Lee Thomson

April 19
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This is one of those that looks better in person! the little shells are white, some with subtle light brown stripes, and they are nicely matte against the shimmer of silk rings and depth of the velvet. I needed the orange velvet stripe to bump up the color a little – it was getting very dark-and-brooding without it. And then there are the red stitches. I am So Pleased with the red stitches!

These larger pieces take longer to finish, so I have this feeling that you (my faithful readers!) are sick of seeing something by the time all the bits are done and the finished object is ready to talk about.

Just for a change of pace, I went to see a live performance of Mahler's 3rd today in town. It was the Smith College Orchestra with the massed voices of all the college women in the Valley and two children's choirs. I went to see Abby sing, but it is one of the symphonies I actually kind of know and like. My parents played it a lot when I was paying attention, and it stuck. Everyone did a very creditable job of it, all things considered. I enjoyed myself immensely. The biggest drawback is that John M. Greene Hall has The Most Uncomfortable Seats on the planet, short of actual spikes in the seats. They are hard and small, however, as my father pointed out, at least you won't fall asleep in them.

April 18 B
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This is looking across the surface of the circled shells stitched to a backing fabric. After planning out the piece with the shells hanging free in an open frame, I thought they looked too much like bead curtains, so I started auditioning backing fabrics. I settled on a velvet with reddish purple nap in a green woven background – subtle and dark enough to show the shells and their surrounding circles off nicely. I like the red stitching a lot – it makes the nice little boinks of color in the cool and dark color scheme. You can see it more clearly in this one:

April 18
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I am practicing running, and I ran outside today, after being on the treadmill for the last month. I keep thinking I am doing it wrong because it hurts and I have so much trouble breathing. And yet, I get a little tiny bit better each time too.

And then I went over to Pelham to ride Penny, the big one. We went out just as the weather thought it might rain. It didn't realy, until we got back. I got lost, and we went for a longish way down a road I thought should be going the other direction, and Penny was Fabulous (although we didn't see any moose today) and I think I need a pocket GPS for thrashing about in the woods on horseback. It would be nice not to have to turn around if the loop I thought I was aiming for was just over the next hill (and it almost always is!).

And after that I made Tax Cake for Al for finishing the taxes. It is a rule at our house. Just because it is a thankless task doesn't mean you don't get thanked.

This is what Wordle thinks I talk about. Or to be more precise, this is an artful arrangement of the stuff I've said over the last couple of days. I like that the horses Penny and Ruby show up in it, and the moose is over in the corner. I am surprised there isn't more about fabric, but maybe I don't talk so much about it as I think.

April 15 20
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This is what 20 of them look like all together, and this: 

April 15 50
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

is what 50 of them look like all jumbled up. The next part of the plan is to construct a nice solid frame/whatever to hold them in a beautiful way.

Photographing silk is hard – it is all shiny and reflective, and very lovely and very ambiguous for the camera.

April 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I made a little proof of concept piece to see if the strings would work, and the silk rings would fit around the little white shells, and how the beads work with the punched out holes and the other bits… I like the way it is working, but honestly the construction to make the frame for it was pretty intense.

The plan is fifty shells, ten each on 5 strings, and suspended in a frame of some kind. I am thinking the frame might have to be wood instead of interfacing, because I don’t think the interfacing will hold up the weight of many many more shells. I still have to finish all the silk rings. Only about 20 left to go, out of a hundred total. Yikes! I realize too that part of the trouble with these ideas of collections is that they take longer to put together than the smaller pieces. This one isn’t much of a collection, but it does help me think about the larger piece in a much better way.

April 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I fell hard for these little shells mostly because of the variations in the size of the pink line and the zebra stripes. I should take some better close-ups in daylight, and post them tomorrow. Time permitting.

I have no fabric for today, it was filled, pretty happily, with other things. Instead I have a story.

I went to ride the Canadian horses I ride for Bob and Leonor, two towns over. They are up in the hills to the east of Amherst, with woods all around, and streams, high from the melt, coursing and trickling through the woods. It was a gorgeous day, and I convinced Bob to come with me. He took Penny, who is large and will be five this summer, and I rode Ruby who is much smaller, and will be four this summer. We started off up the road, and into the woods. We were trotting along, hopping over downed logs, when Ruby stopped abruptly. He eyes bugged out, and her nose was twitching, and her ears were semaphoring around and she was quivering all over. Penny kind of rammed into us from behind, and then she caught wind of what-ever-it-was too, and the pair of them stood rooted to the spot. Bob and I looked and finally saw what had their attention.

Two moose. One very large, about the size of Penny (whose back is up to my eyebrows) and dark and glossy and pretty clearly pregnant. The other was not much shorter, but looked unprepossessing. If it had been human, its shoes would have been untied, and shirt tails sticking out and sporting a severe case of bed-head. Bob and the horses and I watched them move out ahead of us, then cut across the trail and head up the hill, at a low headed, shambling trot. The horses remained rooted to the spot. They wouldn't move without strong encouragement for the next .25 mile, and after that Ruby kept scanning the underbrush for any further moose that might leap out at her, all the way home.

That was a pretty gratifying way to start the morning.

April 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Finally!!

I am indebted to the free graph paper guy for three different kinds, plus variable sizes, of diamond shapes in printable graph paper.

This took so long to get organized I used up both the larger and smaller sets of diamonds.

I didn't post anything yesterday because I couldn't stand myself. I am much cheerfuller about everything today.

black and red diamonds
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

two more tries – mosaic(k)ed with those from yesterday so as to get the full impact!

The first (far left) is the closest, but the diamonds are catty-wampus, and I need them sitting straight in proper rows and columns for what I have in mind. The 2nd left is an attempt to piece diamonds, with mixed results. Still crooked, and the corners don’t meet (which is just a precision issue) and they are too tall and thin (which is a measuring issue).

I gather this week is dedicated to making the diamonds I want come out JUST RIGHT (yes, I am shouting!)

onward!

April 5 A
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

April 5 B
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Both of these are making me really grumpy, plus the first attempt that I just started over because I hated it so much.

I know that I like my fabric to Stay Put when I am stitching on it. I don't mind ripped edges or wavery bits or things requiring ironing, but they have to lie down and not move while I stitch them down. I though I should push this particular envelope a bit, and I tried to hand sew this diamond grid together and that one made me very uncomfortable so I stopped. Then I tried to pin it together for some free machine sewing (5B) and that got monstrously puckery and made me cry and then I tried just straight stitching it together with feed dogs and forward stitching (5A) but it was falling apart so I stopped.

Tomorrow I will make the background that I wanted to make before I got the bright idea to push the envelope, and maybe later this week I will talk about haircuts.