When you miss your man, you do crazy things

How does a stitch artist with nerdish tendencies deal with her man traveling traveling more than 8,000 miles to far away Hong Kong?

Latitude,  chez squeeze.

By stitching him the latitude and longitude of home so he can find his way back. That's how.

Me? I'm headed to Prague next week.

Frabbit of the Fens

Say hello to my little friend.

Detail of Frabbit, 2014. Hand embroidery on layered watercolors.

Frabbit! I made him for Sarah Hennessy as part of the FFFoF Bestiary Swap that I organized for Mr X Stitch.

Frabbit in the sun.

He is a fishy rabbit. Or a rabbity fish. Frabbits have gills and can breath on land. Through the Middle Ages, Frabbits were thought to be mythical creatures, hidden away in the Fens of England.

The only recorded sighting of a frabbit was in 1745, in Lincolnshire, England, at the estate of Lord Lupino.

Based on a drawing from Lady Thomasin in 1745.

No one knows how Lupino managed to capture a male and female pair. The locals whispered about dark arts. What is known is that Lord Lupino's black-eyed daughter, Thomasin, sketched several studies of the furry, scaly beasts, before she mysteriously disappeared, along with the Frabbits, into the Fens.

Frabbit, 2014.

My Frabbit is based on Thomasin's drawings of the male Frabbit. She called him Fabian.

Hennesseflorium Swirlanicus, 2013.  Hand embroidery by
Sarah Hennessey.

Frabbit's new owner, Sarah, is a wonderful, inventive embroidery artist. I remember falling in love with "Hennesseflorium Swirlanicus," her studies of fantasy plants. Her etsy shop is filled with her clean, fresh, swirling designs.

Frabbit of the Fens.

Frabbit is a layered watercolor, stitched piece. Sarah reports that she likes him. I am SO relieved.

WIP: My cross stitched eyes. Slow going and huge.

Next up: More stitching on my giant, cross stitched eyes.

Coming soon: Wait to you see the amazing beast that I received from Rebecca as my part of the swap!

Whatever the hell I want to do

Oh yeah. I can do whatever the hell I want to do.

Tales of Accidental Bestiality. A new made up library catalog card.

Woke up this morning and remembered that I am free to do whatever the hell I feel like doing. Go where I want to go, meet whoever I want to meet, create whatever the hell I want to create.

Section of a new piece I finished last night. More to come.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the symbolic mirror and saw myself again. Saw all the art I've made and the new things I've tried and the good life and love that I've attempted to bring to people around me.   It feels great to remember who I am, what I am. The incredible responses that I get from other people I meet in the world.

Me riding the rails in NYC.
Photo by Erin Core.

That's freedom. Onward.

Seeking inspiration

I'm drifting a bit in the creative shoals lately. Kind of stuck in the silt.  No one can rescue me. I must rescue myself.

March 2014, Inspired to Stitch, featuring Michelle Kingdom.

I'm grateful to have my monthly Inspired to Stitch column for the Mr X Stitch website. Even if I'm struggling to make art myself, I get to have these amazing email conversations with artists about their work and their process.

Michelle Kingdom, who I interviewed for the March 2014 column, has a wonderful way of talking about her work, which is fantastic. Tiny, mysterious narrative worlds. I admire it so much. 

the years fell, and grew into vines. Hand embroidery by Michelle Kingdom.

She inspires me and challenges me to focus on the stories that I want to tell in thread. And in life.

WIPs: Frabbit & a Giant Pair of Brown Eyes X Stitch

Working hard on a couple of projects.

Frabbit in various stages.

My Frabbit (named by the always imaginative LA artist Ellen Schinderman) is a layered watercolor stitched piece. Not sure how he is going to turn out.

CocoaEyes.

And I designed and made the initial stitches on CocoaEyes, a self portrait of my eyes. A selfie, actually. The piece is huge and will take ages to complete. It's my first x stitch design and only the second x stitch I've attempted.

Let's go.

Gifts for my peeps & sunshine

It was an exhausting work week in the corporate salt mines. I've been barely able to focus on anything creative. This does not make me happy. But good times with my squeeze and friends and the the warm weather and sunshine... these take away all of the blah.

Sketch for a new stitched watercolor project. Influenced by the sun?

Started this very beginning of a new stitched watercolor design.

For my dear friend Juline's birthday. Durham is her town!

Finished a badass Durham tank top for my badass friend Juline's birthday.

Crazy cute baby boy sporting 45-insert logo.

And received this lovely photo of a friend's son looking like a super hip baby in the 45-insert onesie I made for him. He looks like a mini Beastie Boy!

Even YouTube couldn't help me figure out how
to change the ribbon.

Retrieved this wonderful artifact from the past... a manual typewriter which I plan to use on my card catalog library cards for books I've made up. I have a couple of ideas for new books that I'm excited to explore, but I haven't had the space or energy to sit down to write them out. And I have no idea how to change the ribbon on this typewriter!

Peter Corcoran has been coming to my rescue for...
let's just say many years.

Off to see my Pops who used to work with typewriters 40 years ago. Pops to the rescue!

Poor, dead Edward Q

Stitched up my first fantasy library catalog card for a book that doesn't exist.

Edward Q, Seal Hunter (2014). Hand embroidery on a fantasy
library catalog for a book that doesn't exist. 

Poor Edward Qautsaulittuq, 1879-1919, Inuit seal hunter from Labrador, Canada, who fell in love with a seal.

She rejected him.

Who wouldn't want to read poetry about seal murder, ardor and the
frozen sea?

He spent several months roaming the shore, writing poetry, reeling from the sting of insufficient love. A happy ending was not in store for Edward Q. In his introduction, professor Jaques Niege-Neuf describes the poet's demise, found frozen on the ice with his verse against his chest, in a seal skin journal.

Stitched with 2 strand of DMC cotton.

Yes, I'm being playful.

My deck gargoyle is equally sick of Old Man Winter.

And now, for no good reason except the colors make me happy on this dreary, cold, gray winter day (not as bad as Edward Q's cold, but depressing enough for me) Look at Arturo, my art hound, with bright flowers and my artwork in the background. 

Arturo wags his tail!! 

Hurry up, spring time. I'm barely hanging on!

String Box 2 (for my squeeze)

Greens and blues. I’m using these colors more so far this year. I don’t know why.  Weeks of dreary, gray weather have me longing for green leaves and blue skies? For a verdant Spring? Maybe.

String Box 2, 2014. Watercolor paper, merino wool thread. 

I tried the string box design again, this time in a larger piece (8 “ x 8’) with softer, merino wool floss. (Instead of the tightly wound No. 8 pearl cotton.) And I like it better this time. The lines are more clearly defined. The squares firmer. Angles stronger.

The piece measurs 8 x 8 inches.

I made String Box 2 for my boyfriend.  For Valentine’s Day. The colors are deep, rich and complicated, like him. I added some playful reds and yellow threads. Those colors, in this context, remind me of his wicked, irreverent sense of humor.

WIP. I may wind up playing with more negative space.

His mother is a very talented, successful artist whose work I admire a great deal. He has several of her luminous paintings in his home, so it’s a little intimidating to give him a piece of my artwork. But I can’t be afraid to make what I make and to share it. That would not be me.

 

WIP. Pyramid.

These angles and lines… I can’t get enough of them. My sketchbook is filled with grids – some with curving lines. Some like circus tents. I want to paint them and stitch them. But  I only seem to have time to sketch them or muse upon in those liminal moments before I wake.

In the sun.

I can’t imagine being free from this longing for more time.

Hiriam B.

Meet dour little Hiriam B.

"Hiriam B, 1919." Hand embroidery into a
post card,  2014.

I stitched him for my darling friend Erin on from a postcard of a photo called "Cotton Flax and Barley, 1919," by Louis Buhle, from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

Detail of feather, fern and crossed fly stitches.

Hiriam B is a fantasy figure. I have no idea what the real boy's name was when he was photographed at the Children's Garden in the early 20th Century. I imagine that the borough ran a program for city children, teaching them about horticulture in the midst of their urban landscape.

Sketchbook scene.

My Hiriam B. didn't live into adulthood. Despite the photographer's efforts to coax out a smile, Hiriam refused.

My Hiriam B. smiled only when he was with his little brother Samuel, who did live into old age.

Hiriam B. made up surprisingly happy tunes for Samuel, which the two boys whistled together. Even as an elderly man, walking up and down the shoreline in Miami Beach in socks and sandals, Samuel never stopped missing his beloved older brother. And he kept whistling, even when he could no longer conjure Hiriam's compositions.

For Erin, with all of my love.

For 87 years, Samuel smiled enough for both of them.

Library Geeks Unite!

Oh, the card catalogue... How I miss those wonderful treasure troves of information!

Robert Louis Stevenson Stitched, 2014. Hand embroidery on card.

So many moments of discovery in my childhood involved me in the public library, peering into the long wooden drawers, flipping through the neat little cards of of information about everything. 

I remember the manual typewriter font. I remember the slightly musty smell. I remember the sense of wonder that there was so much to learn about the world, so many books written about every imaginable subject, so much possibility. And all of it codified!

Detail of Robert Louis Stevenson portrait.

I loved the library. In my small Connecticut town, it was an oasis for smart, nerdy girls like me. I wasn't a sporty kid. I wasn't a popular kid. I was a serious kid, dark and heavy of heart. A reader and a dreamer.  

WIP. This portrait was surprisingly difficult to stitch.

My boyfriend brought me this card from his recent visit to the library at the University of South Carolina. I found an image of Robert Louis Stevenson, a linoleum cut by Catherine Kanner, which I based this tiny stitched embroidery on. And I learned that the Prayers Written at Vailina was composed in Samoa, so I added some crossed fly stitch vines.

WIP. I'm trying my first shashiko embroidery with a kit I
purchased at Purl Soho. Strange to use a kit.

A simple piece that makes me happy. I can envision a series of card catalog pieces of imaginary books. Books I wish I wrote. Books I wish were real. I can at least make the cards real.

Eclipse - First finished piece of 2014

Detail from Eclipse, 2014.
Hand embroidery, pearl cotton & watercolor.

Thank you so much for all of your comments about String Box, which I wrote about in my last post and made for the Phat Quarter swap.

Eclipse, 2014.

Here is Eclipse, a piece I made from the same color family. In fact, I painted the background watercolor on the same day; I was in a deep, juicy, saturated color mood and stuck to red, yellow and crimson paints.

Framed.

This piece was made for my badass Pops. It was his birthday on Sunday. Oh Pops, you are a wild man.

Me and my badass Pops in the 1970s.

I've made several honeycomb pieces. One of my favorite things to do with embroidery is to layer stitches. The honeycomb pieces are already layered.

WIP. Made with pearl cotton, size 5.

String Box was an experiment with longer stitched lines. I've tried to bring a layer of the longer lines to the honeycombs.

What I made the fabulous Kinsellas for Xmas.

Off to NYC tomorrow for a quick visit to the fabulous Kinsella family and to attend the opening of the groundbreaking Queer Threads exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Aubrey Longley-Cook's RuStitch animation, for which I stitched a frame, will be featured in the show.

I'm ready to tackle the gray boxes.

When I get back to Durham, I want to tackle some new work on my gray boxes, which are the opposite of the juicy, saturated colors of my last two pieces.

String Box

I tried a new geometric pattern with this piece. I'm digging it. I can't wait to experiment more with the boxes and lines. The mark making.

String Box, 2013. Hand embroidery on a watercolor. 

String Box was made for the lovely designer Rebecca of Hugs Are Fun as part of the Amuse-Bouche, Phat Quarter Swap. 

Framed, String Box, 2013.

I came up with the theme for this swap because I didn't want anyone to feel much pressure to make something too large. What is an amuse-bouche? It’s a scrumptious little hors d’oeuvre. A stand-alone treat for your taste buds. Literally, one could translate it from the French as a “mouth amusement.”

In our stitchy case, I defined it as a tiny visual (rather than a taste) treat.

Out stitching in public. Cocoa Cinnamon, Durham, NC.

It was great fun to make something for Rebecca, a wonderfully creative stitcher, designer and blogger. She has been incredibly supportive to me as I've been experimenting with watercolor stitching. And she has a great flair for color in her own work, which you can see on her website.

Painting my watercolor backgrounds. I made the one on the right for
my Pops. Coming soon.

The String Box background was painted at the same time I painted one that I used for my Pops. More to come about that piece, soon. It is called Eclipse.

WIP: Gray boxes, a new project.

Tonight I'm painting simple gray backgrounds. I have an idea for something new that came to me while I was between sleep and wakefulness on Saturday morning. I'm geeked to start working on it...