Apparently August

It is still cool - not that I miss the 100+ weather we can get, but I've only worn shorts about three times this summer. I have turned a fan on twice.

I never got around to posting this, from early July.



Such a tiny embroidered face looked...wizened. But I decided to just finish anyway, because I knew of no rule precluding a tiny feather-cloaked lady from being wrinkled. Er, the cat hair is, ah, for scale.

No embroidery since then, as six weeks ago I (sprained?) two fingers on one hand and they still don't work right. Frustrating in a lot of ways, including that the weather is perfect for schlepping and organizing, except you can't do that one-handed. I had planned on doing the outdoor closet so I could install a hook to hang my bike, and I need to repot some plants, such as the hens & chickens the jays keep vandalizing.

Instead, I've read a lot, and managed to start getting back to painting. Hence the pods. Here are the next two stages:



Time for the little brush on the black and white painting; I think one more session of black and white before I add color. The colored painting...I'm somewhat stymied. I accidentally made a large pepto pink - yikes. Maybe it will help to get an apple to model for me. I need more practice figuring out how the different paints work together...which is after all the reason for these studies. And seeing the pictures all together reinforces my niggling suspicion that the last time I worked on them I made them worse. Some of it is my photography - even dry they're kind of shiny. And the camera seemed pretty unhappy with bright red and green.

July?!

Where has this summer gone? - or, where has it been? Because it just really finally got here. It's hard to be convinced by the calendar when the weather is cool and overcast.

At any rate, the weather has been almost completely like summer since last weekend, when I went on a hike:


(If you look at the large version, you can just barely make out one of the hawks that was circling around and around--one of the tall grasses points at it.)

Yesterday Princess had an excellent day.



And I finally got in gear and did some painting--two new in-process and one probably almost done practice piece from a while ago:

The pomegranate/seedpods are experiments in that one is going to be only colors, and the other is starting off with the black and white underpainting as per the workshop I took a couple of years ago. Initial notes: I "get" black and white. Instant color is fun. And I tend to either use very little or way too much Liquin (thinner).

Medieval Inspiration for an Embroidery...

or, Breakfast at the Ashmolean.

It’s just wonderful that institutions like the Ashmolean have invested in making their collections available online. Much as I would love to visit in person, it just isn’t practical...at least on short notice. And they wouldn’t allow tea!

In late December I finished the last bit of a small embroidery I started a long time ago. This experiment was prompted by historic examples in several books—separate inspirations for techniques and for motif.



TECHNIQUES:

"Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt," by Marianne Ellis.

Embroidery #5, pg. 16-17, done on linen fabric, is couched linen thread with silk filling in the background. Probably originally the end of a shawl, only the roughly cut off embroidered section remains. You can see it online courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum:
Textile fragment with Naskhi inscription, birds, and palmettes
Egypt, 12th century (1101 - 1200)

Embroidery #9, pg. 21, was couched with buttonhole stitching; that intrigued me, and I decided to try it.
Textile fragment with band of Naskhi inscription, scrolls, and floral pattern
Egypt, Ayyubid Period (1169 - 1260)

I really like how the couching turned out, though the effect I got in my embroidery is different than that in the picture. Some of the reason is probably that my embroidery was not buried in Egypt for 800 years.

DESIGN:

The design is one I made up; basically, I needed something that fit the linen I found in my stash, which was left over from something else. The shape of my fabric (about 4 ¼” x 6 ¾”/11 x 17.5 cm hemmed) dictated a narrow composition), and the shape of the border is a nod to the Islamic inspiration for the embroidery technique I used.

As for imagery, I’ve been hooked on pomegranates for some time; conveniently, they were ubiquitous for centuries of textile designs. I was also enamored of the adorable little partridges from a 12th century Italian tapestry weaving. I found it in "Tongeren. Basiliek van O.-L.-Vrouw Geboorte: Textiel van de vroege middeleeuwen tot het Concilie van Trent" (a collection of medieval textiles in the Basilica in Tongeren, Belgium).

Woven silk tapestry fragment, used as a wrapper for a relic; Palermo, 12th century. It is very badly deteriorated, and was “repaired” with embroidery in the 19th century.

Thanks to the Royal Institute for the Artistic Heritage of Belgium, you can see this online: go to http://www.kikirpa.be/www2/wwwopac/en/object.html and search for cliché number: N7124 (the cliché number search box is under “Administrative Data”)

I decided the bird in my embroidery needed to be as big as possible, and I filled in the top with as many pomegranates and leaves as I could fit.

The filling stitches used in the Egyptian embroideries seem to be mostly stem stitch, but I confess I deciding on chain stitch for the partridge anyway—it fills in faster, and kind of looks like feathers. And I’m not sure what kind of silk it is, and since I need it for another project I thought chain stitch might possibly use less thread. The beads are also my idea.

More bibliographic detail:

Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt. Marianne Ellis. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2001.
1 85444 135 3 (paperback)
1 85444 154 X (hardback)
This excellent book is available from the Ashmolean—not only can you order directly from them, but they have THE ENTIRE THING online, hooked up to the collection! I just discovered this today, as I was tweaking my essay and playing with the links again. When you look at an item that was included in the book, you get the option to read the “object entry” about the item, and also to follow back to the Ashmolean publications…and then you can find all the items that are online that were included in the book. It’s very cool!

I recommend the book highly—it has superb photos, often full-page, in which you can usually see the threads of the ground fabric and of the embroidery; how often can you say that about photos of medieval textiles? Also there are a couple of diagrams that are probably not in the online version (a couple of stitches and some charted patterns).

Tongeren. Basiliek van O.-L.-Vrouw Geboorte: Textiel van de vroege middeleeuwen tot het Concilie van Trent. (Clenodia Tungrensis I.)
Uitgeverij Peeters, Leuven, 1988.
978-90-6831-125-9
Available through Oxbow/David Brown Book Co. as well as from the publisher; as you probably guessed, it is written in Dutch. It contains many, many delightful things, but the photographs are mostly black and white, and often smaller than you’d like. There are some very nice diagrams (mostly of weaving structures), and detailed textile information. I recommend this book highly, but with the caveat that I think it would appeal mainly to serious textile geeks as it is heavier on the brain candy than the eye candy, especially if you don’t know Dutch—though since my German is decent, and I’ve read a bunch about textiles, I was able to work my way through it all right. That, and a serious need to know more about reliquary pouches.

The Picture, and a Surprising Development

Here's the embroidery picture--between being extra busy at work (end of the month, and my supervisor is abroad) and forgetting to bring my flash drive, it seems to be taking me extra long to get around to doing any personal computer stuff.


The New Development: the apartment complex has just raised my rent. This I could handle; after all, largely due to their disorganization, I seem to have missed the last one. However, they have also decided to have us all billed for the utilities previously included in the rent (water, sewer, and garbage). This new bill, of course, is based on math and not on actual usage. I was pretty sure I knew what my decision was going to be, and then I talked to the apartment complex manager, and became completely certain: I am now officially House Hunting.

I am reasonably certain that the timing is due to the fact that I have nearly reached the state of minimum entropy, maximum efficiency of my current residence.

Pictures!

Sunday afternoon I finally got in gear. I cleaned all the arachnid detritus out from between the windows, and I cleaned off my project table. Then, in order to be able to put away the textile paints, I had to paint the fabric. Because of the expanse of empty table available, this was possible (amazing). Back in July I had this idea that it would be fun to have a new embroidery to work on during my trip to Florida, something like, say, a mermaid. Reason stepped in heavily, and I concluded that I didn't have time to start something else, and I wasn't going to have much time on the trip anyway.

The paints and cloth have been waiting since then, and now here she is:

Then, since there was paint left over, I painted this. It is hideous, but I like it anyway. Then, since I still had paint left over, I painted this: And then there was STILL paint left over, and I painted these.

Then I was really hungry and pretty tired of painting, so I did not use up the remaining bits of paint.

Notes on painting on fabric:

1. painting on colored cloth: thumbs up
2. I was reminded why gesso was invented--fabric is bumpy
3. This time, I will remember to iron the things BEFORE I wash them.

Marduk vs. Tiamat

I do hope the allegorical title will please the Title Quality Editor. (See, they're better when I have time to ponder them.) ;)

The week off was not restful, as I ended up schlepping stuff all over my apartment and repiling it in different configurations. I no longer have a living room; the battle for chaos control has just begun. But my work area is significantly improved. (Is there a law of conservation for entropy? All the entropy reduced in one area reappears somewhere else, and entropy can be condensed into a smaller area if the degree of entropy increases geometrically as area decreases?)

Here are several entries written over the course of the week, including several illustrations of things more or less flat enough to scan with some degree of recognizability (so, no pictures of the cat).

Vacation Process Report.

21. January, 2008 (Monday)

Here is the doubleweave sample I wove a couple of years ago. (I happened to mention it while visiting with Sarah on the phone, and realized I could show it to her!)

22. January, 2008

Organizing is very very tiring.

The idea for today was to clean out some of the extra stuff in the “studio” and to reclaim the “living room.” With the departure of one of the utility shelves (yay) I have been left with Stuff that has no place. Drat. (But not a surprise.) I didn't end up buying the drawer units I thought I would, so there is now, after much carrying, EMPTY SPACE in my work area!!! For now I am relieved by emptiness but I hope that tomorrow's pilgrimage to Ikea will help relieve the living room of its chaotic congestion. At least I moved the stuff that was precluding door access to any but perhaps a weasel. Amidst the lifting I eventually found myself muttering ow ow ow almost enough to take some Advil. I still might, the final straw being inadvisably but stubbornly heaving my unemptied, solid oak spice cabinet up onto the file cabinet.

Must now eat—I am way behind on nourishment. Then a lamentably short shower (until I moved here, I never dreamed that hot water heaters came in such a small size—plus it is now really cold, for Portland at least, so the hot water gets “diluted” by the cold water being excessively cold). Then I will SIT DOWN and have tea while it's hot. And if I've regained some energy I will draw or something.

At some point during the week...

I finished the little one of these embroideries, inspired by reading a couple of really interesting books by Mary B. Kelly (Making & Using Ritual Cloths, and Goddess Embroideries from (of?) Eastern Europe). I made the first one over Christmas:

It's odd that they don't show at all to scale--the second one is a leftover from the first!

23. January, 2008 (Wednesday)

The trip to Ikea didn't happen, but I did do other things: took the car for a check up (verdict: it needs to have something done) and did a quick run to two fairly close-by potential furniture sources. (After the failure-to-purchase of the drawer units on Monday I had checked three other places.) Help me oh Ikea, you're my only hope.

I have forcibly reclaimed most of the living room, at least of the half of the living room that performs the living room function. (The loom, spinning wheel, reel, and boxes of fabric constitute the normal occupants of the other half of the room, with the futon acting as a room divider.) Yesterday's moving included moving the loom so that I could “conceal” the boxes I was displacing from elsewhere.

Hah.

There are probably 16 cubic feet of boxes, and the heap is, er, noticeable. :( I have so far restrained myself from evacuating the bedroom closet, which is poorly configured storage-wise. If I emptied it & reconfigured it I would have leftover boxes, and I can't bear to make the pile behind the loom any higher.

I didn't particularly want to spend my whole week off heaving boxes all over, but I shudder to think of how long this would have taken during an ordinary work schedule. Organizing is important. Once I get through this part of it (hopefully it's the worst) I have to remember that even tiny, incremental steps are progress. There is no use having Hoards of Cool or Interesting Stuff if I can't browse easily or if I can't lay my hands on a particular thing without a lot of rummaging. Using up the finite amounts of after-work Creative Power to deduce where something is—instead of using it to MAKE STUFF—got old a long time ago. Maybe 2008 will be the year I get my act mostly assembled.

Organizing is also very tiring for cats. Activity by the human is tiring under any circumstances, so a nap is necessary to recuperate, and then everything is different when you get up, and you have to explore it and see if you still recognize it. Then there is the socializing with the human (if the human is relatively sedentary) and then it's time for another nap. The nap starts sooner if the human is still active, because that is too tiring to keep up with. It is hard work being a cat.

Speaking of which, the cat is now telling me it is time for Balcony Patrol. Arctic Kitty prefers Balcony Patrol in the dark, especially if the wind is blowing interesting scents around. Balcony Patrol in daylight has been out of favor for several months. Nocturnal Balcony Patrol is most excellent, and Arctic Kitty checks everything out very thoroughly, returning inside when her human telepathically knows that she wants to (she keeps working on developing her human's powers of telepathy). She comes in all super fluffy and fresh smelling, and shortly has to have a nap to recover. After a bit of a snack.

(I do spend rather a lot of time with kitty, yes.)

25. January 2008, Friday, early afternoon.

Yesterday I went to Ikea. After the initial excitement wore off & I got down to the serious business of looking for specifically-dimensioned furniture units, it actually got kind of depressing, because my spots are so small nothing was fitting. For example, I need a narrow bookcase—but it has to be short enough to fit under the thermostat. I found one that was the correct width & height, but way too deep (it would stick out 5 or 6 inches too far) and one that was the correct width and depth, but way too tall. And then there was one that was just ridiculously small.

At least I have ended up with a work desk that I think will be very satisfactory. I bought two little file cabinet-like things with 6 drawers each and found one tabletop that was the right dimensions. The little cabinets are nearly assembled. They are marvels of engineering, really, and extremely admirably packed—plus the assembly instructions are commendable: no text, just pictures, with plenty of “magnifying bubbles” so you could tell what to pay attention to.

I am, however, about DONE with assembly. It is extra hard, I suspect, because I am increasingly sore as a result of an intense workout yesterday, in the form of quarterstaff drills. So far it is neck/upper back and forearms, but I expect it will be spreading across my back like it did last time, except probably worse, because we did more. One of the reasons I've tried to keep moving all day...but now I really must be still for a while. I think I will sit in my bedroom (free of chaos, sun now shining in) and watch an episode of Torchwood. Maybe Princess will come out from under the bed and join me.

27. January 2008, Sunday.

Today spiraled rather out of control, between sleeping through the alarm and Mom calling when I'd barely been up 20 minutes, and then we talked for ages (it might be for the first time since Christmas) which was good except it was way too long & the timing was not good. I eventually got a few of the main things done, except for the sitting around sewing/doing fun stuff part which I have pretty much not done all week. I managed to sit down a little bit early this evening, and read part of my book on Moroccan textiles & carpets (a recent acquisition) with Princess curled up against my leg.

Yesterday I finally mounted an embroidery I had 97% finished by late February. It didn't scan particularly well because of its puffiness (as Muriel Baker pointed out in Stumpwork, it is impossible to block it to remove wrinkles; I resorted to tautly stretching it and padding it with quilt batting). I do believe the recipient was entertained. He nearly didn't get it, as I developed quite a fondness for the monkey and was really close to keeping it. The picture is based on an image in a book of emblems I bought earlier this year (currently missing in action, or I'd include the title; I just checked a bunch of places—I remember where it used to be, but I've shifted everything several times since then).

Yesterday I also took an encaustic painting class with Amy Stoner. Something else to buy art supplies for! You can do collage with wax, too. In the Sept./Oct. 2007 issue of Fiberarts there was a neat article (pg. 20-21) by Daniella Woolf (she also has a blog about her work). She incorporates paper, silk, etc. into her layered encaustic works.

My initial experiments (once I get set up, I'll mess around with them some more) (usual web-picture caveat--in real life they don't quite look like this): Time to make the final preparations for tomorrow. After today, I think I really really need to get a shiny sticker.

Today, Monday January 28:

Snow everywhere this morning! :) Very pretty. I suffer from snow deprivation, but I'm just as glad to not have to drive in snow with inexperienced people.