Month: March 2012

catkins

March 20, 2012

march 20

The pussy willows are out in force and going from their soft silver to spikier yellow gold and green.

Google says it is the first day of spring. Going by our weather today, and the forecast for the week, it feels more like summer. Fistfuls of horse hair are shedding off all the horses at the barn, and with the ground unfrozen and good for rolling they are all looking their most disreputable. Even the very fancy horse we call the George Clooney horse (because he is such a superstar) is dusty, shedding and itchy.

Sycamore

March 19, 2012

march 19

Stopped under the champion Sycamore tree in the center of Sunderland, and talking with Rose about what it would be like to explore the tree, if I could just climb up there. The first fork is enormous – it looks more like a landscape than a tree. Some branches are large enough to fall asleep on.

This is a good start, but the view up into the branches needs more twigs and smaller branches.

copper beech tree

March 18, 2012

march 18

Beech trees always look like elephant legs to me; thick and gray and sturdy and wrinkly.Tree bark, I've noticed, is very seldom brown. It is shades of gray, and wildly variegated textures, and thus perfect for the March circles. So I am reassured that even with the snow gone, I can sitll find monochrome things to depict.

Kaboose and I went out for a long trail ride today with a younger, more worried horse and his older, more worried rider. She did very well stomping along being reassuring. It didn't warm up until we got back, and then Red Kate dragged me out for a walk which was lovely. It feels like summer. It feels (says a gloomy New Englander) like we're getting away with something.

mist again

March 16, 2012

march 16

Once I cleaned off the table and flipped over my mat so it was clean there was much less fluff and dust. With less dust, each layer of organza is cleaner and clearer, and it takes more layers to feel distant. Also it looks like substantially less air pollution. Or rain. Or something.

I am very pleased with this one – it is almost precisely what I was aiming for.

 

mist, try the first

March 15, 2012

march 15

I think I am onto something here, but I need to start with a much much cleaner work surface. It is really just layers of white silk organza and black thread stitching. I had planned to add layers of organza until I couldn't see the first layer of stitching, or until a needle wouldn't go through it.

I'm very fond of organza. It is shiny, it is hardly there, it has a nice crunch to it, and I can put layers of it on top of each other and get really interesting effects. Black organza provides the base for most of my ponds, except the iced over one.

pi(e) day

March 14, 2012

pi day

Pi(e) day = March 14 = 3/14 = 3.14 = ratio between the diameter and the circumference of any circle.

Pie tally:

  • raspberry (with 18 candles for Aerin)
  • chocolate cream (with 24 candles for Abby)
  • 2 apple
  • blueberry (shown above)
  • three berry
  • key lime
  • another chocolate pudding

people tally (some people belong to more than one group):

  • 4 of us
  • 3 Vertssess
  • 3 Almanzars
  • 2 Abbys
  • 1 neighbor
  • 1 hiking club
  • 2 co-workers
  • 1 co-worker girlfriend
  • 3 Mt Holyoke students with various graduation dates

plus some I can't remember.

Pi day makes every one happy. It is like Thanksgiving, only with just dessert.

Black and white circles will resume tomorrow.

country roads

March 13, 2012

march 13

Having run out of snow, I am saved by fog.

I drove to the barn along more roundabout roads this morning, looking for views and ideas for the next half of March. I found some bark, and some big trees which may or may not translate, and this lovely foggy view back along a tiny dirt road.

I take horses up and down this road, so driving on it feels strange. I should be taller, and clip-clopping, and feel the wind on my face, and see ears framing my view.

pasture pond

March 12, 2012

march 12

We seem to have skipped right past spring and into mid-summer. I heard the first spring peeper frog tonight, just one of him, but where there is one there will be more soon. The weather today was sunny and absurdly warm. I rode two horses; the gray old man not-too-hard so he wouldn't get sweaty and distressed, and the grumpy red mare with some tact. I took each one out to walk outdoors to cool off. One silver maple tree was humming – Margaret and I couldn't figure out what it was until we looked up and saw the bees. Not swarming, just lots and lots of bees making use of the early blooming.

I think I've mentioned it before, but I want to give these circles away. If you see a day you like particualrly, comment or email me, and I'll send it out to you.

distracted and bemused

March 11, 2012

three circles and a pair of socks

I must admit to feeling like Edward Lear’s old man with a beard, because it is just as I feared – while I have no birds in my beard I am watching the snow melt under the (lovely lovely warm) weather and the strong contrasts are vanishing and flowing downstream.

The lower right is Friday, when Alice and I went to see the high school musical Grease, and came home too late to post anything. It shows the small patches of snow left in the shade of the pine woods.

The lower left is a pair of socks, finished Saturday and included because the palette is similar.

Saturday had no post because Alice and I got up waaay too early and drove to Cambridge with friends so she could go to a bunch of interesting and distinctly offbeat classes with other extraordinay middle and high schoolers. She took classes in Greek and Roman mythology, Maxwell’s equations for middle schoolers, introduction to soldering and explosions in chemistry. By the time we were done and home, it was well after everyone’s bedtime. I did finish the socks, and a circle. The circle is the one top right – it looks different because MIT has no sewing machines, so I used some black and gray markers to sketch in what I was thinking about.

The last one is from today, another reflecting tree, with the snows of yesterday upon it. The snows of yesterday are melting like crazy, and I’m going to have to work from memory or modify my point of view.