Dancing Crow Designs

heading to NYC

Aerin and I are headed to New York to see Wicked and check up on the Natural History Museum. It is a nice trip in honor of her 1/2 birthday and my birthday, hopefully a time for a bit of mother/daughter bonding. We don't do pedicures (we could try, I suppose, but no one ever sees our toes), we are bad at shopping (someone always ends up crying) and so we resort to things that make us happy - seeing musicals and exploring science museums. Should be good. The food might even be good.

Here's to us.

Sept 27

Sept 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Sept 27
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A pile of cards for today - four finished that I started yesterday, plus a mess of flickr toy experiments on my self portrait. The foursome was drawn looking at pictures of Mattie and Jes, but I'm not convinced they look anything like them. They do feel like them (I think) and they look like interesting other people, so I'm not too bummed. I did the drawings on paper, and copied them onto fabric. Then they needed color, so they got markered and re-copied onto more fabric. I am thinking of doing it again with paint, to get more subtle colors, in one more round.

Proof that this is not a food blog - we had a box of the most lovely pastry from the greatest bakery in town (Woodstar, for anyone local enough to wonder) including 4 eclairs, one lemon cupcake (for the candle) two lemon bars, one piece of flourless chocolate cake, and a (small) banana cream pie. We ate most of it before it occurred to me that we might have had an image for posterity.  Then we finished it before the batteries had recharged.  urp.   Delicious.

I had thought for years that I shared a birthday with Frodo and Bilbo.  I was led to believe this by a very old Tolkein calendar (circa 1979) that had a picture of Bilbo riding a barrel into Laketown on his birthday, and the birthday itself marked on the 27th. BUT (the wonders of the internet) when I googled it, Wikipedia insisted that their birthday is/was Sept 22. So I've been deprived of some fellow revellers, which is a small bummer because I could really get behind the Hobbit custom of giving things away on my birthday. Not that I can't anyhow. It just takes a little more strenuous rationalization.

But all around, it was a very nice day. Thank you all for you kind wishes.

Hippo Birdy Two Meese

Hippo Birdy Two Meese
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Brought to you today courtesy of my patient parents, developed and extended some after leaving the nest. I am one whole year older today and celebrating mightily.

1960. I can't remember how old I am but I can always remember the year I was born. You can do the math. Especially considering they don't make years as long as they used to... Honestly, how can I (or anyone else for that matter) be expected to remember what my age is when it changes so fast. It used to take a year or so to get from birthday to birthday, but now it seems like weeks. I hear from those older than myself that sometimes a year will vanish altogether, without even a small pop or zing as it goes by.

I find that I do not feel a year older. I feel a day older than yesterday, but not necessarily a whole year older. Al points out that the planet is in the same place it was this time last year, and we are celebrating something like that. That plus the fact that I am still on it.

Let's have more dessert.

Sept 24 & 25

Sept 24
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Sept 25
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

It took several attempts to make viable postcards today, I don't know why. I liked making the first pair, but the resulting faces looked crooked and demented. I liked these, but without embroidery they were boring. I drew a pair of people that resemble my brother and Jes, and copied them onto fabric and put them on postcards, but they need something else, probably color. So I added thread to these, and am calling them done.

mattie and jes, long may they...

mattie and jes
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

So I didn't make any postcards but I found some great faces, and some particularly joyful faces.

We went to Isle au Haut, and it was beautiful. I had no batteries and lots of fog for the ceremony, so I stopped trying to record it and set about remembering it instead. It was outside, on the lawn of the house Jes grew up in, with all of us facing them and the water beyond and the little islands and ocean beyond that. The fog kept people from looking too far away, but made all the colors more intense.

In their vows, they married each other and the sea. I didn't expect that, but it makes sense. It makes explicit something about my brother that many people comment on - his connection to and requirement for the ocean. It turns out, it works in a similar way for Jes. So I think they will be OK. I hope they will be.

It was very, very fine.

Here are some pictures of the surroundings:

And now, some more face postcards.

Sept 21

Sept 21
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

And here is one for tomorrow, or (if you are reading this a day later) Friday. She is Indigo Hedgehog Woman's purple twin Violet Snakehair Woman.

What a combo!

Sept 20

Sept 20
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Here is Indigo Hedgehog Woman, ready to make your day. I was so struck by an illustration in Threads magazine from 1993 that I tried my hand at the same kind of idea. I don't know why her hair came out so ... hedgehoggy. Probably the panicky speed with which I am working so as to finish before the long trek to the wilds of Maine.

Sept 19

Sept 19
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

It seems she might need an eye patch in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, but she isn't really a pirate and thus patchless.

Do they look as feminine to others as to me?

I must be better, I left my sickbed and rode a horse today. Soon I will post a picture of him because he is very very cute.

We are having a giant pre-trip scrimmage. My large, loud brother (I only have one) is getting married in Maine. He lives on an island off the coast of Maine with the woman he is going to marry. They thought about having the wedding on their island, but it isn't big enough. This boggles my mind a bit, but there weren't enough places for all the guests to stay for the weekend. It is a small island. But there are also 250 people involved. So they are getting married on the island Jes grew up on instead. It is another three hours farther north, but the ferry ride is shorter and more protected, and the ferry itself runs more often (three times a day vs. Mon/Wed/Fri to Mattie's island).

We have wedding clothes and warm clothes and boat clothes and I have lists of food and supplies to bring because you can't exactly run to the Stop and Shop when you forget something or run out.

So I have a giant case of trip fever, and I am (of course) worried about missing the ferry, and, and, and.... I'm working on outsourcing the worrying again. It worked well for the last trip.

aarrrgh maties

(you'll have to imagine my voice an octave lower and rough...)

Avast ye scurvy swabs, pay heed:

Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Since I have missed it to date, I shall be talkin' and swearin' for as much of today as I remember.

AAAARRRrrrgh.

silver eyed woman

Sept 18
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I should listen to my own childrearing advice. I routinely tell people that kids should be allowed to become bored so that they have experience of getting themselves un-bored, developing skills in getting interested in things.

I have been home, bored, waiting for Alice and me to get better, and I've had this amazing surge of productivity even with feeling logy and dim. Maybe it is because of feeling logy and dim? I'm harder to distract, and can only think in a very slow and linear fashion... or something. So I have postcards lined up waiting to be made, work accomplished on two months of quilt journal pages and (ahem) two backgrounds for a group I am only vicariously involved with.

I waver between feeling like a poseur and an overachiever with these two backgrounds. The group is Twelve by Twelve, and they are making 12"x12" art quilt squares on a theme every two months. The first theme is Dandelion. I love dandelions. I love picking them and making big, fat braids with the stems. I have a picture I adore of Aerin and some neighbors peeking around the corner of the house with dandelion crowns on. Really I am delighted with the theme, and at the moment I am secretly delighted with my two backgrounds. I am thinking they will be up close looks at the fly away part,  (thinking originally about how to make a dandelion that was not yellow and green) although I may use the second background for the yellow part after all. But - it isn't my group. I'm just playing along on the sidelines...

And yet, I am loving the size and the shape, and the new ideas that keep popping up.

I am also thinking I need to form my own group.

Anyone want to join? I think I am looking for creative, artistic people willing to form a group to inspire each other to take their work to the next level. Must be open to new ideas, critiques, and collaboration. If you fit the bill, or even better, if you are interested, drop me a note.