OCD and woe is me, not!

It is Friday morning, early early early, maybe too early to write about this. . .

I must tell you what I have been doing when I am not doing something else.

I have been knitting and ripping out and knitting and ripping out and knitting some more.

I think I have OCD for sure.

Only I know. You do not know what it is like being me.  Actually, it IS pretty fun being me, sometimes.
I get to be around wonderful teachers and children who are like a freshly erased blackboard, so fresh and so ready and so full of wonder. That is the best part of my life.

The worst part is when I am alone and trying to do something that does not want to be done.

They say that you are what you think. . .

I have mantras that I say to myself as I am working on something intensely and constantly, sometimes, they are not what I should say. . .to myself, I will leave that to your imagination.

But, the good part is the fascination I have with dots of color. I like Noro because it entertains my eyes and mind. I have too much Noro in my wardrobe because of that. Now, I am into another yarn. I think about this yarn and how it was dyed and why exactly  do artisans choose the color they choose and how they decide exactly how it is applied. It fascinates my eyes to see a stitch that it perfectly beautiful in itself become lively and even more interesting by which color comes up and what it does when next to another color. What makes me crazy is when I forget to pay attention to the stitch I am doing because I am so engrossed with just looking at the results. This is why I am ripping out.

The photography I have been doing lately is not great because it has been raining for days. The light is not good. I want to show you what I am seeing.

I am working on my own paper designs for origami and paper sculptures, too. I am supposed to give a lecture in a couple of weeks about my sculpture so that is what I SHOULD be working toward instead of knitting and ripping., I am into the Beyond Layers Class, too. I guess you already know about that if you are reading this blog.

Today, I am thinking that I am going to our historical corner drug store to order a LIME RICKEY which is so good to change the way I talk to myself. It is a reward if I will just be good.

I hope you all have a super duper great Friday. xoxox

i MUST EXPLAIN. . .

what this is about. . .

Beyond Layers

The funny thing is. . .

is

I have no idea.

Hope you are taking a look

around.

xoxo to you too!

6 WORD MEMOIR

OK , So what does it mean?

or 

I must not be from here.

or

Let me off of this spiral.

or

One way road

two way traffic.

or 

Well, I am just passing through.

Less Is More

Less Is More

is more or less

the question.

Awaken is the texture.

From Kin Klassen.

I am playing, again.

This is my pepper shaker which I bought

at a gallery a very long time ago. . .

minimal messing around with the photograph. . .

Hope you are all having as much fun as I am on this Saturday!

xoxox

Fiber Origami

This is what I did instead. . .

This is what I wrote to answer a question. . .

Talk about a showstopper, for me this is it. For two days I have been contemplating exactly what to say, I am speechless.

You know the little sign that goes on on the dashboard. . .that lights up in red. . .airbags. . .? Well, my husband always points to that when he is driving and I am the passenger. For some unknown reason, whenever I am  in a car, the verbal, creative, deep deep well of ideas, freely flow from my mouth. I am really very quiet but thinking all the time.

When I was a child there was no stopping me. I spent the entire time thinking up something to do and then did it. Like when I decided to connect all of my playmates to a network of tin can tele-somethings. Of course, it did not work because we put string anchored with bobbie pins all the way around the block and ran a connection to each house. The point of this failure does not matter, it was the idea and the process of just doing it that I remember with pure delight. 

I would tap dance on an upturned galvanized tub and sing, “I Want To Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” at six in the morning. . .

So, you get the idea that I am more creative than not.

It is the well full of wonder and beginning that I dip  my bucket daily to bring something fresh into being.

My problem seems to be editing.

Have a really nice day everyone. . .XOX

I'm walkin on sunshine

Saturday, it came in the mail! Oh yes, now I am walking on clouds while knitting on a version of
my spiral scarf. What can be better than knitting stars and spirals? It is the milky way to go.
I love the colors of the yarn from Camilla of Twist & Twine Yarn.
I used Kim Klassen's texture oh My on this photo. Beyond Layers just click it.

To Evoke

Evocative

Is The Word

I am contemplating. . .

What do I want to convey?

What it feels like when I see.

No cheap tricks!

Like gazing into a crystal ball,

Looking for something which is not there,

or is it?

I find what I want to know

when I sit down to write.

I answer my questions. . .

Questions I did not know I was wondering over

sitting somewhere inside my heart. . . 

discovery!

Now this makes my heart 

as light as

a feather

knowing that I am free to drift

to land wherever

it is

that I might need 

to 

be.

This stray kitty 

did exactly that. . .

he landed right here

he is our outside cat

my crazy baby kitty

talks through the window 

at this kitty

I found a mother to be

strolling on this tree

she found this place, too.

These thoughts are meant for you xoxox

A Colorful Experiment or Swatching Again

I am forgetting that today is Friday

13

While I wait for yet another batch of yarn to arrive

from Twist and Twine Yarns

(Maybe Today:)))

I just couldn't resist the

Easter Bunny Sunny Colors

Camilla dyed

I know, I know, I know. . .

What I really need is more yarn, right?

So I swatched the above using the star stitch

to top off the week exploring

one square inch.

I hope everyone has a colorful weekend!

hugs xoxoxo

That Perfect Square Inch

One Square Inch

Measuring Focus Measuring Focus

From the first visit to Monticello I became obsessed with the instruments carried by Thomas Jefferson. On the back of his horse he would sit and write in notebooks everything he would see. He measured everything in one way or another. He was a man of his time consumed with exploring every detail of his world which included our new land and that of those across the big blue seas.

Those instruments he collected and kept with  his person, those instruments he designed and had manufactured, such as a portable desk and his idea of a copy machine, may be seen at the visitor center along the interstate Highway located at the bottom of the mountain where he set up his homestead, most fascinating to me because these things remind me of my own father, a man interested in the future of

exploration of space and tools in which to accomplish this daunting task which he would design and lead experimentation to prove it here on earth.

Jefferson loved books, I love books, my father thought they were a waste of time, he only used books as tools to find answers, quickly. He was more interested in living each moment in the now. I probably loved books because he did not. But, I love Jefferson just because he did.

I see this thought process as a way to focus, a way to measure focus, a way to abstract from the environment one inhabits, a form or symbol to connect with other beings or to simply crystallize a thought for oneself in a concrete form, to communicate, these tools we use  to facilitate our ideas.

I joke about the fact that a lot of the time my focus is about 6 square inches. In this space there is no time.

It may be 3 dimensional or something flat, it doesn’t matter.  I am consumed by this focus.

It could be a book, it could be a knitting project, it could be stitching embroidery, it could be gazing at the mixing bowl, it could be planting a bulb, it usually involves a grid.

A grid made up of multiples of 1 square inch.

Six squares up

Six squares down

Six squares over

Six squares back

I find so much beauty in a square inch of a photograph especially if taken with  high resolution which can be gone over with  focused attention looking for that one perfect square inch.

Jefferson, Dad, and I were all gazing at the world and beyond looking for that perfect square inch.

After Anthropologie

A few items came home with me the other day when I took a quick trip 

to Anthropologie and to buy window coverings. What a gorgeous

 day to see fields of wildflowers and fresh spring green covering

 the top of trees. Bulbs in bloom everywhere we looked made

 the day enjoyable, too.

A few snapshots I took turned into something else.

Yesterday I showed two photo's where I zeroed in on an interesting inch

of the photo and then manipulated that.

Next, I blew up that image and added more information, printed those out,

then that sparked another idea.

I pulled out some fat quarters of fabric and did a transfer onto

some yellow lined fabric.

Next, I decided to make some small interesting shapes in other fabrics

to layer upon this.

Embroidery stitches and embellishments will come

This will be a pillow sampler, of sorts.

I just thought it would be nice to share, again, how one thing leads to another.

I never know where I will end-up but the journey is fun.

Queen Goony Bird

on fabric

Have a great day!

Voyages of the goony bird

The Tale of the Goony Bird

photo of Mango Candle from Anthropologie

Photo manipulation
This goony bird wants to be seen

Day one

She sat outside the window watching
The people inside
While they went about their dailies
It was plain to see inside
the life cycles
Would go on and on
Endlessly
Until it would end
Collectively
With some amazing event
Her life was sitting on a perch
Their lives
Took place on the stage
They set
At will
One thought it was a prison
She is no longer here
She is in a different prison
The one inside her mind
Pity really  that it only took
a change of mind
Another lives in the castle of
Forgotten dreams
Now kindled anew
Fueled by connections
Reaching far and wide
Deep and full
Another flies by day into
Another realm of commerce
And delight
Created from imagined circumstance
Fully carefree of retribution
When the light is gone
I see him here again
Briefly other individuals come and go
The seasons
the invitation
Beckons now an then
The kitty lives a life of leisure
Where he stares back at me
From his vantage point
Through the pane
That separates
His world
From mine. . .
This April day is the ninth.

A Gremlin Lives Inside This Computer

While I am trying to finish an Easter dress for a goony bird

This afternoon before Good Friday

(around here it is THE day to plant potatoes, but, it is raining way too hard)

I have a helper. . .

not!

What I am trying to say. . .

I hope every single one of you have a wonderful

Spring Break, too.

School is out for Spring Break 

I am off for Charlotte

To buy some linen curtains

and a visit to Anthropologie.

My photo's are squished and turned???

I do not know why. . .

I have a date with a 

finicky rabbit, too.

The Easter dress in the works below

for Missy Goony,

she just flew into the window and

knocked herself cookoo, "Where is the hat?" 

She tweets.

Hugs xoxoxo

Stitching spring or springing stitch

Rainy morning 

follows the thunder

in the night

darkness

then grayness

now 

blue sky. . .

warmth

watching the dogwood and purple pansy red-bud trees

bloom

through the window I see it

knitting color

stitching

through 

this day of my life.

thinking

of 

you

xoxox

A Story

The End