Category: thing of the week

Week 8 lunar exclipse

March 2, 2008


Week 8 lunar exclipse
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Although I am a full week behind on this one, technically I am quite pleased with it.

There are two layers of chiffon over a satin base, all with white resisted stars in black backgrounds. The trees in the front are another layer, transfer printed and cut out, tacked down with embroidery. The moon is white silk with a bite out of it. Visible behind the bite is a red circle with a single layer of black night over it. It pleases me that it looked pretty much like that.

I owe another postcard for this week. Another rhino.

Week 7 blue hippos

February 19, 2008


Week 7 blue hippos
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A hand carved rubber stamp of the Ancient Aegyptian blue hippo, on several shades of blue and light purple silk, appliqued to a patchy silk background.

I guess I have mostly finished with transfer paints. I should declare a new Media of the Moment. The stuff I have least experience with is the foil, but I can’t see any romance with that lasting more than a week or two – maybe if i add metallic paints and stamps to the equation I can fill it out some.

week 6 rhino and gold bars

February 18, 2008


week 6 rhino and gold
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This was done yesterday but we had a keyboard disaster…

The girls were experimenting with non-Newtonian fluids, of which the easiest to construct is cornstarch and water. The fluids were corralled in zip-lock bags, which were only too temporary and there was a containment failure all over the keyboard. We let it dry out overnight, and it seems to be fine. If you search for non-Newtonian on youtoobe, you get these two (among others) that begin to demonstrate the fascination. I love the little shmooey fingers growing up from the first one – it looks like a tiny, tame, almost cute Blob. Oh – you should really watch this one too.

So this is last week’s postcard, drawing fully on the obsessions of the moment. I am hoping that the straight-up gnarliness of rhinos will begin to offset the sparkliness of the background and produce a nice mental contrast. The foil is a new experiment. I lack control but remain extremely amused.

The postcard for this week is almost done, I should be able to post it later.

um, yeah

February 10, 2008

Alice has been kind of wrapped up

All_wrapped_up

working on her science fair project. She has taken on Molecules as a topic, and it goes on FOREVER.

Aerin has been going batty
Batty_2
with studying for (and passing with flying colors thank you) midterms. She has also been at the receiving end of a series of talks about what to expect in high school. And started signing up for classes.

Yikes.

I’ve been hanging out
Hanging_around

trying to remain calm, and mostly failing. I have been knitting a lot, the happy socks are almost done, but the rest of the creative endeavors have taken a back seat.

I continue to collect and wear objects of a very specific set of colors. I am continuing to roll with it, because it is still kind of fun and exciting, and it doesn’t feel dangerous yet. Out of character definitely. Unexpected, yeah, that too.

Which is why I went into the store full of brightly colored sparkly stuff from India and exited with these chinking on my arm.


bangles
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I figure if I can make myself laugh, it is a fine place to be. Plus I gave away one of my rhino shirts. Just peeled it off and handed it to Janet, which made her crack up, especially when she saw the new rhino on the shirt underneath…

The thing of the week is late again. These are the beginnings of it


mixed silks
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

by now, you know I’m good for it.

Week 5 velvet leaf

February 4, 2008


Week 5 velvet leaf
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I found a pile of ripped strips of black white a gray cottons leftover from December’s postcards, and I realized I missed making them.  I don’t like polyester much, except for exercise clothes (I have a separate rant for that). The transfer paint is getting boring, but I swore I’d use it up. I have a lot to go to use it up….

But I realized I could still use old fabrics, and old techniques, as well as the current obsession focus. So I have one of my beloved patchy backgrounds, with a satin and velvet leaf heavily embroidered into it. Hah.

In other news, I am beat. I did the Y thing this morning, then went to the barn and cleaned stalls, carried water buckets and pushed around (enormous) loads of sawdust across treacherous ice. Then the kids had climbing class, and I belayed children to keep them from falling out of the sky. At the end, I got a chance to try climbing again. I addressed myself to a more difficult wall, and fell off once (What a RUSH – in a Really Bad Way) and beat a little higher. I didn’t make the top, but I did respectably. And then I made this postcard when I got home.

Told you I was good for it.

good night Gracie.

week 2 leaves tucked in

January 13, 2008


week 2 leaves tucked in
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I have  a lot of fabrics that have TIF Challenge colors all over them trying to get the colors etter, or seeing how hard and long to press, or just to see what the next one looks like. So I used some of these to make this weeks object. I realized I like it better in this orientation – I made it horizontally. I was thinking about this postcard from last year:


May 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Alice finished a hat for a doll.


dolly hat

I made the doll before she was born, but couldn’t find hair I liked. Alice carried her around a lot when she was one and two years old, and has revisited her since. She persuaded me to put some tibetan lamb on her head for hair, and captured her back to her room. Later that week, Alice insisted on learning to sew doll clothes, so I set her up with some stretchy stuff and she made leggings/pants and shirts, stole some socks from another doll, and started on this hat last week.

Note the band of purling as decoration, the pointy top, the i-cord finish and tassel. oop – I have to take another picture to properly show off all the details.

leafrise

January 7, 2008


week 1 leafrise
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

In the middle of all the experiments, I got the leaves in orange into/onto a starry night sky, and they looked like a series of rising moons, only, you know, leaf shaped. LeafRise.

This is the first of the weekly objects. It is 5×7" (12.7×17.8 cm) transfer printed using leaves and star shaped sequins as resists, embroidered and foiled (hard to see but present).

It was substantially done yesterday but the day kind of escaped from me, so I finished it today.

Today I also extended the experimentations to sheer fabrics like this:


Jan 7
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

but I can’t figure out what to do with them – it wants something that demonstrates the sheerness of them somehow.