Oct 15 closed

Oct 15 open
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was thinking about doors on Advent Calendars. I wanted little doors that showed on the outside what to expect on the inside. I used the punches to get the shapes, and stitched it all down.

Oct 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This is from an article in Smithsonian Magazine about the archaeology of Alexandria. I was hoping for doors underwater, only because I dimly remember a science show about retrieving the treasures of Ancient Alexandria from the harbor, but this cistern was 3000 years BCE and built from things even more ancient than that… plus I liked the sunlight into it.

virus, computer not biological,

working on fixing

dollies fall clothes
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Sometimes I need to make art… ahem, Art.

Sometimes, I need to make the dollies some new clothes. Two pairs of pants, one set of overalls, three shirts and a vest. Still to come – three woolly coats for winter, another couple pairs of hand knitted socks (the dolls and I are the only ones who wear them) and maybe some shoes to keep off the chill. I had plans for sweaters too, but no rush. They don’t really need stuff for snow since they are pretty much indoor kids, but it can get nippy in Alice’s room at night.

I like clothes for dolls because they don’t outgrow them, but I realized that Alice is going to outgrow wanting them soon. I only have a year or two left, and then I become one of those women that makes doll clothes for her own dollies. Yikes.

Oct 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This is a part of one of my favorite doors in town, on the phone company building. There is this lovely doorway with a small, mean, ugly industrail door inside it. I printed this on dark gray fabric and it is too dark. I embroidered it anyhow, but it isn’t quite right.

Oct 12
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was thinking about doors into tree trunks. As a child I read a book about a pair of people who lived in a willow tree, and sold things to animals that they needed. I can’t remember the title, or the characters, just them, living inside the living tree.

This made me think of all the tiny doors around Ann Arbor MI. The commentary is twee, but the doors are pretty sweet.

Oct 11
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

embroidered from the back – it looks like a ghost bank

Oct 10
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I went walking around downtown today, because it was sort of raining, and I didn’t want to ride in the rain. It was persistent, and penetrating, but not pelting. As well as astonishingly alliterative. My brain wanted me to stop and have coffee, or hot carbohydrates – it walked me past Woodstar, and the Bakery Normand, and Haymarket and Starbucks and Fresh Pasta Co, and the new place for panini and back past Woodstar again just in case I didn’t get the idea the first time. I managed to take a bunch of door pictures for later, and not get any additional coffee. Then I managed something even better; lunch with Al. Which was, in fact, hot pasta with duck and roasted tomatoes.

I even retrieved the couch cushions, so the arms of the couch are almost the right height again. Having the old couch reupholstered is not, in fact, like getting the old couch new again. It is like getting a completely new couch that you thought you were going to like but turns out to have suffered a slight personality change through getting its guts replaced. It is very disconcerting. I imagine we will either beat it into submission and recreate the (remarkably comfortable) imprints of our butts upon it, or replace it in aggravation in a couple of years.

Nothing to do with couches goes fast at our house. It took us two years to decide to buy one, three months of testing to settle on this one, a year of holes in the cushions before we could decide between re-upholstery and replacement, and now I fully expect a solid six months before we can sit down and not say “didn’t it used to be…?”

Other things go quicker. We purchase bikes every fifteen years whether we need to or not. Boats seem to be raining upon us (to my great delight). Non-stick frying pans have a half life of 3 years.

Or maybe we are just extraordinarily slow individuals.