You never know...

...when something—the smallest thing even—will trigger an idea, or the solution to a problem. Last week at our High Fiber Diet meeting, one of the members casually mentioned a technique she had learned that involved sewing layers of fabrics together, from the back, then cutting away layers. It was the part about sewing on the backside that triggered an "aha" and I could hardly wait to get home and see if my hunch was right.

You may have seen the small pieces I have been doing where I "draw" by stitching with black thread, like the one in this post. I like doing this, but have been struggling with using the heavier thread that I like. It breaks. It shreds. And it frustrates me. But it suddenly occurred to me that if the nice thread was in the bobbin and did not have to pass through the eye of a needle, it might behave better. It also presented me a way of using a drawing to guide my stitching without having to use pencil on the face of the piece. I drew my design on a piece of very light non-woven interfacing and put it on the back, then stitched.

I like it!

I tried a couple more, experimenting with simplifying and adding another layer of fabric in select areas.

 

These are tiny—5" x 7" and I think will go in frames with mats.

My Shakespeare quilt is finished. I will photograph it one of these days and post it.

 

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February

We moved to Portland in February, 23 years ago. I was thinking about that this morning and remembering how gray and dark it was. We arrived in the rain and the rain didn't quit for the rest of that February. We had brought our cat, Daisy, with us from sunny Ashland and her response to the move was to spend her days sleeping, with her head wedged into the darkest corner of the house. Seasonal affective depression, I figured. It wasn't until June that she perked up and began to make peace with her surroundings. My mood was similar and I was pretty certain that we had made a bad mistake. Things got better and Daisy and I grew to love Portland, but February is usually not Portland's best month. A good month for a southerly vacation.

But look at February 2015. It has been like spring today. Ray and I walked another section of the Fanno Creek Trail this morning. This new section connects our old walk to our new walk and winds through a no-mans-land along the edges of wetlands and an industrial/business park area with busy highway 217 in the background. In the picture above there is an old railroad siding with a couple rusty old cars. Below, the view of Fanno Creek included the Beaverton school bus lot in the distance.

A beautiful day for a walk. At home flowers are starting to bloom. I can't believe spring is here so early. After that first rainy February we spent in Portland we had a massive March snowstorm. I guess that could happen again. Not likely if today is any indication.

 

Here's the little fabric artwork I hung outside last summer. It is weathering.

Work on my Shakespeare piece continues in the studio. I think I might like the end product when I get there, but I have created a tedious project and the process isn't flowing. It moves slowly and makes me procrastinate. A lot of stops and starts and slow, fiddly stitching. Not humming like I like. This is something to remember. Process is as important as product.

You tread upon my patience.

-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"

 

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The Old Trail

My friend Beth and I walked this trail almost every day for about 6 years, then I moved and we moved our walk to a different trail. Actually, they are both sections of a 15 mile long trail called The Fanno Creek trail. This is the Garden Home section of the trail and in my opinion the more beautiful section. It feels a bit hidden and secret from the outside world, running through the hidden interior of a neighborhood, past backyards, open spaces and the back of the Portland Golf Club. Accessible on foot, back in where the streets have ended. This morning Ray and I, bored with the gym, decided to walk the trail instead. It has been several years since I was there and I wondered what might have changed.

It was as beautiful as I remembered. The trail has been widened in some areas and there are some new benches, one near the site of our protest of the ugly razor wire the golf club had there. Some trees have been removed—recently it appears.

We stopped to admire some interesting fungi...

And to play our old game of dropping pennies from the bridge onto the top of an old piling that sticks up from the creek.

There are some nice new signs about the history and features of the trail.

All was good until I spotted this:

One of the parts of the walk Beth and I loved was past a lovely house, hidden away back along the creek. It had a curved driveway and big trees and a glorious garden, filled with flowers and art. The garden was huge, with the trail following along it for awhile. And it had been right here, where now there was a huge hole in the ground, earth moving machines and piles of construction materials. As we continued around the corner, I saw that the house was gone. We asked a man walking by what was being built and he said, with anger in his voice, it was a water treatment facility. The neighbors had fought it. The people who owned the house and property had been forced to sell to the water district. No one was happy, said the man. Further along there was a sign explaining the project. Progress. Clean water for all. I felt sick.

Below, the old driveway that curved up to the house. Every spring this drive was lined with daffodils.

We contined on to the end, then turned around and walked back. We got our coffee at the Starbucks where Beth and I had spent so much time and money that we figured we owned the chairs. The Starbucks has been remodeled. It is fancy. None of the old baristas are there anymore.

Starbucks then (2007)

Starbucks now

Time marches on, now doesn't it?

 

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82 Words

The words are Shakespeare's, not mine, but I am putting them to work in a new fabric work. The theme for the show I am going to submit it to is something inspired by poetry or a quote. The words don't need to be on the work itself, but I decided I wanted them there.

It is, in large part, a remembrance of the thirteen years we spent living in Ashland, Oregon, the home of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. Not a particularly well-versed scholar of Shakespeare when we arrived in Ashland, I got a job there as the buyer/manager for the Festival gift and book shop, The Tudor Guild. I loved being there, among the cast and crew of this well-oiled machine of a theatre organization. And I learned to love the words of Shakespeare, not from a page of print, but joyously spoken by actors, on a stage, under a starry sky— as Shakespeare himself intended!

I could have (should have?) chosen a shorter quote. There are plenty. But these are the words that I most love in the remembering of that time. The sewing of these letters is slow work. I cut them, arranged them, fused them and now I am stitching down each letter, clipping threads and cleaning up frays at their edges. I know that when I start quilting around them it will be equally slow. This will take time, with no guarantee anyone will even notice all the effort.

Each year, at the end of September in Ashland, the final outdoor performance brings the Shakespeare stage season to a close. At the end of the last performance, one of the actors steps forward and recites this beautiful speech from The Tempest. Then the lights slowly dim and the spirits of that, and all the previous years, are "melted into air, into thin air.." The magic fades until a new season begins.

 

'Our revels now are ended'

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare

From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

 

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The Zen of Knitting

I am learning to knit, mostly on my own, with a book and a Craftsy class and a multitude of YouTube videos and the help of my friends—so really not so much on my own, just without a conventional class and teacher.

I started with a hotpad, then I found a simple mitten pattern. My friends gave me a hard time about making mittens. "What—mittens ALREADY!" They were very simple mittens and I made many mistakes and they aren't exactly the same size, but I learned from them. Then I made a scarf, which, it seems, is an appropriate project for a beginner.

My theory of learning a new hand skill is that you make something that interests you, not something dumb and boring; make plenty of mistakes, which you learn to analyze and not make again, and just put in a lot of time. Oh, and don't use materials that are too precious. You don't want to end up guilty about messing up $100 worth of beautiful yarn. That defeats you. Not a good start on something intended to make you happy, ultimately. So, back I went to the cheap yarn store with discount coupon in hand and got stuff to make myself a hat.

It turned out not bad. See that band around the bottom? I had to pull that out and start over three times and it still has a few problems. ( Don't look too closely at the right edge...) but I learned about decreasing, and my stitches are getting more uniform and I am getting the feel for the rhythm of the whole thing. And I will actually wear the hat.

Now I may have bitten off more than I can chew. I am making a sweater.

I bought (cheap of course) a big cone of cotton yarn on EBay because I simply cannot wear a wool sweater. Allergic, I guess. They just itch unmercifully. My friend Gale told me that cotton knits tend to stretch and combining the cotton with a thin acrylic yarn would mitigate that, so I found a deep purple acrylic to knit with it. I really like the mottled effect the combination creates.

I started knitting the neckband first and it looked just awful. I started over three times and finally got the hang of the ribbing and it looked pretty great until I got to the end of the neckband and discovered I had knitted a Möbius strip, despite being careful, I thought, not to twist it. Ray got a good laugh out of that. I pulled it all out and started over, yet again.

Möbius strip

I keep reading about the benefits of knitting. One article called it a form of meditation, and I get that. When I am working in those stretches of repetition, the rhythm and mindfulness puts me into that very satisfying mind space of "flow". Another article talked about how learning a new skill, later in life, keeps one's brain healthy and agile. As it stands, my knitting takes me from "flow" to frustration and anxiety in equal measure.

I am making a lot of mistakes with this sweater. I cannot seem to keep the stitch counts consistent. The front and back should be the same. The two sleeves should be the same (duh!). I have a feeling that simply adding or subtracting a stitch isn't really the correct way to address inconsistencies, but I can't seem to identify where and when the problems are occurring. Oy. This may turn out to be a clown sweater. But now that I know what is happening I will be more alert to finding out why. Offer suggestions if you have them. Meanwhile, I am moving forward, determined to put in my 10,000 hours and become a knitter. Serenity and flow await.

 

 

 

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Studio Time

It is January in western Oregon and we are deep into rain these days. The kind that people in other parts of the world think of when they think of Oregon. I get tired of wet feet, but mostly I find the rain oddly comforting. It makes me want hot tea and and a fire in the fireplace and/or a day in the studio, with the sound of rain pattering away on the skylights.

I am working on this piece that will be covered with words, and I am rather painstakingly cutting out letters. Lots of letters. I printed the letters very faintly on white fabric prepared with a fusible on the back.

This has, and will, take hours.

I woke up in the middle of the night, the other night, and was thinking about those letters. They will be fused onto the background fabric, but then they will need to be sewn as well. "Why?" you ask. Two reasons. First, I don't trust fusing alone to keep things permanently attached, especially small pieces like those letters. And second, and more importantly, I think fused work that isn't stitched looks cheesy. Sorry, it just does. But in the dark of the night I lay there wondering if the stitching of those letters would distort them, or destroy the crisp, graphic look I am going for. So I made a little sample to see how I might stitch them, then how quilting around them would affect them.

I am satisfied now that this can work— and won't send me up the wall in the process.

As I sat and cut letters the past couple of days, I drank tea and listened to Podcasts. Ray gave me a nifty little Bluetooth speaker for Christmas. I have it in the studio, synced to my phone and the sound is wonderful. I am more than halfway through "Serial," the NPR podcast, associated with "This American Life." It is addictive — so well done. Isn't technology grand? An embarrassment of riches at our fingertips. I know my grandchildren will grow up taking it all for granted, but I am regularly stupefied by the access to a world of information and entertainment and connection that is now an integral part of our lives. Wow. Just wow.

So, time for me to head on out to the studio. More letters to cut, and I wonder if I will ever know for sure if Adnan was the one who killed Hae...*

*Serial! If you know, don't tell me!

 

 

 

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A Reminder

Awhile back I posted information about The 100, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, that I am participating in. This is a reminder that it is coming up on February 4, and I hope a lot (well, 100) people will donate $100 to buy a piece of fiber art. All of your donation will go to ACS, and you will get a lovely piece of fiber art.

This is my extraordinary sister-in-law, Jamie. Three days after Christmas she died from metastatic breast cancer. While we all know of the many advances that have been made in treating cancer, there are still cancers that do not respond. Hers was one of those. She fought hard, received the best care and the most current treatments and nothing worked. Nothing. I don't have to tell you what we are feeling. Most of you have had your hearts broken, at some point, by cancer in your families, among your friends or those you admired. I don't have to tell you. We all know.

I am donating this small quilt called "Night Windows" for the event. It is approximately 14" x 18"— (that's a guess. I don't want to go out to the studio in the rain tonight to measure it!) I am donating it in honor of both Jamie and my sister Becky, whose cancer was the kind that all that research found effective treatments for and, thankfully, gave her a complete recovery. That's what I want for everyone with cancer!

You can find all the details at Virginia Speigal's website here.

You can see a sampling of the wonderful work being donated at a special Pinterest page here.

 

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Words, words, words...

Back in my college days I was a big fan of the silkscreen artist, Sister Corita Kent. She was a Catholic nun and very much associated with the socially conscious mood of the country, addressing issues such as civil rights and the Viet Nam war. I loved her clear, bright color sense, her clean, strong compositions and her hand-cut lettering. Always the lettering, because her work was all about words.

 

 

Though her work went out of style after her death in 1986, it till speaks to me.

I wonder why I have never tried using words on a piece of my own work. Now that I think about it, it seems so right up my alley. As a graphic designer, my favorite part of it was typography. Now I have a really good opportunity. Oregon SAQA put out a call for artists for a work inspired by a piece of writing. I am rolling it around in my mind and decided to just see how tedious it might be to hand-cut the letters for a favorite Shakespeare quote. Cutting the letters is the way I want to do it. Painting or stitching or stamping would not produce the look I want.

It wasn't hard to do this much.

I wonder if I have the patience to cut the rest of the passage...

And just because we are talking about Sister Corita, I have long loved her list of "rules". Perhaps you will find something useful here:

Some Rules for teachers and Students from Sister Corita Kent

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student — pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher — pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined — this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: "We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities." (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything — it might come in handy later.

 

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Last year's word

Since I have shared my word for 2015, someone asked me if these yearly words actually are something that I think about or use after I post them each January, so I thought about my word for last year—yellow. Last year I wrote that I would use yellow to add warmth and hope and light to the world whenever I could. Did I?

My friend June and I started exploring digital drawing and I used a lot of yellow in the drawings we made and shared. I especially liked this little tribute to my favorite little yellow bowl. So much so that I reinterpreted it using fabric.

I thought I would like to wear more yellow, but my closet remains notably deficient in yellow.

I did make a large fabric piece with a big yellow moon and reflected moonlight.

But the way I most noticeably brought more yellow into my life was in painting our bedroom a soft, golden yellow. The former owners of our house had painted every room in the house pale blue. The bedroom was a particularly icy shade and the last of the blue to go. It sounds like a small thing to do—simply paint— but at night the lamplight makes the room glow and the morning sun, even the weak winter sun, wraps me in soft, warm light. I swear I sleep better and wake up happier in a yellow room than I did when it was blue.

Morning view from my bed

Yellow was an odd choice for a word to inspire me for a whole year, I know, but I seemed to delight in all the beautiful yellow I found this year, and I'd think, "there it is—my color!" Imagine how delighted I was to find this in Portugal...

 

 

 

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Time—my word for 2015

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.”

― George Harrison

I have had time on my mind, and so it has become my word for 2015. My goal is simply to appreciate and be mindful of the gift of time. 

I see a lot of articles about "using time efficiently" and reclaiming time spent online or how not to "waste time" but that is not where my head is. It's more the idea of being here now, like George said, and making now count. 

It has been a sad holiday for us. Our sister-in-law, Jamie, died last Sunday, ending a two-year long, hard-fought Cancer battle. She was one of our favorite people and very dear to us. The concept of time changed when she learned, a year in, that the Cancer had metastasized and could not be cured. She chose to view time as a gift rather than a sentence and said she would live every day, until the last one arrived. She went for chemo and anything that promised more time or better time, but she lived her life around it, traveling and continuing to enjoy friends, create and plan for a future, regardless of how much. We met them in Las Vegas last spring for a few days of sunshine, good fun and a lot of laughs. Jamie loved to laugh. As she grew weaker, she planned how she might die, hoping, at one point, to make it through Christmas, as she did. She was surely sad, but it seldom showed and making the end of her life meaningful was a project she took on with the same clarity of purpose that she had used to create a business and to bring people together throughout her life. 

We traveled to Montana in November to see Jamie for one last time. The disease had progressed alarmingly and none of the treatments were working at all. Still, she was up and cheerful and busy. She was completing a quilt for a show as we arrived, and days later insisted we all go to see the showing of her group's work. She needed a walker by then, but was not about to miss seeing her friends and checking to be sure the quilts were all properly hung. But much of the time we were with her she spent sitting in her favorite chair, knitting. She had gathered her " nest" of supplies—scissors, knitting, water bottle, medications, glasses, crossword puzzles, pencil, tissues, etc, around her and was comfortable and relaxed. I watched her knit. Her face was serene, her shoulders relaxed as her hands flew over the needles and a pair of socks, then mittens, materialized beneath her fingers. It seemed a way of capturing time, stitch by stitch, row by row. Still here, though with less energy.  Still creating something beautiful. Still living each moment. The last night I was there she was winding yarn into balls for a new project and the yarn had become a hopeless mess of knots and snarls. I offered to help and took one big mass of snarls as she held another and we worked out the knots and followed ins and outs and tamed the woolly beast! Ray and Roy arrived home from an errand to find the two of us wrapped in yarn and laughing heartily. When we drove away the next morning it seemed inconceivable that we were saying goodbye for the last time, but my heart knew it was true. We came home and I began to learn to knit. 

So I think about time. We, each of us, has only so much. My task this year will be to view it as a gift; to use it, enjoy it, fill it with meaning, share it and find peace. What I won't do, or at least try not to do, is squander it on things that don't matter—but I hope I remember that silence and thinking matter and connection matters and noticing matters and it's OK to hang out on FaceBook or watch TV, but maybe with intention rather than mindlessly, and like George said, the only part of the time thing that counts is right now. My little "sunrise/sunset" ornament joins my other words of the year on my studio wall to help me remember.

“How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

― Dr. Seuss