Happy New Year!

this works for me!

rooms with no view

"You need a room with no view so imagination can meet memory in the dark." Annie Dillard

Does anyone else compose or design while doing repetitive physical tasks?

I had to do a lot of errands yesterday and while I was the driving familiar neighborhood roads I spun myself the ground work for a new short story. Once the tasks were completed, I went to the Aquatic Center at Bethesda Park not five minutes from home and swam in the gigantic indoor heated pool for 45 minutes.

My stroke closely resembles a manatee in search of the dessert cart but it still taxes me if I keep at it. After a lap or two, seventy five meters worth each way, I stop, hang on the tile lip and stretch this and that before I turn and head back to the distant shore. A few times I put on the steam and swam like I was hearing the Jaws theme music, impressing myself with the pace I was making. The lithe, young lifeguard piped up "Best lap this morning!"- poor thing, she must be bored to tears. Did I mention that I have the entire pool to myself?It seems like the best kept secret in the county. No one else showed up before noon.

Back and forth, over and over, while other chapters of the story began to make themselves known. I tried to stay away from sharp details, descriptions or feelings, as these can slip frustratingly away with no pen and paper on hand to take notes (note to self - devote that new blank notebook to travel, even poolside) but it was a productive swim.

No visual expressions are coming from this activity so far. It's a pretty mundane setting even with one entire wall  of glass looking out into the Georgia piney weeds and winter sky.  That activity seems to live in a different place in my head but now that I think about it there is a huge wall on one end that begs for a mural...

Ocean Homes

scale

It's been nice to pick up the needle and get back to work on this piece but I constantly have to step back and remind myself to keep the scale of each element in keeping with the overall piece.


It's very easy to get myopic. Already there are two that I have over worked early on and will probably have to pick out.

Helen Frankenthaler died in the night.

She was one of the (many) reasons that I do what I do.

When I was in art school in NY,  I was once present when she was marshaling an exhibition of many enormous canvases, her work, giving orders to a group of assistants ..what went where, etc. It was quite overwhelming and I remember being terrified that my presence would be noticed. I felt like a spy in the camp.

nothing new

so here's something old.

"night wings"from 2005..early work with hand dyed and painted vintage damask, layered and machine stitched, 18"x24", give or take and I'm not exactly sure where it is. That will be a mission for the morning.

Merry Christmas

Our holiday was cozy and comfortable. Close family close, too much good food and wonderful presents shared all round. Cats running wild with too much fun noise and stuff. Happy Holidays everyone.

no more arguments and

no more wandering uncompassed.

I dreamed about the steps to arrive at this last night. It's happened before but this time the results were all I hoped for and more. 

spectacular messes=

While I was out shopping, the dye fairies came and messed about in my kitchen with a 20"x42" piece of Kona PIMA cotton that came my way from the Giftee earlier in the week.

The mess in the kitchen was total but this glory was left hanging from the octopus on the dyedeck in the winter sun.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays, everyone.
Time to get down to business.

WEBTOOLS (for real this time)

(Jeez, don't screw up when you name post here..it seems to be an irrevocable mistake) I was going to write about this yesterday but got derailed, hence the bobble. 


A while back I was web cruising about thinking how I wanted to reorganize and revamp my main website when I came across this nifty little web tool. If you maintain your own web presence even on a minimal basis, I'd say it's worth looking into. My own HTML skills pulled up short several years ago so the "What You See is (Almost) What You Get" format suits me just fine.

I had the devils own time with rearranging and editing it last night but I was ignoring the cardinal rule of coding "Don't screw around with stuff when you are tired!"  So the tool is called SimpleViewer and the basic version is free and I can tell you that I fully intend on paying for the full version...after the holidays are over.

So here is the quick and dirty what I have been up to with needle, thread and cloth going back to late 2009. There are other things, of course, but a trend is revealed. Of course I'll have to go back in and do the dirty work, you know, titles, dates, measurement, prices...all the mundane workaday stuff we all have to trammel with, but for now,  enjoy.

is it wednesday already?

Work continues on the big one...I won't bore you with pictures at this stage but as I expected I'm running into ongoing unhappiness with the need to scale up the stitching and not be so tight. I think I'll have to get used to a different way of handling and stitching on this piece it's so much larger than the previous four. 

Everything is basted in place with nearly invisible single ply rayon thread, the next step is to anchor the tender, raggedy pieces with 12wt cotton  but here is where I get tempted to get microscopic. I think I'm going dump all the 12s out of my basket and stick with the DMC floss and some sail making needles..maybe take off the cheaters too.

I look to the work of Patricia Carrigan to remind me of grace and spontaneity: