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.
It’s from Spell With flickr. Pretty cool.
A different one shows results from Amazon, in an unexpected format. It is called Amaztype.
How DO people think of these things?
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.
Oct 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
The first science fiction I read was R.A. Heinlein’s Door Into Summer. I was working my way through the Jr. High (school) library in an extremely methodical way, attempting to read every single book. I made it to Phillip Wylie’s books in less than two years, which tells you something about the size of the library as well as my dedication to NOT going to the lunch room. Anyhow – this book fell on me like an anvil. It has time travel, and cats, and first love, and do-overs, and I was gobsmacked. I haven’t re-read it lately, so I’m not sure if it holds up, but just the phrase, door into summer, makes me think of secret hidden things.
I used a photograph of a door and embroidered around it. I used my working theory that almost any problem can be solved with more thread. It took a good deal of mental thrashing to get myself into my room and make something. I am struggling with the delicate balance between thinking I need (more or less forceful) encouragement and thinking I need a break. The trouble with the break theory is that I really like this one, and when I need a break, all I can make is carp.
Oct 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
I was thinking about sailing.
I am a little sad that I didn’t trust my needle enough to draw with that. I sketched in the outlines with a marker and embroidered over the lines.
Oct 7
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
Our front door, open to catch the breezes, looking out onto the porch and through the porch to the street (you can’t see that through the screen…)
I like that we can, and do, leave our door open when we are at home. I am appreciating the last of the weather where that is possible.
Oct 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
Saturday’s postcard, done with every muscle quivering from climbing again in circus class. BUT – I was stronger this time, and I will be stronger again next time, and stronger again soon.
Joining Shula in the Making Life Difficult for Oneself Department, I show you the raw materials:
and the self portrait, in progress:
I can only congratulate myself on choosing to make the circles/grid larger than originally planned. These are 1/2" circles. They take some hammering to create (so I can only increase my palette when everyone is awake) but they cover a fair amount of space. I had thought to use 1/4" circles, but came to my senses in time. I have mostly finished August’s page, needing only to attach 30 perforated pennies in some sinuous line. And I actually have all the circles down for September’s page (a couple hours after this picture was taken).
I have also stabbed myself with a pair or scissors, and toasted a nice line across one arm with the iron, proving Arlee’s thesis that fiber art is, in fact, a sport. In the social arena, I’ve introduced myself to the new neighbors (they are nice, we’ll be fine), been down with a headache and had a nap, and fed everyone supper. I have yet to oversee the cleaning of the small (relatively speaking) child and chase the large one into the room with the shower so she can do her thing, and then I will catch up on doors.
Oct 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
Oct 5b
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.
two for today
The first one got me started, and the second one got so exciting I kept adding to it until the thread started breaking. Then I had to stop because it was frustrating.
The squirrel who wants to live in my house found a Nilla wafer in the garbage, and couldn’t be shooed off the back porch. Later he climbed up the back door, inspecting the (now undercover) garbage to see if he couldn’t acquire another piece of yummy carbohydrate goodness. And then, because it was apparently "feed a rodent processed flour day" we gave Pumpkin a club cracker, which made his whiskers twitch.
lots of circus tomorrow
Lee Thomson 