Dancing Crow Designs

sewing table audition

sewing table audition
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

same window, same corner - lots of stuff gone. Some is in the cellar, because I just can't stand to let go of it, however if it gets flooded and wrecked I will only be a little sad. Five boxes are gone to people who will use it; Freecycle, a community art group, and the school. There are more boxes to look through, but I guess I am mostly resigned to putting my hand on every object I have in the room and deciding what to do with it.

The sewing table is undergoing an audition. It doesn't feel quite right, but I may just be out of practice sewing at a shorter table.

before

before
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This, give or take some clap-trap, is what the room has looked like for two years.

power tools

I wrestled with a pile of power tools yesterday. I managed not to remove any fingers, which is always good.

The hedge is substantially shorter than it was, and my neighbor can now see over it when she backs out of her driveway. This maintains a peaceful relationship between us and the neighbor with lawn issues. I keep the hedge down and she keeps off my case about how ratty and kid abused out back yard is.

My work table (which closely resembles a hollow core door on six stacked shoe holders) has been removed from the workroom. I am trying to make space that is permanent; real furniture, real materials, and no casters. The table has been a stop-gap measure for years. I just decided it wasn't working. So I whacked a chuck off the end of it, and I'll see if that makes it fit better, and if I use it better. Things just stacked up on it, until I couldn't find anything. Clearly I don't need something that long, if I only pile things on the end. Unfortunately I have no clear idea what to rest it on.

I am wavering on what to put back. I had to rest my sewing machine on something, so I have a sewing table given by some friends. It feels pretty sturdy, so it is almost real furniture, although it doesn't quite meet the real materials criteria. I need a place to construct things, and I've been doing that mostly on the ironing board. I was thinking about a piece of Ikea kitchen ware with lots of drawers to store fabric and sewing machine parts, and than padding part of the top for ironing purposes. It would be nice to have enough ironing space for big square works all at once. 

DAR pond

DAR pond
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

We live near the best pond.

It is small enough to swim across in times of high energy or people overboard, it is big enough to circumnavigate in an hour, it has blueberry bushes all around the shore, and a campground and a swimming beach. The swimming beach has shade all day, so you can choose how much to bake in the sun, and have a cool place to retreat to at any time.

I rashly told Aerin that if it was not raining and there were no thunderstorms on the weather radar that we could sail Sunday afternoon. So we did. There was very very little wind, but there was enough to push the two little boats around. Having ridden my bike for almost two hours earlier that day I chose to stay ashore and read (no socks. Huh.) and take pictures. This is one of my favorites.

It really is a sweet little pond.

snark

snark
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

toenail

toenail
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Thank you socks

Marian's Hedera socks
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Paul's simple socks
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Socks for Alice's teachers, to thank them for a great year.

It feels odd to have finished all these socks. I think I started the purple lace ones in January or February, and finished the toes of the blue and green ones Thursday evening, weaving in all the ends because, well, you can't give away socks with strings hanging off them even if I wear them that way myself.

I got organized to go out to something I thought I might be boring enough to knit, and I didn't have anything to bring. I had to settle for a book. That felt weird

I'm knitting entirely from stash this year. I have all the Socks That Rock yarns from last year that I didn't touch, and the patterns with them that just do not speak to me. I have some random things I found at Webs on sale, all good for socks. I think the next is some orangeade/limeade/grapejuice socks for me. I have the yarn right here. It has been talking to me for a month, telling me to finish these things and get to work.

what DO you do?

May TIF done
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I finished it in the middle of last month, well ahead of schedule, but the clean out (still progressing) was in the stage where a lot of thing get piled on other things and it vanished into a stack of other stuff.

I have been thinking about groups of things and rhythms across a piece. I also wanted to know exactly how many of a thing I had made. I wound up with this grid of 100 squares of woven fabrics - 10 pink, 10 blue, - held together with the embroidered circles at each intersection. All the original ideas had elaborate plans for patterns within patterns following each fabric across the page, but as I started the embroidery process I realized I wanted it simpler than that.

I am pleased with the object as is, I am also thinking I could chop it up into business cards, to really put the final, performance, spin on the answer to "so what is it you do? exactly?"

Queens of Hearts

Queens of Hearts
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

One of these ladies is mine - you can find her (if you haven't met her already ) by the nose.

I was admiring Jenn's sketchbook (2nd in on the top row) and thinking how different it was from mine. So I looked around of Flickr and found all of these. True, some are not queens but instead flowers, or only hearts, but I like it.

Still mucking out my room. This is taking waaay longer than I expected, but it is worthwhile and illuminating.