Mar 11
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I feel I’ve been walking about with the camera stuck to my face for the last couple of days. I love being able to take the pictures, take a lot of them, sort them, mess with them, pick the three best and ditch the rest. I love the immediacy of it, the instant gratification part. This morning there were amazing frost patterns over the cars, these were on Al’s car, the one planned for tomorrow was on the rear window of my van… to be able to grab those images, take them home and play with them feels divine.

Mar 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

‘m tiiiired.

finished Feb journal page. Finished another feb journal page. pretty much hate one, dubious about the other. pix of them tomorrow.

Mar 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

On a visit to my mother, the hose exploded and made the greatest little lumpy ice storm in the corner of her yard. I took several pictures of it. The original is here:


Because it was a great image before I started messing with it.

It is cold. But, things are starting to melt in the middle of the day. The ground is not frozen solid all day long even in the sun any more. So the world is slowly spinning back towards spring (for us in the northern hemisphere anyhow – this is what comes of thinking globally…). I am anticipating the melt. That is partly why I chose water for this month instead of next, when in theory April showers bring whatever they bring. Lion or lamb, March means melt to me. And maple syrup and pancakes. My Sunday yoga teacher is determined to have pancakes with maple syrup every week until sugar season ends. I am thinking we should go indulge at least once. Probably more.

Mar 7
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

In the dark channels… five different iterations of the same image, on silk, cotton and organza, over and under each other. This feels closer than the last. The whole Hockney thing is extremely difficult to pull off, especially for someone who (ahem) has some issues with edges and placement of the chopped up bits.

I’ll get sick of this game soon, I promise.

Mar 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Three layers of the same picture, trimmed in different ways and overlapped. The base is a print on cotton. The blue squares are printed on habotai silk, which is more see-through than I expected. There is a layer of printed silk organza over the whole thing. I cut two square holes in the organza, one is visible (lower left) one seems to be invisible (over one inch to the right, up one inch). I wanted to experiment with what is visible through several layers, but I always max out at three. Maybe I need to try more layers of sheerer stuff…

I used to run into these issues when I was making maps too. I tis tempting to think that more data is better, and to a certain extent that is true. A single variable map is not terribly interesting. A two variable map shows the relationship between two things (income level and divorce rates, for instance). That gets much more interesting, because you can start to see, and think about, something that changes across space, and whether there is any kind of pattern to the relationship between the two things you’re mapping.  Add a third variable and most people max out. The legend has become a cube, with 27 different categories possbile even if you only have low/med/high on each of three variables. The colors get to be indistinguishable, or you run out of distinctive patterns to use; the end result is too dense. Better to make two different maps.

So, although I think wistfully about layers and layers of scrim each with another interesting piece of image on it, once I sit down to try it out, I generally get grumpy.

Today was a circus day. Red Kate came, and hung upside down, and realized she might in fact accomplish a hand stand in this lifetime. Considering how worried she was when she showed up here to head north, she was very brave. She did a really great job too. I gave her the pictures of herself, which I hope she posted as she made me swear not to. Oh well. If she doesn’t, I have one in reserve.

Mar 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Yesterday I sat in my (fabulous new) chair, and stared vacantly out the window for a while. It felt really nice to just drift.

But then I got intrigued by the drips on the window, and started messing about with the camera. I got a couple pictures that didn’t suck, and printed one out for yesterday’s card, and hated how it was going. So i switched, and gave you branches instead. But I still like this concept, it just needed refining. When I picked it up again today, I started by getting more intense with the embroidery. That worked better, but I had to contain the embroidery effort or I would go mad, plus I would be there til midnight. So I focussed on just one corner, then clipped it out, and stuck it to another postcard. Then I was attracted by some plastic that made me think of the window all over again but then I needed to do something with the blank spot on the right… More raindrops, embroidered from the back of the card. It was a nice piece of playing. Not ugly, neither.

Think wet thoughts for Melbourne, that Shula says is dying of dry.

Mar 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

It bucketed rain today. It snowed some last night, but washed most of it away over the course of the day. The schools started with a 2 hour delay, so there were people underfoot for hours this morning.

I took a lot of pictures, thinking “rain is water”. I was workingon a different one before this, but realized it was awful and this one would be easy. I’ll print out the other again and go after it differently. Maybe I need to make it smaller.

Aerin was watching over my shoulder this evening as I was cropping the pictures of the day. She didn’t like my close-ups, preferring instead the wide angles where she said “everything is still there” instead of my tight peeks at things. Her comment “you’re leaving everything out, it is awfully exclusive” was surprising to me.

I’m tired. I hope I’m not sick. Bone weary is OK, sick is ugly.