bee creative

#3 rethinking plus some other things

Originally I was thinking..."anything for ten minutes" but I have decided to narrow it down a bit.  Ten minutes of painting, doodling, collage or drawing; preferably with the inks or paints I've made.

I want to play.

 

Cooking:  I do still want to post about food every Sunday though... that's another goal.

I've been craving polenta.  I use my stockpot and a mixing bowl to make a double boiler which makes cooking easy. 

Then I fried it in olive oil until it was crisp and ate it with the last of the purple sprouting broccoli I had from the last farmer's market.  Plus onions, parmesan and a bit of tomato sauce.  So good!

Reading:  I've finished reading Ways of Being by James Bridle.  A couple of the chapters get a little technical, but overall it's full of interesting stories and thought provoking ideas. He covers a lot and I am still processing what I think about it all.

Next up on the reading/listening pile is Foxfire, Wolfskin and other tales of Shape Shifting Women by Sharon Blackie. She's a new to me author that I stumbled upon while listening podcasts. The podcast is here at Knitted Heart and her  web site is here.  There is a beautiful video on the home page that Marti found. Sharon Blackie has written a lot on mythology, in particular women in mythology. 

Learning: what I want to learn this year, basket making and paper making.

I am sure there will be other things too...

 

on the table

I've spent a lot of the weekend rearranging things...

When I paused to look at what was stacked on my table I had to shake my head...pigment making supplies and pigments, dye supplies, the baby indigo vat, sewing projects, paper projects, books, drawing supplies, a water color set, yarn, gifts from friends, the occasional cat and an iron that I rarely use.

So many things that I am interested in. 

So many things that I am or want to be.

And a kind of chaos.

Looking closer,

There was also lunch:

Toppings: pears, smoked cheese, walnuts and radicchio.

And dye experiments.

The fabric on the left and middle were dyed in the baby vat, two dips for the cotton and one dip for the wool.  The wool on the right was dyed in the ice water dye bath. 

And that brings me to my reading...

One of the concepts that I find so validating in  Ways of Being is the idea that it isn't about either/or.  On a personal, small level for me, there is comfort in all the examples that Bridle gives. When I look at my table there is very little either/or. There are possibilities.  Why identify as one kind of maker?

And then there is a discussion on the importance of randomness. I am thinking about how that relates to creativity, how we define creativity. 

More thinking...in this week's newsletter Krista Tippet links to a podcast by Kevin Kelly.  The discussion is about technology, what it is and how it is shaping our world.  It's a great conversation, I especially like this:

So we have this world where, basically, answers have become cheap and ubiquitous and pervasive, and they’re everywhere, and so what’s much scarcer are good questions. And good questions are kind of like a discovery. They’re kind of like a way of exploring “what if?”

What if... :)

books and soup

Woke up to just a bit of snow....

Still more cold weather in the forecast.

Soup weather:  squash + water + tomato chutney topped with paneer and pumpkin seeds cooked in olive oil and paprika spice mix.

I finished reading another chapter of Ways of Being. One of the things I've loved about the pigment class I took was that there were reading materials.  At least two books mentioned in Ways of Being were also recommended reading for the class (Braiding Sweetgrass and Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta). 

And then, another connection... he uses a short story by Ursula Le Guin as an example, one that I was familiar with.  I pulled out my old yellow paged copy of The Compass Rose, bought when I was probably 13 or 14, read the story and remembered yet again why I love Ursula Le Guin's writing so much...

"The first geolinguist, who, ignoring the delicate, transient lyrics of the lichen, will read beneath it the still less communicative, still more passive, wholly atemporal, cold, volcanic poetry of the rocks:  each one a word spoken, how long ago, by the earth itself, in the immense solitude, the immenser community, of space."  From The Author of the Acacia Seeds

citizen scientists

After being intrigued by Nancy's post mentioning the blue hour, I've been taking some pictures of the sky just before dawn. 

I first discovered the term citizen scientist (more information about this here) when I was reading A Sideways Look at Clouds, found it again in Ways of Being, and then had someone mention the term in the pigment class I've been taking.

The term reminds me of a book I didn't read but was intrigued by and plan to read someday, The Scientist in the Crib by Alison Gopnik, Andrew M. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl.

The scientific method:  Observe, research, hypothesize, test, analyze, and report.

The last instructional/discussion group meeting for my pigment class was last night.  While many of these things can be done without knowing the science, there is so much science involved.

It makes me think of the layer of science that is part of all that we do as humans, of how we experience the world and participate in life.

Field notes:  27 F/17 with the windchill.  Winds NNE 11 MPH, gusts to 20.  Clear skies.

 

science

From the farmer's market today...romanesco. 

One of the most amazing vegetables.

It's a fractal.

Where my indigo that was fermenting sat for a couple weeks. 

It left a footprint.

Ice-dyed fabric that I bought, and that they dyed, at a local yarn/fabric store (Spincycle). 

I want to try this... of course I do.

Definition of science in Ways of Being by James Brindle, "A guide to thinking, not a thought: an endless process of becoming."

 

good reading weather, good stitching weather

Gusty and wet.

It seems like the leaves are falling all in one storm.

Tomorrow I will need to get out and pick the last of the tomatoes...we are supposed to be below freezing for a few nights next week.  Snow is still in the forecast, mostly mixed with rain.

It's really good weather for reading, knitting or stitching.

Still working on the hem on the brown shirt I started last weekend.

 

A few weeks ago I was thinking about this book, read many years ago after a recommendation from Jude, and ordered a copy. It arrived today and is as beautiful as remembered.

I am just about done reading Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Talents.  I can't read it at night because it is too disturbing.  While both Parable of the Sower (finished about a month ago) and Parable of the Talents are well written books, they fall in the category of "I am glad I read them and...." What is truly terrifying is that these are considered Science Fiction. 

And I have just started reading Ways of Being by James Bridle, as a recommendation from the On Being newsletter.  It's about intelligence, human and "more than human" and so far is an interesting book.

Reading multiple books at the same time is normal for me.  This morning's newsletter from Austin Kleon shared some advice from Ray Bradbury.  The advice is to read one short story, one poem and one essay every day. 

I just might have to try this, or a version of it....maybe a new challenge?

 

in a way these are all field notes

Yesterday's lunch break...cloud watching.

It feels like fall. 

It feels good, cooler. Just a little rain this morning.

The yellow shirt went into the walnut vat.  Yellow from the home garden, walnuts from the work garden.

A more wearable color. 

I am stitching up the sides now and considering a touch of the yellow somewhere.

Two new books:  Lab Girl by Hope Jahren and Wild Textiles by Alice Fox.

(How many books can I read at one time?)

Feedback Friday's presentation today was by Alice Fox.  For the first time I decided to watch it in "real time."  It was a great presentation and I have plans!  Tomorrow I am going to gather bindweed to save for a basket.  For today, I twined a flyer that was in the mail into paper yarn. Twined paper makes a great cat toy.

And then there was this, late afternoon...

There isn't supposed to be rain for the next 10 days.  The crocus will be beautiful as long as there isn't a downpour. I need to water.

Sunrise: 6:49 AM  Sunset: 7:20  

 

maybe

Three yards or so of hemp/cotton knit soaking in Buddleia. It's been there overnight.

This is the second soaking, the first in soy milk.

I will wring it out and hang it to dry today.

And then, perhaps, a dip in my almost exhausted indigo vat? Or maybe iron water?  I have some made but have yet to try it. Or maybe a bit of both for comparison? Or maybe a stencil with the iron?

I want to make a dress with this but it will need some mending or strategic cutting.  I was using it on my bed as a sheet. 

Knit is not a great choice for kneading kittens.

And, shared before but coming to me often right now:

Crepuscular midnight stands by the road,

Where the stars have spilled from it's purse.

You can not go over the road past the fence

Without trampling on the universe.

Boris Pasternak, "The Steppe"

naming things

Not even finished with chapter two and I am loving Maria Mudd Ruth's book A Sideways Look at Clouds. This book is beautiful not just for the information it holds, but also for how it is written and as an example of someone researching a topic that fascinates them.  Thinking a lot about that. 

One sentence that I feel transcends clouds is this one:

"Through language, strange and nameless clouds can be recognized, discussed, and understood.  Through language, once-distant relationships to clouds can become familiar, intimate, enduring."

Thinking about how a name is something different than a label.  We name things so that we can talk about them. Labels are more for identifying and categorizing.

We need more names and less labels.

 

Still in progress.

Testing out a Threadcrumb moon for a sail.

Now reading: A Sideways Look at Clouds by Maria Mudd Ruth.  Another rabbit hole for me...  It's been on my shelf for awhile; something in Orwell's Roses made me think it needed to be next.

A long time favorite song of mine came to mind too, Kate Bush, Cloudbusting. Probably reminded by the fact that Running Up the Hill is in the news...

Today's clouds will not be tomorrow's.

It's supposed to rain.