For rainy day web based foolishness, nothing beats these stupid quizzes.

or alternatively

Were I to be a mythological animal, apparently I’d be a centaur. Since I feel like my riding is making me a centaur-in-training, I like this answer.

You Are a Centaur

In general, you are a very cautious and reserved person. However, you are also warm hearted, and you enjoy helping others in practical ways. You are a great teacher, and you are really good at helping people get their lives in order. You are very intuitive, and you go with your gut. You make good decisions easily.

Apr 15
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was experimenting with gold on fabric.

The foil is from some very nice chocolate which I have been eating in prodigious quantities. It occurrs to me that I have “official” foiling materials too – the glue and etc. to make flexi gold-leafed fabric. I bought a new gold pen yesterday in Brattleboro, while waiting between Family Circus and the recital. It behaves like paint, rather than ink; the line on fabric and porus paper is blurry, on tight paper the ink stands right up off the page.

pink and orange Monday Mosaic
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

So I’m talkative today. Don’t get used to it – this is vacation week, and the kids are home all week, and I will be ripping my hair out by the end.

Anyhow – Jude at Spirit Cloth is making 100 pink quilt blocks. I have a long list of questions for her about color choices and intensities and whether she needs pink fabric that I haven’t managed to email yet, but it got me thinking about pink and orange, which has captured my imagination on this gray and rainy day. So here is my Monday Mosaic a day early when I have a chance to make it… extremely pink and orange.

I was updating my Studio Year file and I was struck by a couple things.

I keep track (only by keeping old versions of the page, but whatever) of the ideas I’ve been having. I have the year laid out by month so I can list what my theme was/might be for each month, what I was exploring for the journal page and what I am worried about in the future. My favorite part of the page is the list of potential themes for the future. I am up to 40, maybe a few extra, and the list fills me with conflicting emotions. I love each idea on that list. I read my list, and I can think of 4 easy things, right off the bat for any idea on it. I want to make all of them, plus I keep coming up with new themes to chase. I toy with the idea of taking a theme for each week, instead of a month, so I have a chance to get to all of them, but…

After reading Twyla Tharpe’s book on creativity, I am thinking that I need to stick with the month plan.  She describes an exercise she does with rooms full of people, and it is instructive. She calls it 50 things to do with ____ . She picks up an object as she goes to the lecture, then starts a list on the board of all things the audience suggests. She says the first couple are pretty obvious. Using my own terms, the first several are the objects affordances – what it is more or less designed to do – in the instance of a stool, they would be

1. sit on it
2. stand on it
3. use it to reach something

after that it gets labored, with some silly ideas (use it for a hat, use it for a weapon, knock someone over with it), some useless (use it for an anchor), and finally a fit of creativity where some genuinely new and interesting things pop out (upside down, use it for a boat). I have this feeling that if I only do a week on a theme, I’ll be stuck at the obvious level, and never get to the really silly, interesting, or genuinely new. It is the thrashing around trying to escape the obvious that produces the most interesting ideas.

I’ve found something similar over the course of a month. I’ll start off simple, get elaborate, and somewhere around the 12th, I’ll panic — OMG more than 2 MORE WEEKS!!! And yet by the time the end of the month arrives, I still have one more postcard than I do days. Even for thirty-one days in March, I had two on the last day – one extra last idea to wedge in!

So I look at my list of ideas and I am simultaneously excited and bummed. Excited to know that these are just the ideas that I have managed to write down, that I won’t run out of ideas, that they keep coming… and I am really bummed at the way I can schedule my time for years if I am so inclined, that I might have to leave some of these ideas behind, or something. I’m not so sure about the exact nature of the bummage, but it is there.

Apr 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I read in Quilting Arts about a transfer process that used paint and ink-jet transparencies. I gave it several tries, and feel like I am still refining my techniques. The first one, the background, wasn’t inkjet compatible, and the ink beaded up on it. When I put in face down on the paint, it smeared and bled like crazy. I liked the back better, so I used it upside down. The smaller piece had the ink settle on it properly, but the image didn’t pull off as cleanly as I hoped it might. I might need more paint.

It looked so empty, I just went mad with the stitching in the back ground. That was fun.

Apr 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I think this one post dates decimalization (?) although I have a two shilling piece that I am pretty sure pre-dates it. Having read far too many books from England as a child, I’m ashamed to admit I always skipped blythly past the financial considerations and straight on to additional plot. I know there were smaller and larger amounts of money in coin, and that a little bit went a long way. I can remember a little bit of my own money going for three (3!!) candy bars. I can remember eating them all at once, all by myself too.

Send me pictures of your currency. Once you really look at it, it gets much more interesting. I think I’m going after an american 10 dollar bill soon.

Apr 12
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

More colored fabric experiments. I separated the different coins and printed them in black ink on colored fabric. Using Shula‘s advice (who got it from Nellienell) and (gasp) the recommendations on the giant stand where they sell the thread, I used a much bigger needle and got the wrapped mettalic thread to work nicely.

I found these charming people, through following a bunch of blogs (Davernator to feffakookan who made the clothes to kamenendo who made the people)  made from porcelain I think. I love that they are nothing but gesture and posture, even after they have had clothes added.

I was so enchanted that I made my own person, from paper mache. She has a certain charm. I am thinking of leaving her plain white, although I really like the decals/clothes on the clay people. I could just shelack some cloth onto her in strategic places. I think I may try again with something a little smoother, and with slightly more tensile strength.

addenda: There was also a pointer to here making me think of more  potential uses for small hand sized figures. This was after a picture of these gentlemen made her think of it. Hand sized is my preferred size for making dolls – the body fits in my hand and the head and arms stick out the top, the legs dangle, and I can up-end them and check to see if they have underwear on. I’ll post a picture of Jenny and her sisters soon, you’ll see.

Apr 11
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I forgot I could print on colored fabric – thanks to Jude at Spirit Cloth for reminding me. Although they are too small. I’ll try again tomorrow, when I am less exhausted.

I clipped Tiger Eye today, so he could cool off – he was still carrying a luxurious winter coat, with long fluffy guard hairs over the top. He looks much trimmer now, but also slightly chagrined, that funny look animals get when they feel their dignity has been impinged on. He also reminds me of Sword Dancer, one of the Welsh cobs I loved when I was working at Grazing Fields Farm. I rode Christmas Ball, who was shorter, kinder and funnier. But I worshipped Swordy.

Apr 10
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

And the most important thing money has to do is coordinate with itself:

If I designed money
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I liked making these, but I am done now. The weaving was a great idea, but ten each way was fiddly and painstaking, and I’m definitely not going higher than 10. I love the numbers, and making them overlap slightly, I’ll miss doing other two digit numbers. The stuff on this one feels like it all fits better than yesterday’s. There are 10 concentric circles in the weaving, 10 strips each direction – all I need the the Count (from Sesame Street) saying "ten, ten lovely curliques" with a flash of lightning at the end and his great cackle.

I was thinking about different denominations, and how we gravitate so easily to the one/five/ten series we know already. I was thinking about twos and threes and 12s, and the old joke about the conterfeiter who asked the mark if he had change for a thirty dollar bill and the mark said Sure – you want 5 sixes, or two fifteens?

I got a picture of Cody in her finished costume:

Isn’t she cute? She’s our teacher for Family Circus, and sometimes Alice and I get her for our lesson on Tuesdays. She has amazing shoulders. She can do amazing stuff.

Apr 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Two shrooms, two moons, two strips each way, and lots of golden thread on the feathers. Because the mushrooms are not gold today. It gets a bit lumpy and overwrought in the middle there – I hadn’t realized it would ALL wind up in the center.

I was using a different mettalic thread. I have two different ones, both from Sulky (and probably others make it as well) one is metallic filament wound around a cotton or polyester core (I haven’t burn tested it) the other is a single strand of colored mylar filament. I go back and forth on which one I hate more. The wound stuff gets unwound and strips itself going through the needle, but the tension tends to work better and I think it takes more effort to break it. The filament makes for a smoother sparkle, but the tension is hideously wonky and it breaks very easily. Shula pointed out there are needles for metallics; Schmetz makes Metallica needles that ease the filament stuff. There are also Sticknadel and Stepnadel which I think are, respectively, embroidery and quilting needles.

These bills are still making me absurdly happy. I need to think about what I’m going to put on coins too. And how I am going to make them. And then embroider them. Besides designing holes so they can be strung for carrying.