Dancing Crow Designs

two shillings four ways

Apr 30
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Four ways of depicting a two shilling piece. I am pleased with this one. Deeply. How much WAS a shilling worth anyhow? I am sorry we didn't/don't have tuppeny or ha'penny pieces here either. Or crowns, although I guess that wouldn't be so likely in a democracy.

The end of April, the end of money as a theme. What is the old joke? Too much month at the end of the money... I guess mine came out about even. I still have an idea or two, but I am resolutely not cramming in any more postcards today, and the concepts can be applied to other things as well.

I still don't have a theme for May, but I am closing in on something workable.

In unexpected news, I have less than six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. My boss's daughter was at summer camp with Kevin Bacon's daughter. If I read the fine print correctly, I think this gives us a Transcendental Bacon Number rather than a regular one, because we are not associated with him through movies. My husband is inexplicably delighted with this, and feels I have given him a great gift.

penny, farthing

Apr 29
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A couple views of the pennies. The transparency plastic is Ok for laser printers as well as inkjets, and that is why it did not turn into a smoking smelly mess when I ironed fusible web to the back of it. Nothing like destructive testing, eh?

I finally finished the March journal Quilt page, all about Aerin because, well, March is her month. This is one where I feel I'm still not done yet - like the last five minutes of a test where they have to snatch the pencil from your grasp because there is so much more to say? I really haven't done her justice, the pigtail is wrong and hangs badly, the books should be clearer (I can list them if you want to know the titles, they are all really good) the colors aren't enough, I meant to add ferns to the bottom of the tree... I think I will get a chance to add 13 pennies to it, one from each year she's been around. I'll repost it when that final touch is done.



I've started the April page with a real tree and a money tree woven together, and it is so ugly and so wrong I'm starting again. I think I was onto something when I got silly, and used broccoli as the basic tree shape. Silly is definitely the direction for me.

now what?

May is two days off, and I have no clue what next month's theme is.

My stongest contenders are

• wood
• holes
• green leaves*

I am thinking in a desultory fashion about following some of the ideas in Wreck This Journal and Wrecking This Postcard, but it feels uncomfortable.

I am thinking about counting. Starting with one thing - a dot or a bar or a square - and adding it again every day. It may only be one postcard, manipulated for 31 days, or I may have to make 31 at the beginning, and have them drop out one a day as they get their counting thing added. The details are still hazy on this one.

I am also thinking about drawing a card a day from a pack, and making it or riffing on it. Probably a tarot deck, but a regular deck has enough bizarre symbols to be pretty fertile ground as well.

I'll ask my subconcious.

When it tells me, I'll tell you.

more pennies

Apr 28
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

These make use of relict penny prints. Mostly.

Two of my favorite words are relict and palimpsest. Mostly I like the way they sound, but I like the technical meanings also.

Relict is left-over but not man made (that would be relic), and is used in geology to describe something left behind like relict stream deposits, or relict bedding planes still visible in marble from the original limestone.

Palimpsest is a little more complicated. It is usually used when refering to manuscripts on parchment, vellum or papyrus, and describes the remains of one set of writing that has been more or less completely erased/scraped off so the page can be used for new writing. Because parchment and vellum were hard to come by and durable enough to scrape, many old documents are written over their predecessors. I refer you to the Wiki entry here  because it is fascinating, and especially because you should go read about finding the Archimedes Palimpsest.

In geology, palimpsests refer to glimpses of former geological times in the currently visible landscape or outcrop. My favorite has always been the palimpsest of dunes over stream structures that are visible near the edges of glaciers.

But mostly I like to say them, or work them into everyday conversation.

ghost pennies redux

Apr 27
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I printed images onto transparency plastic (remember overhead projectors? and mimeograph machines?) and then tried to transfer the images onto painted fabric. I really liked the relict images, so I experimented with revealing some parts of them here. The plastic won't take the intensity of embroidery that the fabric can, so I have to think of other ways to highlight it.

Made it safely to Ikea and back. It rained most of the way, but not all the way, for which I was grateful. New Haven is both closer (faster) and farther away than I expected. I was also grateful that the very-large-boxes fit into the car, so they didn't melt all the way down there to replace them and all the way home. I resisted thousands of dollars of more home decorating and organizing ideas, and stuck with just the new closetage. It will be nice when it is finished.

And then, I get to repaint the living room. The color is wearing on me....

last one

Apr 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Not the last postcard of April, but the last one dollar bill I can stand for any time in the forseeable future. This was working at the limit of what the machine could stitch together - 12 layers of fabric that I embroidered and then cut down into. I like the frilly/fluffy edges, sort of like chenille. I experimented with lino block carving tools, but the fabric sandwich wasn't stiff enough to be carved that way. Instead I had to use an exacto and a tiny pair of scissors. I think I may have killed my newest pair of tiny scissors. But I had fun.

In other news, the daffodils popped yesterday. Spring was on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border on Sunday (about 35 miles south of us here) as delineated by the flowering of the forsythia. The line swept over us on Tuesday, all the neighborhood forsythia bloomed, and on Wed the daffodils went from green lumps to this:

Today Alice and Aerin proved (once again) that you get the kids you deserve. Both of them can make a Nakamura Lock paper airplane from memory. This flys farther than any paper airplane we ever made as kids to torture eachother or substitute teachers with. They couldn't get them to go far enough in the house, so they went outside to launch them. Onto the porch roof.

Spring rules!

stacked and carved

Apr 25
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A pile of dollars printed, stitched together, and cut.

What more can I tell you?

A nice ride on Tiger Eye, I had time and warm enough hands to clean my tack, and I was so tired I fell asleep in my chair and woke myself up snoring. The kids were impressed. They are used to Al snoring. I tend to be awake when they are.

pink buck

Apr 24
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Why is our currency green? Why not Barbie Pink? or Pepto Pink? Or even, to be much more charitable about it, raspberry fluff or strawberry ice cream or tulip or sunset pink?

I can't begin to describe how tired I am. This is (partly) why:

and this:

plus about a half hour or trapeze and lots of hand and headstands. I can do an unsupported head stand. I can get up by myself, and do a straddle and something else graceful and then come down without too big a thump. I am deeply impressed with my ability to learn new stuff. Especially new physical stuff.

bed now.

holes

Apr 23
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I had this vision of holes going down through layers of fabric. I wanted the pieces to feel carved out. Then I looked at my threads, and they are all tulip colors. Heh.

Long, long day today. Plus it turned into summer. Quite suddenly.

Boom!

I imagine it'll go back to spring eventually, but the hot part is a little unsettling.

assorted ones

Apr 22
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A fistful (six) of ones in different color schemes. Poor Al just decided to look up the laws aaround using currency as art materials or inspiration. I say so long as I am not trying to pass it off as real money, I should be OK.

We took the girls to see Spamalot in Hartford this afternoon. It felt like Monty Python Lite - with Music! but I laughed and laughed. There were two shows going on at once. One crowd looked pretty fancy, and Al and I were just rethinking our sartorial decisions when we tried to give our tickets to a nice lady and she pointed us in a different direction. We walked into the lobby, and into our peeps. There is HUGE amusement value to sharing an auditorium with people who know what the Knights Who No Longer Say Ni say next... and the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch. And nice new touches, like The Song That Goes Like This. My belly hurts from laughing.