fiber frenzy

The reason behind this frenzy of organizational activity, you ask? Aside from not being able to turn around or find anything, A gift! A boon!

A box arrived the other day with 33 pounds of fibrous glory inside - a trove of premium commercial cotton prints from my dear St.A.

She buys the cloth for the love of it and commands me to be creative...mission accepted my friend!

I hardly know where to start but the beautiful collections from Japan are already set aside  in the "do not touch...yet" pile and you know I'll have to start pulling the strings on those little bundles of batik fat quarters just to see what I have been missing.

I've covered the shelves with bits and lengths of heavy vinyl wallpaper that was rescued from some restaurant renovation years ago. It's interesting stuff but I never had enough of it to make sense of the pattern.  So very functional - I came close to chucking the whole many times and now I'm so glad I didn't.

The floor! the floor! I can see it! a beautiful dark navy blue carpeting..badly in need of a thorough vacuuming!

That dark pile in the foreground is the cloth I dyed yesterday..but for one span of ocean blue, all murky and in need of further work.

Time to test drive that new FM foot that arrived the other day.

a good day's work before noon

TADA!  tomorrow I'll cover the wood with a layer of this slickey restaurant wallpaper that fell into my clutches and then get everything loaded back up..
OR I could hang out the Opium Den sign and rent out the shelves to four dragon-chasers...just close the doors and turn off the lights. Can you tell by the crazy that it's FRIDAY!?!!

I have a squadron of flags stewing in the dye - everything bagged up on black plastic to take advantage of the sun's heat and earlier, buzzed around a the print joint this morning and took about 20 Fabulous (if I must say so myself) prints of the pieces that just came home from the latest show..I'll scan a few and drop them into the store later.

Now, it's off to the Whine & CYA mine for the afternoon.

the Pomodoro technique

When I read Robert Genn's newsletter this morning I realized that I have been doing my own version of the Pomodoro time management technique all week, without the windup tomato time.

The studio has been in turmoil as I am finally getting proper shelves set into the closet. Everything that was stacked so precariously  (and impractically) in the closet is piled all over the studio with barely a footpath for my Goodman to work.  It will be finished today!

My own dayjob has had me on early starts all week leaving precious little time for anything else. The weather has been glorious all week so I have been grabbing the River basket and skipping out with this piece to the park. I make camp at a picnic table by the pond and, with no phone calls, no music, no books on Ipod, no TV in the background - just focusing on stitching for a full hour. Why does that small chunk of time seem so remarkable?  When did I let my day get eaten up by stuff that doesn't pay off??

This mornings precious free time is going to a quick  and dirty dye session - today the temps are supposed to scratch at 78 but will plunge to the low sixties tomorrow. This is really it and I want it for my own.

not robot-rabbit buggery!

A good friend has reminded me to keep pushing my art - reaching beyond my comfort zone. Thanks for the prod St. A.

Here's another of the three pieces that I had to keep under wraps all these months.

 "Jazz Takes Over" is 41x40  and was the middle piece in a progression of work moving from all hand stitched to completely machine stitched. This piece is the crossover or hybrid and a jumping off point for all of the things I have in progress right now. It was a lot of fun in the making. This post title was one suggestion from my in-house critic for a title..it was hard to deny him.

detail