'Tis the season...

Thank you, friends, for your messages of seasonal cheer following my previous post. It's true, I was feeling un-characteristicly gloomy, but a few kind words make all the difference. A special thanks to Deb who wrote me a couple of special emails about her experience of Christmas. Sharing is a powerful act!

Although I've been stuck at work, I've been snatching moments to celebrate this season's gifts as they occur here in the tropical world. Here are a few of my favorites images to share.























A Jicaro tree (Cresentia alata). An tropical twist on baubles!























Scarlet flower of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis.


















No snow. Fallen flowers.


















Late afternoon clouds.























The sun sets. New horizons!

I am thinking about moving to Typepad in the New Year, and wonder if anyone has any advice or comments about that idea? Pro's and con's?

Hope everyone had a relaxing weekend.

Letting go of Christmas

On Friday morning it finally sunk in that, for work-related reasons, there will be no Christmas for us at all this year.

As hard as I'm trying to ignore this fact, and focus on my professional duties, I have that horrid wrenching feeling, that comes when one is forced in a direction that is clearly not of the Spirit's choosing! Which manifests, first as anger, and then as profound sadness.

I'm reminded of a story that my mother recounted to me when she one day tried to take my older son, Eben - at that time a young toddler - into town in his stroller, and she had taken a different route than I would normally have taken to make that journey from her house. He threw a massive tantrum, and began screaming "Wrong way! Wrong way!".

I was raised in a home where Christmas was a big deal. It was a time of wonderment (is that a real word?) and family tradition.

About 2 weeks prior to Christmas day, my father would take me to buy the tree and then he would lug it home over his shoulder, as we never had a car. I wasn't usually allowed to get involved in decorating it, as he was -still is - very particular about the way he likes things done. I respect that about him. And certainly as far as tree-decorating went, he made it look perfect!

My mother would bake a cake (based on a Dundee cake) a few weeks in advance, and feed it with brandy in the meantime. She could do that without needing to follow a recipe or cooking instructions. She was an amazing cook! My father would line the baking tin for her with brown paper and string. I loved the smell of the paper as it baked. He was also responsible for mixing the ingredients, which, with so much fruits and nuts was very hard going, and also for the iceing and decorating. A hard white iceing over a marzipan base brought into stiff little peaks, inevitabley with a little sledge ornament and some holly. And I remember something odd about that, when they mixed the iceing they added something called "blue bag", a laundry blueing, which made the iceing stay whiter than white. And although I never liked that cake, it was still an important part of Christmas for me.

My mother also baked homemade mince tarts. She made the fruit mincemeat herself, adding real farmhouse "scrumpy" cider (you have to remember, that we are Somerset folk!) that my father would procure from a nearby farm. The house filled with the smell of baking and spices and fresh pine tree and she and I would get a little bit tipsy sipping scrumpy as we baked.

These are just a few of the wonderful memories of this season that I have. Most of which are visual and/or olfactory in their nature. And more than anything, are about that indescribable magical feeling of cold, dark Winter evenings, lights and sparkle, sharing and excitement.

When I moved to Costa Rica, life changed alot! I have never been able to come to terms with the fact that Christmas falls at the beginning of Summer here. Forgive me, but the thought of hanging out on a tropical beach on a stifflingly hot Christmas day, just doesn't do it for me! Then there's the fact that there can be no replication of traditional meals as it is not possible to find any of the ingredients here, and no tree will survive more than 3 days in the house even if watered.

Add to that the impossibility of leaving the Peninsula to shop for Christmas presents for Nilo, who has just turned 8 years old, or , more so, of creating that build of excitement that comes through craft making and preparation together, I realize that, somehow, I have to let go of Christmas altogether this year. I'm not sure how to do that! I wish for the Spirit of Christmas past to manifest itself and lift us off into the "how it used to be". But instead, I am working long hour shifts, with no real breaks, in the blazing sun, full on, until the day itself, and then starting all over again on the 26th!

Friends, please continue to sew holiday cloths... bake as much as you can, go do late night shopping surrounded by pretty lights and pretty window displays... make homemade christmas cards... beautifully wrap presents... relish every sprig and sparkle... enjoy the company of your friends and family... take lots of pictures... and blog about it all!























Snowy egrets roosting in a bare tree, lake edge yesterday evening.

A few hundred stitches later...

It's strange to be reading about everyone being so cold, as I am sitting here stitching and sweating, sweating and stitching!

A few hundred stitches later... following on from my previous post... this is how the little cloth is looking. I haven't thought too hard about it. Just having alot of fun letting it take me where ever it wants me to go!

Hope everybody's had a great weekend!

Little time, little cloth

I have so little time these days, I'm finding it hard to settle into something that I really want to work on. I also forgot to bring the iron again!

It has to be little. So I have the sense of possibley finishing something. For me that's become important somehow.


















I found these scraps, which looked pretty nice together. Many are just thin strips an inch or so wide. What to do with them?...

I notice that alot of you lovely people have been busy weaving cloth. So I thought I'd try my hand at it.


















Not to copy... but to learn more about technique.


















I know so little, and it's easy to find oneself doing the same old-same old thing.























I'm playing with this pale little cloth. Maybe as a gift for another friend who has a birthday coming up? Lots of raw edges.


















Some simple outlining.

I want to show you the amazing moths that have appeared here over the course of the weekend. Someone might find inspiration here!


















The perfection of carved wings...


















The vibrance of color and pattern...























The smokey rainbows of shadowy scales.

On a black moon in summertime, we get hundreds of beautiful and bizarre looking insects. And I often look at them and wonder how many of these have ever been seen before!


















The Summer is finally creeping in here, and now we can see again the blue mountains of the Cerro Rincon.

Just look at this from Arlee and this from Karen.

I have so much to learn!

Cloth doodling

Cloth doodling?... Well, I can't think of a better name for it! It's what you do when you just pick up the cloth and thread and without really knowing where it's going, you start something ;)

It's what you do when you forget the iron and your sketchbook!


















Calico and two strands of DMC embroidery thread.


















A design outline sketched in graphite and then stitched using blanket/buttonhole stitch.


















Couldn't resist peeking! Reverse applique using a scrap of hand-dyed, upcycled silk, in a slightly darker tone as the under layer.


















For successful reverse applique it's important to do the stitch so that the passing of thread through thread happens on the inside of your design, where you'll be cutting through the top layer of cloth.


















Intricate designs are hard to stitch in this fashion. It's diffiuclt to get around all of those complex corners!


















This is how it's looking so far.

Reading through missed posts on Jude's blog yesterday, I was introduced to Manya Maratou's blog Mythcolor. If you don't know Manya already, I recommend that you visit her soon! Have a lovely Sunday afternoon!

Tropical Botanical Miami

Back at the farm and only just catching up.

I really like this from Sandra at inanna shamaya.


















Waterlillies at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens in Miami.

The Fairchild gardens have become one of my favorite places on the face of the planet.


















I was there last Wednesday. But due to the Thanksgiving Eve traffic, only for 30 minutes before the gardens closed.


















And it seemed strange to us that they would close the gardens at what might well be the perfect moment for viewing them. During the cooler hours, with a soft golden sunlight creeping along the pathways...


















And the shadows are growing long...


















And things get kind of hazy...


















And magical!



Do you want to know if everything glittering will turn into the gold...
Heart of Mine by Peter Salett, & clip from one of my favorite (shamlessly romantic!) movies "Keeping the Faith"

Of Old Roses (and other pretty flowers)

I've been out and about in Escazu this morning. Escazu is my husband's home town. Thesedays, it's the Knightsbridge of the San Jose area. It sure makes for some great window shopping!


















This pretty sofa caught my eye. Upholstery that wouldn't last 5 minutes in my house! I love this color combination right now!


















A little self-indulgance! A new blouse from Zara, a label which I'm finding often has something for a girl like me *:) It's so hard to find stylish smart/casuals for the nearly 40's! I really like the micro pleat details on the shoulders and the pretty old rose print! Feminine, not girly!


















And, today, I had my first ever manicure! Not the prettiest of hands, but they look a whole lot better here than they do when I'm at work!

Simple pleasures! [Did you know the sugar and hand cream trick?]


















Right before I left the farm last weekend, I grabbed this stash of cloth, hand-dyed earlier in the year with logwood purple, which, for me at least, produces a pale shade of prune, or of old roses. Pretty pale shades that are calling to me at the moment! Each of the differnet cloths in these images come from upcycled clothing items.


















Prune and rose.


















Wax resist on silk and linen.


















Wax resist on linen.


















Detail of wax resist motif on a textured silk.


















Detail of wax resist stencil work on linen.

I was really excited at the idea of getting my teeth into this new project during travel time this coming week. Until it dawned on me that all sharp items - such as needles, scissors and quick unpicks - would be rapidly confiscated at customs :( PAH! So it's just going to have to wait!

Learning and moving on

In one of her October posts, entitled The nature of woven cloth, Jude wrote:

"The basic understanding of your materials is crucial in developing the character and individual style of your craft and the satisfaction that comes with that...."

For folks like myself, just beginning to translate into cloth, this is a fine piece of wisdom. Because, not everything works! And that kind of understanding only comes through experience, trial and error, [and in my case, some pretty steep learning curves!]

This morning I finished the embroidered pillow that I've been working on for the past few weeks. Hurrah!

It's far from perfect! But I did my best, learnt alot, and will be moving on shortly. Before I do that though, I'll share a couple of simple little things that I learnt - or was reminded of - along the way with this piece [although not illustrated by the greatest images!]


















The importance of trying to make even-lengthed stitches, particulary when filling in geometric patterns.


















Blanket stitch twists the thread as you stitch. The finer the thread, [in this case I used a regular black cotton thread to hand piece the central panel to the border] the more it twists. This makes for a lot of knotting when you try to pull the thread through to the back!

White embroidery transfer paper does NOT vanish when made damp, after a while!


















Kantha stitching, on some cloths, acts like elastic smocking. Instead of just adding a pleasing surface texture to the cloth, it gathers the cloth and pulls it out of shape. I started to do a running kantha over the borders of this piece, but ended up unpicking all of it because it just warped the cloth too much, even though it was stitched even and loosely.


















This is the finished center panel before being pressed. I was reminded that I least like the part of construction! Hence, the appeal of moving into scarf design!























And here is the finished item [momentarily stuffed with some kapok to give me some idea of how it will look when it finally gets a pillow inside it]. Wish I had some fancy piece of furniture to model it on, instead of the cream-colored plastic patio chairs that we have at the farm these days [the nicer wooden chairs are in the house in town].

Kellie, forgive me! ;)

I'm hoping that the next time this piece gets featured here, it will be sitting pretty on the sofa that it was intended for. That should be the week after next, as I have an upcoming business trip to Florida. YIPEE! A brief escape and a few hours of in-flight time to work on whatever I plan to do next!

Hope everyone's having a great weekend :)

The need to move swiftly

One thing I'm still learning about inspiration, is the need to move swiftly when that sense of something stiring breezes through. It's like catching butterflies. You have to hope the inspiration will alight somewhere nearby, and then you need to creep up, and throw your net over quick!

Typically, these days, I'm finding that I don't have the time, or the materials, to translate my ideas into something tangible when the inspiration alights. And before I know it, the idea has metamorphosized, or, I find myself off on the next butterfly chase.

I had been Planning on Pink. I started a pink theme board with my new account at Pinterest, which you can visit here. Now, I feel the idea growing into something new... and I don't know what that is yet! Patience...patience, Catherine!























A silken white moth, with feathery puffs, seated on a cotton scrap, dyed with Lac extract.


















Sopa de ropa: The last of the Lac dye and some other recycled fibres simmering on the stove this morning.


















And here it is turned out of the pan, looking for all the world like a Summer pudding!


















This is more like the intensity of color I was hoping for. Hmmmm, I think Summer pudding is a good name for these shades of deep pink, [yes, the sun has pushed his way through the clouds for a few minutes!] And for those of you who love to cook, a recipe for Summer pudding can be found here on the Barmy Baker.


















I'm excited by this small scrap. A silk shirt that Megan and I wax batiked with a stencil we designed earlier in the year, now over dyed with Lac extract to achieve a deeper shade.























A new motif that I'm playing with. I like it's formality. I like the fact that, if I play with it some more, I could probably make the negative space into a formal motif as well.

This almost reminds me of Suzani textiles from Uzbekistan, which I admire very much. You can see a couple of my favorite online examples on the Flickr photstream of Circa by Courtney Pyle, starting here. I also love the colors of this.

Hope you're enjoying your Sundays!