for this while I was working on it, but I forgot it when I went away to get a kid from school. The perils of parenthood!

This is from an old doodle I found cleaning my knitting shelf. I was trying to draw more last year, and rather than drawing the salt shakers over and over at restaurants while waiting for people, I started doing these regular doodles of squares and circles and diamonds. I keep finding them at odd moments. They do have a kind of regularity that I don’t think I display normally.

Jan 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

More grids! I need to figure out how to see the grid on the front even though I am doing the gridding on the back using thin ribbon in the bobbin of the machine. That’s why it has that great couched look, bright pink specks on dark purple ribbon. With the grid on both sides I could center the circles better.

A friend asked Why Circles? Why Blue? Good questions. I wanted to keep some kind of thematic unity for the month, and having a color and shape theme makes it easier to figure out what I can do do next. It all has to do with setting limits. With no limits, I tend to flail a lot, trying to decide what to do next. Limits get me thinking about how to interpret them, and how to submit to the letter of the law while flouting the spirit of the law.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

So there is this site, How Many of Me?   where you can find out how many people have your first, last and combined names.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 26 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

And I have now figured outhow to do something new in my blog. I am a happy woman!

I got so carried away thinking about grids that I made 6 different ones, and then shuffled this out to start with.

This whole one-a-day thing is interesting in that I feel free to try multiple takes on a concept and see how they play. I don’t deeply care if a couple (or more) really suck. I know out of a January’s worth of cards there might be one or two fabulous ones, but the great thing is that any four people would probably pick four different ones as the absolute best of the month. I’d probably pick a fifth!

We had a friend over for supper last night, braised lamb shanks, roasted vegetables, russian banana fingerling potatos (I love the name, the potatos are merely OK) and a Cake for dessert. K made the most amazing cake, devil’s food, from Cooks Illustrated, with whipped cream for frosting. I had many pieces last night, and a couple more tonight. It is one of those foods I am not entirely rational in the presence of. So, I get to eat it until it is gone, which isn’t all bad. Cook’s has a coconut cake like that too – I can’t make it unless I have many other people to feed it to, because I am completely capable of eating the whole thing and regretting it fiercely later.

And then this morning I was in  K’s blog ! This is a strange feeling, I must say. I mean I understood, kind of, about the whole putting oneself out there kind of thing, but to show up somewhere is just, well, odd.

Do leave me a note if you stop by, this thing is still in the testing phase. If I like it, I’ll sign up for more than January, but if the novelty has worn off, I’m done!