With the fields sketched in, and the outline of the rivers, you might be able to see the Deerfield River joining the Connecticut. Or not.

This is the very beginning stage for most of my work. I find a lot of colors of fabric that speak to me about the topic or location in mind, and rip pieces of them off; thin pieces, wide pieces, pieces I will cut shorter and those I will leave long. And then, with a base in mind, I stick the pieces down in an order that is not random but is also not regular. My patient husband came to see what I was working on, and even when I pointed out the landmarks, he just shook his head.

What surprises me is that even after I complete the next couple steps, he still doesn’t see it. Not until a piece is finished and on the wall, does he get what I was aiming for.

More winter colors. There are subtleties to New England winter colors beyond black and white, these quiet greens, dark blues, purpley browns, but all with quiet gray undertones. Or overtones.

Something about the valley we live in seems to keep snow out of it. We’ve more-or-less dodged a blizzard: there is snow to the east of us, snow to the west of us, more forecast in all directions, and we’re done. We even have sunshine, intermittently.

This is Main Street, looking towards our delightfully absurd Town Hall, with turrets. No one was driving except people with plows. The walking was nice. I hope the coast is not getting hammered too hard – it makes me feel obscurely guilty for wishing a little more of their snow had hit us!

ah, Instagram – your filters amuse me!

I feel like I should say right up front that I love my family. I’m pleased to have them in the house, I look forward to vacations when the college girl is home, the high school girl doesn’t have to wake up and Al is off work. We had a virtual cousin for two weeks in early January too, which was also wonderful. It was a happy, noisy, convivial time.

I managed to build this model for the production of Godspell we are doing in mid-March at the high school. But I couldn’t get into my studio.

I like an empty house to accomplish things in. Yesterday morning, after most of a month of family and company, there was no one else in my house. I finally sorted and thinned my yarn stash, and I have a box to go to the Montessori School for their knitting projects. I finally emptied the baskets of my stuff that had been cleared from the Living Room to make room for Christmas. I found the floor in the studio, and sorted the threads again. Dogs generally need to turn ’round three times before they can settle to sleep. I clearly need to pace three times ’round my studio before I can settle to work. And I need it quiet and empty to do that.

I used to make dolls. I made a lot of fabric dolls. Making them, thinking about making clothes for them, was giggly fun. Making tiny clothes, and figuring out how to sew tiny shoes, and even making fancy laces for tiny fancy boots was about the best fun I could think of. My elder daughter Aerin told me, at age four, that she had enough dolls now thank you, and I could stop making them. I kept going for a while, and made more that were were more adult looking, but eventually I stopped.

Here are pictures of the Shaggy Man (who looks suspiciously like my charming husband) :

And the Queen of Hearts – she doesn’t look like anyone I know, but her sister the Queen of Diamonds looks like my maternal grandmother:

And a valliant attempt at a dollhouse sized doll in paperclay. Alice liked her just fine without clothes, thank you, so she was a kind of nanny in the doll house for a while, before Alice got a mad thing for chain mail and wanted her to more strongly resemble a warrior of the Khan. I’ll take a picture of her all decked in her war finery sometime.