Audrey & Peg

This is my friend Peg and her houseguest Audrey. Peg normally doesn't name her livestock beyond "Leg'O" or "Barbie-Q" but Audrey is going to get to grow up and and experience the joys of motherhood, Peg hopes, including feeding her own lambs and not leaving it to Peg and a bottle!

more new things

Sewing sleeves on two new pieces entitles me to take another new wholecloth dyepainting out of the pile and put it up on the wall for consideration. I may be doing some discharging and/or painting to this one to bring out some value changes but not too much. I sure don't want to screw it up. Another large piece, ummm, 40x58 I think. I do know I'm going to be scrounging to build backs for this set and scrambling for coupons to get a break on more batting. Below is something I started based on the table-mopper that I made down in Florida. Someone in this blogring (help me out here readers) posted about having a craving for some texture not to long ago and I was inspired to dig up a set of spotty looking fabrics and make them dance. The huge Frankenstein hand stitching is because the baseball season has started. Someone's Mum would say "It keeps me finger outta me nose."

New work.

Thanks for the concern Peg. It's probably a lack of FIBER! Finally some progress. This is a crummy picture but I'll have to sleeve it before I can get a good shot outside. I put the pedal to the metal this morning about 7:30 and, with a break for a little yard work, got the stitching finished after the game. Don't know what to call it yet but it's big, 60"x39", and by a miracle of serendipity, the backing fabric is the exact same color as the lavender I dye-painted on the front. I started this at Focus On Fiber last month and have been stalling like mad about finishing it. Why? Didn't want to screw it up. This was the first time I ever sketched out how I wanted the stitching to go before sitting down at the machine.

Once upon a time I had something to say...

From 2005 "In response to Gabrielle's question "What drives you to create....to make art...to show your inner self or just play?" I offer this. The manipulation of light and texture until that silent, inner bell tolls is an act of anticipation that feeds a need for making order of these elements according to the inner eye. The hope that this personal order will have a degree of universal appeal drives one to hold up the finished work and say "Behold - a piece of what makes me unique". This hope is a secondary type of anticipation often tinged with fear. Those lucky, brave or smart enough to skip this second anticipation will reap the best of what a creative drive can give us. Total self-satisfaction." At the moment, the bell is silent, the eye is blind and I have no feelings about it.

While you aren't watching

Voodoo and Jinx are almost the same age having come into our household within a month of each other almost nine years ago. Daily, we have to break up noisy arguments that stem from Voodoo trying to make an impression on the ladies, never mind that he hasn't had the goods to deliver since he was old enough for the operation. THIS is what I came upon last night. I though Jinx was going to ask me for a cigarette.