May 12
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Alice’s real birthday is next Wednesday. Today is really my mother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mum!

The little girl has her party today. Four friends (including a treasured friend who moved to New Zealand last summer and is back for a visit at EXACTLY the right moment) for supper and much shrieking in the back yard, followed by Miyazaki movies. They chose The Cat Returns and Totoro. Sleep will be attempted. Kiki may be viewed in the morning, depending on time of rising and need for (relative) quiet for other house members.

I managed to make it through Family Circus class, but pulled my poor mugged chest muscles and was hunched with pain all afternoon. It seems to have eased some. I also made it to my Quilt Journal class, but left early to come get Alice and house ready for the party. Can I say how wise I was to make the cake yesterday? I was very wise.

Still. Need. More. Sleep.

May 11
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Seeing fiddlehead ferns unroll in the spring makes me giddy with delight.

Must. Have. More. Sleep.

May 10
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The Dynaflow paints made squares when dropped on this piece of silk. I was so astonished I spent a lot of time experimenting with it, and dragged a bunch of random friends over to come see it do it again. No one believed it until they saw it. This scrap looked like a wall, so I added some leaves to it. I like the one peeking out from the bottom corner best.

I had another idea before this. I was channeling Chuck Close and trying to make this leaf

into this postcard

BUT I realized I had a couple hours of embroidering to do, and had to apply a little more logic to the printing of it before I got to the embroidering of it… so you got the other one instead.

I also offer a dolly quilt:

and a pair of dollies that I thought were going to Etsy but Alice decided could not leave the house. Meet Marina and Penny.

I managed to mail a bunch of stuff – look for postcards if I owe you one – and get the elastic that holds my pannier on my bike so wrapped around the axle that it needs the nice bike dudes to take it apart and fix it for me. So I get to go flirt with them tomorrow. And bake Alice a cake. And prepare for an influx of 9 year old girls. woot woot!

May 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Still enchanted with my little leaf stamp, this time I took rubbings off it, using the Pentel dye sticks which are remarkably like oil pastels for fabric. Once ironed, the stuff sinks into the fabric, and acts as a resist for the Dynaflow paints. I had (temporarily) forgotten that the point of owning the materials and supplies is to USE THEM UP. You don’t get points for having saved stuff from your youth. So I am going after the stash with joyful abandon.

Still smitten with the thread too. It’n it purdy?

So far it has been a day of petty annoyances.

I had the Perfect Idea yesterday for making fruit for the money tree, and as a side effect, for the apple tree as well, and it won’t work. I can’t get the ink-jet ink to stay on the shrinky plastic, it comes off if I look at it much less breathe or smear my fingers across it. Plus it looks ugly when it almost works. The other plastic I have, that will hold ink, won’t shrink without far too much encouragement and subsequent smoke alarums. Have to rethink the whole thing.

After figuring this out this morning, I went to the barn. I have taken to speaking a short meditation before I ride Tiger Eye. It goes something like this. "This pony goes sideways, it is what he does. I realize that today may be the day that I fall off this pony, and I may not hold it against him."

It never occurred to me to murmur a meditation over the wheelbarrow. But then, I think I may be allowed to have a grudge against a wheelbarrow. It tipped over on the way out the door, mugged me, dumped me over, twisted my ankle and then stabbed me in the boob as I went down. I wound up staring at the sky wondering what exactly had happened. My boss was remarkably kind, and recounted how she’d been done in by a hose/sprinkler combo, and got me a glass of cold water AND cleaned up the stuff that had tipped out of the wretched wheelbarrow. I was quite grateful.

But that meant I hurt when I did anything other than walk (on account of the flop factor). So Tiger Eye and I walked and then Flyboy and I walked, and we went out into the woods, where it was hot and sunny and lovely.

Then I got home and Alice and I walked to town for books and birthday party videos. I think we did the local video place out of Miyazaki videos. I have a plan for the postcard, using some of yesterday’s tiny block printed leaves.

May 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was so pleased with this little stamp I made last night, quite off the cuff, that I covered the postcard with it today. I’d forgotten how much pleasure I take from printing things. Then because I am smitten with this purple/green/yellow variegated thread, I embroidered around the greener leaves with that. I was thinking of going around the purple blocks in variegated light greens, but it’s past my bedtime, and I need to save an idea for tomorrow.

I worked hard on my journal page for April today.

I was thinking of trees that grow money, and trees that grow apples, and which one I’d try to grow and why, and then I started thinking a lot about the actual growth of a money tree – what it might have for fruit, and whether they could be bred or cross pollinated into different denominations, are they madly hetrozygous like apples and don’t breed true from seed but must be grafted onto root stock…. all kinds of foolish questions.

May 7
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

There is a new baby in the extended family, and I was thinking about him when I was working with these new leaves. They are very soft, and floppy and the veins are not terribly hard so I can’t take rubbings off them, and the printing didn’t work well until I rediscovered the fabric ink (thinner and finer grained than the fabric paint) and used that to print them. Then I found all the eraser carving tools and a pile of erasers next to the ink, so I printed the leaf on an eraser and tried to make a stamp from it. The fabric underneath already had the quiet maple outline on it when I started working with the birch leaves.

This is the birch tree I planted the day after we moved into this house 8 years ago May 2. Aerin was unimpressed with 8 years, since it didn’t seem to be a significant number. I was trying to explain that is the longest I’ve lived anywhere. It has been a pleasure to watch my trees grow. The birch tree came up to my forehead when I planted it. Now it towers over the house. I planted the dogwood the next year. When it first went in, Aerin could jump over it, and the bunnies nibbled all the buds off the branches the first winter because the snow was deep and they were hungry. Now no one can jump over it, and the bunnies stare at the buds wistfully. I toss them half-dead carrots when I am feeling kindly. They are wild rabbits – they are supposed to be able to fend for themselves.

My favorite brother-in-law is dying. He is one of the world’s wonderful people, and it will be hard without him.

May 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

So not all leaves are green, even though they have chlorophyll. These belong to my neighbor Joan. Although she is a lawn nazi, she has other redeeming qualities. She loves kids, especially the little ones. She is kind about letting them draw chalk pictures on her driveway (although she washes them off that night !?!) She usually hands out nice things at halloween and x-mas. My yard-keeping actvities, or lack thereof, drive her mad; everything ranging from my weed collection to my willingness to let kids dig random holes in the backyard and sit on the porch roof reading. Ah well. It is my yard. She’ll deal.

Gorgeous, gorgeous day today. I managed a long ride around my town and the next one over, out for almost two hours including the river picture of the week and riding home across the fields on the other side of the highway. I always start out back there thinking it will be fine, and I always remember 1/2 way that the roads are unpaved, dusty, insufficiently packed down for road bikes, flat-and-boring,  too-sunny, and too-hot. So I won’t ride out there for another year….

I got a new bike last year. It still isn’t quite real somehow. When I think of going out for a ride, I think of taking my green bike that I rode for 23 years. I get to the garage and find – sacre bleu – a red bike! and it fits me! and I remember, Oh yea, I got a new bike, this is it, and then I go ride. Eventually I will imagine the red one. I was amused that I hadn’t yet.

May 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Taking my weekly picture of the river, I looked down at the dock and found leaves growing there as well. They are green. They are leaves. I admire their tenacity.

May 4
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

We went in to Boston, and had a fabulous day.

We saw the Big Apple Circus. It is a little, great circus, one ring, all the seats are good (although we’ve improved them by sitting one or two rows away from the ring for a couple of years). There are horses and dogs and sometimes house cats or pigeons, but only “animals that have a long history of working relationships with humans”. The aerialists have safety harnesses. No one is going to die in front of me. There is a guy whose bike falls apart. I crack up every time he says merde. I am not, generally, scared of clowns, but these ones I love. I have always wanted to run away to the circus, and this one is why.

And as if a circus wasn’t enough fun, after a nice lunch we hiked over to the Boston Museum of Science and signed on for a Duck Tour. These absurd old vehicles from WW II that could carry things from the Liberty ships onto the shore and up onto the roads. They take you sightseeing around the center of Historicale Boston(e) and then drive down a ramp and into the Charles River. Once on the river they will let kids drive. Alice got to drive, then Aerin did too, and when he asked if anyone else wanted to I raised my hand and he chose me!! I’ve driven a DUKW (pronounced Duck [Quack!]) and it drives, like, well, a bus. A watergoing bus.

And then we stayed at the Science Museum and explored the new animation exhibit, and had a perfectly OK supper and kind Al drove us home again.

Oh, the postcard. Well, it was a full day, and I still managed to make something to post. I am not sure about the durability of this thing; it is real leaves fused to the fabric, with more fusible over the top holding them down. At the moment it looks good. I’ll post another picture of it at the end of the month to see how it ages.