a little more “love is the answer”, part 3

Love is Respect, and you can hold that in your hands, and take it out into the world.

These have to be stitched to the pennant, and a bit of text completed above the moon, and then i can put the back and front together.

The world is an ecoprint with my favourite local plant, red osier, dipped in indigo. The hands were cut from a rust and brazilwood piece done during one of my residencies at ACAD. I like too how the heart current abstraction also looks a bit like a tree, growing, protecting, strengthening the world.

I will however, resist saying “I am Groot” 🙂  🙂  🙂  🙂

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what a concept: finishing

 When you concentrate on one thing, it gets done–what a concept!

Admittedly, this is dimunitive, a whole 7×14″ once she’s mounted, but a full day of stitching still left me bleary eyed but satisfied! She’ll be in the shop when done, but is still untitled.

 

 

a little pain, a lot of gain

Yesterday was a “Dental Day”, and you know what that means! To keep my mind off what was going to happen, i worked on this little ecoprint. All natural dyes, all cotton, and a perfect antidote to pain and winter! Background surround is madder, madder with osage overdye, and ecoprint panel is madder and a tannin blanket, with leaves from my garden.

Shall have to photograph this in better daylight, as it’s even prettier than it is 🙂

“Love is the Answer” project, part 2

March 7/18:

(As i mentioned before, these entries will all be posted when my part of the project is done, but are dated at the time written. For reference to previous thoughts, see Part 1 and posts following this one by clicking on “Love is the Answer collaborative project” under the entry.)

Most of us have a personal symbol system, whether motif, shape, object, colour or even stitch, that marks our work, makes it ours and is ultimately satisfying. Mine are anatomical (hearts, brain, spine/bones) or nature inspired (bees/roots/branches/moons), and the hexagon shape, quite ubiquitous in a lot of my work. Hexagons, in my lexicon, are cells, microscopic flora and fauna, hives, memories, all symbolizing at a basic level, connectivity.

While most of my personal symbols would probably work within the context of this collaborative project, i feel the heart and hexagons would be the most appropriate. Heart and connectivity are most definitely parts of love, in all of its platonic, romantic, pantheistic and spiritual permutations. It’s these components that make it work, in my books. And that is where Respect starts, as Love is Respect.

For this, i wanted to use the really abstracted drawings of the way the heart’s “electrical” current flows. This was a pre-cursor to that (from 2006!).

I had started a new project/idea in January of this year (after correcting the placement of that left side hand!):

Went nowhere with it….

BUT. Those hands and what about with an abstracted heart?????

I liked this sketch,

 

and thought to make it a bit more story telling, a heart’s current over the entire world. (This is a somewhat artistic rendering of the actual heart current, abstracted and more ornamental, but it does represent the real thing. Because i have heart issues, i do a lot of research 🙂 )

Sept 29/18: A version of that sketch will go on this:

Oct:    And i finished the “back” for this pennant, though i suppose there is no front or back, no “right” or “wrong” side to this project, as Mo is suspending them from very evocative armature.

 

 

gah, winter is here

Really, we have had very little autumn this year!

Good thing i collected the last of the oak leaves yesterday! Hopefully we will have a melt because i still want leaves from the cottonwood/poplars.

Today, i’ve filled up the bird feeder, put out their suet blocks, and shaken some apples off the tree for the deer and squirrels. Part of the tracks in that snowy photo are the deer wandering through the patio area 🙂 I’ll shake the snow off those bowed down raspberries, because the deer love them too! I’ve already been out getting it off that crabapple so it doesn’t snap the power line to the garage. And the dog can’t make up her tiny little mind if she wants to come in, so she can have a towel rubdown, or go out so she can come in—- for a towel rubdown. 🙂 I think we’re up to a foot now…….

It’ll be a good day to stay in and play with post mordants and modifiers for the oak leaf experiments!

 

 

Free shipping

Canada Post every once in awhile gives small businesses a break. This month shipping WITHIN CANADA, is free. Shipping fees paid will be refunded  *before* shipping 🙂

Visit the shop, and see what delectables are there! Some are even on sale!

foraging, part 2

Mysterious chemistry 🙂 These are the oak leaf results.

Quite chocolate coloured on its own!!! I’m sure the first extraction, the first thread in the photo below, proves that more WOF is needed, as i’d love to get that ON fabric or threads! Even though the pot was positively solid with the leaves, i’ll do extraction by soaking/simmering for two days, then remove and add new/more leaves and repeat the process.

Oddly the UNmordanted silk took the colour better, whereas the uptake on previously mordanted cotton was expected.

I have also discovered that my thread skeins from this batch were looped too tightly to either be scoured properly, or mordanted thoroughly, hence the “variegation”–even though i loop quite loosely, it still had an effect. (lesson learned there: DON’T loop)

The colours are softly pretty but not terribly exciting, however they are good base colours for overdyeing, and are obviously *all* mordanted now, as that’s what oak does 🙂 I still have to do post mods to see what colour changes i can get (nothing earth shattering expected), but it *is* good to see what colours one can forage locally.

I’ll still collect more of the oak leaves as they are plentiful and falling anyways. And no one else uses them, just bags them up and sends them to the city compost facility! Also on the list is Cottonwood (a poplar species), very prevalent in my neighbourhood.