Sept 10
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Here is the last of the family portraits in shades of blue. I realized I wanted to cut out from the right side fabric that had already had fusible applied to the back. In a fit of brilliance, I printed the black and white image I wanted onto freezer paper, on the paper side, and ironed it to the fabric. Then I could iron fusible to the other side and cut out exactly the image I wanted with no flipping it around or going backwards. I got braver as I went along, with tiny lines and two colors. I like the set of four together. I wonder if more shades are possible.

For today I spent my time spinning. I think that comes from Jamaica, where someone is not attaining much forward motion, for all the effort they are putting into it. Kate sympathized that it was much like the unexpected nap of the young child. It is very difficult to decide what to do, how best to use your time, when faced with a nap of unknown length. It took a while to learn to chunk life into nap sized pieces. Of course it all fell apart when they stopped napping, but school started eventually and … well, you all know this I am sure.

Mostly what I did was swat things on my to-do list. I showed Al my list, a half sheet of paper scribbled and about half crossed out, and he said "oh. overhead." He frequently says "half life is overhead" by which he means that for any fun thing you do, you spend at least the same amount of time preparing for it and picking up after it. I think it comes from grant writing, when the university took 50% off the top of whatever you were awarded for overhead. Fifty percent to cover the basics; turning on the heat, the electricity, keeping it clean, all under overhead. So to speak.

So maybe I should think of today as spent on overhead. I missed the fun part though. Have to make up for that tomorrow.

Sept 8
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

yesterday’s postcard, couldn’t post on account of thunderstorms

Sept 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

same dude, new experiment

I am quite chuffed about figuring out how to make this an easier way. Or at least, easier than the first three ways I thought about.

Sept 5
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

All I could think of while I was embroidering his lovely curly beard was a piece of a book in progress from Jenny Crusie and two friends over here, in which a god becomes manifest and comes to roost in my favorite heroine’s kitchen. Oh, and their dogs talk to them. If you would prefer to start at the beginning, you might begin with the blog and follow your nose.

I saw him on my trip to NYC earlier this year, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And like we haven’t got enough eyes this week, here are some with new, purple specs….

And now, I’m going to have a beer, and not sew.

Sep 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I’m moderately sure he’s a monk.

Sep 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Change of month, change of theme, change of orientation to go with it all.

faces

Could you have guessed? Alice chose.

He does look kind of wild. Kind of like my brother, in fact (it’s the beard). He watched over the hot springs at Bath, the most glorious (and slightly cross-eyed) Helios I’ve seen for a while. I embossed him on metal shim, and stuck him to the postcard with fusible and stitching. I’m still getting the hang of stitching on metal. It won’t carry a lot of holes gracefully – it just tears – so I have to stitch slower and move farther to keep enough metal in place to hold things together.

hmmmm –

I haven’t a clue what I am doing for postcards this month. I have been doing some heavy duty design and thinking about the journal pages, I have backgrounds for the next several months, up through November, and probably themes for them as well. I have a theme for November, to go with the journal pages for November. I have journal page concepts or designs for July, Aug and September.

My contenders for the moment are harvest, clothes or self-portraits. I suppose if self portraits are one option then faces (in general) might be another option.

Aug 30 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

So I was on a roll.

I wanted to color in a coloring book. I made a black and white picture of one of my sunflowers. It was such fun I made a bunch more. Then I colored them in. I have five of these buggers beauties, all related, all different, making up for the weekend I went off and left you with no postcards, making up for the fact that tomorrow I am working on nothing but journal pages (because I am 4 months behind and starting to freak!) and if I have a spare moment I might add some thread to them but really, they are pretty sweet as it.

find the rest of them here, and here and here and here.

And in the sweet but entirely bizarre department, I offer these:


bringing new meaning to the words Chocolate Chips. Not that those words need a new meaning, by any stretch. Really. Perfectly good words, just the way they are… But these are, well, odd. They are more related to the Mexican mole sauce, with cocoa and chipotles, than they are to any kind of chocolate wafer I was imagining. The bag says they’d be good with peanut butter and bananas. I’ll report back.

Aug 22
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I’m wondering how much postcard aggravation was due to feeling profoundly stressed for time. I have more time to experiment these last couple days, and I feel much happier about the results.

For this one I ironed the stencil on the back of the fabric and made a rubbing of it. Twice. The dark green and lighter green dye sticks (from Pentel I think) soak into the fabric when ironed. I liked starting with the bright fabric and darkening the edges.

So – how much cheating is it if I have a couple postcards mostly made for the couple days I’ll be gone? Not quite completed, but a series of ideas ready to finish and photograph on the road. My game, my rules, I know, but I’m just polling.

Aug 21
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I am pleased with this one. Ink on white fabric makes for colors behaving the way I expect, as well as producing clearer, prettier colors. This is more important to me for sunflowers than for murkier subjects. The single layer of printed fabric was not enough, so I fused it to some yellow/orange batik, and made all the petals 3D – they are stitched down the center but free to fold as needed. The center is more of the same batik, dyed brown with Dynaflow. I like this version best so far, although I am kind of missing the glitter of the lumiere paints.