Dec 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

finished last night, overwhelmed by tiredness.

Dec 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

white velvet on stringy black/grey background stitched with red

Today was the last class for the Quilt Journaling class. I had a good time with the class. Part of what I liked best was seeing what different people were doing and being inspired by their work. That is the same thing I love about the internets and other people’s blogs.

I am working on getting some of these people signed on for some small ongoing group. I want regular meetings, critiques, brainstorming and laughing. I also want other people to play with. I like responding to challenges, part of why I signed on for SharonB’s Next Step Challenge for next year. We’ll see who I can rope into this. Online members would be welcome as well (jude? Anyone else? We’ll talk)

I have some journal pages to show, but they’ll have to wait.

Dec 7
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Friday’s card.

Nice lunch with my mum. She tipped over on my sidewalk and I haven’t heard yet if she broke her wrist. I hope not. I feel hideously guilty for breaking her – again – we have a bad track record for ankles.

solid hour and a half of laughing at the Capitol Steps, political commentary at every one’s expense. And there is such a lot to mock… My abs feel like I did sit-ups for half an hour. I laughed til I gasped.

Dec 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was noticing how many different patterns came from cutting into a shape and flipping the cut shape out. Patchy white silk background, black wool square with elaborations.

Wicked was fun. I was admiring a Dale Chihuly chandelier and fell head first over a granite bollard, smacked my knuckles, dropped my purse, flew out of my shoes. It was pretty dramatic. I’m OK now, but still startled at the reaction I got from falling. I think I might need some martial arts training to help me fall better.

Al says he learned two fun things about Wicked. One is that the author (Gregory Maguire) named the protagonist Elphaba after LFB or L Frank Baum. The best one is that the first 7 notes of the song Unlimited are the same as Over the Rainbow. It is a musical joke from Stephen Schwartz, in honor of the Oz most of us grew up watching. Seven notes because eight notes is copyright infringement. The rhythm is different, but the notes are the same.

Dec 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was thinking of how branches seem to hover in front of deep woods, and trying to get at that feeling. The embroidery disappears into the grays, making me think I need to do something brighter for the tree or something quieter for the grays of the woods.

Went to the barn, but couldn’t get up the driveway, so I hiked in and cleaned stalls and emptied and refilled water buckets. She has electric water buckets. They have heaters in the base, and they keep the water from freezing. I am smitten with the theory and practice of electric water buckets; it is such an improvement over hammers to remove ice.

We are all headed to Alice’s Wicked tonight. She isn’t in it, we are just making up for missing it in NYC. She said Al and Aerin could come too. So they are. Aerin wants to actually see what is happening onstage, since for her Wicked we were in the back row of the topmost balcony. Al just remembers Pippin with pleasure and wants to see what Stephen Schwatrz has been up to lately.

Dec 4
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Yesterday’s, delayed on account of adverse weather conditions at sea.

Dec 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was pleased with this one until I saw it next to the one from yesterday, and realized how similar they are. I was trying to get a more raggedy edge on the light blue under the greeny-blue silk. I rubbed and scruffled it pretty hard with a stiff brush, but it does not ravel as sweetly as the silk chiffon layer on the Last Brown Postcard.  I need some more different colors of silk chiffon, even if it is a giant pain to sew with.

Cathy and I went down to Osgoods this afternoon, amid all the pre-storm barking (Ah! Ah! snow! snow! bark! bark! – peeps, it is New England in Winter. Duh.) I needed swatches of white stretchy material for a commissioned costume. The performer wants a white body suit to dye in an ombre pattern, and three mutually exclusive choices in sleeves, shoulders and back. So we’ll figure it all out, and with any luck she will be both covered and thrilled.

We stopped at B&N on the way home for tea and some books. I got Terry Pratchett, filling in holes in our collection. She was finding Christmas presents in a very efficient way. We sat in the craft department for a while looking at things. There are a lot of knitting books. There are a lot of beginning sewing books. There are a lot of "don’t be scared, it isn’t that hard" books. There were very few that were interesting enough to bring home. Mostly I need to make things, use stuff up, practice techniques I have only read about, not bring home any more eye candy. I can sit and read the eye candy and then leave it there. That is my new plan, anyhow.

Dec 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Today is postcard number 301 and the photo to record it for posterity was 3001 (on that particular camera), which seems like a nice piece of synchronicity. I meant to mention three hundred postcards yesterday but it slipped my mind in the delight of dinner not cooked by me.

My thought for December was to work with black and white, in much the same way I managed to explore brown for a month. Except I think of December as a brilliant month rather than drab. So I thought “black and white and red all over” which seems to have morphed into “black and white and one other color”. I like the jolt the color gives the black and white background.

Everything looks like art when photographed in black and white. I kept my main camera loaded with monochrome film for a decade, until I couldn’t easily get it processed anymore. I know that I could do darkroom things, but it isn’t my sport. Fabric is my sport. Now I can desaturate any picture in Photoshop and presto! I haven’t experimented enough to decide if that will work as well.

I kinda secretly sorta miss the warmth of the brown. Clearly I came to some kind of agreement with it.

Nov 30
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Then end of "coming to grips with brown" month. I asked Alice what to do, and she suggested a big brown spirally thing. She was right.

Great dinner with Andy (temporarily home from England) and a crowd of friends and relations. It felt like Thanksgiving again. He made me sit and watch the food prep, and visit. Watching people cook felt really different. Usually that is me stooging around in a greater or lesser swivet, getting things ready to eat, shouting at people to come and get clean and sit down. Instead I ate cheese and crackers and sipped a glass of wine and caught up with people I hadn’t seen for most of a year. Awesome. thank you, very much Andy.

New theme tomorrow.

Nov 29
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I started by sticking down random patches with a spiral stitch from my fancy sewing machine. I liked it, all loose and ruffly, but I thought it needed more stitching, so I stitched over the top with another fancy stitch and lighter thread. It pulled the top together, but it flattened it out more than I meant to, both physically sewing down the edges and visually with a layer of light thread, and instead of having a postcard I had a really nice background. humph. So I added the little flags, with another fancy stitch, and added a great little copper doodad at the end. And now it is a postcard again.

Interesting.