Glyph card: Ancient

Here's my glyph-creature for the SAQA meeting's monthly word challenge: ancient. I think I may need to take the color down a little, but I'll see what I think tomorrow.

This is the reverse side of a cool swirly-print fabric that I don't have nearly as much of as I'd like. I cut a pencil eraser to make the triangle stamp, and stamped with watercolor paint. It's not quite so blue IRL. Foiled with copper, scratched it down, foiled over it with blue-green (which barely took, but when it's in your hand and the light is just right, there's a glint here and there), scratched it down again and foiled over with gold. Now I'm only two months behind on the SAQA challenges.

Excelsior.

invitational

This is what comes of having a blog:
people find you and ask you to come out and play. I got an email from dinahmow (in Australia, please) who saw a comment I posted on another blog (which originates in England) expressing envy at missing the fun of these pass-along and paste-in make-a-book exchanges. So she's starting one. So, would I like to participate? So I said, Sure.

Enter panic.

The challenge word this month for SAQA is "ancient" so that got me thinking about petroglyphs and I remembered that in the winter I splashed up a bunch of watercolor papers and left them out in the snow. I brought the soaking wet papers in and put clean pieces in between. The soaked papers are not wildly successful but the between sheets are interesting. The picture is a section from one of the between sheets with a little distress ink. Later in the weekend, I'll pick a section to work up for my book -- how odd it feels to say that -- carve some petroglyphs; stamp, stamp, stamp; and see if that looks like anything. Here's hoping...

another quarter is heard from

This is Patches. He has an anxiety disorder. Really. About a year ago, he decided he'd had enough of being a yard cat and was going to be a house cat. He seems to have adapted.

Funny how that works.

awake again

Okay. I'm up.
Three days in a row I've been awake for more than about 40 minutes at a time. Behold!, the power of homemade chicken soup and garlic.
And so I got going on the cards for a postcard swap I joined via postmark'd art [http://www.postmarkdart.com/]. I first thought about doing some kind of leaf study, then I thought about doing something for a moonbow idea I've been harboring for a while. I did a moonbow sketch and pulled fabrics, but... no... that won't do. Then I remembered I had some quilt blocks that weren't going together in quite the way I'd hoped and that were about the right size. Where... where... ah! in the downstairs room that has become an attic. Whilst cleaning -- yes, I'm awake enough to tackle a small portion of the ongoing excavations -- I came across yards-and-yards of something I'd bought while in thrall to Stack-and-Whack. Yes! These go together and the flowers are the right size for a medallion. Off I go.

Today I discovered a heretofore unsuspected superpower -- I can (almost) melt Mistyfuse with my bare hands. I'm not sure this is useful, but I will try to use my power for Good.

Forging on... Misty-fused the medallions to the blocks, Fast-2-Fused the blocks and backing together, and discovered yet another reason to hate math. F-2-F is 28 inches wide. You'd think that meant you could get seven 4-inch pieces across the width. You'd be wrong, you get almost 7. I understand the bit about cutting lumber where you have to account for the thickness of the saw blade when you measure, but come on... how thick is a rotary blade? Thick enough, I guess.

Now I just need to unearth the sewing machine... I know I brought it back from the April retreat, it's got to be here somewhere... find some thread that goes-with, and Finish. It's good to be back.

Oh, addendum to the postcard exchange lore posted previously: Make one for yourself so you have a complete set.

land of nod

I've been almost but not quite coming down with something for a couple of weeks. The main symptom of this thing has been an irresistible compulsion toward 15-hour naps relieved by half-hours of diminishing alertness.

In those fleeting moments of alertness I have managed to help coordinate a postcard exchange and learned a couple of helpful tips for getting going. To wit:
1. Set up a yahoo group. Set it up so that the personal info of the people in the group is available only to other members of the group.
2. Keep track of the folks who can't or won't yahoo and keep them informed of what's going on.
3. Once you have your major points settled -- theme or no theme, mail-by date, who's in and who's not -- make a list or table or spread sheet so you can keep track of whom you've sent to (and received from).
4. Make and send cards to five people at a time so you don't get into a major mass-production weekend or all-nighter the day before the mail-by, and -- I thought this was especially brilliant -- so people start getting cards almost immediately.

Whatever I was not quite coming down with seems, as of today, to have been routed by chicken broth laced with shocking amounts of garlic so I expect to have more to report sooner rather than later.

Looking forward.

little boxes

In a recent thread over at artand perception.com, McFawn offered an exercise:

"Draw a ½ inch by ½ inch box with a pen. Then, fill the box with forms–but make it interesting. This is very difficult because you can’t work with nuance, texture, etc–just a fat penline in a small space. Do about ten of these and you’ll see both how limited an artist’s choices are in terms of overall forms, and how interesting a little box can be."

So I thought I'd try it. I didn't collapse into quivering frustration, so I'm sure I've done it wrong (forms? qu'est-ce que forms?), but here they are. The last one is an idea I've been incubating for a tiny (4-inch square) expression of the vernal equinox. Now that the solstice is almost upon us, and if the general excavating of a workroom continues at a good pace, maybe I'll get it done. The bottom band will be robin-gray, the next one up will be red-breast-rust, and the next robin-beak yellow overlain with yellow bugle beads, and the top will be bird-head black.

work in progress

Okay. Believe it or not, this represents progress. The rug is visible. There are whole swathes of floor with enough clear passage so that the cats no longer struggle to move around. I have packed up and thrown out huge bags o'stuff -- mostly miscellaneous papers with information that I might build a class around, or that were funny or interesting, or that might be useful, or that I can't remember why I saved in the first place.

Bags o' stuff that I only looked at when I was considering whether to throw them out, or during earlier spasms of "I really have to get organized. Oh god, this is too overwhelming." This time I threw them out (actually, I put them in the recycling bin -- which is required here in mainland NYC). Six -- count 'em -- six shopping bags of books went to the library. Some of them, maybe one bag's worth, I had bought and never read. Out. Out. Out. There is still more to go, but this is much improved.

I'm not sure how this room is going to sort into work stations. But now at least there is enough space to shift things without first having to shift other things. The house is old and the electricity is not of the first water -- so I'm not sure what all I can have going when the a/c is on, but This Is Progress. Really it is.