I don't know why this is revelatory, but there you are. I think it is just brought home to me this week, as I am more capable of standing up and moving around, and not yet able to return to regular life.

Buying stuff, shopping for stuff to make things out of, feels creative, and is not. Making stuff is creative. Buying stuff is a displacement activity I indulge in when I can't make stuff. Sometimes, if I am disciplined, I have a list and I know exactly what I want, and I go and get the last roll of thread and come home and finish something.

Much more usual; I am thinking vaguely about a bunch of stuff, and the buffet of raw materials and tools produces a cascade of fantasy. You know the fantasy, I'm sure. Sets of colors in fabric, certain textures rubbing against others, a particular twinkle of thread in the decorative threads department, and I start thinking about potential projects, and the next thing I know I am hip deep in bags full of new material in my workroom, and it is piled over the two or three unfinished projects I was actually working on, and everything comes to a halt until I get the new stuff filed (making it automatically old stuff) and get the projects fished out and dusted off and eventually concluded. While the new stuff marinates in the old stuff, and gets slowly forgotten. 

I really don't need any more materials. If I made big things weekly and little things daily for a decade, I might need thread and fusible and heavy interfacing, but I would not need to buy fabric. Or doodads. Or yarn. Or beads. Or sequins. Or buttons.

I really DO need to make things. When I don't, I get grumpy and itchy and thrash around and am a menace. When I do, I am calmer, and more centered. Kind of like exercising, only less sweaty. 

My only real question now is whether this realization will help me refrain from acquisition.

Bob’s birthday viking horse
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Bob’s birthday was the day I fell off, and needed another spool of thread and some mobility in my left arm before I could finish it. Since both of those things happened, it is done. This one is much smaller – 5×7″ is a good size for a birthday card, right? And Alice was completely correct that working smaller gave me more freedoms to experiment with colors. I can see another couple coming along, one with the horse GOLD(!).

I continue work on the other, larger, horse pieces, and I have started mapping out a couple more tree pieces.

I am surprised to see that everything so far this year has been much much bigger than previous years. It was kind of comforting to return to this little size for a gift. But I like having the room on the larger pieces, and I really like the impact they have across a room.

lascaux pony
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Another in what seems to be a series of horses from other eras. I have always loved the cave paintings of horses, especially ones that have expressions that I see on Ruby, and have seen on previous ponies, routinely. The colors of the Lascaux horse are particularly lovely,a red-brown that has to be related, geologically, to siena or umber.

I wish I could make it more smudgy somehow. The edges
and the mane in particular are lovely and smeary at the edges, which I
did not address properly. But the bouldering (small embroidered circles) on the body is perfect. I
used three layers of painted organza to get lighter colors along the
belly, and that worked pretty well too. The painted background seems
like it would be easier than the patchy backgrounds I've been making
but isn't actually. It took longer to get the colors in places I wanted
than it usually does to get the patches placed and stitched down. Which
surprised me.

Uffington White Horse
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Another antique equine.

Inspired by the Uffington White Horse. I like the way the horse is almost all gesture, and I tried to catch that in the fabric and stitching. The one in real life is hacked carved into the chalk hillside, which is pretty cool. It is also incredibly old – Wikipedia says 3000 years.

Viking Horse
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I got sick. I’m better now.

I still have a bunch of the art from the February show in the back of my car, but I got it out of the library in reasonable order on the 27th. Al helped. I am sorry the exhibit is done. It was lovely to have the work up, and visible, and have friends and strangers admiring it.

I finished this large horse yesterday. The whole piece is about 18×24″ – bigger than most of the things I have done to date. The size was an issue for some parts, and now I am thinking wistfully about a machine with a much deeper throat. Something more than 6″ would be very nice.

shibori class, more homework
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

less grump, more homework

Probably that is related. Apparently I am needing sun, because I kept adding more yellow, and orange and red. I am really pleased with the way those came out. I have handfuls of truly awesome washers; I feel rich in washers!

Still snowing. After raining and snowing more or less steadily since Monday night. Must be related to the yellows?

Blue horses
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was looking for the little blue ceramic Chinese horses, like the ones I found for sale in the Paris subway when I was there as an exchange student. Instead I found Tang horses, and this array of amazing blue horses on Flickr.

Truly, the internet has many things.

snow day out the back
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

We had a snow day today, one that was justified instead of driven by hysteria.This is what my back yard looked like. Sadly, it rained for a while after, so the snow is heavy and soggy.

I have started another new piece, by painting fabric for the petals of the flowers. The horse is on hold til the thread I ordered comes in.

Alice keeps coming in and offering good advice that I don’t want to take. I can’t decide if I am just being petulant about not having those good ideas, or if they really are not quite what I had in mind…. Actually she is completely correct that I can do a series of smaller ones and run these variations as experiments/variations on a theme/series.

quarter imprint
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Working on homework for my online shibori class last night, I started experimenting with all kinds of tiny things for resists. The ones that made me laugh are the magnets. Since Christmas we have been all magnetic, all the time around here, with three sets of Bucky Balls, a set of tiny powerful rare earth magnets and two new magnet building toys. Then when I discovered that Canadian quarters are magnetic, as well as the washers I was using, there was no stopping me. Except when the magnets attached themselves in ways I didn’t want, tangling the fabric.

So – magnets for resists. Also quarters, washers, pennies and bottlecaps (which have a pleasing scalloped edge)