30.11.09

Hand(s) printing

In the course of the ongoing WIP-struggle
I thought about what to do with "Hands of Time"
and decided to turn once again to the
mysterious hands of Borneo for assistance.













Can you imagine the sound, if they all would clap...

They were too orange though (means: not fahl enough...)
- so I gave them a tea dye afterwards.
Perhaps it´ll work now...

27.11.09

November dream or: Finished...





































"im traum suche ich immer das weite und
erwache im bett. frage: wie weit ist mein
bett vom traum entfernt?"

(H.C. Artmann: im traum suche ich...)

dreaming, I´m always seeking the far-away and
wake up in bed. question: how far´s my
bed away from the dream?

25.11.09

Resolution

36 days to go - and a (maybe quixotic, doubtless
backbreaking) resolution: I´m going to finish
all UFOs, WIPs and half forgotten projects before
the end of the year...













Shown here: just the tip of the iceberg...
After a lot of trying and exploring ,
spending considerable time on spur-of-the-moment
projects (and deeming myself still a stitching novice),
next year I plan to approach things with some more
purpose...













Already ticked off: long-term UFO quilted
pillowcase, named (for reasons long forgotten)
State of Mind, and...













Strange growth, the second...

























"The truth will set you free. But first, it
will piss you off."

(Gloria Steinem, born Nov. 25, 1935)

23.11.09

Fahle Farben

A nice, slightly oldfashioned word in
German for the colour shades I prefer is "fahl"
(wan?, sallow??)
In a scene of Bertolt Brecht`s "Baal" the sky
is "aprikosenfahl", I always liked that...

Here´s another dye result in a pleasant pinkish
Fahlheit...
























And a cloth creature/doll of a new design
(with pastel painted face) dressed in it...


19.11.09

November eternity or: Lucky me

Captured the last light of today...













... with, from another window, a slightly confusing
inside-out effect...













Made a winterly Calmer, on a crocheted woolen
base (more of those to come)...













... and, last but not least, received a wonderful
textile heart from Carolyn at Love Stitching Red
as part of her recent Give-away. She calls it
a "rock pool heart", inspired by the coast at
St. Ives. And she very generously added about a
hundred other wonderful things, including little
text snippets she cut out for me, all about grey...














"A day is a miniature eternity."

(Ralph Waldo Emerson,
borrowed at Thinker online)

17.11.09

November time













Here´s a little thing I made last saturday night,
while babysitting...













Just took a few scraps with me, including a tiny
one dyed pinkish, with an old laundry tag, and
a page from an old book...

Wouldn´t have been bad to pack an overnight
bag instead and being













But that doesn´t seem to be on the agenda nowadays...
So what - there are other ways to gain













... stitching being one of them...

Are the days flying by as fast out there as they
do here...?


"There is no time
time is man's skin
it cracks and crackles and shrinks
in life's passing-by
in the fire of being
telling the hours
then letting them be
in the ever reverberating
moment of silence

in the smoking dance
of the evening star and the midnight sun
in the curl of the leaf
in the dove's swiftly
graceful and fluttered
gesture of dying

there is no time
time is the shooting
comet of recall
strewing heaven with the sparks
of stories no one will ever hear again

time's my love for you
the lizard movements
in your body that come and go
to fill the hollows
with the fire of telling
those many faces of departure

there is no time
just the pulse of the heart
as pain under eye-shells

just the emptied tell-skin
of this poem
splotched and measured
by cancer words of forgetting
like lizard shit"

(Breyten Breytenbach: There is no time)

12.11.09

November quilt or: Printed matters
























On it´s way: November contribution to my
private little monthly callenge...
The (late-)autumn leaves to the left on
the first picture stem from a (more or less)
local swap of hand printed fabric squares...













That´s what I got from (left to right)
Suschna, Floh (both Berlin based) and Tally
(Hamburg)

10.11.09

November day or: Cuffs

Here are a couple of cuffs/ornaments I made,
using some of the turmeric-tea batik I dyed
a while ago...















































The machine writing says: To sit, to think,
to sleep, to dream and: Hold on to nothing
too long.


"Nebel,
der alles verschlingt:
Jedes Haus, jeden Baum, jeden Strauch.
Ein Kind schreit vom Balkon:
»Bin allein,
endlich allein auf der Welt!«
Und aus dem Nebel die Antwort:
»Ich auch!«"

(Hans Manz: Novembertag/November day)

Fog,
swallowing up everything.
each house, each tree, each shrub.
A child shouts from a balcony:
"Am alone,
finally all alone in the world!"
And out of the fog the answer:
"Me too!"

9.11.09

November nights or: Eskimoing
























Dug out this half forgotten project, a bedspread
made from old t-shirts, sweaters and nightwear (of which,
all grey, there seems to be an endless supply...)













It´s all stitched by hand - a somewhat humble, but pleasing
project for November nights (with Eskimo yo-yos,
from discarded pyjamas...)













"Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall."

(Adelaide Crapsey: November Night)

5.11.09

Remembering October













Almost finished this one, called Rainy weather (of which
we had more than enough in the last couple days...) - it´s
going to be my quilt of the month for October - when I made
this in September, I got the idea of starting a
collection of small quilts, each one dedicated to a month...

"Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun
bring more happiness than the daffodils."

(Cyril Connolly)

1.11.09

Picasso reloaded













It´s painters´ week, it seems...
An advertisement for Picasso prints caught
my eye with 4 animal drawings, all done in
just one line - which looked like good suggestions
for practicing machine embroidery...













He´d been cheating with the eyes on some, though,
and so did I with my own designs...