the old, the completed, and to be worked on: 2011+1=2012

Left the piece started a couple of month back is just about done:  99%

The project I started, probably back around middle of October or so is just about finished.  The lower left band has some stitches to finish...will be done by the stroke of mid-night 2011.  I will discuss the story and stitching after the new year. 

OakLight
Gifted to my sister....29 December 2011

This was a piece that I started playing with stitches in preparation for my 2012 little weekly challenge to me.  My fascicles project (see 2 posts ago).  Fascicle Project.  It is bases on the influence of several ideas, but mostly Emily Dickinson "self-published" bound fascicles.  The way she sewed and preserved her poems for herself.  She created 40 all together.  I'm hoping to get about forty done as well next year.  Here, below is the first fascicle.  The main character is an oak leaf, that will tell her story through the year: seasons, months, weeks, days, night, cold, heat.  Her own view from up high and from looking up.

Fascicle, 1.

The beginnings of the Fascicles project.  Each fascicle will be made up of four leaves, 6 pages with a front/back cover.  A single signature sewn with thread, probably red, since I don't use much red (read) thread and somehow I've gotten it into my head the ED used a color! Basic pamphlet style sewing: 3 holes sewn and tied through the center...leaving a frayed end, "somewhere for the eye to rest."  My very first binding teacher told me to fray the thread, leaving sort of a combed hair like effect.  This was her signature - her symbol.  Everyone who had ever studied with Joan Flasch does this same kind of tie-off, "to rest the eye." 

Text will be left and image right.  Various stitches will be used but mostly simple basic stitching.  The text for this page is: 

HappyOak

last of winter

with peace

at the door

contented, soon

i'll be no more

There will be 6 lines of text (including the name/title of the oak leaf that is speaking. I'm still trying to work out the method for including the text.  I will probably just write it without necessarily stitching it...I have planned 40 such fascicle, with 4 leaves, (8 pages): that's 320 pages of stitching.  A bit of stitching I'd say without the text...so it will probably just be "printed" in some fashion.

The fascicles will be my small relaxation project while doing part II of Jude Hill's: magic-diaries-part-2.  That will start in January and go through the end of June.  It is a subscription instructional workshop.  Wonderful things to be learned there. 

And finally:

Few quiet things that dried today.

today was dark and rainy...wasn't a day for gazing and dazing...except into the cauldron (oh, wait, that happened already!)  just did a little dyeing today.  I stitched for two hour straight at mom's last night before putting her to bed so on the horizon there will be an update to LEFT.  Jude video and blogs (Diaries and Spirit Cloth) were so powerful the last couple of days.  I need to think about everything she said...I think she lives in the woods because she is a wood nymph.  I think she'd disappear if she left the civilized life and went into the city.  Just dreaming.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a place to retreat to with just the minor needs met and no one rattling at your door.  My sister lives in Western Massachusetts, on a mountain in the Berkshires.  She teaches in Lenox.  Anyway, she doesn't like the weather there and want to be in the Southwest.  I on the other hand, well, suffice it to say, living on a mountain in a forested area - really seeing the seasons, hearing their songs (dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.)  Well, here are a few examples of my dyeing.    

rust, mould, and a quick dip in indigo carmine

rust, indigo carmine, redyed in onion skin

First dye:rust, indigo carmine
redyed in onion skin

First dyed in indigo carmine with rust
redyed in onion skin and painted bottom with walnut dye gue

first dye: rust in indigo carmine,
redyed using Jude's hoop dip in
onions skin 

close up of hoop dyed dip

indigo carmine, rust beer caps
(found objects!)

avocado dyed

putting a few objects in my pocket while walking mom's dog.

Ha, you wouldn't guess that I have a BFA in photography...I learned photography doing old fashion film, black and white imagery and developed my own film and prints.  I'm not good with this digital camera stuff.  I only own one because I got it for my 25th anniversary gift from the Art Institute as an "award"/"reward" for services rendered. Ha.