Taken By the Night continued

Elizabeth Barton's recent post about avoiding cliches made me focus on why I have not been doing any hand work for a while now. She actually had me sketching faces on paper last night!

The word "twee" kept coming to mind (and gagging me) as I tried one small composition after the next, each time with some literal objective in mind. Finally, I went back to my established way of composing - gathering small bits of cloth that work well together, color and textures, and then stirring the two dimensional pot until a  design emerges.
When something recognizable emerges, like figures, then I start to smell trouble. What is the story? How much to show? How much to leave in the wind? How far into cartoon do I want to dive.

At this point I have to rely on my admittedly limited stitch repertoire to define and refine. Faces are particularly deadly as they usually say too much. I prefer faces to be incongruous, contrary even, to what seems to be going on.
I don't want to to spell it out for the viewer.

Sometimes there are elements that have to be weeded out or brought into focus in an unexpected manner.

This piece continues to compel me.

sunday stitchin

Sweetie was annoyed that I abandoned our afternoon nap in favor of other things like bothering her with the camera and stitching in the afternoon sun for the scant hour and change that it  comes through the bedroom slider on the back of the house. If I'm ready early enough I can catch the morning sun in the studio now that the leaves are mostly off the trees in the front of the house.

sweater days

Brrrr. It's a sweater day in Georgia looking as if it could snow any minute. Spending this day chillin', stitching and watching old movies on the tiny TV. (and the occasional Lexulous move)
 Later there will be home made pizza and
"The Town" on the big screen.

just a little comfort

Waaay back when (note the date on the site!)  I did an entire series of digital images that used scans of commercial fabrics as fills. I was learning several graphic programs and teaching myself to write HTML code at the same time.

Here's one of my first websites..I did run right back to a comfort zone when I made my own gallery.

So to get out of the fiber doldrums, I did that little oil pastel and after staring at it for a while now and being pleased with the design, I'm going to try to take it back to the cloth..round and round we go!

but sometimes all we want is just a little quick  comfort.

Winter Banner

I had to take the Ducky banner down. Daily reminders of the pool at this time of year just make me sad.  Right now this looks like the back reaches of a primeval   swamp. There could even be alligators in there. You don't want to see it now.