Category: Slow stitch

art, coffee pot posts, fiber art, Slow cloth, Slow stitch

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

The latest stitchery:20230304_113105

I’m really enjoying stitching in this section. This piece has changed in my mind from purely abstract to ruminations about paths, choices, obstacles, and flow. What we do to stitch the fragments of our lives together while attempting to create balance. Sometimes you can, sometimes there is too much disruption in the fabric, but we still give it a try.

Now that I’m considering these aspects of it, it has become more meditative and much less frustrating. At the moment I’m thinking about mounting it on another piece of fabric and making it into a scroll. Next week I’ll probably have a different idea.

Last night I spent a lot of time looking through the different workshops that Stitch Club has to offer and making a list of which ones I’d like to do next. I’ll probably not stay subscribed to the service however. Not that it isn’t worth it but I need to mind my budget if I’m going to be able to travel and do the in-person workshops that I enjoy more.

I bought the program Deep Art Effects for my computer a while back and took a very simple photograph of water that I took during one of the last boat trips I took with my family at the lake through all the different filters. I loved so many of them and now considering – what if I warped up a long warp and wove the same design with all of my favorite versions. Separately or together? I think maybe separately, and hang them as a series. I’d weave them horizontally but hang them vertically.

This is a very good sign that I’m breaking free of my artist block.

Here’s the personal life stuff.

I pay attention here to the small cleaning tasks I get done around this house because after five years of serious depression and a spouse whose health concerns limits what he can do, it looked for a while as if it was too awful to ever catch up. Now that I’m feeling better mentally, I realize that we can do it in small chunks. So it’s a celebration when Sandy cleans out a closet, and when I clean a ceiling fan. When I look around and start to feel despair, I remind myself that it IS getting done, slowly, as is our style here. The deep kitchen cleaning is almost done.

Now our ants are invading the bathroom. Why? What do they find to eat? Honestly, it seems like they are just moving from one hole between the molding to another gap under the window. Sandy is going down to the basement to see if he can find clues. I finally got them out of the kitchen, and then the washing machine. ???

Here’s the thing. I am fascinated with ants. Especially when I go to the lake and there are still so many kinds hanging out on the beach. I can sit and watch them explore and maneuver around and over obstacles for a long time. I was about to write “hours” but I’m not that mindful. I do hate fire ants and now that they have finally made it to my street I hope that they don’t chase the other ants away.

Once I was stung by yellowjackets that had made a ground nest under a tree next to our driveway where we step out of the car. That simply won’t do, so I identified the hole, and waited until after dark when they had all returned to their nest. I put window screen over the hole and weighted it down all around with bricks. Then I poured a pot full of scalding water into the hole. That took care of that problem with no poison involved.

The next day, I witnessed the large ants who occupied the tree carrying boiled yellowjacket treats straight up the tree vertically. The yellowjacket bodies were more than twice the size of each ant.

I miss that tree, mainly for the ants and the woodpeckers.

If you read E.O. Wilson’s work about ants, you will discover an amazing world that no one ever notices.

Anyway, I had a busy workweek, and then I volunteered at the CVA gallery again yesterday morning. I noticed that now that my Achilles tendinitis is much, much better, my hips are protesting my lack of activity, so I’m going to get out for a long walk this afternoon.

coffee pot posts, Downsizing, Slow stitch

Sunday evening

Laurie

Here’s the stitching from this week. It’s fun to do this with no deadline and the faintest idea of a “plan.” I’m especially fond of the yellow lines I added on the left, with silk thread I dyed with broom sedge. Most of the rest of the thread is embroidery floss. The project is from a class with Gwen Hedley on Stitch Camp. It’s howlingly funny that I once thought I might finish it in two weeks. Maybe by the end of the year, but that’s the fun and beauty of it – it doesn’t matter. I’m much more pleased with it with the yellow and gold threads and I’ve been finding people in it. Who knows what else might appear? I like the flow that is starting to come together.

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Meant to write a blog post yesterday morning, and then this morning, but I had a late Friday night hanging out with my buddy Beck yakking and laughing, woke up without a hangover, and then gallery sat at the CVA Gallery again for the great fiber arts show there. I met a couple of artists who just moved here from Buffalo, and reinforcing that, ran into them after I closed the gallery at Deep Roots Market. I’m getting back out in the world, gang.

Also, on Friday, we had a dryer delivered so hopefully my near future will have less wrinkled clothes with less cat hair on them. I went to bed really early on Saturday night and slept twelve hours, so today I’ve been knocking out the laundry that’s been piling up.

Sandy cleaned out a couple of closets because a guy came to our house that was just starting to do American Revolution reenactments and was interested in buying gear and clothes. We have a ton of it, and were hoping he’d buy more, but it was a good start in getting rid of stuff we don’t use anymore. We might have to set up a trade blanket at the Guilford Courthouse reenactment, but man, that will take some energy and I don’t want to camp.

I continued to concentrate on cleaning out cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, including cleaning the insides, and purging and moving our stashed pantry food into the kitchen. Now I hope that Sandy will have room in these closets for some of the boxes he has stacked up. Unfortunately it kicked my allergies into high gear and I’m struggling with a persistent headache. But mentally I feel great that I’m making headway on all this mess.

I found the perfect solution for my stashed fabric scrap collection. Bryant Holsenbeck is teaching her recycled mixed media textile animal sculpture class at John C. Campbell Folk School in July when my work isn’t heavy. I’ve wanted to take this particular class for a while. I admire her work and her ethics, and I’m really excited about it!

This means I’ve pretty much booked out my vacation days and money for the year, but you know me, I’ll probably find something else near the end of the year because I won’t be able to resist it.

 

 

coffee pot posts, Slow stitch, Wonderfulness

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

I turned 62 on Friday, so I can now take Social Security early if I really crashed and burned and had to do it! So I guess that’s a milestone of sorts. Even if I do retire early from my current job, I’m going to try to wait to take my social security payments until I’m full age at 67. I’d probably try to find a part-time or remote job.

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Sandy took me to Elm St. Grill in Greensboro and surprised me with four of our friends showing up. The food and drinks were great, and we all agreed that we were a really fun crowd. Joseph cracked me up with a version of Happy Birthday that was very dark and twisted. And I got to go through the tequila torture, TWICE, because the owner said the first time was a practice run. I panicked and got confused about whether thumbs up meant I had enough or to keep going. I could not let that go straight down my throat! Filled up my mouth and almost had to spit it all out. But it was good tequila, and it was payback of sorts for when he did it on his 70th birthday. I slept well that night, and didn’t have a hangover.

I promised to show my stitching since the last time. I didn’t get a lot done, but I started adding buttons and I will be adding some lighter contrasting stitching much later. It is fun because I’m just following my nose, really. Many French knots are on the horizon.

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Yesterday I had a much needed massage and my neck feels so much better today. I went grocery shopping and made a big pot of soup. Instead of the stitching, I mostly went down the rabbit hole of switching between my book and my family tree again. Boy, did I have some evil ancestors, but I have found whole new branches of the family to explore those threads back to Scotland and Switzerland. The Welsh branch is fascinating and a bit hard to decipher. So many Owens and Davids and Thomases and Williams, and then they start turning to Owains, and Dauids and Dyfdds and Gwilyms and Gwyllams.

My neighbors made a couple of repairs to the siding that came loose in a storm at the top of the front of the house. I suppose I should be happy to have such great neighbors, and I am, but it also freaked me out and made me feel a little, I don’t know, ashamed? I finally had to go hide so I wouldn’t have a panic attack. (No need to tell me I shouldn’t feel this way, I know that. I am mentally unwell.) We were asking for recommendations to get someone to fix it and they decided that they could do it for us. One of them told me that he didn’t want to do it, but if he didn’t, the other guy was going to do it, and he didn’t want him to do it because he was afraid he would get hurt. Men, I swear. But, hey! That’s one thing off the to-do list.

They clipped out the branches in that area and around the utility wires coming into the house too, and it was a beautiful day, so I got a little front yard clean-up done. My favorite flowers are beginning to bloom and the eucalyptus does not seem to have survived the Christmas cold snap, so I’m going to cut it down and see if I can get some dye out of the leaves.

Little by little I am getting this place cleaned up and less cluttered, although I don’t think anybody would see the difference. I’ve been concentrating on the kitchen drawers, cabinets, and refrigerator. I have squirreled away a lot of food for the dystopian future, and it’s time to use or get rid of a lot of it. Sandy wants to switch my studio to the front room again. Just thinking about it makes my back and neck hurt. But it would force us to go through a lot of the books and knickknacks and art supplies and make decisions. I’m good about keeping my book collection under control, but Sandy has a hard time letting go of even his old computer manuals. My biggest hoarding issue is fabric and paper. I think that I’ve purged my yarn as much as I can go.

I’m looking that that Dorothy table loom across the room, and thinking that it needs to go. I’ve never even warped it up. I think I know the perfect place to donate it – my friend is an art teacher at a school for refugees. The refugees haven’t arrived yet, but hopefully it will happen soon. There’s been a lot of controversy about it.

Latest fun thing: listening to public radio WNCW on Alexa. This morning they’ve been playing old-time country, along with some pop and soft rock from the 50s-60s. I am not a big pop country fan, but I do love the old stuff and “Americana.” Now they’ve switched to Celtic fiddle.

The church bells are signaling that it is noon-time, so I’ll close. Have a great week!

coffee pot posts, fiber art, Rebel stitching, Slow stitch, tapestry, weaving

Sunday evening Smiddicks Post

Laurie

Can’t say that I’ve gotten much accomplished this weekend other than laundry. I looked over this stitching project and realized that life is too short to be compulsive about doing all this when I’m really not thrilled about most of the pieces. I whittled it down to the long piece and the mostly blue piece and spent several pleasant hours stitching while listening to Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow, leaving most of my thoughts floating in the air somewhere, not a care in the world. It was good for me, because thinking about the world outside of this little house has been bringing me way, way down. When I didn’t like most of the stitching I did this afternoon, I looked at it as an applique opportunity. So maybe this will become a stitch practice, or a mood journal of sorts. One thing is for sure, it is SLOW.

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I had some amazing news on Friday after I posted my blog post – I sold “A Place You’ve Never Been” at the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition. Now, here’s the thing. I put a high price on it and “Cathedral” because I didn’t really want to sell them. I nearly called the curator to tell her to put NFS on both of them. But I thought, nobody is going to pay that price for either of them and if they do, I’ll put the money aside for something really nice for myself. The gallery commission was 50% so I put $1,000 on “A Place You’ve Never Been” and $10,000 on “Cathedral” (I REALLY don’t want to sell it.). So that’s $500 coming my way for the deposit on Laurie Doctor’s workshop in Italy in September 2024.

I’m not interested in making art for money. It sucks the joy out of it for me. You know, I just need something to do with my hands. I will never ever sell my art for cheap. It undercuts the value of my time and the value of other artists’ work. I’d rather give it away than sell it cheap.

However, I kind of fucked up, because I never thought I’d sell it, I didn’t get a good photograph of it in its final setting. I had wrapped it up to send it to another show in early May in which I was going to put NFS on it, and then I found out that I had to put it up for sale. So I never sent it, and I didn’t unwrap it. And guess what, I realize that I didn’t get good photos of the other two in their final form either. I finished getting them hemmed and backed and hanging devices on them at the last minute, and I didn’t stop to photograph them – just jumped in the car and drove with them to Asheville. I hope that I’ll be able to do it when I go to whatever kind of opening we have, whether it’s just a get-together or public. What’s funny is that for a while I was sharing so many photos of it in progress that I decided not to share another photo until it was framed and ready for display. Lesson learned.

Here’s a photo of it when I was testing out different color backgrounds, and a photo of it that my friend sent me when she was there and noticed the red “sold” dot on the card.

A Place You've Never Been

A Place You've Never Been at exhibit

I spent several frustrating hours searching for the best, most affordable way for us to go to Scotland in May or June, and it just ain’t gonna happen. Sandy and I went out to the used bookstore where I picked up a couple of travel books on Scotland and Great Britain, and when we went out to eat, I told him that he was going to have to pony up more money for this trip because I haven’t had time to save for it, and I keep my credit cards paid off. This isn’t like Portugal, when I had the airfare already paid from when I’d planned to go to Ireland in 2020, and the accommodations were inexpensive, and I had two extra years to save up for it. He is worried about his medical bills, so we decided to try to do it in September. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it then either, but I’m glad to have made the decision not to try it in May or June, anyway.

This clears the way for me to go to Penland this summer IF and ONLY IF I can get a scholarship, which, since I am older, I figure is a long shot at best. But it’s only $5 to submit the application, so I’ve decided to put one together over the next week or two. The deadline is Feb. 15, just before my 62nd birthday. I will try not to be disappointed if I don’t get one. I’ll just need to find another way to have fun this summer. I’m sure some kind of workshop will pop up that I can do in person. Maybe I just need to knuckle down and actually get a body of work together – now there’s a thought. Actually doing art instead of dreaming about going to workshops to do art!

art, fiber art, Slow stitch

Stitching

Laurie

Half of Sandy’s thyroid was removed and the nodules tested. It is cancer-free. What a relief! He was in a fairly jolly mood yesterday prior to leaving the hospital – he had to spend a night there. Today he is hurting more, but all he needs is acetaminophen.

He was in the recovery room for hours waiting for a room, and he called me to tell me to go home. I packed up my and his stuff and headed to the door, where a deluge was coming down, then turned around and headed back to the waiting room. It was actually pleasant once I knew that he had come through the surgery okay. I was sitting in an area with three people who were quite entertaining and I had this stitching to do.

Yeah. There’s a couple of reasons I call my practice and my blog “Slow.” One is that I really am quite slow-paced in my artwork, and I tend to choose projects that take time. If I make something in an hour or so, it is a shock to my system, but I can say that very seldom ever happens.

Anyway, people in the online class have posted incredible work. I posted a couple of photos of my slow progress, mainly to encourage others whose work isn’t so wonderful or quick that they have company. I’m enjoying playing with the stitching.

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20230127_133619I was surprised how long it look me just to stitch the pieces together and get rid of those pins. I flipped a few pieces by the time I settled down and decided to accept the challenge of pulling this busy background together. My main intention is to treat this as a learning exercise and a creative jumpstart with rules to help me along. I have pieces of cloth and lots of buttons and beads to include as I feel appropriate.

One of the rules I made for myself was that I have to use up all the pieces. Hmmm. Considering how slow this is going, it might be a year-long project, but okay. I divided them up into smaller groupings, and two of the squares are going on the covers of my stained needle book.

Here are the other groupings:

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Will I continue with this? I don’t know, really. I’m not super enthusiastic about what I’ve done here. I might get a couple of interesting book covers out of this. The main thing is that I know that I will have little stitching projects in my bag everywhere I go, and doing that is better than whipping out my phone to play a game or check social media.