While we’re all too sluggish to get near the keyboard, perhaps somebody needs a bit of summer reading? (or winter as it were)
I just finished reading a collection of short stories, and while I get various things out of the way, so I can finish all the projects I want to show you, I’d like to recommend this beautiful book. If you enjoy poetry and fairy tales I’m sure you’ll like it!
Well, my pony post obviously wasn’t a huge succes 😉 so I’ll try a bit of Sunday gardening instead.
As previously linked, I’m going to try making a no-dig bed in the garden. I’m making it with fresh manure as I empty the horse boxes, so it may not be ready this year, I think I started in November. I put a layer of newspapers under, to kill the grass, so I can only top it up when I have enough papers! (We get a ton of free locals each week). I may scatter some carrot seeds just to see what happens, and I know potatoes will do well in nearly anything. Perhaps I’ll just cover it up to keep out weeds.
As you can see, I’m nearly done according to my markers! I’ll top it up a bit as it sinks, to end up with a good layer of soil. We have heavy clay here, and our lawn is seriously compacted, so this should be interesting on many levels.
Other than that, I’ll try to keep gardening at a low this year, it took too much of my creative time last year, so I’ll weed as much as possible, sow a few annuals and the only other new thing I’m creating is a grass free lawn under the hammock. Starting with moving some thyme from the barrels, in which I’ve instead put some bulbs that should have gone in last October, but I didn’t have the pots ready where I wanted them to go. And time passed and it was cold and I tend to hibernate… But today is such a lovely, sunny, balmy day I thought I’d get started!
And now I still have half the day for: ?? I know I shouldn’t overdo it with the physical stuff, I have to stop before I’m tired. Otherwise I just push on once I get going and then pay for it by sleeping all week. Paint or weave perhaps. Oh, the dog needs walking and the stable needs mucking. Always something, isn’t there. 😉 I think I’ll save it for later though – when I’m tired anyway.
I’m completely ambivalent and scatterbrained when it comes to colour taste. I like all the bright shiny colours at once and I like the muted greys/browns, I come up with ideas in both groups and everything in between.
Most artists seem to pick a certain corner of the palette that they work in, making a coherent body of work with a specific “signature”. At least for a while. I can’t help feeling that I need to limit myself in order to not be all over the place and end up doing nothing but sampling. But I don’t want to. I want both the bluish slate greys that I love and the bark colours, fog and dusk, as well as the circus.
I experience this in all areas, paint, photo and fiber. It’s like a kid in a candy store.
My latest yarn splurge:
And the next to last one:
I write down all my notions and if I set out a block of time to work properly on each, never get another idea in my life, I’ll be done in about 20 years I think.
Do you think it’s possible to work without constraints like that and still master a few things? Because right now I just feel like I have a head cold (ok, perhaps I do, it’s been a while), I feel heavy and unable to focus as well as rearing to get started again. Everything in my head is stampeding, the desire to sketch, weave, paint, more weave, cloth and tapestry and a mixture of both.
And of course this kind of panic leads to absolutely nothing. I know I can only do one project at the time, and anyway I got some stuff to improve the homemade tapestry loom, so it would make more sense to leave it alone until it’s rebuilt. That’s at least 50 projects off the list for now. 😉
And this is why I never get anywhere. I can’t choose my topic, there’s not one that burns just slightly brighter than the others. I wonder why that is.
It doesn’t feel like an inner critic “you’ll do badly anyway” kinda thing. Possibly it’s the usual result of too much downtime and then trying to cram in all the things when you finally have a slot for playing. Having to build up flow from scratch too often. I’ll first try my usual method, I just wound a couple of yarn skeins that I forgot to when preparing for one yarn adventure, and after I hit send on this I’ll spin the fiber I started weeks ago that should could have been done in a few days. Sometimes a project will present itself when I do these preparatory things. I’ve already discovered during the course of this exercise, one of my conundrums: I want to use the Rigid Heddle loom for two different projects in particular, one could turn out to take a while. But I don’t want to rush through the other to get it done and free the loom. And I used to snort at people with a whole room full of looms, like you can weave on more than one at a time…
Then I just have to figure out what to do with the sketching painting urges. I so admire real artists who get up at 5 every morning and get cracking, putting in 6-8-10 hours of work a day without distractions. (Like, I just realized, no matter how my thumb is doing, I should be giving big brown pony a pedicure asap)
So I guess this pertains to both of my current Keywords: Focus/Intention and Health. Improve both and perhaps I would not have to reboot so often! Perhaps then, my colour tastes could simply be seasonal, and I would have time to exhaust one before the next fascination happened?
Do you ever put blinders on yourself when it comes to colour themes, or does it happen naturally?
Playing with tapestry designs that are totally out of my league:
A lot of readers come here while searching for posts on plant dyeing and some of you probably subscribed for that only. I realize that it’s been quiet on that front during the winter months, so I just wanted to make a service announcement that there will indeed be more posts about dyeing eventually. In fact I have several half done drafts I could begin with…
Soon I’ll be ordering seeds, this year I’m going to replace the coreopsis with orange cosmos to try out. There won’t be as many different plants as last year, rather new experiments with old ones. And I hope to be making things with my older dyed yarns to show. The first yarn I used felts really well but is very scratchy, so I’m looking for ideas for non-clothing. Baskets, bags, cushion covers, knit, crochet, woven, felted, pictures or pattern suggestions are welcome!
Some acid dyeing adventures are also likely to happen. I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping around between various topics, but that’s what real life is like here at the cottage.
I’ll try to make it easily accessible via the menu up top.
Plantefarvningsindlæg har jo været lidt sparsomme her i vinter, men jeg kan se at de gamle stadig bliver læst ganske ofte, så jeg syntes lige jeg ville udsende en servicemeddelelse i den anledning. Der kommer helt sikkert mere farveri på programmet i år, ikke kun planter, men også pulverfarve.
Jeg bestiller snart frø og regner med at erstatte skønhedsøje med orange cosmos. Der bliver ikke så mange nye eller forskellige eksperimenter, jeg gentager heller ikke dem fra sidste år, men snarere nye eksperimenter med gamle kendinge.
Der skulle ogsÃ¥ være en chance for at fÃ¥ lavet lidt færdige ting med det plantefarvede garn, som jeg kan vise frem. Det garn jeg har brugt filter rigtig godt, men er ret krads, sÃ¥ hvis I har gode ideer til ting, frem for tøj, som man kan strikke, hækle, væve, filte, fx. tasker, puder, kurve osv, sÃ¥ del meget gerne billeder eller opskrifter! 🙂
Selvom jeg har opgivet at oversætte alle mine indlæg her på bloggen, vil jeg dog fortsætte med det når det gælder plantefarvningen, som minimum, evt. også andre garnrelaterede emner. Jeg håber I vil bære over med mig at jeg sådan springer i diverse emner hen over året, men det er sådan der ser ud her i farvehytten, både virtuelt og i virkeligheden.
Der er et særligt menupunkt i toppen til emnet, så jeg håber det er rimelig nemt at finde rundt.
The shortest day yet
King Frost declines invitation
Green holidays ahead
A scent of Christmas
decorated forest floor
green tufts underfoot
Den korteste dag
Kong Frost takker nej til fest
Grøn jul i sigte
My interest in haiku a few weeks ago lasted exactly 2 days. Not that I don’t like them anymore, I just haven’t bothered. I think my brain simply thrives on new challenges? The thrill of firing untried combinations of neurons, no reason to go bungee jumping, you can get your kicks inside your own skull!
“Change all begins with thinking: we can immediately form new neurological connections and circuits that reflect our new thoughts. And nothing gets the brain more excited than when it’s learning – assimilating knowledge and experiences.” (“Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” by Joe Dispenza)
It would seem, to stay alert and on your toes, learning new things is indeed the way to go. So I guess I’ll just carry on like I’ve always done, LOL. Multicraftual, multilingual, diving into all sorts of weird subjects just because. I read somewhere that bilingual people are less affected by Alzheimers and other forms of dementia because they have more word combinations to choose from. Well, I’ll have to get back to you on that one in 25-30 years, that is, if I remember to.
There will be more on this topic later as I hinted on Monday.
On a holiday note, well, I can eat good food and take a wee bit of time off (ok, the latter is untrue), but I don’t do holy days or anything ceremonial. I’m guessing most of you out there will be busy with your families the coming week, so I’m wishing you all the best and I hope to see everyone on the other side of xmas or in the new year! I’ll probably keep posting if I feel like it, regardless of a drop in readers, or I may not get enough uninterrupted time to do anything useful whatsoever.
I’m really looking forward to the afternoons getting longer, as my outside time is suffering, I go about my things in here and before I know it the sun is down. But outside things also wear me out physically, so it’s no use doing them in the morning, as I’ll then be napping most of the day.
Date night, a movie.
Off to see the bad dragon,
but not in 3D.
