Dancing Crow Designs

pines with thread

Like a commenter said yesterday - do something every day, even if it is only five minutes. So I did five minutes, and got the pine trees textures and ready for green needles and some embroidering. 

We also got a LOT of glow sticks in packaging that included two hubs. The results were amusing, and produced a ball that works in the dark. So we instigated a spirited game of catch in the dark, followed by some glowsticks around the origami hanging off the ceiling. It looked like this: 

Happy day

Al and Alice and Aerin made me a cake (sour cream spice cake with orange butter cream frosting) and figured out how to write 51 on it (in Roman numerals) and it was wonderful. 

Alice has also been making birds: 

including this rather lovely raven.

It is true, I will nevermore be 50.

And a happy Mother's Day to my mom, on the anniversary of the birth of her first child. 

monstrosity

Alice has sharp knees. And because she grows slowly, they wear away at the pants longer in one place. So I've gotten creative mending her pants, because she doesn't outgrow them fast. She's had pandas, cats, dolphins, and a spiderweb that said "some pig". 

When I saw these monsters on a friend's page, I knew Alice needed one. 

These have braces too, out of silver thread. Because even monsters need to have nice, straight teeth.

self image

What I forget, and I shouldn't because I used to be there, is that even a person who doesn't follow or believe in fashion still has a very, VERY firm sense of what they want to look like.

Alice brought that home to me last year when she wanted a pair of boots. She who had lived in slip-on black Merrels for four years (she doesn'r grow very fast) wanted something she couldn't even describe very well, but when we went to Target she walked down the aisle, sorting and discarding options until she came to one in particular. And that was the one. Mid-calf, brown suede elf boots, with a zipper up the side. She wore them all through the school year. When the zipper broke this week, we had to replace them.

This year, the choices were heavily skewed towards Ugg equivalent boots, kind of clumpy and way too warm for her, but we found a couple choices she kind of liked, and she walked out with mid-calf, purple suede elf boots that perfectly matched the purple hoodie shirt she wears.

This is just to say that self image is a deeply mysterious thing.

hurricane weather

Apparently the last Hurricane (Irene) made an impression on my subconcious.

Last night it rained and rained, I heard it in my dreams, and about 4 am I woke up convinced the river was rising and we should get to higher ground. I peered out windows and saw nothing amiss, but the echo of 4 am haunted me in the morning. I convinced the kids to put things they treasured into the car, in case we had to run for higher ground, or in case I couldn't get back to the house later. So I spent the day with Aerin's bassoon and laptop, Alice's ancient and beloved bunny, and my computer and camera. 

In retrospect, I think I must have been listening to the neighbor's noisy gutters coping with the aggressive mist, rather than actual pelting rain all night. A tour of the local rivers showed them high: the Deerfield was well into the floodplain but not in anyone's basement, the Connecticut was over Elwell Island and up to the front porch of the marina on Rt 9, but not creeping across the fields to me they was I'd imagined. 

By the end of the day we'd returned the precious things to the house. But it was an interesting exercise. 

kids, bassoon, computers - what would you save? 

Alice and the new hippo

Alice and I needed things at the not-exactly-fabric store, and we found some other things too. She needed vellum to make a large origami spiky star thing to put a lightbulb in to hang over the table. We found that, and medium gray thread, which I need for the blue Polish hen. And then Alice found patterns for these great floppy creatures, including a hippo, a rhinoceros and an elephant.

So we got the pattern, and some fabric, and came home and made the hippo right off. Together. We think it is for the nephew, but Alice is helping the hippo practice being a good friend. And a good pillow. 

Alice said she felt like she was in a Little Bear episode. And then she said that any day that felt like a Little Bear episode is a very good day. 

So today was a very good day. 

general life

I have become obsessed with saddle pads, and I don't like any of my (expensive) choices for getting the colors I want (navy blue, edged with bright green and a nice light blue) so I decided to try knitting and felting one. In an uncharacteristic piece of forethought, I made a series of swatches, and they are in the washing machine even as we speak.  Heavy felt has a long history of use with horses, from the Mongolian nomads to more recent eras. I am looking forward to this project.

In other news, the tree is still there. Since no one was hurt and the buildings are all whole, we are lower on the list of people who need tree removal. Three  different companies have given estimates, and it will probably get done by next week. Until then, the kids are climbing on it, because a sideways tree has huge amusement potential, and the birds perch and look bewildered. 

Aerin just suns herself on it like a cat. 

 

new skillz

Alice cleverly convinced me to sign up for a pot throwing class with her. We couldn't fit the kid's class into our schedule, but the kind gentleman who runs the place said she'd be fine in one of the adult classes and I could come too if I wanted. I have yearned to throw pots in the same way I have yearned to spin and weave for years now. It isn't a burning kind of yearning, but one that persists from year to year.

In class today, our second so far, Alice and I made rapid progress backwards. Where we had both thrown fairly competent and rational looking things last week, this week all was wabbly and floppy. I realized I do my nicest work when it doesn't matter - clearly I need a certain level of relaxation to accomplish pots - and with practice clay. So I kept thrashing around with more and more water and clay...and ultimately produced only one thing I wanted to dry out and mess with further. But that one thing may be my cereal bowl if it comes out of the kiln well.

Alice was having similar problems with intensity of trying. Last week she produced a series of interesting little Ali Baba pots with bulbous bodies and little necks and flared tops. This week she was most interested in a double container, looking rather like a candle holder in a deep dish. She made a series of these and each time they were close to finished looking, she'd try to push it just a little farther or thinner and it would splorch. She is remarkably patient and resilient, but it wore thin on her after a while so we cleaned up and came home early.

There will be pictures when I remeber to bring my camera to class, or I manage to bring a piece home.

aerin all cirque-y

aerin all cirque-y
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Because it is her birthday today. She didn't look like this today - this was from a workshop over the weekend with Serenity where they experimented with different looks for stage makeup and performances.

We've had her for fifteen years. Who'd of thunk it?

dozen dots

Jan 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

An even dozen different ways to hold down a blue circle.

That was fun.

Kids bring home all kinds of stuff from school. Alice had several deeply mysterious songs including one where she stated she was proud to be a cow, and another about the stegasaurus (a funny looking dinosaurus). But I was very taken with a new one yesterday. Zeb, Serenity's son, was singing a song that went like this:

oh you push the damper in
and you pull the damper out
and the smoke goes up the chimney just the same
and the smoke goes up the chimney just the same
boom boom

And I realized there were not very many places in the US where your run of the mill kids in public school kindergarten would know what a damper was. It had to be Vermont or Alaska, or possibly Minnesota. This happened to be Vermont. Leave a comment if your local kindergartners would understand this song. Or if anyone has produced something incomprehensible...