bee creative

moving through the day

4:44 AM  I can hear the rain hitting the chimney.  Often I wonder what it would be like to live under a tin roof.

6:01  Having my second cup of coffee.  Wondering about wardrobe choices.  Layers are very necessary where I live.  I wonder if the lighter layers for winter could be made to stand alone for summer?

6:56  Just came back in from the letting the chickens out.  The code for the sky scarf for the last three days would be G-G-G.

8:04  This morning I'm being more deliberate about cheese making then I usually am.  I'm following these directions for making Paneer.

9:00 Been working on a Jelly for the last hour. There's a break in the rain so I'm off to the grocery store to get potting soil.

9:55  On my way to the grocery store I saw two cars go by with snow on them.  Talked to one of my brothers and he said he had an inch of snow this morning.  No April Fools joke, that is unless you thought it was spring...

11:23  Just finished planting up the tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, and broccoli.  The indigo isn't up yet.  Maybe I need to reseed?  Nope, need to be patient, I just looked up the germination time and it can take over 32 days!

(I'm particularly pleased with these tomatoes.  They grew from seed that I saved two years ago.  I'll thin these to just one plant in a couple days.) 

2:34  Spent an hour or so outside, some beautiful sun breaks off and on this afternoon.  Made an indigo vat (chemical) to dye a sweater that could use a pick-me-up. 

4:00 Cleared the table.  I'm finding that I need to have an open space available to work if I want to keep working on things during the week.  But I constantly fight a desire to stack things...like books.

6:23  Time to think about what I need for work tomorrow. 

gone fishin'

I recently realized I still draw fish about the way I did when I was a child.  That's me, at about age four or five.  A salmon in one hand and a red snapper in the other. 

unwrapping "connect"

I always come back to connections.  How do things connect in a sustainable way?  Sustainable for me to maintain, for the environment...to sustain who I want to be. 

I stitched my fish down.  The fabric for this project was reclaimed from two shirts that had seen better days.  The fish is made with fabric dyed with leaves from the garden, onion skins, and pomegranate. 

I want to make more fish to be used on the other side of my Following Sea blanket...

My thought is to leave this side pretty much as it is now.  I am going to stitch a few jellyfish on the top, moon jellyfish.  I'm pretty sure these are the jellyfish I remember from my childhood. 

The other side, that's where most of the creatures of the sea will be, under the water.   A community...

the second ring

I played with the color...

 because I can.

I've cut the fish for my "Following Sea" blanket out of white wool.  It's a nice tight weave that I believe will wear well. 

 

I've been remembering a summer day.

We were out on the boat, surrounded by fog.  I remember such stillness.  This is the part I'm not sure I remember directly, or if I just remember my parents telling the story.  My dad was talking on the CB radio telling someone we were going home.  

The story, as my dad tells it, was of someone on another boat wanting to know how we were going to make it happen.  Dad used the fathometer (which measures the depth of water), the compass, nautical charts, and a call to one of the logging camps he could hear running in the distance.  The call was to find out which camp it was so that he had a location to work from. 

Thinking about how we decide where we are...and how we are going to get where we want to go. 

 

 

working on following sea

I was able to get the cat to move off the blanket so I could work on it some today...

Looking down

Looking across.  Trying some things I've learned in Jude's (Spirit Cloth) classes...

This morning as I stitched I remembered childhood friends.  Good memories...

snow day

Today I was able to come home early from work.

I took a walk through the park.

Tried to work on one of my blankets but had a little too much help.

And took the chickens a treat. 

I've had three eggs this week, despite the cold weather.  Barred rocks (the striped chickens) will lay through the winter their first year (edited:  and sometimes other years too).  I was lucky enough to get a piece of plastic over their run so they've had a nice cozy shelter during our snow storm. 

While I was out I noticed one of the last branches of lunaria in the garden.  They are becoming even more transparent as they age. 

I've been thinking about how snow is rain transformed.  The ordinary (for us) made unusual (again, for us).  The snow has caused a lot of frustration for people I know, but as it melts away, I still think it is magical... 

Now it's time to spin white yarn. 

next direction for Following Sea

This morning I looked up from the computer

and found the next direction for Following Sea.

Little fishies.

Remembering: 

Sometime in my childhood I used to sit on the boat and sing to the fish.  I was inviting them to come be caught...

 

 

working with roses, a bit about a blanket and rose hip syrup

Following Sea

The compass rose on my "Following Sea" blanket shifted a bit as I stitched it down.  Not really a surprise to me as I'm working on a velvet base.   And really, this adds truth to what I am doing.  Water is fluid...things will move. 

For the last week I've had it on the table, looking and thinking about what I wanted to do next. Wondering how much I wanted stitching to show and where.

This morning I decided to stitch with heavier thread  around the outside of the compass, as a filler in the center of the rose and along the outsides of the triangles.  I'll use quilting thread to fill in the rest. 

I love how the center now looks like a partial moon. 

I've also been contemplating what will be next.  I think a ring of fish around the compass rose.  Halibut, salmon, and bull heads.  Some of what my family fished for commercially while I was a child and what my brothers and I would catch as we fished from the dock. Maybe some Dungeness crab, to represent my teenage years. 

Or maybe boats...

The other project of the day, rose hip syrup:

 

I have a lot of rose hips in the garden (and a few raspberries  that were eaten before they left the garden), so  it seemed like a good time to try rose hip syrup again.  This time I added fresh ginger from the farmer's market and a stick of cinnamon.  The directions I used are here.  The next project with rose hips will be to make Schnapps. 

I also want to say that I am sorry for any frustration the comment section may cause.  I really value what everyone shares and regret that it is a bit more difficult.  Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to change it to a different setting.  I'm going to stick with this format for a month or so and then I'll decide whether to switch back. 

postcard: the color of water

 

 

Part of making for me is research.  Part of the layers.

What does determine the color of the ocean? 

day twenty-eight: following inspiration

This one was tough for me.  It says something important to me about being creative. 

I've known that I wanted this blanket, "Following Sea," to have a compass.  I had some vague ideas of what I wanted it to look like.  And then yesterday morning as I was brushing my teeth it came to me that I wanted the compass to be the predominate symbol.  My motivation for "Following Sea" is really about direction.  Whether we are traveling with the waves or against them. 

When I think of the fishing boat I spent most of my childhood summers on, one of the images that always comes to mind is the compass that sat in front of the wheel. 

I'm pretty sure that the inspiration to have a large compass in the middle of the blanket really came from a post Acey put up here.    A little medallion floating on a blue background. 

And then Jude posted a picture of this bowl.

And despite knowing better (despite having read Jude's thoughts on beginning and copying!), the first thought that came to mind when I realized what the pattern was...was something along the lines of "now it will look like I'm copying an idea when I start my blanket..." and "maybe I should think of something else." 

And I told myself No.  Continue.

I believe we create in community.  I believe it can be impossible to tease out all the things that inspire us as we create.  I believe that there is a current that creates like thoughts.  Many of us have shared experiences that create similar ideas.  This is important.  This is community.

So my "Following Sea" is about community too.  It's inspired by the company I keep.  By my childhood.  It's built from the skills that I've learned from others, in community.  Even the cloth is from my community.  Most of the velvet on the front came from a friend cleaning out her mother-in-law's stash after she died.  The fabric on the back was a gift from a friend.  The fabric for the compass points mostly a gift from my mother.  I added a bit of my grandfather's chambray shirt for one of the points. 

We live in a community. 

Looking closer:  some of the points face inward, some outward.  With the following sea, against the following sea.  Back and forth.  In and out. 

 

day twenty-seven: down by the bay

Today I went to the beach.

I settled in amongst the rocks and day dreamed for awhile.

I took a bit of a nap until a group of people in kayaks going by woke me up.  And then I read a bit and thought a bit and wrote a bit, until my mind seemed empty and clear.  And then I walked home. 

Somehow being by the sea always brings me right into the moment. 

This morning I was thinking about how it isn't always desirable to travel with a following sea.  Sometimes it is more rewarding, more fun to go against the current...it just depends on perspective. 

 

day twenty-six: blanket making

 

The first project of the day was to add a red star to the building block quilt.  It's actually acquired a new name:  "Made of Stars."

Most stars are considered red dwarfs.  There are also brown dwarfs and blue dwarfs. 

Unfortunately, the color of this red dwarf is off.  Visualize it as a bluer red.

As I was stitching I realized that my favorite way to start a blanket is to sew together larger pieces of fabric to form a large cloth.  So building a blanket with blocks of fabric is really how I'm creating...

It's based on my desire to not cut fabric any smaller than I have to. 

One of my favorite things about making a blanket this way is that I can use it right away, but I can take as long as I want to embellish since it never has to be "done." 

At least one star on this blanket is going to need to be exploding or radiating away from it's center. 

And since just about any blanket/quilt could be started in the same way as "Made of Stars," I pieced together a lot of my blue velvet.  A base for "Following Sea..." 

 

 

 

 

day seventeen: dog days?

This morning I started wondering if I could judge the weather depending on where the dogs slept?  It was a little warmer yesterday though...

And that made me start thinking about the expression "dog days of summer."  We might not get any of those.  I did find my first tomato forming though. 

Worked on my indigo star today and experimented with a few options.  Still not sure what the next step will be, leaning towards sewing a center square on the diagonal. 

And maybe I'll just make more.  The "Sawtooth Star" pattern has always been one of my favorites. 

Also spent some time working on my windflower...

"But this rose, this rose in the sea wind,

Stays,

Stays in its true place,

Flowering out of the dark,

Widening at high noon, face upward..."

Theodore Roethke

day fifteen: following sea

Playing with layers again.

Following sea is a nautical term used to describe a boat traveling in the same direction as the waves. 

It's become an idea I want to explore with fabric and stitch...

There will be a lot of blue.

A little white.

Stars and a compass.

The moon.

Ripples and waves.

And, of course, a traveler.