Tuesday, February 3, 2015

- Celebrating milestones

Jace is 5 months old today ...



That alone would be reason enough to celebrate, but the blog also reached a couple of significant milestones: 200 blog posts and 50,000 views. Better yet, 125 of those posts were written since my 2014 New Year's resolution to "Blog." So we're celebrating by eating the newest version of the #2 all-time blog post for dessert tonight.

Best of all, in the past year I found a community of like-minded stitchers, weavers, dyers, and dreamers ... KINDRED SPIRITS ... crossing the country from New Mexico to New York ... circling the globe from the Netherlands to Australia.

And in that community, I finally found readers who were willing to talk back. Of the 665 comments made since the blog began in 2009, over 90% appeared after Jude Hill's Considering Weave class began last June ... no coincidence.

So much has changed ...
  • Beginning every day reading about and looking at the amazingly inspirational creations made by the KINDRED SPIRITS ... 
  • learning so many new ways of doing the "same old" things ...
  • finding joy in the process and acceptance of my own creative expression ...
  • and letting go of  "needlework" in order to embrace "stitch" as my watchword.
So much remains the same ...
  • Don being there every step of the way ... 
  • encouraging me, then asking for my thoughts on his own creative journey ... 
  • following the blogs of others who have caught my interest, then finding his own inspirations ... 
  • and adding not an insignificant number of ticks to the "Views" stat.
It has been a most excellent adventure ...

I can't wait to see what's next ...

- New Mexico: Inspiration to last a lifetime

I've added a " New Mexico" label to the index because it has become apparent that this place, this land of enchantment, has literally gotten into our blood.

The latest on the assemblage

And in service of that inspiration, I've been teaching myself warp-faced weaving by trial and error, first warping a shadow box ...

Then discovering that this ...


was not going to work as well as this, which has one pair of red strands added to either side of the seven red/black pairs ... 


And now I am slowly figuring out how to weave an "X" ...

1/2" wide

Meanwhile, Don found his "Jude Hill" in the artist Robert Rivera and has been pulling out shells and gourds and sticks and ...

Sticks!

A synapse fired and I rooted out a box that has been sitting next to the printer ... gifted to us by the Cline family when we were in Avon four years ago? Five? 

No matter ... in the box was a handful of sticks (rootlets?) that I found on the beach that year ...


And a chunk of aggregated shell sand ... thunderstone? Well, probably not.

No matter ... they will surely serve Don's muse.