I finally managed to finish a couple pieces over the last two days. Focus helps, as does an air conditioner in the studio, and a rainy day. Good weather still means horses take precedence!

My mother notices things. I think it is a super power, partly because she mostly notices pretty and interesting things. And when she notices, she also points out, so traveling with her is an education in looking closer. She names the flowers by the side of the road, and chicory is a favorite, I think because of the ambiguity of the color, an in between, purpley-blue, or bluey-purple. It is permanently tagged in my head as 'ambiguous chicory blue'. I was trying to catch the elegance of the color against the woody stems.

I have a lot of thread. I have a lot of different threads. They inhabit two large boxes, roughly sorted by color. The greens are tricky because some are with the yellows and some are with the blues. The purples are all together, the reds and pinks are all together – the sorting is courtesy of Alice and Red Kate who brought order to the jumbled box and put like with like.

In a long conversation with Jane (Hi Jane!!) on the ferry home from Long Island we talked about fabric and then I started waxing rhapsodic about threads. The above shows a tiny bit about why.

Variegated cotton threads from Valdani, Sulky and King Tut are relatively easy to find. Handdyed threads from Oliver Twists are gorgeous, and luxurious, but expensive. Rayons are shiny and pop, but cotton sinks into the surface, and gives a more cohesive look to the finished piece.

Timna correctly pointed out that this barn is more integrated into the work than the previous barn. I am very pleased with this one! I'm looking forward to Lesley's reaction when I bring it to the gallery on Wednesday.

"Stand in the place where you live
now look north
think about directions
wonder why
you haven't before."

An REM song called Stand, one of my favorites. So I stood today and looked west, and north, and up at willows and over at a wonderfully gnarled copper beech tree on Hadley Common.

These will be some of the next works. I heard from the gallery that the big Mt Toby piece sold, which is great news!

Even if I'm not making much, or talking about it, I can still show you what I've seen lately.

still busy!

ANNIE is over and done, and the current show is ALICE IN WONDERLAND, directed by a student. I've been making rosebushes, cardboard pots and pans (so they can be flung at Alice's head in the show [not my Alice – the show's Alice]), cardboard keys, and dozens of other amusing things.

*passing the local tv station truck with its extendable dish raised
high, and a wire wrapping around it, making it look… sproingy*

Lee: put a hamster up there and pull back, you could launch it into low earth orbit
Alice: but, you like hamsters. You want to get rid of raccoons
L: true. But raccoons are larger and heavier – they wouldn't get into orbit, they'd be sub-orbital
A: and land, lightly scorched, in…?
L: Russia, depending on where we aim
A: so Russia is over-run with smoking raccoons? cool
L:
Maybe, if we dipped them in barbeque sauce, the sauce would caramelize
as they sizzled through the atmosphere, making a crunchy protective
shell?
A: it would crack on impact though
L: releasing the overheated but now protected raccoons into Russia

*a moment of reverent silence*
*Lee, unable to keep from voicing her grudge*

L:
with the credit cards they stole from my wallet, they could continue to
order solid but cheap tools that are made in Korea but sold through
Home Depot, and create a new kind of DIY havoc on the Russian populace.
Think of the garbage bin openers, the barbecue grill food extractors,
the other random things they could make!
A: *reminiscing snerk* sub-orbital raccoons!

I'm still neck deep in the high school musical, but today I do not have to be at school until noon, so I marched into my studio and started something. Before I could start anything I had to sweep a good deal of dust and crud off various surfaces – I hadn't realized it had been so long since I sewed something that wasn't a dinosaur. 

The weather is definitely transitioning to spring. Days are warm if they are sunny, but kind of grim if the sun isn't out. the snow is melting and grubby, the ground underneath the snow is also melting and muddy, and the horses are shedding in giant handfuls of loose hair. I am alternately coated with white hairs from Nuada and red and orange ones from Kaboose. It is a different kind of look, especially when combined with the layers of paint from the set; white primer, and gray, pink and brown.

via www.flickr.com

The ground is frozen so hard there is no riding at the moment, not unless I shoe the red mare. Instead we've been playing games with following, circling, and changing directions with me on the ground. She thinks this odd, but it wins her treats which makes her interested.

On the way home I stopped to admire the bison at the bison farm. There are youngish ones, that stagger and bounce, and very large ones.

via www.flickr.com

The first finished piece of the year. I was driving around when the weather was soooo cold, because i could turn up the heat in the car and I'd been riding, and I wanted to take pictures of tobacco barns. Sadly, on review, all those barns i thought were so distinctive, aren't. One looks much like another. So my grand plans for barn portraits may have to be modified.

I think part of what pleases me about these barns is the rhythm of the hinged boards on the sides. I'd like to take some pictures from the inside too, looking out through the slats at the changing seasons.