Jun 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I tried to describe this one on Tuesday, after banging my head with the keyboard. I bet you imagined something completely different. You should go make what you had imagined… Sometimes I think that would make a good challenge, or swap, or exhibit or something. Post a description, make what it brings to mind, and then see them all together. To a certain extent that is what illustration Friday does, but it is really big, and the prompt is pretty loose.

I am deeply relieved to get these posted. They have been waiting for you.

Interesting, I seem to have touched a nerve with this rant on practice. Kate-who-shuns-comments emailed me requesting three things that don’t require practice. The ones I could think of were:

• sleep
• TV watching
• walking

and I add here

• reading         

I think the last two require some initial start-up but then are maintained by use – is that practice?

And then I realized there was another category I had missed. There are the things that you can get good enough at to forget about. That is where walking comes in – just think of babies getting organized to walk, those early days are killer – and some other physical things. They are, if not perfectable, at least attainable.

It is possible to get good enough at riding a bicycle that you become one with it, and fly over hill and down dale and hardly think about shifting or your feet going around. Walking took practice once, but for the most part we take current mastery for granted, and march through our lives one foot after the other, contemplating other things.  For some people cooking is like this. We remember a few recipes or concepts, and wing it from there, forever. Or until the in-laws come for Thanksgiving dinner.

The title for the previous post came from a David Brin book. I think it might have been his first book written, although not the first published, because it was pretty rough and fairly thin, and relied heavily on intrepid grad students. The idea, that practice improved performance, was applied beyond the sentient and into the inanimate. So not only could people get better at what they were doing by practicing, but a backpack could be a better backpack by being used as one. The straps would fit better, the pockets would be the right sizes for what you put in them, waterproofing would improve… In someways this resembles beloved objects being broken in; think your most comfy pair of jeans, hiking boots, oldest favorite hammer, etc. But in other ways, it is just freaky. Inhabitants of this world couldn’t engineer things, because the effect modified them before users could comment on them (begging the question "how do it know?"). I believe Our Hero saved the day by applying engineering principles to … whatever. It was a long time ago.

jude at Spirit Cloth paid me what felt like a huge compliment when she called this a working blog. I hadn’t thought of it that clearly. What I thought to do was make myself accountable to some one or some thing such that I felt compelled to make a postcard every day, and guilty when I didn’t. It has sort of worked.

When Al commented that he hadn’t known I’d had a burning ambition to make fabric postcards, I spent some time trying to explain that this was the fiber equivalent to how to get to Carnegie Hall – practice, practice, practice. A book I was reading yesterday on making tiny oil paintings had similar advice. The woman quoted her teacher saying to reach his level of technique and understanding, any artist had to paint 100 yards of canvas. When I was making dolls, my teacher said we had to make a bucket of heads before making them would be second nature and we could start to make expressions. Yoyo Ma participated in a study that showed that even medium level musicians improved a lot when they increased their practice time, and fantastic musicians stayed that way by practicing constantly. The professional track circus kids at Nimble can only hold down part time jobs, because they can’t fit the amount of stretching and strengthening and practice they need to improve into their evenings.

It is being brought home to me that I am surrounded by things I do that require practice; handstands, trapeze, dressage, fiber, knitting, spinning, childrearing? relationships? … I tried to explain to my dad once that all my favorite things to do required practice to get to a place where they were not painful, and more practice to make it actually fun, but after a while, the practice became part of the process and the sport. 

No pix.

The camera is in Brattleboro, having circus adventures without me. It came to class, and captured Alice balancing on one of the big balls, the one where you have to keep your feet moving and you look like a penguin. Then it practiced balancing on one of the hand balance blocks while Red Kate and I finished stretching and experimented with partner acrobatics where partners are roughly equal. It is easy to look like a hero balancing Alice and tossing her about, she’s tiny and solid. Balancing someone your size and strength is trickier. Anyhow, then we went off to supper and left it there.

So.

I could try to describe the new postcard for you – it is pink  block printed floral, with bright pink batik profoundly perforated with little holes and one big one laid over the top, and topped off with a square of the same pink floral with a large hole edged with embroidery with one corner tucked into the big hole of the batik. I am pleased with it.

That doesn’t help much, does it?

I could ask Molly and Andy if they need my old camera, so I have one with me and an emergency backup camera at home.

fooey.

Jun 4
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I think the whole hole thing is really just a good excuse to go buy a decent grommet setter… I find myself yearning for a series of perforations along the top edge, or making some kind of snaky pattern through the card.

Today we have leaf shaped holes, cut into pink fabrics two layers deep.

Bucketing rain, wind NE, chilly. I used to think rain was holes in the clouds leaking. I think there were many leaky things in my yoot.

orange circles
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Mosaic Monday. I just typed orange circles into Flickr, and got these great things. I may type pink holes in too, to see what happens, except I think the opportunity for, ummm, risque? is much higher.

Jun 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I signed up for the pink postcard swap on swap-bot, and realized none of the existing postcards were pink enough… I’m not allowed to BUY postcards while this year of postcards is going on, so I located a handful of pink fabrics, including the outrageous pink floral from my youth (I always hear that as "from me yoot" from a book I read long ago). I felt quite pleased with myself for figuring out how to follow, roughly, the outlines of the big pink flowers with embroidery, and then cut the interiors out of a couple. The surface is interesting close up. At least two more pink ones, and the color is getting interesting with use (thanks jude for the pinkspiration)

Poor Alice is having major school stress. I found her weeping in bed this evening. She was dreading school next week. Even though we only have two and a half weeks left, it can’t end soon enough for her. Her comment, "I like being a feral child – I have to be tame all week… 30 hours – it feels like forever". That is the most coherent statement of the issue I’ve gotten out of her so far.

Jun 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I know holes can be other than round, but these are making me happy at the moment.

I found the metal shim I ordered dunnomany years ago, and started using it on other things – first as coins on the money side of the tree for the April journal page, then here inspired by the series of little holes in the edge from the previous. It is possible to stitch through it, though it feels a little dicey with thin thread. Embossing is a piece of cake, and fun too.

We managed to get to Brattleboro a half hour early and watched part of the Strolling of the Heifers, a parade organized by the Local Hero/Local Farmer groups. Many cute small girl cows, plus school groups, girly scouts, pipe bands, marching bands, and floats with a strong cow/agricultural theme. It was quite grand.

We were a little late because the lady we were crossing the street with took a header on the curb and smacked her lip and nose and her glasses came loose. She had about 6 of us at one point asking her things and telling her what to do next. Her son came along, and I kept patting her shoulder because that was all I wanted when the wheelbarrow mugged me. Al ran for napkins from the bagel place. We left her in her son’s care, talking to a paramedic. It seemed like mostly what she had a split lip and terminal embarrassment, maybe a couple bruises tomorrow. We felt lucky to be able to help and not the helpees.

Hot and muggy here, wind SSW, scattered thunderstorms. I’ll be pleased when the front goes through.

Jun 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

New month, new Theme: holes.

This is holes in two layers of silk, offset slightly, so you can see the printed leaves underneath, also on silk. Still going for those raggedy edges.

possible sick child in lap, must sleep.

May 31
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

So I finished the Wed. postcard early Thurs morning, and started this one to finish in plenty of time later, and then Aerin was finishing a report and hogged the computer until after I had fallen asleep for the night. We may need to expand the family network. Heck, I might need my own machine. What a thought.

This is the last of the leaves for May. It is the back of the fabric I was painting with both transparent and metallic paints to see if I could get the metallic to show through the sun printed paint. It almost worked – you can see the outlines faintly on the front – but when I turned it over the back looked so organic, and interesting, that I used that instead. It felt weird to have real edges again. I liked the fringey edges, but I am guessing they wouldn’t mail well. I’m not sure how wedded I am to the whole mailing thing though. The biggest issues for me seem to be size, and sticking to the theme somehow.