May 28
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Torn strips of silk woven and embroidered. I love my sewing machine. I missed my sewing machine. At some point, I’ll have to return to the edges of the postcards, but this loose frayed edge thing is still interesting.

I am pleased to be home. I like handwork, but doing a postcard a day over the long weekend made me realize how much handwork is involved. I have been angsting about what to do about postcard making for the time we are travelling (England – more about that later) and I think I am going to take a vacation. I’m switching media, from cloth to paper, and I’m thinking I’ll keep some kind of journally sketchbooky thing and work on something every day, but I don’t feel like I can maintain the postcard stream the way I’d like and still be having a family vacation.

As for the rest of the weekend, Family Camp at Becket/Chimney Corners completely rocks. We did some climbing (Al summitted this once and it was a triumph, Aerin just had a jolly time messing with different routes and made it up twice),

some boating (Lee and Aerin), no swimming because the water was frigid (except Alice who is training to be a polar bear) some crafts (Lee and Alice) including a lot of woodshop

and some batik, plus a good deal of running around and we caught one red eft, more commonly known as a newt even though technically it isn’t.

You can see here the woodshop inspirations for me…

I’ll try to get some pix of Alice’s workshop output, because the messenger bird is wonderful. I have to paint the three-leg bird and then I’ll post him too. Elinor designed him, and I cut him out and sanded the edges off and he stands and looks happy, but still needs paint.

I can’t begin to describe how wonderful my own bed will feel.

May 27
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The colors of the little sticks were making me happy, so I gathered a handful and wove them together with the floss to make a little stick rug. That worked as the centerpiece, but it looks more and more like a raft, so maybe it needs a passenger of some kind….

May 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I got the leaves on the pre-breakfast hike, the silk was speaking to me, but the pieces kept getting smaller and smaller as i ripped them. So I attached them all on one side and then the little pockets had a purpose – to hold the leaves. I like the rhythm of the stitches, and the way you can see into the layers of silk chiffon. The chiffon is a major pain to deal with – it is all wifty and wafty and sticks to my callouses and rough skin. But it does shine.

May 25
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Started Friday at Family Camp, finished after pre-breakfast hike.