Dancing Crow Designs

set of five

Aug 30 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

So I was on a roll.

I wanted to color in a coloring book. I made a black and white picture of one of my sunflowers. It was such fun I made a bunch more. Then I colored them in. I have five of these buggers beauties, all related, all different, making up for the weekend I went off and left you with no postcards, making up for the fact that tomorrow I am working on nothing but journal pages (because I am 4 months behind and starting to freak!) and if I have a spare moment I might add some thread to them but really, they are pretty sweet as it.

find the rest of them here, and here and here and here.

And in the sweet but entirely bizarre department, I offer these:

bringing new meaning to the words Chocolate Chips. Not that those words need a new meaning, by any stretch. Really. Perfectly good words, just the way they are... But these are, well, odd. They are more related to the Mexican mole sauce, with cocoa and chipotles, than they are to any kind of chocolate wafer I was imagining. The bag says they'd be good with peanut butter and bananas. I'll report back.

gold thread

Aug 29
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Printing the photo in black and white, the petals needed some color. I thought about doing it all in black and white and gray, but sunflowers seem to me to REQUIRE color. So there is some. Not much. Some.

In other news, the Verts' came for supper bearing a pie they brought all the way from Maine. The Bluebird Cafe in Machias makes a very fine blueberry pie. Actually they make two very fine blueberry pies - one regular two crust that is baked, and one single crust that is not baked. The single crust pie is filled with fresh blueberries and just enough gelatain to hold it all together, and topped with piles of fresh whipped cream. Bill and Cathy brought a two crust pie because they were unsure about the capacity of a single crust pie to travel any distance from its point of origin. The two crust pie survived the journey quite nicely, but no part of it survives dessert.

only thread

Aug 28
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

We're home. I whanged this out before collapsing into my (own, nice solid extraordinarily comfortable) bed.

This is one of my favorite things from the trip:

Some close cousins and my extremely large brother. plus Alice in the background being adorable. All together in the kitchen at Herndon Terrace. Someday I will explore with you the intricacies of this house. Too much traveling today.

I had a nice visit with more distant cousins as well. I think we shared the same great grand parents - making us...what? Cousins. Close enough.

radio silence

We are headed to South Carolina.

It sounds trite, or snotty, but I am still surprised that we need no passport to get there. It is much farther away, conceptually and psychologically speaking, than Canada. Geographically speaking too, come to think of it.

We will be doing the family thing, with relatives who haven't seen me for more than a decade, met Al once, and have never seen the girls. The girls want to know what, exactly, we will be doing when the birthday party is Saturday and we will be there four more days. Since I haven't a clue, I mumble. And buy more books. Aerin has 9 in her bag. Alice has 4 brand new ones, with orders not to crack a one of them until we reach the airport.

We will be back Tuesday. I'll report Wed.

I'm going in.

mixed messages? media? what?

Aug 23
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

After staring at the fronts of sunflowers, I got entranced by the backs. This is a photo printed on fabric, embroidered onto a piece of hand dyed white-on-white fabric. I used the back of the hand-dye to emphasize the colors of it, rather than the spottiness of the white print.

Since it is after midnight GMT, I can post tomorrows postcard as well:

Aug 24
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

tomorrow's postcard today

Alice was playing Pony Farm again. She really had fun driving the tiny horses. She has been working hard at making a cart for the ponies to pull the dolls, and came up with this for a pair to pull.

The doll is Marina, the ponies are Impulse and Spirit. Impulse is named in honor of Bay State Initiate, a little Morgan I used to ride at my previous barn. Alice loved him, and was captivated by the idea of all the names in a year starting with the same letter. Since the pony looked related to Nish but not exactly like him (Nish had 3 socks, a white face and one spooky eye) he got a name from the same year.

Alice, much younger, on Nish. I miss him dreadfully. This is circa 2004, which I usually think is just yesterday, except there are 3YEARS between then and now.

time

Aug 22
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I'm wondering how much postcard aggravation was due to feeling profoundly stressed for time. I have more time to experiment these last couple days, and I feel much happier about the results.

For this one I ironed the stencil on the back of the fabric and made a rubbing of it. Twice. The dark green and lighter green dye sticks (from Pentel I think) soak into the fabric when ironed. I liked starting with the bright fabric and darkening the edges.

So - how much cheating is it if I have a couple postcards mostly made for the couple days I'll be gone? Not quite completed, but a series of ideas ready to finish and photograph on the road. My game, my rules, I know, but I'm just polling.

priorities

My list of stuff to do reads Laundry, Dishwasher (twice), packing lists for kids, clear the counters.

What I am actually doing is stockpiling postcard ideas for the long weekend.

We're going to South Carolina for my aunt's 80th b'day. It is a quick trip - fly down Friday, fly back Tuesday. In between I expect we will eat a lot of lovely food, visit the Pine Cottage, the only built piece of my grandfather's architectural output, and spend a good deal of time explaining how these people are related to the girls.

I rode my bike this morning. It was cold. I had goosebumps for most of the trip, and my ear started to ache from cold. The acorns are falling form the trees, the leaves on the tips of the branches are starting to turn. I think every cold morning is a little elegy for summer. We try so hard to hold onto the summer with cutoff shorts and bare feet but we still needed sweatshirts this morning to ward off the chill. I feel lucky to have missed most of the really scorching weather, it makes me wilt. But I am not quite done with summer yet. I bet once I have had a little South Carolina weather, I'll just be feeling profoundly grateful to be living here.

Laundry? Soon.

canonical

Aug 21
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I am pleased with this one. Ink on white fabric makes for colors behaving the way I expect, as well as producing clearer, prettier colors. This is more important to me for sunflowers than for murkier subjects. The single layer of printed fabric was not enough, so I fused it to some yellow/orange batik, and made all the petals 3D - they are stitched down the center but free to fold as needed. The center is more of the same batik, dyed brown with Dynaflow. I like this version best so far, although I am kind of missing the glitter of the lumiere paints.

she did it, she did it!!!

Aerin passed her Wicked Big Math Test courtesy of a pile of her own hard work and intensive help from her dad. She is good to go ahead a year to Algebra this year. I am anticipating a year of grumbling about new and hard stuff rather than grumbling about repeating old stuff ad nauseum. She is pleased and thoroughly praised and feted.

Now all we need to do is get Alice happy about going to school.

Aug 20

Aug 20
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Trying to get a sufficient density of petals, I used the stencil on two layers of fabric. The dark fabric background kept the petals from being as bright as I was looking for, although I did get edges!

I added another layer of petals on a bright green fabric to use as background, and stitched down the petals along their centerlines to let the edges loose. I like the way the petals float off the edge of the postcard.

I can't remember what I was thinking with the very dark green background fabric - it hasn't worked the way I wanted it to for any of these options. I think I'll try inks on white fabric next, and see what happens.