Month: December 2007

tree in snow

December 5, 2007


Dec 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was thinking of how branches seem to hover in front of deep woods, and trying to get at that feeling. The embroidery disappears into the grays, making me think I need to do something brighter for the tree or something quieter for the grays of the woods.

Went to the barn, but couldn’t get up the driveway, so I hiked in and cleaned stalls and emptied and refilled water buckets. She has electric water buckets. They have heaters in the base, and they keep the water from freezing. I am smitten with the theory and practice of electric water buckets; it is such an improvement over hammers to remove ice.

We are all headed to Alice’s Wicked tonight. She isn’t in it, we are just making up for missing it in NYC. She said Al and Aerin could come too. So they are. Aerin wants to actually see what is happening onstage, since for her Wicked we were in the back row of the topmost balcony. Al just remembers Pippin with pleasure and wants to see what Stephen Schwatrz has been up to lately.

snow day

December 3, 2007


Dec 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

While there are many snowflake images out on the web, most are copyrighted. This is a real electron micrograph of a snowflake in false color, courtesy of the US Department of Agriculture and therefor in the public domain. I printed it out onto silk and stuck it to a patchy white background. It is a weather report for the day. Snow, freezing rain, more snow on top, and panic in the streets. The first snow day of the year. Really they give us the first snow storm off just to ease the freak-out factor, I think, because after this their standards for canceling get stricter.

So the girls had the day off, and Aerin even forgave me for looking at the only tv station that utterly failed to post any cancellations and waking her up and shoving her out the door to catch a bus that was not going to come. Alice made a gingerbread house with the next door neighbor, another neighbor came over for costuming and stayed for lunch, gingerbread house eating and sledding, Aerin went out and found some people sledding and joined them until her jeans were sopping wet and her legs were blue and it was dark out. It was a pretty gratifying day.

What comes next

December 2, 2007

SharonB over at In a minute ago is taking Take a Stitch Tuesday on to the next thing. During 2007 she demonstrated a hand embroidery stitch each Tuesday, and people who were playing along took that stitch and made a small sampler or piece from it. While I don’t do much hand
embroidery, I really enjoyed seeing what others did while beating a
stitch to death each week.

For 2008, she’ll be organizing the Take it Further Challenge.  For Take it Further she is planning on issuing a challenge and a set of colors each month, and we can do with those what we will. Media and materials are up to the participants. I am guessing many people will be interested in some of the alternatives she mentions (paper, collage, quilting as well as hand and machine embroidery) or will incorporate several different things. Interim reports and final photos will be posted on Flickr and in our blogs. She will keep a list so you can see how (and what) others are doing with the challenge.

I am looking forward to working larger and for longer. The Journal pages this year felt really huge after postcards, but I am thinking of going (gasp) even bigger – possibly up to 12×18" or even 18×24" to give me enough room to explore these things. I have thoughts for several series that I might use as starting points for the challenges Sharon posts.

Dec 2

December 2, 2007


Dec 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was pleased with this one until I saw it next to the one from yesterday, and realized how similar they are. I was trying to get a more raggedy edge on the light blue under the greeny-blue silk. I rubbed and scruffled it pretty hard with a stiff brush, but it does not ravel as sweetly as the silk chiffon layer on the Last Brown Postcard.  I need some more different colors of silk chiffon, even if it is a giant pain to sew with.

Cathy and I went down to Osgoods this afternoon, amid all the pre-storm barking (Ah! Ah! snow! snow! bark! bark! – peeps, it is New England in Winter. Duh.) I needed swatches of white stretchy material for a commissioned costume. The performer wants a white body suit to dye in an ombre pattern, and three mutually exclusive choices in sleeves, shoulders and back. So we’ll figure it all out, and with any luck she will be both covered and thrilled.

We stopped at B&N on the way home for tea and some books. I got Terry Pratchett, filling in holes in our collection. She was finding Christmas presents in a very efficient way. We sat in the craft department for a while looking at things. There are a lot of knitting books. There are a lot of beginning sewing books. There are a lot of "don’t be scared, it isn’t that hard" books. There were very few that were interesting enough to bring home. Mostly I need to make things, use stuff up, practice techniques I have only read about, not bring home any more eye candy. I can sit and read the eye candy and then leave it there. That is my new plan, anyhow.

301

December 1, 2007


Dec 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Today is postcard number 301 and the photo to record it for posterity was 3001 (on that particular camera), which seems like a nice piece of synchronicity. I meant to mention three hundred postcards yesterday but it slipped my mind in the delight of dinner not cooked by me.

My thought for December was to work with black and white, in much the same way I managed to explore brown for a month. Except I think of December as a brilliant month rather than drab. So I thought “black and white and red all over” which seems to have morphed into “black and white and one other color”. I like the jolt the color gives the black and white background.

Everything looks like art when photographed in black and white. I kept my main camera loaded with monochrome film for a decade, until I couldn’t easily get it processed anymore. I know that I could do darkroom things, but it isn’t my sport. Fabric is my sport. Now I can desaturate any picture in Photoshop and presto! I haven’t experimented enough to decide if that will work as well.

I kinda secretly sorta miss the warmth of the brown. Clearly I came to some kind of agreement with it.