Sweetie darling & 70s retro mashup

Going through a 1970s nostalgia phase. Spirographs, Twister, Barry Gibbs' tight white pants and sexy Jesus mane... and woodgrain fabric. Can't get enough of woodgrain fabric.



I like the knot under the "i."



Made my girl Keefie this little "sweetie darling" hooped action on some precious woodgrain cotton.

"Sweetie darling" comes from Absolutely Fabulous. Back in the 2000s, Keefie and I drank vodka gimlets and fought off the boys together. And we loved those ill-behaved English women, Patsy and Edina, from AbFab. We were each other's sweetie darlings.



The stars are star stitch. Convenient.



A 1970s image involving Keefie... her family being evacuated from Tehran when the Shah was overthrown. I envision helicopters taking off at twilight, filled with tanned, bell-bottomed Americans in 22k gold jewelry.  And for some reason, in my fantasy, the Eagles' Hotel California is playing in background, pierced by the chopping roar of the helicopter blades. Coppola is slated to direct my reverie.

Go figure.

Keefie (left) & me at a recent Caps v. Caines game.

Cool Cat. Rattled Skull.

Wool felt & embroidery floss.

Several stitching projects are in hoops around my apartment these days, but I haven't been finishing anything. Lots of little sketches and ideas. More craft and less art, which feels a little strange. But it's all good.

Made this simple, wool felt, catnip LP for a cool cat I know named Vann. Looks a little more like a hockey puck than a record, but I wanted him to be able to bat it about. Word is, he does. This makes me happy because he is such a cool cat. And every girl loves a cool cat who plays by his own rules... as long he is lovable and purrs like a slightly drunk locomotive when scratched. And Vann does.

Records are on my mind these days.

I got caught in a tempest on Saturday night and was drenched in rain and stung by hail. Literally. Struck hard on the tender scalp. It felt like the universe was bullying me. I'm not proud to say it, but I felt sorry for myself.

But Spring is here. I rallied. Back to my embroidery hoops and stitching, peeps. Back to sketching, crazy ideas, and great conversations with wine and friends. And back to sunshine. I didn't work so hard to make my life what I want it to be only to be crushed by a storm. Besides, I love storms.

Go!

Spirographs, Star Fox & other small stitching

After pulling a week's work of dense, little stitches from my Tiny Great Curve piece (which was heartbreaking by necessary), I've been making small, fun things this week.

Stitching a spirograph though Sulky Solvy.
Red pearle cotton, chain stitch.

Turned one of my zillions of summer cotton camisoles into an ode to the fabulous spirograph my my youth.

I want to embellish all of my little summer tanks!

Stitched up a set of thick, Pottery Barn dinner napkins into an ode to 1990 computer game catchphrases. (Star Fox is the cutest thing!)

Love the playful language in these crazy phrases.

I'm really enjoying this simple, happy stitching! Making little gifts for myself and my lovely peeps. More of these little stitched odes to come.

Playtime has just begun!

Summer beckons... warmth, friends, books, bootcamp, zumba (with Kate and Katherine), art, stitching, trips (DC with Juline and Miami with SF)... life is full of joys.

In a war, someone has to die

So said a temporarily out-of-work professional African soldier. So heard Danish artist Hanne Bang, who was inspired by a television news interview she saw with the soldier to create a collaborative, stitched art project titled, "In a War Someone has to Die." 

Stitched handkerchiefs. Foreground, Katherine,
background, me.

Bang is collecting embroidered handkerchiefs from stitchers around the world, each inscribed with the soldier's line in her/his own language. She will sew these handkerchiefs together to form a large installation artwork later this year.

I heard about the project on the MrXStitch site. My friend Katherine and I decided to participate. We each stitched up the line in Spanish. Spanish is my mother's first language and I had her write it out for me in her beautiful, strange handwriting. I used a brightly colored new handkerchief and chain stitch.

My handkerchief in chain stitch with little stitched flowers.

Katherine is bilingual, having learned Spanish while in Honduras in the Peace Corps. Her husband is Honduran and she uses Spanish professionally in her social work career. She stitched it up on a vintage handkerchief in backstitch. (Interestingly, Katherine's mother's first language is German. I wonder if she ever considered doing it in German.)

Katherine used a vintage linen.

I love the way that the artist's experience with the news media lead to this art project. To me it shows how being open to stories and news from around the world can inspire huge, collaborative projects.

Imagine the scene: A reporter and a camera person interview a professional African soldier for a Danish news program. The segment is viewed by the Danish artist back in Europe. She is moved by the coldness of the soldier's words and she plays with the feelings and associations that the news story stirs in her.

Brightly colored pink cotton.

Bang then reaches out to the stitching community, online and in her physical surroundings, and we all are pulled into the creation. My mother, who has no other connection to the professional soldier, the unknown reporter or the Danish artist, writes out this sentence at her kitchen table. And she is disturbed by the words her daughter stitches. But she is used to me and she is game.

My mami's handwriting.

Read more about Bang's work here.

Big Yes! Chaos Theory Scarf by Lesley Starke

Prepare your nerdy heart for some seriously geeky and gorgeous patterns generated by an eight-point, early chaos theory computer code.

Science + Craft = Joy.

No, you did not read that wrong. My Durham String Thing buddy Lesley Starke is knitting up this double-sided scarf using Rule 30 from early chaos theory, written by Steven Wolfram (father of Mathematica.)

She is knitting with two skeins of yarn at the same time.

Lesley is a scientist in ecology. She says that the project is the brainchild of her friend Joe Sexton (not a knitter). “He and I use similar approaches to the ecology work that we do. To put it broadly, we use satellite images to detect and analyze changes in the landscape.”

Back in 2009, while he was finishing up his PhD in Ecology from Duke University, they had a conversation about their work that exploded into this wildly beautiful creation.

Random triangles and shoots!

I love the stark black-and-white translation of the computer code and the random waterfalls and pools it creates.

The Code (pattern) runs along the bottom of the scarf.

Lesley claims that there is no pattern to this double-knit scarf. Here she explains how it works:

“I'm using a code that has 8 keys to it-- each produces a single answer: black or white, to create a random/chaotic image of black and white. The keys are each three-stitch sequences that I read on the row below to determine what color I should stitch in the present row. Four of the keys yield black and four yield white”

Their friends on Facebook
 recognize the code.

Don’t you adore this combination of computer code, utility (this is a scarf, after all, and will eventually warm Joe’s neck), wildly open creativity and the randomly beautiful patterns it creates?

Lesley, mad scientist & knitter, at work.

Big Yes to Lesley! 

"Big Yes!" is a blog feature where I share, with their permission, a piece of textile art that has opened my eyes to the possibility of what we can create.  When faced with things that are truly beautiful or moving or that fill me with awe, I try to say yes. More than that, Big Yes.

Un petit lapin for Katherine

Stitched this little sleeping bunny for my dear friend Katherine's birthday.

Stitched in pearle cotton, displayed in 3" hoop.

Katherine is an animal lover and actually has a pet rabbit that she rescued from a random parking lot. (What a white, pink-eyed bunny was doing alone in a parking lot is not known.)

Katherine is an amazing woman. She spins, knits, wet and needle felts (my favorite pin cushion is a geode that she wet felt for me), among other crafts. She is the fastest talker of anyone I've ever known, and that is saying a lot, because I'm from NYC. She is also the fastest knitter in the world. One moment she is buying the perfect skein of robin's egg blue yarn and then next she is wearing some insanely beautiful, intricate, finger-weight lace shawl.  How does she do this?!

He makes me think of my late dog Django
when he was a puppy and slept in a ball.

Happy birthday, sweet Katherine! Thank you for letting me into your life and being such a generous, caring soul. Friendship is not just about fun and games and telling entertaining stories. It's about sharing ourselves, the good and the bad, and spending time together, learning from each other. Katherine gets this. Others don't always.

Love you, cupcake!

Adventures in NYC, Part 3, Stitching & Purple

Can we talk thread? Can we talk floss?

Detail of Tiny Great Curve, chain stitch in Valdani 12,
color  2 (charcoal).

While in NYC, I did venture out of Brooklyn and spent a glorious bit of time at Purl Soho, feasting on the threads and flosses.

Koigu wool needlepoint yarns.

The fabrics were wonderful, too (especially their collection of Liberty of London) but there are decent quilt shops in NC. The flosses and threads... those are harder to find.

Liberty of London fabrics, hooped near the door.

I can and do order threads online, but being able to paw through silk thread and bin after bin of Valdani 12 in every conceivable color in person... that is a special treat. And their collection of embroidery-worthy linens is not to be missed.

Wanted to spin this DMC cotton wheel!

Bought myself a collection of Valdani in greys and purples for my Tiny Great Curve self portrait. It is pleasure to stitch with this. I also treated myself to a spool of Trebizond twisted silk in a lilac for highlights on my latest piece.

Some of my supplies for the latest piece.

I didn't purchase any of the Liberty of London fabric because I'm anxious about money and storage in my apartment, but I did spend a little time fondling the bolts. I wasn't alone! Another woman was standing next to me, doing the same thing. "It's like silk," she said. And I nodded eagerly.

These bolts called to me. And to other fabricphiles.

Since being home I've been doing a fair amount of stitching and playing ideas. Making progress on my Tiny Great Curve piece. Still stitching words galore. Generally feeling very upbeat and creative. 

WIP, current state of Tiny Great Curve.

I only wish I could make it to Fiber Philadephia this weekend. The exhibitions of textile art look like they are going to be amazing! Alas, funds won't allow this. 

Leaving Purl Soho in my purple beret.

I think that the purple ground fabric of my latest piece has made me a little fixated on purple. I keep wearing a purple hat. And these beautiful purple hydrangeas are a constant source of inspiration.

From my squeeze. Excellent taste.

I keep them close to me, next to my laptop, in my tiny little bay window space, surrounded in my collection of Pantone color post cards.

Purple, floss, silk, art, time with Erin's beautiful family, stitch-speration, handwritten notebooks and marginalia, and stitching. These are all things that NYC gave to me on this visit. Will get back very soon. 

Adventures in NYC, Part 2, Handwritten notes & archives

*And we remember strange and funny events, long ago and far away. Harlem is a police state with the voices of angels. Knitting in hand probably will change this.

Scrawl in my notebook.

Mash up of handwritten notes and marginalia in notebooks, manuscripts and scores by John Coltrane, Virginia Woolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, Jack Kerouac and Malcom X. All found at the Centennial Exhibition of the NYC Public Library.

Libraries rock. 

What we write in the margins and notebooks of our lives… treasure it. When you are exploring -- out in the world or through the portal of you laptop -- keep a notebook and jot and sketch and harvest, mofos.

My laptop with my new Nerd notebook,
from the NYC Public Library gift shop.

More NYC stitching adventures to come…

Adventures NYC, Part 1

Lucky me! Three days with Erin, Kevin & Maeve in Brooklyn. The Diego Rivera and Print Out shows at the MOMA and a wonderful, Centennial exhibition at the NYC Public Library. (Stitch-speration abounds.) Gorging on threads and fabrics at Purl Soho. Bouncing around NYC... man, it doesn't get much better than this.

"Super Duper Sound System" by Joshua Abram Howard.
(Read more about this N Brooklyn mural project.)

Erin is one of my oldest friends. To say I adore her is an understatement. She lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with her talented, writer husband Kevin and little gnomina daughter Maeve.

Erin & Maeve bring their auburn beauty
to the garden at the MOMA.

Three days in the generous company of her family, talking about life and art, eating Erin's phenomimal food... it is like heaven.

Me looking dwarfish in front of "Welcome to Greenpoint" by Skewville,
part of the India Street Mural project. 

Kevin is a writer, blogger and translator from Russian. And an all-around brilliant and funny soul. Kevin writes about art on his blog (New First Unexpected) A recent post is about the Diego Rivera exhibition at the MOMA, which we saw together.

"May Day Moscow, 1927" by Rivera.

I was also struck by Rivera's sketches from scenes in Moscow, especially the way he painted large groups of people in an unfamiliar enviornment. I enjoyed seeing the way he composed these quick paintings in strong horizontals -- sort of thick and heavy. Some of the sketches had more energy to their composition (he threw in some wonderful diagnonal frames) but the weightiness of the group scenes, with their flat lines and rows, spoke to me about the heaviness and gravity of the events themselves.

Collection of prints from the Print Out exhibition at the MOMA

We also spent some time at the Print Out exhibition, which showered me with stitch-speration and lead me to try to write in Chinese.

The circles in this piece give me chills when I think about
making them into raised, thread bumps!

And imagine a piece done entirely in raised spider wheel circles, like the circles from news print.

My sketchbook and some word stitching.

It is a cliche to say that in the city you are surrounded by powerful images, both intentional and unintentional. But it is true. I ate up all of the scenes and sounds and details and ideas around me. Devour them.

Random detail 1: Carved stone panel near the
front door of Erin's garden apartment.

Random detail 2: A ghostly leaf in my cappucino at Bowery Coffee in the Lower East Side
where a had a lovely time reconnecting with another NYC talented soul, Amy Vickers. 

I love my Durham home. I also love the city of my birth, NYC. I love my NC friends and life. I adore the visual gifts the natural world gives to us every day here in North Carolina. I don't love the strip malls. I don't love the parking lots. I don't love the beige work cubes. Getting away for even a few days... this helps me become less numb to the beauty around me.

Seeking your love of life, my peeps!

More to come... but for now I ask my NC peeps to share with me all that they find beautiful or sad or intense. Let's help each other make the most out of this gorgeous life. Every detail!

Deal?

My Lips, Stitched, Part 1

So, here is another take on self portraiture. These are my lips.

My lips, stitched.

The outline of the lips is chain stitch and the textured fill lines are in a combination of back stitch and chain stitch, in pearle cotton 5, 8 and 12. Had so much fun stitching this up, that I'm going to stitch up another pair and play with the textured stitches even more, trying different flosses, colors and line stitches. I love the idea of layering line stitches (feather, chain, etc.) to create a heavily embroidered surface.

I am truly happy stitch nerd... This is fun to me!

The world's cutest gnomina, Maeve!

Speaking of fun, headed to NYC this weekend to hang with my girl Erin and my beautiful, little gnomina, Maeve, seen here wearing a yellow kimono sweater I knit for her and the special gnome booties I made, too.

Lots of stitch-speration awaits!

A tiny portrait of my bare back

Working on little something just for me.

Self portrait.

This is a tiny version of my Great Curve design, stitched on pale plum Kona cotton. I'm using stem stitch and 310 pearle cotton floss. Pushing myself to get better at stem stitch, which I think is an elegant outline stitch that I've never been confident doing.

Word by Becky Wagoner, writing by me.
Love architectural terms so send me some!

I'm still collecting and stitching words like a banshee. I love the variety and themes of words that you're all giving to me. Thank you and please keep them coming!

Before taking a stitch.

Been working a lot at my corporate day job and I'm feeling weary. Siting in a beige cube, staring a a computer all day has lead to a strange feeling of disconnect from my body. This little portrait of my naked back is a reminder that my stiff shoulders and back have a shape and curve to them.

I'm hoping that stitching will help make it easier.