bee creative

some weekends...

It wasn't that I got distracted this weekend... although yesterday I picked up a copy of Digital Expressions by Susan Tuttle from the library and did spend some extra time on the computer today.  

I didn't even spend the weekend napping or being lazy...

(This blanket was perfectly flat until Lola decided to arrange it to her liking.)  

I just didn't do most of what I planned to do. 

Rather I seemed to spend a lot of time day dreaming and shuffling fabrics back and forth and thinking about whether to cover (the middle of this did not turn out the way I wanted), or to cut.  To use this pattern or that pattern. 

And I did discover that the secret to making good (what I think is good anyway) nut butter is to roast the nuts and not be stingy with adding oil. 

And I did find this really good interview with Bobby McFerrin (he talks about improvisation) which I think applies to all types of creativity.  He talks about the need to just keep going.

I did that. 

 

 

 

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. 

unwrapping "grow"

"Each of us harbors a homeland, a landscape we naturally comprehend.  By understanding the dependability of place, we can anchor ourselves as trees." Terry Tempest Williams

"Having once put his hand into the ground, seeding there what he hopes will outlast him, a man has made a marriage with his place, and if he leaves it his flesh will ache to go back." Wendell Berry

 It always seems that the words I need at any particular time tumble into my life.  I just started reading An Unspoken Hunger by Terry Tempest Williams.  The sentence above are words that make so much sense to me.  Words that I want to linger in my mind.  

I've carried images and pieces of Wendell Berry's poems in my mind for a very long time, the first book of his poetry a gift from one of my favorite teachers in high school. 

Being able to grow, the capacity to change, is an important part of creativity for me... but growth isn't always a good thing. 

Today I planted indigo seed, madder, safflower, calendula, cabbage, broccoli, swiss chard, and onion seeds. 

As one grows larger, the other grows smaller...transformation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

unwrapping "learn"

So much to learn...

When will we have our last snow this year?  Was it today?  Last year it was the first week of April. 

How long will the indigo vat last at 60 degrees Fahrenheit?  This is day three.

How fast can I make a local, sustainable, organic dinner for the Dark Days Challenge?  20 minutes

This is hash browns, scrambled eggs, pear and sorrel from the garden. 

Curiosity can drive creativity...

I'm dyeing roving in the indigo vat for the sky scarf.  Tomorrow I'll plant indigo seed.  Maybe this fall I'll have local organic indigo to dye with? 

 

 

unwrapping "reflection"

Over the next week I want to "unwrap" my last post a bit, starting with "reflect."

 

I'm dyeing swatches with indigo.  As much as I love to experiment, I don't tend to keep track of details.  The details that allow something to be repeated.  Thinking about how I tend to see what I get and then see what makes sense, what might be done from there.  I probably wouldn't be a very good scientist.  But I do love to "think" and "reflect" on what I am doing...blogging is a nice way to make that happen.  Thinking about how contentment and creativity go together...

 

 

one more year

Reflect:

Learn:

Connect:

Grow:

Share:

It's happy birthday day for the blog...

Thank you everyone who comes to visit, who leaves a comment, who has shared some piece of themselves. 

I'm going to make a cowl (this pattern) with the yarn pictured above and I'd like to give it to someone...  I'll draw a name next Sunday, leave a comment if you'd like to have your name "tossed into the hat." 

sky scarf: 6 months

Six months ago I started my sky scarf.  The plan was to knit a bit every day to match the color of the sky for the hour after dawn.  Has that happened?  Not so much the last two months.  Have I stopped working on it? No.

What I've done is changed the approach.

I write down the color I need to knit every day and then spinning yarn one day during the weekend and then catching up with all the knitting at one time.

Here's what I've realized over the last month:  A daily practice needs to fill a certain time frame, for example the time I'm on the bus in the morning, or it needs to be long enough that I can settle into what I'm doing. 

It is easier for me to spend one hour every night working on a project then it is for me to spin yarn for the day and knit two rows, which takes me about ten minutes.  The ten minutes is a teaser, I want to keep going and it makes me sad to stop. 

I'm at 35 inches now, about 3 feet.  My knitting for the first month is about one inch longer than my current month.  I'm spinning thinner yarn now. 

 

Today I will write "B" for my records.  I came home to find the first of the crocus popping up.  If I'd been a little earlier they might even have been open. 

Using things up...

Years ago I wouldn't have been able to imagine not having milk in the house...it was essential.

Last night I decided to use up what milk I had to make one of my favorite treats, pudding.  Topped with the last of the strawberry-honey jam I made last year.  

I am feeling no sense of panic about having used up the milk.

I've been using up some favorite scraps on this project.

I'm feeling no sense of panic that there won't be more favorites.  New favorites come along...and it's good, maybe even necessary?  Thinking about what I consider essential and why. 

moon stories

 

This

 

plus this,

layered together in photoshop elements and then adding an "overlay" filter (found where the opacity is set on the far right hand side of Elements)

equals:

I was eleven or twelve the first time I thought about rings.  I was (and am!) a huge fan of Madeline L'Engle and read A Ring of Endless Light as soon as I discovered it. 

One of the passages quotes a poem by Henry Vaughan, "The World:"

"I saw Eternity the other night/ Like a great rind of pure and endless light/ All calm , as it was bright."

One of the gifts of poetry is how an image, an idea,  can be caught in just a few words.

A few years later I read one of Ursula K Leguin's books and found a passage that just added to my love of circles.  It's rather long so I'm not going to re-type it tonight.  I posted the quote here a few years ago. 

It seems I'm circling back...

 

houses and hammers

This is the project I finished today. 

It's been an unfinished project for about ten years. My original plan was for it to be a rug, but rugs aren't very successful around the dogs.  And then, after visiting here (Art Spirit), it occurred to me that it could be a pillow.  In less than an hour it was done.  (And yes Dad, I know my window and door proportions are off. )

Someday I'd like to build a house.  Maybe like this one.  I have a hammer...

When I needed a hammer, my dad gave me one of my grandfather's.  It's rather hard to take a picture of, but it has a bend in it that somehow my grandfather managed to make.  I value this hammer, not just because it was my grandfather's, but because of the bend.  It represents my paternal grandfather better than just about anything else would for me.  He was a man who valued work, making things, and had a temper. 

One of the projects I've used this hammer for was to tear apart a porch.  Somehow in the process of cleaning up, my hammer went home with someone else.   Before returning it, the person who had taken it home thought he'd be helpful and take the bend out of it for me.   He straightened out the bend and then told his sister, who was my housemate, that he had my hammer.  She told him that the bend was important to me and that I might be upset.   Since he'd already straightened the hammer, he put a bend back in and returned the hammer to me! 

So many years later, I still smile and think of this just about every time I pick up my hammer.  And I value the hammer even more ... 

 

shelter

This is a bit of a ramble. 

I wonder often about creativity.  How it comes to us.  Why some people are considered creative.  Why some people don't consider themselves creative. 

For me it is often about finding connections and curiosity and problem solving. 

For one of the Magic Diaries posts, Jude spoke about rings and connections and making meaning.   As I was listening to the audio clip she had made, I was finishing some of the last rows on my sweater.  It started me thinking about how knitting in the round is all about building ring upon ring, one row at a time until it becomes something more.  Generally some sort of shelter.  And that led me to the understanding that what ultimately draws me to cloth, is that cloth is about giving shelter.  Even perhaps something made for the wall that we might consider decorative might also be a form of insulation.  Or perhaps shelter for our hearts and souls.  Such an important thing, shelter. 

Originally the word or concept I wanted to explore for 2012 was "current" but I'm wondering if "shelter" might be a better direction, a better focus.  Or perhaps they will connect a bit.  We often need shelter from air currents or water currents; electrical currents travel through our homes and our bodies. 

And then...as connections seem to come to me; I read in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard:

"We found other caddisfly cases that day, Sally and I, after I had learned to focus so fine, and I saved one.  It is a hollow cylinder three quarters of an inch long, a little masterpiece of masonry consisting entirely of cemented grains of coarse sand only one layer thick... The caddisfly larva will use any bits it can find to fashion its house...."

Ring after ring...building shelter. 

 

 

a little science

Lots of playing today, no shopping. 

Here's one of my latest dye experiments ( from a container  of leaf dye. )   For this one I made a ball out of dry fabric and placed it in the dye bath.  This is the outside edge.  I love the effect created as fluid wicks up through the fabric.  

After washing and drying this piece, the colors are subtle and hard to capture on the camera, but it does have some fun patterns. 

The more I looked at the fabric, the more intrigued I was by the creases. 

I wondered what if I played a bit with the image in Photoshop...

Sure glad I decided to find out.   The only thing I did here is add a layer called "fresco."  The patterns were created by the wrinkles and the color. 

No Photoshop involved in this one:

This is what happens when a book is put in a sun room that contains slugs (I didn't do it!).  Luckily this was the only damage to the book, on the inside cover.   I suppose slugs could be considered lace makers...

practice makes pie

 

And other things.

I am often asked on the bus if it is hard to learn to knit.  I have to answer that I honestly don't know.  I learned to knit while I was a child.  And to crochet and to make pie. 

(This pie was made with half oat flour and half wheat.  It turned out very well.)

Thinking a lot today about when and how we learn skills. 

Spinning is a new skill for me (about one year).  Spent an hour or so practicing plying this morning.  Oh what fun!

Practice, practice is an important part of it all. 

That, and a willingness to play. 

That's what I was doing with the geranium leaves when I realized they made a rather nice flower. 

P.S.  The photo of Briar and I is ten years old now.  It was taken right after her first bath. 

P.P.S  I think the secret to good pie crust is to use just enough water to hold the crust together, that the water should be cold (and the butter if that is what you are using for a fat), and to not overwork the dough.  I specialize in rustic looking pies rather than re-roll. 

 

sailing by moonlight

equals

I decided I needed to learn how to do something new this week.

So I taught myself how to fold a paper boat.

And I set it to sail on a piece of cloth that was a gift.  One that I had left folded in the sun this summer and then dyed in indigo.

And then I played a bit more.

A good thing to do under the full moon.

feeling dotty

Jude recently reminded me of something I made several years ago.  That reminder inspired me to play with this again.  And really, this time I need to keep going with it, to play more with doodling on dyed fabric. 

So what did I do?  Basically I'm stippling on fabric.  I used a micron brand pen to make a design with dots.  What I find the most fun is to dye my fabric first, with folds...

and then follow the patterns the dye makes to create patterns. 

Fun!

Here's a few samples I've dyed recently.  The greenish-yellow is cotton dyed with goldenrod and the orange-ish fabric is cotton dyed with elderberry leaves. 

Play, play is good!  

finding what is needed

 
This morning I was a bit early for an errand I was running so I walked back to the nearby park and sat between here

 

  And here. 

 

I watched the leaves and tree needles swirl in the water current.  Some rotating in circles, some shooting over the rocks and down the stream.

I sat for awhile and thought for awhile and realized that sometimes what is needed comes unexpectedly.

 I'm thinking about how to "bee creative." 

Change is good.

I'm going to try switching to typepad's "micro blog."  Not sure how this will change...

Might be time for cake. 

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 sixteen: the flow of time

Cool enough today that the dogs huddled together.

Rain, then sun, then thunder, then rain...

Tomorrow the sun is supposed to come back.

By posting (at least!) one image a day this month I've developed more awareness of the flow of my days.

Weekdays are really about time at work, time getting to work, time getting ready for work...good thing I like what I do most days! Weekdays leave me about 2 hours (including some commute time) at the most for making and gardening. 

Weekends...they are another story. Today was a bit of house cleaning, time with family, the farmer's market, sorting fabrics, cooking, and a bit of knitting.

Lots of wonderful things at the farmer's market now.  My favorites today were the strawberries and the cherries.  Some of the strawberries were used for shortcake, the rest are in the dehydrator. 

I have a tub of apple leaves soaking for dye.  The yellow bit of cloth is my first test sample.  Ready to add more fabric. 

I've started to knit another shawl.  This one with yarn I've spun.  Spinning and knitting satisfies something in me that sewing does not.  It has to do with the magic of making cloth.  Sewing seems to be more about rearranging cloth.  I'm still thinking about this...

 

stages

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players:  they have their exits and their entrances..."  Shakespeare

Beginning:  quinoa with apples, dried cranberries and apricots, a touch of honey and some cinnamon.  Yum.

Some stitching while I waited for the dew to dry.

The garden.  The raspberry patch was alive with bees.

Middle.  Taking a break during the hottest part of the day.  I originally checked this book by Carol Deppe out from the library.  I liked it so much that I went and bought a copy.  

Back to the garden.   Pulling weeds.  Poking around to see if the beans are sprouting (they are), planted basil, more lettuce and some sunflowers.  Plotting out where the squash and corn are going to go. 

And then....more stitching.  I wasn't quite sure where the spiral was going to go when I started.  I started thinking about how spirals like this often represent the wind for me.  And so it became a windflower.

 

The end.

(not really) 

 

soft

Lunaria and Bleeding hearts under one of the apple trees.  I think of this as my moon garden.

"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound."  Sara Teasdale

For some reason this poem is what stuck in my mind when I read Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury many, many years ago. 

Today there was a steady drizzle most of the morning.  A good watering after several sunny days. 

I decided to use up some of the last of the bleach I have and do a resist on velvet.  After the bleach is gone I'm going to try to only let the sun bleach out fabrics that I want lightened.  I think these look more like flowers or snowflakes rather than the stars I was aiming for.  Maybe that's okay.  Maybe I'll do some stitching and that will change things...

 

regrouping

 

Saturday brought:

My storage onions were starting to sprout so I decided it was time to transform them a bit.  A few onions went in the dehydrator.  I haven't tried drying onions yet so it's a bit of an experiment.  Another batch was used to make an onion relish.  Some of that will go in the freezer.  This should get me through until there are fresh onions at the farmer's market.

The skins will be used for dye... 

Transforming as a form of regrouping.

I've been wanting to create a cloth that would have a sheep skin type effect.  Today I wanted to find out whether it would work to crochet little protrusions from a knit base and then felt the wool for more texture.  Going to play with this more, it has some possibilities. 

Regrouping strands.

First patch in progress for my building block blanket.  Mending as a form of regrouping...

one page

I tore a page from my journal and did a little bit of a transformation...something that should have been set free a long time ago.  Catalyist:  Jude.