First there was the photo, taken at Healing Ground in Oak Ridge, North Carolina.

Then there was the idea and the cartoon…

Then there was a long period of dithering because I couldn’t decide between two approaches. One was to make the “path” blue, the maze white, and sew on buttons or smooth worn pieces of shell.

The other was to use all these little samples of handspun, natural or naturally dyed wool that were given to me along with the used loom I bought eight years ago, and make it more realistic.

I decided to start with the more traditional tapestry, and if I’m hungry for more, weave the other one.

Update: Rather than post progress reports every day or so, I’ve put an “In Progress” spot for the latest photo near the top of my sidebar.

I just wrote this long random post, looked back into the archives to see when I planted my tomatoes last year, and realized that it was my blogiversary. How about that! I won’t try to do a retrospective. I’m looking toward the future right now.

Last night I looked at the found object jewelry/sculpture class that I signed up for at Art and Soul, and I changed my mind. It looked totally fascinating, BUT I registered for it when I still thought that I was going to be making paper and books in Italy, and when I hoped that one of the three collage/paper/multimedia workshops I signed up for in Greensboro would make. None of this things panned out, and I realized, damn, I still want to take a class in multimedia techniques and bookmaking, and I’m having a hard time getting excited about making jewelry again right now. So I changed my classes. In that two-day class’s place I’ll take two one-day classes - one in book making, and one in fabric collage techniques. I figure that I’ll learn a lot of new things in the first two classes (the first is carving stamps) and the third will be more familiar and relaxing, and I can use all three classes in my plans to make books and art journals and whatever. I need some focus and putting some limits on my direction will help me. Flying out in all directions is great for some people, but it overwhelms me.

I just wish that there were some book art classes nearby. But it’s kind of nice not to be tied down to a regular time every week. Other than work.

I received an interesting phone call today. Looks like a reporter for the News and Record is going to interview me again - a different reporter who wants to focus on somebody who is on a journey of “going green.” The other article, almost two years ago, focused on the Eat Local Challenge and being a locavore. It didn’t directly address the ecological aspects of what I’m trying to do. So this one will probably focus more on the sustainable lifestyle changes that we have made and since it will be in June instead of next week, thank God, I’ll have the garden going and we can talk about composting, rain barrels, organic methods, recycling cardboard and newspaper as mulch, earthworms and beneficial insects and such. I will try to get in there my efforts to reuse before recycling or buying, and to consider the impact and sources of the stuff that we do buy. I think that it will be a much more interesting article, at least for me! Maybe by that time we’ll have a new fuel-efficient car.

The interview was originally going to be tomorrow, and this house is a wreck, as usual, and one night would not have been enough for me to make it acceptable for company. The thought of what might have been did shame me into cleaning the toilet and washing the dishes. I had to spend some time in the Back Forty putting plastic sheeting over the row tunnels. It’s very windy and the lows are supposed to be in the low 20s tonight. Those little seedlings may have been okay, but why take a chance?

I’ve decided to wait until March 8 to plant my tomatoes. That will be the day after the new moon. My tomato seedlings always get way too big before it’s warm enough to plant them outside. I’m trying to stop making the same mistakes over and over. Last year I planted them (inside) on Feb. 8. Sometimes restraint is needed in gardening.

My mother visited the South Carolina Cotton Museum in Bishopsville, SC today, and discovered something interesting. It’s located in the livery stable that my grandfather operated back at the turn of the twentieth century.

I have rather odd ancestry - odd because of a line of youngest children born to older parents. My great-grandfather, William Harris Parham, fought in the Civil War. His wife’s grandfather, Tristram Thomas (my g-g-g-grandfather), fought with Francis Marion in the American Revolution - “the Swamp Fox.” So when people talk about their grandparents or great-grandparents being alive, I really envy them.

3.5 x 2.5″
cotton yarn, cardboard, brown paper, shipping label, ink

See this post for the story behind it.

I jammed up my printer playing with this brown paper and I think that I killed it! But I do like the effect it made on the words. The “prettier” side is actually the back of the card. It is supposed to have my contact information on it and I have to figure that out. I have a blue gel pen at work that might do the trick.

This is my first artist trading card. There are only two rules for ATCs - they must be 2.5 x 3.5 inches (baseball card size) and they must be traded or given away, never sold.

This was a lot of fun and I think that I’ll keep it up. Hopefully I’ll have plenty to trade when I go to Art & Soul in early May.

Me: “Don’t you think that smashed hubcap would make a great base for some found art?’

Him: “I think that if this light changes and you’re not in the car, you’ll be on your own.”

He reaches over and locks my door. “Do you have your seat belt on?”

I have to do the same thing to him on a regular basis, with other stuff.

It’s called marriage.

The Take It Further Challenge for February had two options: a color combination and/or a concept prompt of “What are you old enough to remember?”

I wanted to do both, but blanked out on how to do it until yesterday. My concept had more to do with technology - the phone system, mimeographs instead of copiers, etc. I thought about collage and I might still work with this idea, since I have a great secretary’s manual from the 1930s to work with. (By the way, I’m a secretary, and I’m the daughter of a secretary.) But I ached to do some more with tapestry, so I began by pulling out yarns that were a close match to the color challenge.

I couldn’t find the shade of brown, and it irked me because I felt that it was so familiar that I must have it somewhere. I stopped and took a few moments to straighten up my studio, and there it was - my cardboard box that I used as a loom for the tapestry bag. I decided to incorporate a small cardboard loom into my project for the brown color, and I cut the box into small pieces. One piece had the UPS shipping sticker on it, and I thought, I remember when there wasn’t a bar code or number on every single thing that was sold or shipped, and you didn’t have a different password or ID number for every different purpose, and the technology that is supposed to make our lives more efficient has complicated our lives in many ways.

Then I realized that this was the piece that I would use for my loom.

The bar code is meant to look like the weft on that side, but I am so tempted to weave the whole thing. I’ll upload the finished object when it’s done.

(Later that evening…)

I wove a frame around the bar code. I’ll finish this tomorrow night. The weaving is done. And it was fun.

Now that I have gotten my whining out of the way, it’s time to write about whatever else occurs to me until the coffee runs out.

I don’t think that I mentioned this yet, but I signed up for another class on Friday night at the Art and Soul retreat - carving stamps. I think that this will be great fun and I’d like to do my own alphabet. When I was in high school I did a little freelance work lettering signs for small businesses and I took a typography course in community college, back in the days before desktop publishing. I’ve always been interested in the design of fonts. I bought a print making kit with a carving block, inks, stamp pad, brayer, linoleum cutter and blades. Now I just need to buy rubber erasers to carve small stamps. And prayer. I am such a klutz that handling sharp objects always carries a high amount of risk for me.

Part of what I’m doing with the money that I saved to go to Italy this summer is going to this retreat, but I’m also buying some tools and supplies to help me get started in multimedia. I use as many found objects as I can and recycle paper and fabric, but I still have to buy the stuff to attach them to each other! My latest purchase is a craft iron with a tiny tip. There are other attachments you can buy for it for other functions, but I’m just trying this now. Since I’m figuring out that my chronic tendinitis is not going to let me hold a needle and apply pressure for more than a few minutes, I’ll be able to use fusible webbing and this iron for some small projects. I also bought some embossing powders and heatproof craft sheets to use between the iron and my projects. My next two purchases will probably have to be a heat gun and a cordless drill. If anyone has any recommendations on brands or sources, please let me know.

I bought these items specificly for an artist trading card project that I am doing with recycled manila folders and short pieces of leftover yarns and thrums (leftover warp threads from weaving). We had a large number of legal size folders in the office that we don’t need, so I am cutting them down to normal size and using the leftovers that would have been thrown out. There is a chapter using these materials in Artist Trading Card Workshop that I thought would be a good jumping off point for me. I hope that I’ll get a chance to play with this today.

And I found a new discussion group for Art Journal Quilts through a real soulmate blog that I just discovered recently, Notes from the Voodoo Cafe. This makes three art discussion groups that I’ve joined. Normally I don’t like this much email but I have them going to another address I set up just for things that can wait until I have some relaxing time to read through them.

Part of my frenzy here is that since I finished the tapestry bag, I’ve been sinking. Maybe the art is distracting me from experiencing my grief and I need to work through that, but right now, I’d rather be distracted.

Last night I read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett while listening to classical music. Nice way to finish off the work week.

I keep dreaming about hidden or newly discovered rooms in a house where I live filled with beautiful furnishings and books and interesting objects. I see this as my subconscious assuring me that there is still much treasure to be found in my life.

I’m pretty sure that I have one of those endless sinus infections dragging me down, sapping a little more of my energy and patience every day. Everywhere I turn people are sick. It makes me want to wear a face mask to work. Every day this week I have announced out loud that I am not going to lose my temper that day. I am moody in the extreme.

I’m dealing with a bit of disappointment and frustration. Not to sound negative, but…I should have known that things were a little too bright and shiny to last. Last night I went to a movie co-sponsored by four organizations that I am affiliated with in some way. Slow Food and Deep Roots had information tables there. I realized that I don’t attend meetings any more for the other two, and I’m debating whether I’m spreading myself too thin. I know that my Sierra Club chapter needs a webmaster, but I wonder if I should resign from that and the other committee that co-sponsored the movie and throw all my energy in with Slow Food. I don’t have as much energy as people seem to think that I do, and I have to be careful and selective with it.

The thing is, when I come home from work, I don’t feel like doing more work on the computer. Especially this time of the year, when I always have several large responsibilities at work that are in a constant state of change. Just when I think that I’ve got things nailed down, splat.

Tonight I’m going to try to get some extra sleep. I heard that there was a Stitch and Bitch group that meets downtown at a coffee shop on Saturday afternoons. I actually managed to thread a beading needle and finish up a bracelet that I began a year ago the other night. So I might check that group out and also check to see if the damn gallery that was supposed to call me almost three months ago about my leftover work from the now closed Two Art Chicks is actually open yet. I think that I’ll see if they really have my consignment pieces (it won’t be much) and get the hell out of that situation, if I am indeed IN that situation. If they don’t have them, I’ll just write it off as a lesson learned and be glad to be done with it.

I could warp up another tapestry box loom and take it to Stitch and Bitch. I really could.

My favorite tree, the willow oak on my walk to work.

I think that this tree is a redbud. The snow was piled as high as the horizontal branches were thick.

Hot damn, I finally remembered to buy new rechargeable batteries yesterday after sucking the absolute last bit of use out of my old ones, and I finally remembered to recharge them tonight, so I could upload my photos from last week.

Because, you see, I finished the tapestry bag on Sunday afternoon. The closure is a drilled pebble button, and there is a piece of cardboard in the bottom to hold its shape between the lining and the bag.

Don’t…ask…how I did the lining. Dumb luck with much cursing and sticking pins in my fingers. It was a lesson in persistence and pain, and I finally resorted to an iron and Stitch Witchery.

Next time, I will make the lining darker, although it does help me find things in my bag. Also will make the inner pockets bigger. The straps are perfect!