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!

Still here, still at it.

Thanks to all of you well wishers following my previous post:) We are all doing fine here. Just growing tired of the relentless cold and damp, and hoping that Summer starts soon!

It's still raining.
I'm still stitching this...


















I've sheared of the excess fabric around the edge of this central panel, ready for the next part of the process.

I'm aiming to have this piece finished by the end of next weekend (although, originally the plan was to try to get it done by the end of last month.)

HA! Lesson #1: Never underestimate the amount of work involved in stitching something like this by hand!

I would carry on working on it tomorrow, but I've just realized that I left my iron at the house in town!

Hope everyone's having a great weekend.

A little rain

Just before I went to bed last night, I poked my head out of the back door to look at the rain. Didn't think it would work, but I took these photos.


















Another galaxy?


















A cocktail dress strung with silver sequins?



Tom Waits - A little rain.


















My daisy cloth soaking up a brief moment of early morning sun.

Almost!

I have two more weekends to finish the piece that I've been working on all month.























Still impossible to photograph!


















There are still many green flecks and a few more leaves to stitch around the edges, and the petals of the third flower in the central (vertical) row to fill. Then I have to make it into a pillow cover. But I think I might just get it finished!

Strange!

Strange things happen!

For example, all of a sudden I find myself fired up by things that would never have occurred to me previously, - right now it's vintage lace - It usually starts as a glimmer of an idea, something very simple, usually something visual that catches my attention, and I start googling around that initial idea for further images to feed from, and.. POW!... I find myself in a whole new realm, considering new possibilities.

Does that happen to you too?

Currently, Nilo and I are reading C.S Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" from the Narnia series. It just struck me that he had such a good point, about how we come to enter magical "places" (Narnia) by first entering the "everyday" (a wardrobe).

It's interesting, when you think about how much time so many of us - we who blog on cloth and other expressions of creativity - spend appreciating, reflecting upon, and even incorporating into our creativeness, those humble, everyday objects and occurances. And I continue to be blown away by all those who can work magic from it.

From the blog of Pia Jane Bijerk, entitled Enhance The Everyday - a blog that I follow whenever I have the time - I came across this link, introducing the work of Hannah Bertram. WOW! There are obvious references to historical patterns. I think my favorite pieces are those which, to me, have the appearance of vintage lace, and which feature in the series Now they are gone, I hold them. And for somereason these intricate installations also made me think of the shadows cast by plants, particularly at night, and how those are like lace, with their their forms and transparency. Hmmm... hold that thought (since I have no time to play with it at the moment!)

Another strange thing, I want you to meet my new friend. A very special little cat that I spotted running out of the garden of the house we rent in town last weekend. At first, I thought I was imagining it... but no, it's true, he has spots! I have no idea what he is, perhaps a domestic cat crossed with a Marguay? Whatever he is, and wherever he comes from, he sure is adorable! Have you ever seen anything like it?





















We're experiencing a cold front (if you can imagine that!) it rained and rained and the river in the village burst it's banks. This is how the day looked from the balcony of my house...



















The power went out for most of the day, which provided me with the shove I needed to get to work on another billion stitches on my latest piece (which, let's face it, is going to take me FOREVER to finish!)


















This is as far as I've got. Forgive the poor image, taken with the camera on my phone!

Leafing into Spring: Part I

I have to start by saying a big thank you to my friends Arlee Barr and Jude Hill for plugging my blogs and my new adventure over at A Common Thread . Also to everyone who has already joined me there. Welcome! And don't forget to tell all of your friends :}

And... sheeeeeeeeeeee's off! A new idea. But this is all you're getting right now, because I have to get on with it... a sneak peak of what's on the work table today. I am busy busy here!



















Leafing Into Spring

Before I go... remember folks... there's very little that a serving spoon of Nutella can't fix! ;}



















Nilo. That's one happy child!

Being koi

Following on from this...

The Gavilana dyed cloth is in off of the line and ironed on a very hot setting.















First try at capturing the color results: The camera is reading off of the wood of my work table so the cloth is looking more muted in this shot than it actually is in real life.



















Second try to capture color results: I placed all of the cloth in a stack on a piece of white notebook paper to see if I could get the camera to read the color of the cloth on balance with the white of the paper. This image is more accurate. I'm going to have to come up with a good descriptive name for this dye, because the actual color rang is somewhere between tan, seaweed, moss, and goldenrod.

SHHHhhhh....Don't tell anyone, but I quite like it now ;]















Trying to stitch a Japenese koi fish into the shashiko-style pond. This is what I've managed after three earlier attempts. Still misssing fins and tail and watery swirls. Now I have to make lunch. But after that I'm going to move onto something else!

Little stitches...

Little stitches are remarkable things... which, inspite of their smallness, can bring about huge changes.















I am just starting to over-stitch the black and gold artifact cloth that I made over the weekend, and said was probably going nowhere. Well... you never know!

I'm finding I like very much what these little metallic thread stitches do to cloth, (but definately not liking what the cloth does to the metallic thread! It strips it down and knots it up and it's a total pain in the arse to work with this stuff! Anyone got any wise counsel to offer about that?)

Seems I'm not the only one here who's busy working small right now.















I love these crazy spiders that set up camp all over my house, particularly around the kitchen and dining room. A long while back, I blogged about one of these spiders over at the Los Charcos de Osa blog page,(which has been static for over a year now, but has some interesting stuff on it about life here). You can catch that post here. Stitched heart and all! (Arlee, how are you with arachnids?)

This beautiful little spider... actually, it's not that little once it reaches adulthood!... has the most fabulous metallic silver(!) thorax, and just look at those gorgeous stripey legs. They remind me so much of Jude Hill's black and white magic thread, which I think she has used to great effect here (and if you're in the US, while you're at it, please use that text info to donate 10 bucks to the American Red Cross for relief to Haiti!)

Thinking about it, Jude Hill is quite the spider... as she goes about carefully and lovingly stitching her magic cloth(s). (Jude, everytime I try a new catagory link on your site, I am delighted to find many pieces/posts that I haven't come across previously!)

And while we're on the subject of magic threads... check this out. It's a fabulous blog by Embellisher who is a gorgeous looking Indian female textile designer, based in Bangalore, India - which is my favorite spot on the globe right now - electronically speaking!

And then there are these magical Artfabrik threads by Laura, which Arlee Barr blogged recently here. They are such delicious color ways and they all have such delicious names to match! Even if I could afford some of these fabulous threads, I'm not sure I could choose which ones I would like to have most. Hmmm....? Let me see...

Burnt Marshmallows
Snakeskin
Copper Queen
Oasis Twilight
Indigo
Shadows
Wild Rice

So, there's my wish list!
And it just so happens that today is my birthday! ;}