Dancing Crow Designs

the needle eater is finally done

I'm not sure why this one took so long to finish, but it might have had to do with breaking ten needles on it. Generally the needle body count ranges from zero to three (they do run in threes) so I am not entirely sure what made this one so voracious.

I'm leading with it because I am really proud of it. I still need to finish the edges and stretch it, but the piece itself is finished.

I also started Book 5 - white pages for the next two books/four weeks.

 foolishness with circle stamps, and thinking about rivers (again)

page, and peeks

The little round stamp is from yesterday, but the hole was so appealing I wanted to use that too. I used a paper punch to cut the hole out, and centered it on the eraser becaue I was worried about edges. The texture on the piece with the hole is from the trademarks on the surface of the eraser. The nicer erasers have smooooth surfaces, and the pink Easy-carve is just one GIANT pink rubber eraser in 1/4" sheets of variable size.

Shown below are pieces of two medium sized landscapes I am building simultaneously; one in the middle of a snowstorm, the other the clear blue day after a snow storm. With the weather cycling back and forth like this, I'm getting a lot of good looks at both conditions!

magical morning

 

This morning the temperature was right around zero F, and the river was smoking and steaming. The moisture in the air condensed and froze on everything next to the river, producing the most astoundingly gorgeous frosting on the landscape. I took some landscape photos, and some of sumac and false bittersweet up close with frost on them, and then my camera battery stopped and I took more pictures with my phone. I am glad to have a camera in my phone, that I carry everywhere. 

I even stopped and parked out of the way and walked back and forth across the Sunderland bridge, trying to capture the the fluffy beauty of the trees.

Today's stamp has tiny leaves all over it, so I tried turning it, when stamping, so they went up and down in alternating ways.

 

double exposure

What I like about this image is how it looks old, and battered, and almost like a fresco on the fabric. I ironed one image down (onto silk, which is why there is that sheen underneath the image) and then tried to iron a second over the top. The result looks exactly the way I feel, so it could be accounted successful.

I also started a new larger piece, inspired by all the fog and rain and veils of water in the atmosphere over the last couple weeks. One small piece of it looks like this:

 

Open fields on a hillside. A lot more will happen to this.

veils of snow

This piece uses image transfer to get the tree onto white fabric. I colored parts of the tree, an oak in Ellington, CT, with marker, and then put two layers of silk organza over it and stitched them all down to the page. I need some way to get specks of white onto the layers of organza - paint might work or might be too heavy.

I am unexpectedly fond of seeing the air full of shifting moisture. I rather like rain, especially when I'm inside, I love snow falling, and looking through mist and fog is an enduring pleasure.

Today was a banner day for seeing snowy landscapes with more snow blowing about. I went north to Greenfield for some horse supplies, and then back to the barn and rode the red horse, and then slowly home watching the landscape obscured and revealed.The snow has picked up this evening, and we're forecast to get a couple more inches. My mother, on the coast, is being hammered, and is slated for twice what we are.

The kids have today and tomorrow off from school, which is fine with me. It feels like a longer vacation, and I am happy to make use of it. More sleeping is a good plan.