Lee Thomson

Jun 10
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I had scraps after the last round of cutting up postcard base material (Timtex and Fast-to-Fuse, for those who wants to know) because they were an odd size and 4×6″ didn’t fit evenly. So now I have 2″ and 1″ squares to decorate and punch holes in and attach to things.

Part of the cool set of punches includes eyelet setters. The whole set is for the scrapbooking crowd. They get cool tools specially made for them in ways the quilters don’t seem to. So I cruise the scrapbooking aisle whenever I hit the craft store. That’s where I first saw… the eyelets.

I have an ongoing fascination with the eyelets. I think that is why I chose holes for this month, so I had a reasonable excuse to get eyelet punches and the little metal eyelets themselves. Sweet little holes. Rows and rows of holes.

I nearly came home with a grommet punch and setter last night.

In other news, River and Sage came to play today. It is such a treat to see them, our old favorite neighbors who moved and are now treasured friends.

When I called Alice downstairs for breakfast, River and Sage were perched on the edge of Alice’s bed while the witch puppet (courtesy of Alice) told them they would be cleaning the bathrooms and making all the meals for the next month (I think she was channelling Auntie Tribulation from Nightbirds on Nantucket). When I remonstrated with the witch, River said “That’s all right, we were going to tie her up next.” Clearly they had a plan.

Later, after food, repeated games of Blokus, dollies and running about, they were sitting in Alice’s room thinking about what to do next. I heard several ideas floated, including going in the backyard, going fishing (except I left my fishing pole at home, says River) sidewalk chalk, until Alice suggests “We could go dynamite a car dealership”. This is greeted with silence for a moment, until River says “we’d probably go to jail” and Alice agrees “and our parents would be disappointed in us” and Sage says “wouldn’t the dynamite be hard to get? plus you don’t want to hurt anyone”… so they decided to go outside instead.

She’s nine. She’s a girl. Where does she get these ideas?

Jun 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

An exercise in making your eyeballs wobble. Did it work?

I used this leaf punch, pointed to by Mimi K months ago, to cut out a bunch of leaves.

It needed the cool hammer (see  Jun 8) and a mat that I wasn’t trying dimly to protect before I could smack the punch hard enough to get through all the layers. I realized they were an exercise in symmetry as well as holes.

Jun 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Elegant lines of holes in eye popping pink and purple fabrics. The punches are so sharp, I didn’t need the eyelets to neaten them up.

I have two sets of punches. The first set is old, and interesting, and was given to me by a friend, and  has character and a history and even a great wooden holder:

and all the edges need sharpening. I didn’t realize this was the case until I broke down and purchased this:

soulless, mass produced, no history, no sweet wooden block, one quarter as many choices of size, and yet, I am smitten. And embarrassed. These ones work so well. The hammer. Just look at the cuteness factor on that hammer. Unfortunately, even using the cute hammer on the old punches doesn’t work that well. They really need sharpening. I need to ask my dad if they can be sharpened.

Jun 7
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Captivated by this image of a wall with a pink hole, I tried to make some kind of lath wall effect with satin stitch rows. They make an appealingly shaggy texture when cut into. I love the way the stitches sink into the velvet too. Then I was wondering what you called the circles that were cut out of the holes. Are they holes too? or just circles?

Bed now, the rest tomorrow.

Jun 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The corners into holes was so cool I did a bunch of them. Next time I satin stitch all the holes before I stick them together.

Jun 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I tried to describe this one on Tuesday, after banging my head with the keyboard. I bet you imagined something completely different. You should go make what you had imagined… Sometimes I think that would make a good challenge, or swap, or exhibit or something. Post a description, make what it brings to mind, and then see them all together. To a certain extent that is what illustration Friday does, but it is really big, and the prompt is pretty loose.

I am deeply relieved to get these posted. They have been waiting for you.

Interesting, I seem to have touched a nerve with this rant on practice. Kate-who-shuns-comments emailed me requesting three things that don’t require practice. The ones I could think of were:

• sleep
• TV watching
• walking

and I add here

• reading         

I think the last two require some initial start-up but then are maintained by use – is that practice?

And then I realized there was another category I had missed. There are the things that you can get good enough at to forget about. That is where walking comes in – just think of babies getting organized to walk, those early days are killer – and some other physical things. They are, if not perfectable, at least attainable.

It is possible to get good enough at riding a bicycle that you become one with it, and fly over hill and down dale and hardly think about shifting or your feet going around. Walking took practice once, but for the most part we take current mastery for granted, and march through our lives one foot after the other, contemplating other things.  For some people cooking is like this. We remember a few recipes or concepts, and wing it from there, forever. Or until the in-laws come for Thanksgiving dinner.

The title for the previous post came from a David Brin book. I think it might have been his first book written, although not the first published, because it was pretty rough and fairly thin, and relied heavily on intrepid grad students. The idea, that practice improved performance, was applied beyond the sentient and into the inanimate. So not only could people get better at what they were doing by practicing, but a backpack could be a better backpack by being used as one. The straps would fit better, the pockets would be the right sizes for what you put in them, waterproofing would improve… In someways this resembles beloved objects being broken in; think your most comfy pair of jeans, hiking boots, oldest favorite hammer, etc. But in other ways, it is just freaky. Inhabitants of this world couldn’t engineer things, because the effect modified them before users could comment on them (begging the question "how do it know?"). I believe Our Hero saved the day by applying engineering principles to … whatever. It was a long time ago.

jude at Spirit Cloth paid me what felt like a huge compliment when she called this a working blog. I hadn’t thought of it that clearly. What I thought to do was make myself accountable to some one or some thing such that I felt compelled to make a postcard every day, and guilty when I didn’t. It has sort of worked.

When Al commented that he hadn’t known I’d had a burning ambition to make fabric postcards, I spent some time trying to explain that this was the fiber equivalent to how to get to Carnegie Hall – practice, practice, practice. A book I was reading yesterday on making tiny oil paintings had similar advice. The woman quoted her teacher saying to reach his level of technique and understanding, any artist had to paint 100 yards of canvas. When I was making dolls, my teacher said we had to make a bucket of heads before making them would be second nature and we could start to make expressions. Yoyo Ma participated in a study that showed that even medium level musicians improved a lot when they increased their practice time, and fantastic musicians stayed that way by practicing constantly. The professional track circus kids at Nimble can only hold down part time jobs, because they can’t fit the amount of stretching and strengthening and practice they need to improve into their evenings.

It is being brought home to me that I am surrounded by things I do that require practice; handstands, trapeze, dressage, fiber, knitting, spinning, childrearing? relationships? … I tried to explain to my dad once that all my favorite things to do required practice to get to a place where they were not painful, and more practice to make it actually fun, but after a while, the practice became part of the process and the sport. 

No pix.

The camera is in Brattleboro, having circus adventures without me. It came to class, and captured Alice balancing on one of the big balls, the one where you have to keep your feet moving and you look like a penguin. Then it practiced balancing on one of the hand balance blocks while Red Kate and I finished stretching and experimented with partner acrobatics where partners are roughly equal. It is easy to look like a hero balancing Alice and tossing her about, she’s tiny and solid. Balancing someone your size and strength is trickier. Anyhow, then we went off to supper and left it there.

So.

I could try to describe the new postcard for you – it is pink  block printed floral, with bright pink batik profoundly perforated with little holes and one big one laid over the top, and topped off with a square of the same pink floral with a large hole edged with embroidery with one corner tucked into the big hole of the batik. I am pleased with it.

That doesn’t help much, does it?

I could ask Molly and Andy if they need my old camera, so I have one with me and an emergency backup camera at home.

fooey.

Jun 4
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I think the whole hole thing is really just a good excuse to go buy a decent grommet setter… I find myself yearning for a series of perforations along the top edge, or making some kind of snaky pattern through the card.

Today we have leaf shaped holes, cut into pink fabrics two layers deep.

Bucketing rain, wind NE, chilly. I used to think rain was holes in the clouds leaking. I think there were many leaky things in my yoot.