31.1.11

Hanging on to January

This is my monthly hanging for January...













Still wip - won´t be able to finish this one on
schedule, which is quite as well - don´t feel
finished with January, novemberly and pre-spring
at the same time as it has been, unwilling to
slip over into a February which threatens to turn
out the same: a stretch of life without a climate
of its own...













As I turned 56 in January, which means 8 x 7 years,
it´s a sort of time-ladder, on which I´m stitching
the 7 chakra symbols...













And I´ve just herded last week´s Creatures into
the shop.

28.1.11

At the end of a week...













So, here they are...
Please meet:













Lady Po - elder stateswoman of the kangaroo
penguins (rare species!) - mild mannered, shrewd,
loves jewelry...













Big-eyed dog - vigilant, loyal, but a free spirit...













Specs - smart, ambitious, well organized, but still
a romp...













Bird-catcher dog (or is it a cat? up to you...) -
passionate, single-minded, sweet-toothed and, well,
predatory...













Melo - a muser, melancholic, misantropic, mellow,
musical...













Rain or shine - acrobat extraordinaire...













... world-wise, wiry, well aware that













... into each life some rain must fall...














They will be in the shop next week...

27.1.11

25.1.11

Creatures (without names)













Pssst, they´re still sleeping...













But this sheep is wide awake (and ruminating)...














"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."

(Virginia Woolf, born January 25, 1882)

21.1.11

Ageing or: Shop talk













Here´s the third of three middle-sized mixed-media
pieces I made this week, all three on a rather firm
cotton and cardboard base, like a canvas made from
pieces of cotton hand and machine sewn together and
covered with acylic paint…
In this one I matured a face I saw in a magazine photo,
adding the words "the lines around my eyes are like
old friends", from a Willie Nelson song – remembering
that I´ve used that line before – and rediscovering…













… her
She has been sitting packed away in a box for a while,
but as she obviously deserves better, I´ve put her
into the shop now…
And she´s leading over softly to next week´s focus,
which will be – Creatures…

So, and here comes some more shop talk:
I´ve opened, in addition to my Bigcartel one, a shop
on Etsy recently, because I want to find out what´s
the same and what´s different.
What´s different, from the start, is that on Etsy prizes
are in $ - and as almost all my sales go to the US, Canada,
and Australia, this might be more comfortable for everyone
in this parts interested in my things…
I don´t like too many items at one time in the Bigcartel
shop anyways, so what I´ll be doing now for a while is
putting new works, fresh from the needle, there first –
and what´s not gone in a relatively short time wanders
along to Etsy (except the hand dyed fabrics, I´ll leave
them in the Bigcartel shop I think)…

A good weekend to everyone...

19.1.11

Fashion news













For machine drawings I often use photos from magazines
and such for orientation...













So I thought: why not actually use parts of them in
the drawing?













Liked it, and did it again...
Out came a person in a fashionably oversized cardigan,
for which I happened to find a fitting quote in an old
book on Virginia Woolf: "I admire your women, your pale
women, with their white skin and fair hair..." - says
some guy, about the Bloomsbury women, in Leonard Woolf´s
The Wise Virgins - and goes on, to tell you the whole truth:
"but I despise them ... your women are cold and leave one
cold - pale hair, pale souls, you know..."













Which doesn´t bother her in the least...

17.1.11

Marginal notes...

One of the good things about thrifted books is
that they come with all kinds of interesting extras:
bookmarks, dedications, marginal notes, reviews...













Here: a timeworn receipt from a bookshop in Sri
Lanka - so fragile already that I preserved it in
plastic...













"I have a mind myself"- one of a series I´m working
on...













The birds singing like crazy, the moon looking down
in a rather irritating way last night...













Gave me a funny mood I guess, so I made two moony
mixed-media cards...













This one started with me staring at the moon, then
finding a bit of a book page with these lines on
it, by an author unknown: The night shall be filled
with music, And the cares that infest the day/Shall
fold their tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal
away...
Next to that was a child´s drawing I´d rescued
in the street, part of which provided the tents...
Looks like lady Luna had her nose done at the same
place Michael Jackson frequented - well, why not.
While busy with that, I was humming - what else? -
It is only a paper moon/hanging over a cardboard scene...













A paper and thread moon...
They are all three in the shop, and there will be some
more this week - I´ve been prescribing myself a weekly
focus, and this week it´s mixed-media...

14.1.11

Rainy friday afternoon

I´m dreaming...













... still of icicles, it seems.
While outside it´s mild and grey and raining...













... but with a feel as if spring were eager to hop onto
the stage any moment...
























All in a jumble, climate- and...













... otherwise...













Have a good weekend...

11.1.11

Winter moments...













... "frozen" in cloth - Thaw













... and City Snow













This started out to become my monthly hanging
for December, but then I made another one instead...
Do you remember the photo of the thick snow caps
on that dry flowers on the balcony? All gone
now in reality - but preserved in stitch...

7.1.11

Warm-up
























By dyeing one might not be able to reduce heating
costs - but it can feel like that at least...













A piece of warm-up silk, drying on the balcony in
a rare bit of Berlin winter sunshine...













And it burns, burns, burns...
I just put three small silk packs into the shop, together
with some other things, such as these two ladies,
who seem greatly unperturbed by any kind of chill...



5.1.11

Thaw

























“Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful
than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other
breaks into pieces.”

(H.D. Thoreau)