bee creative

life boats

Back to them again...

built from poetry.

And

Walnut ink and tea bags.

I am thinking one a day for the next year. 

Imagine what it would be like to set them free...

a flotilla.

in the hand

The knitting:

Local hand spun yarn done by someone who is actually a neighbor. It's sold at a yarn shop as a scholarship fundraiser for teens to learn to spin.

I am adding more brown hand spun yarn that I found at a thrift store and will add some of my own hand spun yarn. 

It will be a mostly brown shawl with a bit of pink on the ends and in the middle...at least that is the plan at the moment. 

The spinning:

Thank you so much Mo for reminding me of Renata Hiller's video...

revise, imagine

This weekend...some sewing, doodling, knitting (to be shared later).

I think this was a stitch page from last year that I started and then never went any further with. 

I trimmed the top part off and then folded it over. 

The moon face was done with a penny and dyed with black bean water several years ago.  The color has held well but it hasn't been in any light or been washed. 

Still in progress.

While listening to a online presentation this weekend (training hours for work), I doodled on the bottom half of the page.

Originally I thought it would be a flower or a nest but it became something more. Maybe the dragon that Marti thought the chicken-bird might become?

I didn't realize it until afterward but there is definitely a Jude influence with all the eyes.

Here is the dragon I did intend to make...at least as soon as he made himself known. 

 

still here

Oops... a little more time has passed than I intended. 

I think mostly because time is just flowing past for me right now...

Last night I had dinner with Hazel and we talked about how 15 minutes is a manageable time for making.

This is my latest stitch book page (blue fabric from Jude, yellow is marigold dyed). 

Something like this is easy to work on a little bit at a time.

Strangely enough, so is this (still in progress).

I have been taking a class from Christina Romeo (Carla Sonheim Presents). It is a process that lends itself easily to 15 minutes or so and is lots of fun. 

Both of these projects are also great for larger periods of time when everything settles into place and it's easy to be in the moment making.

This all has me thinking about making/art as a process of healing and mending our own frayed edges. 

There are signs of spring in the garden, this also brings joy.

As of this month I have been blogging for 19 years.  I am pretty sure that I have it in me to keep going. 

Writing and sharing with others is different than writing for yourself in a journal.

Keep noticing the joy in the world.

 

practice transformation

On Thursday I had some time so I made inks, lake pigments (still in the process of finishing them) and a few rust experiments.  All based on onion skins or the remains.

*

Thinking of onions.  

Layered and complex.  

Raw, they might make you cry.  

Cooked, they are sweet and subtle. 

*

One bottle above is an ink made with onion skin and water. It's the base for the other four, each including a different modifier to shift the color.

One of the lake pigments. 

A bright spot.

I also layered in some of the onion skins with fabric to make rust prints.

The hearts you might find are deliberate, not the product of chance.

 

This month I am reading See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur.

A bit to consider from a podcast conversation between Kaur and Brene Brown: 

“I realized that we’re co-creating culture every second with every breath we take, every word we say, every choice we make and that it’s possible to practice the world that we want in the spaces between us.” Valarie Kaur

One of the things that I am been thinking about is the need to practice making decisions; for both adults and children.  That this is a muscle that we need to exercise in small ways so that when the big decisions come we won't freeze. 

How do we practice? 

Within the process of making and being creative are so many opportunities to make decisions. 

The figure above was originally the back of a project.  I decided that I liked it better and so it become the side that would show. 

I was going to stitch the features of a face in but I've decided to leave it empty, without expression.

 

Two On Being conversations that I have revisited recently:

Jane Hirshfield

Ann Hamilton

I know I have quoted this before but again...

And there’s so many forms for making.... I love reading the dictionary. And the Oxford English Dictionary has I don’t know many pages devoted to “to make,” and “making,” and all of its possibilities. And I think that’s like making — it’s the same as making a list of all the materials that exist in the world that you might transform in some way. It’s like, if you make that list and you take the list of every — all the possibilities of what “making” is, that can just keep you busy forever.  Ann Hamilton

resiliency

Today...just at sunrise, snow.

It's gone now but there will probably be more over the next few days.

And then there were two zoom calls. 

The first a wrap up for the rust mark making class with Alice Fox.

I tried stitching a face into this one but didn't like it and pulled it out. 

I love it like this. 

A face and heart imagined. 

The mind making meaning and telling me a story. 

While I had things out on the table I realized the rust marks (iron and tannin), created a color similar to the mussel shell pigment I made (on the right). 

Another perspective.  The color inside the hole is mussel pigment and the top is some of the paper I made with a rust mark.  I tore the paper in the process of making. 

It's still beautiful and full of potential.

I love that the marks are a chemical reaction and are about change. 

That they contain iron, something that each of us carries within our bodies. 

That iron is a building material.

That stars contain iron.

All this reminds me of Ada Limon's poem, "In Praise of Mystery."

 

The second zoom call was for the book discussion on  Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler) and A Paradise Built in Hell (Rebecca Solnit) hosted by the Studio for Playful Inquiry.

It was a wonderful conversation about resilience (the focus for the month) and how it might show up in our lives...in particular for this group, while working with children.

Throughout the afternoon I kept thinking about the ways that those of us who explore creativity practice resilience.  The need to experiment and consider multiple ways of doing things.  The knowledge that not all things work and that we might have to try again; problem solving.

layered image

That we need to create meaning. 

That we are storytellers...

 

making faces

Okay, this is the year that I join in with Ann Wood's 100 day stitch book project.   (15 minutes of stitching a day, a good lunch break project)

There have been a few false starts with pages that just made me think why am I doing this?  It's the purpose thing that trips me up frequently.

And then I received an email that the Pale Rook doll making class that I took last year is open again.  I made one doll and then was distracted by so many things. 

I still love the idea of making dolls and know this is a direction that I am heading. 

(Dolls as characters in stories, dolls as stories.)

And that's when I had an "ah-ha" moment...each page of the stitch book could be a practice page for faces. 

That idea came Carla Sonheim's class, Creative Lab (2024).

 

(Not done, I want to do more with the hair.)

This feels good, not just as a project, but also the convergence of ideas and learning from different sources. 

I want to keep exploring, what connections can I make between all the things that interest me?  How can they come together? 

I think the hat needs a tassel and that I need to add eye lashes.

All the clothing fabric is from Deb Lacativa and the face fabric I dyed with something plant based. The background for the top page was done locally and the bottom background was dyed in a not so happy indigo vat. 

Jude is very much a part of what I've done here too...

 

community and cloth

This year I decided to join The Studio for Playful Inquiry.  Honestly, with a name like that, how could I not? Two of my favorite words roll around in that title, play and curiosity.

It's going to show up here I am sure, so a little background...

There are classes on offer to support those who work with children (they hosted a class I took this summer), but other things too...including the approach of being a study group and a community to explore some big ideas. It seems like something I have deeply needed in relation to my work.

This month the conversation is about resilience, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell.  I am not reading Parable again but am reading Solnit.  It's a hard read right now given the news...

Resiliency is something that I have considered important for a long time.

I went back to listen to an "On Being" conversation with Andrew Zolli.  There is so much that rings true in this conversation including:

"I think the first premise is all things fail. And in fact not only do all things fail, but failure is intrinsic, healthy, normal, and necessary to most complex systems.

Then the question is, if that’s true, how can we weather such failures? And a big part of that story is about emboldening the local. Because we’ve so tightly connected all of these systems, it’s important that we have redundancy. It’s important that we have spare capacity. It’s important that we have the right kinds of social networks, so that we can share with each other. It’s important that we have a shared wisdom, a body of knowledge that helps us be more locally self-reliant."

When I think of the best of social media, blogging, or however we reach out on the internet...I think of the ability to share knowledge and support.  The global community has so much knowledge and experience collectively. 

Resiliency is part of why I make things, on both a practical and emotional level.

It's part of my "Good Enough" quilt for sure...looking at the blocks yesterday morning I thought about how they lean into each other. 

a wishing star, threadcrumbs from Jude

I also thought about where the fabric came from and the community it represents. 

Fabric gifted from my grandmother and aunt, Jude, Grace, Hazel, Nancy, and my mother.  Fabrics from the stash that are still crisp and fabrics from worn clothing or other blankets, soft and supple. 

There is also so much emotional energy from the thoughts and support that came from so many others throughout its making beginning during Covid. Every time I look at the skinniest strips I think of Liz.

Here's another part of the conversation with Zolli:

"There’s no way we can steer around these storms; we had better build a better boat."

Most of the back of the quilt is made up of the orange fabric with boats. I knew it was perfect when I found it.

Thinking about life boats again and that we need more blankets.

Thinking it's too early for blossoms like this on this blueberry plant and that it is a good thing I have other varieties.

 

 

 

dots and holes and beasts

Today I finally cut up a quilt I had made and that Lola had torn a lot of holes in with her nesting habit. I miss her, but not how hard she was on blankets.

All the pieces will be recycled into other things, including this slightly tattered beast I made in one of Jude's classes.  

There is help; Timber thinks it's great fun to flop right where I am cutting. 

I keep telling him it's not helpful and probably dangerous.

I've also been playing with the ink made with the Douglas Fir cones.

The dot on the left is the Doug fir, the middle Doug Fir mixed with iron water and the one on the right Doug Fir with iron water dropped in the middle.

And then walnut and iron because it was so much fun to play.

Might be the eye of a beast? 

rings

I like to put my coffee cup down on pieces of paper to see what will happen.

It was interesting how this pen bled so I was a little more deliberate and made some rings.

The brown is walnut ink and the black iron/oak gall. 

It could look different in the morning.