Miniature Landscapes

When you look at our lakeshore from far off, it's really pretty uninspiring. The heaps of twigs piled up along the shoreline look like a homogeneous beige mess. But when you look much, much closer--on the scale of inches--subtle shapes and colors appear. The tumbled rocks, the curled-up leaves from last fall, seeds and seed pods, and other organic material of questionable origin combine to form remarkable collages.

Here is our intrepid bark boat, with its seed pod captain, sailing away after exploring these miniature landscapes.

Fruits and Flowers

We're quickly approaching the summer solstice--the longest day of the year and the official beginning of summer for us folks in the Northern Hemisphere--and the trees in our neighborhood are showing off what they've accomplished since the spring. The Kousa dogwood's ivory, four-petalled flowers cover the trees (shown above).
This Japanese Tree Lilac is spouting clusters of showy white flowers.
Not to be outdone, the trees are bearing fruit. My husband's favorite mulberry tree on his walk home--a good snacking opportunity--has its first green fruits to present.
The maples have been busy, too. Delicate green samaras dangle from my neighbor's Japanese maple. The green samaras--those winged, seed-bearing fruits of the maple--look delightful against the brick red leaves.
The samaras on our maple are not as showy, but the groups of them look quite healthy. They remind me of one of my first walks after we moved to our neighborhood. My children and I were walking to school, and we got showered with a storm of the brown samaras whirling to the ground in a strong fall breeze.

Dala Horse Inspiration

This has been a hectic week, and it's been frustrating to have so many handcrafted items that I've wanted to make--and some inspiring materials to make them with--and so little time to devote to them. However, late last night I chanced upon a Flickr image that inspired me to do some seriously late-night crafting.

The gorgeous repeating pattern of the Dala horse shown above is by Alline Luz, a Brazilian illustrator. She works at a wildly inventive illustration and graphic design studio called Mopa. How cool is it that a Brazilian illustrator produced an illustration based on a Swedish folkloric image, which in turn inspired an American crafter (of Mexican origin) to make something?

The item in question is a soft stuffed creature with extravagant embroidery that's flitted through my head in various incarnations for several weeks (a chicken? a rabbit? a pig?). I've had an angora sweater in a deep red that I've been wanting to transform into a softie (see Softies Central for all things softie), and last night the Dala horse illustration pushed me to figure out how to make a horse in soft, three-dimensional form.

To do so, I copied the illustration from Flickr to my hard drive. Then I uploaded it to Powerpoint (lame, I know, but I don't have Photoshop, and it's the easiest image editor I have) and cropped one of the horse images and enlarged it. I traced the outline of the horse and used the pattern to cut two pieces from the red angora sweater, one side flipped, of course. Using a tip from maya*made, I traced the shape of the horse's legs to create a pattern for the bottom gusset and traced the horses ears, muzzle, and mane to create a pattern for the head gusset. I sewed the pieces together on my machine, which was a tricky puzzle with all the pins and seams coming together.

I wish I could say that my late-night crafting yielded a finished product, but my little Dala horse isn't done yet. Here's a peek at the prototype for my work in progress:

You'll notice that I haven't embroidered her extravagantly yet, but I have some trims and thread that I'd like to use. And I'll have to tinker with the bottom gusset, which turned out to be too fat. The Dala horse is a graceful creature, after all.

This little craft detour left me a lot more energized for my work and my kids, so I'm looking forward to a happier end to the week.

Dreaming and Creativity

Our region has been experiencing a heat wave the last few days. This morning, my two-year-old and I have been holed up in his bedroom, trying to keep cool in the only air-conditioned room in our house.

While I was folding clothes, he played with his toys. He kept up a running dialogue with me as we worked at our own tasks. I love how much he reveals about his inner life as he plays. He was playing with his train Spencer, when this little story emerged from our dialogue:

Spencer had a dream. He dreamed of an octopus. The octopus was on the track.
Spencer stopped. He put the octopus back in the ocean. He saved the octopus.

This “dream” was essentially my son’s imagination leading him to put some normally unrelated images together into one story.

It seems that with children there isn’t a rigid divide between their dream lives and their waking lives. Bad dreams seem very real and scary, and they get worked out through their imaginative play. As children get older, this distinction slowly becomes clearer.

My eight-year-old is in a middle phase in this process. A nightmare woke him up last night shaking, and he needed my company to help him get back to sleep. Usually his dreams are more pleasant. One morning at breakfast he commented out of the blue, “The real world interferes with my dream world.”

That seemed so adult of him, and I identify with his sentiment. There are many mornings when I wake up and want to hang on to the wisps of a happy dream, full of music and color and people and places to explore. I have had some powerful dreams that have inspired the beginnings of stories. My 12-year-old is in the same place now and often uses her dreams as fodder for her writing.

Because they can blend fantasy and reality so well, children can create the most imaginative and spontaneous stories and art. I’ve been trying to be open to letting more of my dream life leak into my crafting and writing. Lately I have even had images of lovely things that I want to create pop into my head while I’m just about to fall asleep (a result of late-night Flickr browsing?). I try to sketch them as soon as I wake up, though they don’t look as fully realized as in my dreams.

How does your dream world inspire what you create?

In Defense of (Craft) Blogging

As a full-time job, I edit. As purely personal pursuits, I write, I do research, I take pictures. I buy vintage items that catch my eye, especially books and textiles. I make crafty things with my kids. I try to find time to make things on my own out of fabric and yarn and paper and paint and whatever items I can recycle. Then I blog about these things.

As an amateur blogger, I was very interested to read Emily Gould's recent article, "Exposed," a first-person account of a professional blogger. The article has aroused quite a powerful response, just judging from the comments on the New York Times site. Here are just a few of the criticisms leveled at Gould, and bloggers in general:

• "Thanks for exhibiting the empty narcissism of so much blogging." [Sounds like this person reads a lot of blogs!]

• "The whole computer "relationship" concept is so anti - human ... regardless of those who would sell it as some sort of way to "interact." Don't you think that interaction should be only used as a term for real human contact?" [Does this comment strike anyone as ironic--the need to post a comment seems to me like an attempt at human contact.]

• "The blogging epidemic strikes me as the height of self-indulgence, without any real regard for the common good. There are other, more graceful and enduring forms of self-expression." [Yes, like quilting, knitting, painting, etc.]

The article has inspired some bloggers to engage in some critical, and constructive, self-examination. Is blogging just an exercise in narcissism? Do I reveal too much personal information? Some of the craft bloggers in particular have written thoughtful posts about Gould's article. Floresita wrote intelligently about the distinction between "TMI" (Too Much Information) blogs and the craft blogs. Essentially, she writes, the craft blogs are all about "creating rather than dissecting life." Astulabee tied blogging back to her own art, which is extremely personal, as much great art is.


In defense of blogging, I side with Floresita that the craft bloggers are doing something far more positive and worthwhile than bloggers like Gould are. Although she may be a good writer, Gould occupies a unique blogging niche in which gossip and negativity are the coins of the realm. (No, I'm not going to link to those sites.) I have to admit, I read these sites compulsively for a while until I realized how juvenile they all were in making snarky fun of the way people dressed or how fat they were. Gould, and bloggers like her, depict themselves as outsiders, and yet what they seem to be doing is reinforcing really negative social norms about how people should look. Reading that kind of negative message daily was making me feel really low about myself, and it doesn't seem like a positive trend for our culture.

Luckily, one day I discovered a much sunnier place to spend my limited Web-surfing time. I wanted to know how to make a yarn pompom for some now-forgotten project and found a handy tutorial on Belladia's blog. Belladia's happy, beautiful pincushions and purses inspired me to start making things again, which I hadn't done for several years. And her long list of Wonderful Blogs gave me multiple windows through which to view what other people are creating for additional inspiration.

Unlike the solipsistic exercise that Gould is engaged in--consuming online culture and criticizing it and making her personal life part of this online culture to be consumed in the same fashion--the craft blogs emphasize production rather than consumption. Craft bloggers produce handmade items, usually for other people. And they are engaged fully in the real world and in fostering positive human interactions through the things they make.


I think that Astulabee hit on something very important in her post as well. Craft bloggers reveal personal details, and there is a tension between demonstrating how a creation was inspired either by personal experience or by a loved one and revealing too much about one's own life and family. But for the most part, I would say that the revelation of personal details helps explain the creative process and is not all about receiving attention for the revelation itself.

I love that there are tens of thousands of art/design/craft bloggers trying to make some sense and beauty--and perhaps even meaning and order--out of our sometimes crazy lives and express this in written and visual form. Rather than tearing people down, they are attempting to create a world that we'd all like to live in, as Astulabee put it.

Like me, craft bloggers are trying to learn new methods, stretch themselves creatively, find inspiration, keep track of and stay on track with their creative endeavors, meet like-minded friends who share their interests, and even feel a part of a community of sorts.

I know that I appreciate the feedback and support I've gotten from participating in the craft blog community. I'm sure that I'm not alone in getting a little thrill from receiving comments on my blog. It's a feeling that, Yay!, someone out there has seen and appreciated what we've put so many hours into creating. (Even without these comments, though, my blog has been a great way to keep me committed to creating regularly. It's almost like a regular journal in that sense.)

Reading other people's blogs and taking part in a dialogue by leaving a comment is another way to feel a part of the larger virtual craft community. I've realized that I'm not alone in feeling unsure about what I'm doing or in feeling frustrated at the lack of time for crafting, among many other issues. And it's nice to share voyeuristically in another crafter's triumph at finishing a project or achieving success commercially or artistically.

Personally, I feel that this sort of positive reinforcement is a crucial part of why I continue to blog. It keeps me creating things despite the fact that crafting is sometimes viewed at best as frivolous and at worst unnecessary or wasteful by the people around us. But then a defense of crafting will have to be left for another post!

Inspired by Nature

My husband grew up near Philadelphia, where rhododendrons (named for the Greek words for rose and tree) grow wild and flower luxuriantly. He's on a mission to convince me that we should plant the shrubs around the edge of our yard. I'm not a fan of the plant's dark green, leathery leaves, or of its sometimes scraggly branches. But we took a tour this weekend of the botanical gardens, where the rhododendrons are in full and glorious bloom.

I was enchanted by the amazing variety of colors of the rhododendron blossoms--from white to the most shocking hot pinks. The blossoms grow in huge clusters, called trusses.

I think I may be a rhododendron convert.

We also took a walk through the rest of the botanical garden and hiked through the wildflower garden. I was happy to see many of the flowers that are growing wild in our yard and learn their names.

This one is called Dame's Rocket, and the mix of white, pink, and purple blossoms look beautiful clustered in our yard.

Everyone in the family took turns with the camera, and my daughter captured this lovely image of a hosta whose huge leaves cradled a drop of water.

And of course I was on the lookout for silhouetted images to use for paper cutouts.

I left the gardens feeling so invigorated and inspired, and the paper cutouts below are the result of our Sunday morning garden inspiration. Both are for the Artist Trading Card swap with Snippety Gibbet.

The cutout below, of course, is more indirectly inspired by nature. Snippety Gibbet is an avid cyclist, and I included a quote on the back from Frances E. Willard, a 19th-century social reformer, who learned to ride the newly popular bicycle in 1893 when she was in her 50s: "She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life."

Swappin' and Barterin'

Late Thursday night I returned from my vacation after a LONG day of traveling feeling tired, cranky, and in need of a shower. But the crankiness immediately dissipated when I opened the mailbox and found not one, but TWO, packages of artsy-craftsy goodness. What a double treat!

Snippety Gibbet sent an Artist Trading Card (ATC) with one of her delicate and whimsical paper cutouts. It's gorgeous, and I love how the water pours from the watering can onto the flower. I would love to find out how she achieved such graceful cutting lines and exquisite details on such a tiny card (2.5" x 3.5").

Thank you, Snippety Gibbet, for the card and the inspiration!

A few weeks ago, Resurrection Fern proposed a "swap shop" on her gorgeous blog. She suggested sending some of her overflowing stash of vintage textiles and trim in exchange for whatever the reader thought she might like.




If you follow her blog--and you should--you'll know that Resurrection Fern is an avid collector of vintage loveliness in all its forms, and she has a fantastic eye for overlooked treasures.




Well, not surprisingly, the package she sent did not disappoint! The fabrics, trims, and buttons were thoughtfully coordinated in blues and oranges.


The bundle of goodies was tied together by this perfect blue and orange fish trim, a treat in itself.
These pieces of barkcloth have scenes of Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood.


The beautiful blue palette of goodies included buttons and a piece of a lovely, soft patchwork quilt top.

And Resurrection Fern must know of my affinity for orange, because the orange duck tea towel and the orange clown bib piece are just the right shade and vintage designs. (My daughter confirms that the clown is "not one of the scary ones.")

And this gorgeous, silky piece of fabric combines both blue and orange.



Thank you, Resurrection Fern, for the thoughtful and inspiring treasures! I can't wait to start creating with them.