Feb 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I managed to ride a horse today, down the road and back, and another horse around in circles in the snowed over pasture on the paths the horses make going about their day. I made this piece, but I can feel an itch starting to make more pieces of horses. My mother showed me the most gorgeous book ever, of very simple, very clear, very very large format pictures of horses. Some of them were just pieces; a neck or the sweep of a back or the shape of the withers – the knobbly tops of their shoulders. They were inspiring.

D2

the story so far
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Six out of 24 pieces in place. I hadn’t realized the color was so uneven from picture to picture.

I’ll update this next week.

Feb 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Long weekend – lots of hugs on the new baby (pictures of him forthcoming) lots of hugs for my brother and his amazing and fabulous wife, and for my mom, and my spare parents (everyone should have some) and my aunt and uncle I don’t get to see often enough… Lots of family and face time. I am ashamed to say I came home and sat very still and very quiet with my face inthe computer for a couple hours, just to unwind.

And I made this square. The last color of horse. I like him lots. I have to figure out what to do for the eyes – I am thinking of paint actually, rather than thread. Or maybe hand sewing.

This is the 6th piece, I am 1/4 of the way through the project.

C6

Feb 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I’m ashamed to say I cheated and chose a square with not much happening – I needed to make it and get on with the list of stuff to accomplish before leaving to see my mother.

My brother and his wife and new baby are coming off their island and south to be seen, and I joke that we are having the world’s smallest family reunion. My mother will have both her kids and all her grandchildren (3!) under one roof for two days – it should be fun! I am looking forward to it, but it seems like there is a lot of scrimmage before leaving….

A1

Feb 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I attended Alice's Science Fair this morning which was interesting. The kids did a great job getting interesting ideas across. Alice decked herself out in her lab coat (from Halloween) and a T-shirt that says "I shall do Science to it" and was ready to rock. It was hard to get the kids to hear and answer questions – they really wanted to spew their spiel and be done. I wanted to poke at the corners of their understanding, being the poking, intrusive, nosy individual that I am. Once they heard me, they did great.

I then went up to see the Canadian horses, and they were WILD! with the wind and the cold. I got Bob to ride bareback for the first time in his life, which he enjoyed, on his favorite enormous Penny, and I rode Kaboose and Ruby. Ruby is a lot like riding a couch – she is so plush and so warm…

Then I came home and did this square, and now we are driving to Brattleboro for Aerin's circus, and Family Circus, and then home and done. Amen.

B3

Feb 4
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Apparently I can start making things on Tuesdays, but I can't finish them, and photograph them and post them. I was working on the previous piece last night, and I was so tired I could hardly sit up and then I broke a needle. I decided that was a message from the universe, so I left it alone til today.

I am encountering all kinds of internal objections. I am worried the colors of the larger areas won't fit together, and that the details won't match across edges. I wish I was more sure of what I wanted from the finished object, and I could relax a little. I know exactly how I'd go about making this image as a single large piece, and I am thinking I should maybe do that too. So I have one piece I am pleased with from the exercise. Then I think I should go back to using an existing image, and then I go around again… it is getting dizzying in here!

B4

Feb 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Well – you can tell what some of it is from this piece!

One commenter (Hi Cathie!) asked if you could see the whole picture, and the answer is not yet. Partly because I was planning on showing it at the end of the month, and partly because at the moment it is cut up into little squares and carefully segregated by whether I have accomplished them or not.

How about if I make Flickr mosaics every week or so, with the finished pieces in their proper place? Then you can see it grow as fast as I can. I can't be fairer than that.

D3

Feb 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This may be one of 4 or 5 squares where nothing much is happening in the foreground. It seems like a hard way to start, but it made me think a little about what I want as a result of the month, so it must have had a purpose!

I realized I wanted more uniformity of effort across the page than I first thought. Probably because I am not interpreting someone else’s art, I still want the end result to be a coherent object. Had I chosen to interpret an existing work piecemeal like this, then letting the techniques rule the day would make a great deal of sense. You could treat it as an exploration of media and techniques so long as the colors were correct for each square, the end result would be a sampler, in a classic sense, and still show the sense of the original work. Since no one but me has seen the original work for this piece, I realized I needed to use more constraints to keep the end result cohesive rather than not.

A-4

Feb 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I spent a chunk of yesterday getting this picture ready to work on for this month. That is, I drew it and colored it (because I realized there was much confusion once the pieces were apart) and labeled the back, and cut it up. For the next couple weeks, I pull a piece from the stack, and make it on my 4″ square pieces. At the end of the month, it all fits together in a mosaic, and looks fabulous.

That is the plan, at any rate.

I had forgotten that I like using paper sometimes. I pulled out my water soluble oil pastels for coloring, and they were verry creamy and lovely on the page.

Maybe I need to keep a sketchbook after all, except that I still feel it bleeds off creative pressure in ways I don’t want like. Rather than recording and feeding the ideas for where I want to go next, spending too much time with paper keeps me from getting to the fabric, and frequently makes me unhappy with the fabric results because I spent too much time envisioning what it was going to look like, instead of pushing the actual object along to see what it could turn into.

Jan 31
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

jude – this one's for you!

I am very pleased with myself over this one. I dreamed it up Friday night, and it looks exactly the way I thought of it.

It is tricky to see in the picture, but it really is nothing but circles held in a grid of stitching. I used two layers of water soluble stabilizer, one that has sticky material to hold things in place and a plain layer over the top to keep the presser foot of the machine from sticking to it. With extra thread in the top and shiny in the bottom, it looks lovely either way up.

I offer also this vision of it against the window…