March 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Another experiment – I have to stop saying that, they are all experiments. Today I wondered what denim would do. The short answer is pretty much what the other stuff does, except I broke my first needle. Two pieces of good news resulted from that: the replacement sets are waaay cheaper than I expected, and (huge win) the broken one works almost as well as the regular ones, so I can leave it in there for a while yet.

I like the effect when I slice the piece to be felted on into thin strips – they go down in interesting and unexpected ways. Note the Bright Orange leggy thing…

I am really liking the raggedy edges and distressed look to the surface.

March 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

And today’s experiment.

I am working on the Exquisite Corpse piece which I can’t show you (mildly frustrating) and hammering away on the steep part of the learning curve for the felting machine.

You know where the first weeks with a new tool are spent find the edges of what you can do? And creating a lot of… well, crap, really. Sometimes it is interesting crap, sometimes there are flashes of artistic or beautiful or useful, but I just have to crank out the experiments until something clicks. Not that there aren’t some good pieces to this. Plus I think it might be brilliant as a substrate, so I have to try some machine embroidery, or hand embroidery on it.

March 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

a piece of experiment from yesterday –

Feb DONE
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

And the end result.

I was surprised at how much work remained after the last square was finished – there was some engineering involved to get the pieces to come together and stay together, some additional stitching to smooth some of the lines across the junctions, and all those manes and tails.

I didn’t like working on one piece at a time because I wanted the piece to fit together better than it did.

I could have used more different fabrics across the entire piece. This makes it quite unified, but then I wonder why I bothered to cut it into smaller pieces to begin with.

I like the patterned fabric for the horses – especially the red horse. (Yeah, the stripes on the blue horse are kind of distracting, I’d do him more swirly next time. Or I can just paste swirly fabric over the top and restitch it.)

I like the stitching as a sketching line as well as a fixing/finishing line.

I like the way the manes and tails came out. I had this colored hemp from a different project and the colors fit perfectly!

Were I to do something like this again, I would use someone else’s artwork, make less than 16 pieces, and expand my repertoire of techniques.

Now, what was March going to be again?

Feb connected
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

all grouted together

Feb 28
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Today I finished these pieces, and photographed them and then went to the barn and rode the lovely blonde Haflinger pony in a long lesson and then through the woods and helped out in the afternoon, enjoying the sun and the mud before it turns to snow and other vile weather.

Our neighbors were having a game night so Alice and I went over and were sociable. We taught them the water buffalo song, and took over Quirkle and the triangular version of Blokus. I think everyone had a pretty good time. Aerin was in town being sound techie at a Northamptones concert. Al was working, and came home and flopped – he couldn’t face people.

I am SO PLEASED February is done. I always come into it thinking maybe it won’t be so bad this year, and I always get whiny and sick of it a week before it ends. I think it feels like an entire month of Mondays. I am looking forward to March.

I actually have a couple thoughts about February’s project, but I am so tired I am about to tip over, so I’ll have them tomorrow instead.

Feb 27
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Friday was also busy – I went to a Owaji Island (also known as Bunraku) puppet demonstration, which was very cool, and then participated in the Parent, Student and Teacher Talent Show to benefit the band. I was in the music stand drill team. We were very silly.

Feb 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Thursday was busy. I did ride, and I did well in circus, but failed to accomplish any computer thing. I was whiny about February still happening.

Feb 25
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

More of the blue horse – I am just working my way along the unfinished pieces because they all connect, and I prefer to have the edges match.

In other news, I bought a new tool/toy today. I have been yearning gently after an embellisher machine, also called a needle felting machine. I avoided buying one because I thought if I really wanted to felt things I could use felting needles by hand and see if they did sort of what I wanted. But today I finally sought one out, and played with it, and realized it was much faster and much easier and much more fun than I expected. I talked to Al sitting in the parking lot, and decided to go ahead and do this machine now, and see if I really like this way of working as much as I think I will.

I had to finish these squares before I felt like I could pull it out and play. I’ll post pictures of new work soon. I think I have a theme for March too: daily felting machine experiments.

Feb 24
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The blue horse takes shape. I failed to finish him yesterday because I was having migraines and narcoleptic fits, and went to bed at 9:00 with Alice after falling asleep (and I think drooling and snoring) on the couch in the staff room at circus. Only mildly embarrassing as these things go.