I'm off and away
to the 100 acre wood--
or will be when you read this.
​
Just now though,
 I'm in full-on
list-crossing,
pile-making
lonely loom mode,
which is not my fave
(to put it mildly),
and yet seems, alas, to be
​ the nature of the beast.

I'm trying to suck it up though--
or at least--
to put it more pleasantly--
to be one with the angst,
which mostly seems to involve
attempting to stop second guessing every moment,
while still packing the things I might need
for mixing my metaphors
in hope that  the interesting idea I had last spring
will have enough nourishment
to bear the as yet unknown fruit
that it will.

​
Till then,
I hope you enjoy
 your opposable thumbs
in whatever way(s)
you like best
(which for me today
apparently means
​ drawing my hands
in such a way
that no thumbs
​ are visible).

So you might have noticed a slight shift 
in the colors I've been using in my comics
since -- oh-- maybe May. 

All I really wanted, at first,
was a slightly brighter green.
Spring had arrived, after all,
and though it often poured rain on Farmer's Market mornings,

the grass, the trees, the new lettuces, the tunes
seemed to call for something more exuberant than
the greyed green  of the indigo/yellow ochre combo
from my beloved limited palette of last winter.

Just a little bright yellow, I thought --
something like the weld  with which I dye wool.
And then a couple of weeks ago
as I was messing about with madder,
I remembered lakes.

Some of the best known historic lakes
​are actually made from my standard  natural dyes:
madder (alizarin crimson)
cochineal (carmine)
and--ta da--weld, 
​which apparently is the source one of Vermeer's favorite yellows.

With the help of  this site,
and some glorious photos,
I did a few rough experiments
the results of which have.... varied.
The madder turned out more orange than I imagined,
the cochineal leans toward purple rather than carmine,
and the weld is more than a little chalky.

But I still ended up with some photogenic pigment,

that blended easily with gum arabic and honey

and allows me to paint my 
 linen shift (a summer staple)
​ with some accuracy.

Also, the greens are definitely brighter.
Weld and indigo watercolors combine nicely on paper
as they do on yarn.

Palette-wise though, I am left in a bit of a muddle.
 For even as I enjoy the new colors,
they can be overwhelming
(particularly the cochineal)
and it would not surprise me a bit
​ if I narrow back down---

once berry season is over. 

There is a fair bit of texture around the studio this morning,

an interesting shadow or two,

and no shortage of neutral/ natural shades,

but not much in the way of bright color.

This should not be a surprise as,
with the odd exception,
an ever quieter palette has been an ongoing trend,
 in my yarnish life.

The idea of applying this freedom of limitation
to my comics, however,
came as a bit of a surprise.

But the new comic diary, with its sheets of textured paper
seemed to eschew the pinks and purples and bright greens
that have been delighting me for the last year,
so I thought I'd go with it.

The first idea was to use only  Walnut Ink
(though of course I had to debate whether or not
​ this would include the line work).

But when push came to shove
(or brush touched paper)
 I realized that the pleasurable pull
​ of crow quill, black ink and watercolor
was too important to set aside.

Besides, after trying this Redwood Willow watercolor sampler,
I'd been longing for some indigo watercolor 
​to go with all the other indigo in my life.
And ever since Jodi 
(who made the exquisite tiny watercolor sets I've been using for the past year)
showed me the Greenleaf & Blueberry web site
 I had been seeking an excuse (and a spare moment),
to make some of my own.

So....since I happened to have plenty of pigment
(left over from my egg tempera flirtation in 2005)
some liquid Gum Arabic
(leftover from the Chemistry and Art class my husband taught for years before he retired)
and honey (because --how not to have honey in the kitchen?) 
I googled 'making watercolor paint",
half-assedly  followed some directions I found out in cyber land
and made two colors: yellow ochre and indigo.
​I really like how they turned out.

As ever, 
it's just an experiment.
But experiments with materials (esp those lying around the house), are the best!
Indeed, though many things in the world can induce me to quivering jelly
(elevators, airplanes, merging, politics, Stephen King books, the internet, meanness, movies...),
it is good to know that for some of us
(here's looking at you Nicole and Jodi and Rebecca and Patti and Bonnie and... and ... and...maybe most of you reading this?)
 art supplies are our friends.

Of course part of me wants to make a couple of more colors,
but the internal majority is so enamored of this simple set of colors,
that am going to hold off.
At least for today.

Sometimes, a gal just needs a trim.
​
Immediately.

And while the results are not always the most attractive,

the doing of it can be cathartic,

allowing  one to get back to doing what needs (and wants) to be done.

And besides
some haircuts are just more fun to draw. 

All those wisps!  Ugh.

And  (to quote my dear S.W.), 
why should everything have to be attractive?​

One of the odd consequences of having a blog and writing somewhat regulalry,

is how often I find myself thinking, 
"better finish this before Tuesday so I have something to say."

It's pretty  funny, when I think about it that way,
as I never ever know what I'm going to say until I start to write --
even if I've already uploaded some photos,
which is part of the fun. 


But still, the feeling lurks
that one should never talk about an idea
or show images of a project
until they are complete--
have lived up to their promise
or are deemed decent enough to actually share with the world-- 
(too hideously embarrassing to have gone public with something that turned out badly).

Except that the original definition of a blog is "web log" -- is it not--
a kind of public/ private diary where ideas unfold?
And it's not as though I haven't blogged
(can't believe I'm using this verb... I used to scoff at it),
mid-project before, so I'm clearly not wedded to the modesty thing.
​
But nonetheless, to be caught mid-project seems a little off--

 the maker equivalent of not leaving the house without makeup,
or wearing undies without holes in case you are in an accident,
or checking your teeth in the rear view mirror to make sure there are no hunks of kale blackening your gums when you smile at that important meeting you're about to attend. 

​

And the salad thing?
Well, since I live in town and usually walk places rather than drive,
there is rarely a handy mirror with which to check.

I must, therefor, rely on my friends:
"Sarah -- there is a bit of something greenish stuck between your teeth ...
no, not there, a little to the right... almost....a little more... got it."

So friends -- the grey buttons or the black?
​Or some other color entirely?

Some of the long narrow pieces of cloth I've been weaving
​want paint on them.

Not sure why as the cloth is interesting all by itself.

But sometimes  a gal's got to do 
what a gal's got to do.
​Right?

If I were to claim an historic textile practice,
I would be needlepoint. 

After nearly 30 years as a tapestry weaver I have spent far more hours in front of a loom than with needle and canvas, 
but for as long as I can remember,
the marriage and yarn and image has been a given,
and that certainty began with with needlepoint.

My grandmother, unless she was driving somewhere very fast in her pink Volkswagen bug or cooking something with lots of butter, always had a piece of stitching (needlepoint or crewel or sometimes knitting), in her hands.
So did (and do) at least two of her five daughters (my aunts, not my mother who was otherwise occupied getting a masters degree, learning to program computers back and teaching mathematics).  Grandma's stitching was an endlessly compelling and yet unknowable backdrop to many of my youthful imaginings. 

Once, in my youthful innocence, I asked her why she stitched other people's drawings instead of making up her own. Apparently that was a ridiculous question,
but I was left with a longing to give form to my own ideas--
if only I could figure out how.

My Mother and Aunts now have most of Grandma's work (rugs, bags and more cushions than I can possibly imagine), but I've never needed the physical manifestation of her stitching to know that, should I ever need it, permission to draw with yarn and needle was already granted. 

Not, of course, that one should make a career out of it.

Except, well, I did.

For all the goodness that has come from tapestry and knitting however,
 stitching on canvas has remained in the background--
a secret hobby the mere mention of which causes some tapestry weavers to draw back in horror if the two words appear in the same sentence.
 "Needlepoint is NOT Tapestry!!!!!" 
Of course it is not.
 But neither is it a lesser medium. 
(It probably has not escaped your notice that my needlework and  tapestries look an awful lot alike....)

Truth to tell, for most of my tapestry life, other than mending and sewing the occasional garment,  there hasn't been time for needlepoint.
In the midst of constant weaving, knitting, teaching, spinning, dyeing, drawing, hanging out with my husband and son and doing the dishes, the last thing I needed was another thing.
Indeed, I don't recall quite why I picked up needle and canvas 10 or 11 years ago,
though I know a conversation with Sarah Haskell about  embracing the grid of warp and weft (she loved it, I spent my weaving life trying to defy it),  had something to do with it, as did learning about Knotted Pile from Sara Lamb.

I do remember that the desire was fierce and immediate, and that the moment I found a piece of blank canvas I snatched every second to stitch, enthralled by the sound of the yarn swishing through holes, riveted by the the glow of the stitches -- so different from tapestry even though I was using the same yarn. ​

I made some bags, and cushions (as one does).
Then I began to study comics.
And that, for a time, was that.

Stitching, sewing, storytelling,
dyeing, drawing, dreaming,
 wild and magical and playful freedom to do as I pleased --
I'd never seen or done anything quite like it before.
When not tied up in knots about where the story was going
or how best to tell it once I knew,
I was entirely at my ease. 

 Needlepoint Comics provided a kind of elbow room I was not, at the time, getting with tapestry, 
though those familiar with my work may notice that Stripes is connected to the tapestry book Casting Off, picking up where that book ends.

None of this stuff happens in isolation.
In fact, most of the work on these comics took place as I was writing the novel that would become the Rough Copy series of tapestries -- sequential narrative finding its way into tapestry in a different form.
When I began to actually weave those 13 pieces though, I had neither time nor creative energy for  anything else -- and certainly not something as demanding and compelling as needlepoint.

But now I'm back.
And it was those tapestries that are responsible --
 the addiction to words that was not entirely (even remotely) cured by weaving them,
led to unscripted writing at the loom (no cartoon),
which generated an idea that I might be able to write longer sentences on a backstrap loom,
and sucked me down the rabbit hole I'm currently in (discussed in myriad previous blog posts),
and then the lightbulb moment (lights are good down in rabbit holes),
that I have been weaving the linen grid I longed for back when I was making those giant comics panels above, but couldn't figure out how to do without a floor loom. 
Sometimes I am so dense.

 Now, alas, I've gone on and on,
​the work is calling
and I have not addressed the technical aspects of the thing
-- yarn, sett, materials etc--
which is what I meant to talk about.
Ah well.
Maybe next time.
​I'll know more by then anyway.

See ya!

​

But what does work look like? 
And how can you identify a distraction when you meet it?

What are distractions anyway, if not the first tiny steps -

in pursuit of a dream?

Where they begin

and where they go

(if anywhere at all)

is the great mystery.

But the only way to find out, is to begin.

High drama in the studio and the garden.
Never have we had such a crop of exquisite yellow plums.