a working weekend

Ain't she grand? She makes me want to dress up and drink champagne.  Google's tribute to Alphonse Mucha this morning was inspiring.  I'm quite sure I've lived all those lives and remember all the luscious details.

I'm also inspired by Jude's Rock Star to pull Danube out of the store and put it into my go bag. It has a large piece of that vintage, smooth handed feed sacking all sugar dyed like a Mucha and I'm taking it back for my own greedy self.

I've been hand stitching on the same two large pieces for a long time and feel my design eye shutting down.

So tonight, it's scissors and pins and hopefully the miscreants and malefactors of the world will put off calling me at the office until Monday.

I actually like being at the whine mine on the weekends. The contacts are unique, few and far between and the atmosphere relaxed. All I need are candles and incense and I am the High Priestess of  Business to Business Reporting.

With the full moon coming on strong, I'm probably kidding myself but I like a good jest as well as the next fool in line.

Two things I need for my cube - a good Mucha poster and a map of the world. 

that popular incantation

So here I am whoring the goods.

I'm not a big prayer but having this posted on the bulletin board of my studio mind would be a good idea. So many people have commented on this and continue to visit the image that  I took the Zazzle plunge and put up a few mugs with an updated version of the imprint. The chant remains the same.

The original cloth that inspired and backed up this image fell to terrible abuse and all that remains was a low res image so I picked through a few more recent hand dyes to adorn the mugs.  Oh, the links are down there on the right in the side bar.

the perfect evening

We spent the day stirring the cauldron, sprinkling secret compounds
and muttering incantations. With all the rain and heat, the pool is having it's midseason algae tantrum. I've tried to encourage it here by reminding it of the proper shade of blue.

The evening rolls on perfectly. After days of righteous salad eating, we had a pizza and fresh canolis followed by an evening of stitching as the Braves take a big wet bite out of the Padres. Thunderstorms, please wait until after the game is in the bag.

PS - that's what I get for gloating. It took 12 innings for the Braves to lose...it shoulda poured!

with his permission

It's my only day off this week and I just finished making black-out curtains for the slider to the back deck. The afternoon sun is brutal now that my tent went to the 311 concert at Lakewood and never made it home. Uninspiring at best. Here's some inspiration for you.

This illustration from the Sunday NY Times book review captivated me. The article was amazing unto itself (read here) and made me less concerned about paying my Comcast bill  on time, in full.  The image fairly sizzled for me so I wrote to the artist. Paul Sahre ,  and asked for his permission to interpret it in cloth.

He graciously agreed. I visualized it huge of course, little areas of discharge on midnight navy cotton with glowing rectangles of white satin overlaid. Somehow this fits in with the beach pieces. somehow.

after a pleasant interlude

It's back to the fiber mine!  I found a drawer full of manila envelopes each crammed with a selection of scraps - sets that I made up some time ago and forgot about! Now to get them all photographed and posted. Here's one and here are the rest.

The chunk of silk skirt waistband was a find from a thrift store in Chappaqua from my last spring trip to NY over a year ago. It was vintage 60's by the style and the cloth it self was like a bowl of cream until I got my  hands on it. A wonderful garment but maybe a size 4!
It should be extra interesting if you pick out all the stitching and deconstruct it. Surprise shibori maybe?