...its doodle wednesday , remember that? and whispering wednesday as well. ha! dropping a line here just to let you know that passwords for Whispering Hearts will be issued starting friday, april 1. la-la-la...
and also, my reader collapsed so if i am not visiting you lately it is because it will take me some time to rebuild it. sheesh! just what i need.
i decided to apply some black silk fringe, from a discarded scarf, to one edge of this one. i trimmed it down a bit and needed to free up the straightness of at least one of the edges without defining which was the top or the bottom. i think it still can be hung any way. i am considering a set of ties on all four corners. i think this one is about circumstance. (the keeper of context) how that can come at you from any which way. how you can absorb the impact of that (with the help of many eyes). and create a space to be again. just like magic. poof. you continue.
i have to say that the curtains , that winter theater, let me do it...set the stage for the last act for this one...
...it transformed into something that, quite frankly, astounds me. (being astounded is such a personal triumph) it has spaces... lots of them. or just space. which almost protrudes into my sense of construction. i need this space as an important new component. this one, well, it weighs nothing. but it is strong.
...it has so many things, but the one thing, the heart that resulted from trying to cut a velvet applique from the surface and the stitches would not let go... the spot that seemed to ruin everything... a heart's remains...is everything.
the velvet tear that became a tree is a small scrap form mom's favorite suit. she loves green, especially olive green.
tomorrow's shop update has been cancelled. shop info will be on the whispering page from now on.
the hearts of trees are bigger than the seasons.
Once I wrote...
I have never liked hearts. I have always avoided them because
of their commonness and especially because of my secret fear
of pink and all things too sweet.
And then continuing....Oh, but now that I am a bit
older, I am finding my fears hold a special place in my life. Like
billboards screaming opportunity, I use them as challenges and I
have come to appreciate them as a chance at something new.
(AQS 2009)
sometimes you say things without actually listening to yourself. today i am thinking about that. thinking about what i said, thinking about how this has all come to pass. just thinking about how this blog has become a way for me to look back on that and also a way to continue. how hard that is sometimes even though it seems easier everyday. And how many times i have used the heart, how many ways there are to redefine it. redefinition is really mending, isn't it?
i planned a little shop update to celebrate heart, and there will be a few things posted there today. but there were so many i just became overwhelmed by it all. i am collecting them all, old and new (and a bit of whispering) and i will be dribbling them in as they are finished....so the shop will just be filled with heart for a while. and then it will be closing. the shop, that is.
today i love this
..early morning and Was is still folded like cloth.
the sun is out and temperature is above freezing. feeling lighter, seeing more clearly.
a gift has lightened my heavy feeling. a story so casually shared . the loss of a child. i think sharing these things is a generosity. story is a way to balance life's weight. to raise awareness of a common journey. to distribute the burden. the telling and the listening. sharing story has two sides. double sided keepers.
thank you
in the spirit of new found lightness, i am working with silk gauze today. the strange thing about silk is in its lightness it can also harbor amazing shadow. it has unusual depth and a mysterious sense of weight. there is a small journey waiting here.
today, i love this.
...this ol' heart has become more complex...
...and even though it is about 12" square it seems much larger to me. i think i need to start whispering, i am welling up with words. the quiet kind, that come at you at every moment. filling you. and then everything else.
5:36 PM ...a little color, little by little, changing season.
...some curved quilting. a bit of sympathetic movement.
looks like we are in meltdown mode at last, expecting, at least, a few nights of above freezing temperatures. we had to break off the icicles from the roof line to keep them from getting dangerously large and had some fun creating some kind of ice fence, hoping scare away the winter spirits for a while. when everything is covered in ice and snow, you start to lose your sense of color. or maybe it is found again in the revelation that white comes in a million colors.
i always remember, when i was a fabric designer, how hard it was to explain to customers how differently light colors can be depending on how you use them with other colors. how a light pink might be white if there was less of it or if it was used with a dark background. or even a dark color nearby. how this can trick your eye. i rarely use pure white, i just use less of a light color. in this way it can seem colorless, yet even in colorlessness it can hold a sense of something.
this piece already holds a sense of heart to me. the pinks which were dyed using the pinapple sage blooms this past fall. is soft, a pink i can live with, and sometimes use as white, that has a sense of something else.
...tenderness is a little fragment but it is no small thing.
taking this photo through a window caused the reflection to transform the bleed into something quite spectacular in terms of color flow and the illusion of new vision. not much melt here yet, it is like the storm is suspended as a reminder of something.
going to spend some time with mom. dad died around this time of year. winter can be challenging with a hole in your heart.
If the path before you is clear,
you are probably on
someone else's.
-Carl Jung