Mangos For Breakfast

It's up! This year's online show for the 2010 International Freeform Crochet Guild is now live and it's glorious.  The theme is "Somewhere In My World."

My piece is a wrap called Mangos for Breakfast By the Startling Bougainvillea,
Take a look at my page, then go see everyone's! The starting page for the exhibit is at:
http://www.freeformcrochet.com/2010/Pages/main.html
You can take a look at the shows from years past through the main page at:
http://www.freeformcrochet.com

And here are more pictures of Mangos....

 ....this, above, as a work-in-progress. While I worked mostly in my basement studio space, there were days when I was able to work in bliss out on the back screened-in porch.  For the weaving-in of ends, I did that somewhat tedious task in the convivial atmosphere of RiverWools. 

And there are LOTS of ends in my freeform pieces.  I'd work them in as I go and I do a little bit of that, but I really like to have the option to use the ends for surface embellishment that pulls the piece together.  I even leave ends longer to facilitate that.  Often it's not clear how or if the ends will be used until I'm nearing the completion of the work.  So I always wind up with dozens of ends to do something with at the very last.

Some detail pictures:

and the wrap wrapping:

Bliss.

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A little more bliss: the arrival last week of the May/June issue of Handwoven with a picture of my winning piece, "Motley." What an amazing feeling to see my work in a national weaving magazine! And to be in such good company. I say a big thanks to Interweave and Halcyon Yarn for sponsoring the contest, and to the Universe that keeps me going on this fiber journey.
Namaste!

an unsecret project

It seems like it's been forever that I've been working hard on Top-Secret-Shhhh-Can't-Reveal-Anything projects. And then worked all April on poetry that I felt obliged to remove if I want to publish final poems anywhere other than in self-published venues.  So I've gotten sort of used to not having much to post here.

I've been working on a piece for about a week now and today I suddenly realized....I can blog about this!
So....here is my current work-in-progress. 

I started with this round-up of yarn...

....and wove lots of continuous weave squares (from the Noro Chirimen in the bottom left corner ) on this one-square weavingboard (tm) from Roger at Homestead Hideaway and scrumbled a bit with the rest of the yarns...

...and stitched and crocheted squares and scrumbles together until there was enough for Zelda to start wearing it

Hasn't yet got a name, but "dusk" is likely to be in it somewhere.

This direction my work is taking, this integration of crochet, weaving, freeform is immensely pleasing to me.  And I'm so happy to be able to share that here!!


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A little note on the looms from Homestead Hideaway. Last year, I discovered HH on etsy, when I was looking for small triangle looms for teaching my workshop.  I ordered six from Roger and was very pleased with every aspect of the transaction - he was fast to respond to my request, his price was very reasonable, the looms were nicely made and he packed them efficiently and safely with all the instructions I needed to put them together properly.

After I let my students purchase looms from me, I ordered another half dozen to replace them this year. Then I noticed he had some new and interesting looms he's calling Weavingboards (tm).  It's rather a complex system of nails and boards that you can change and extend to create triangles, squares and rectangles. In several sizes!

To shorten the story,  I've now got a two square weavingboard set (with 1/4" nail spacing) that I haven't yet used (I'm very interested in learning to do a continuous weave rectangle) and a set of 3 custom-made one-squares with 1/2" spacing between the nails (I used the 8" one to weave the squares for the Dusk wrap-in-progress.) And he's making me another set with 3/8" spacing.

I may have all the small looms I need now! ya think?

Poetry...going...going...

Right after I post this I will be removing all the poetry work I posted for April's NaPoWriMo.  The sad fact is that I can't submit  poems for publication if they are posted here.  Having a poem on my blog is apparently considered 'prior publication' by most journals. 

I have long struggled with the issue of submitting poems for publication. Years ago, I went through periods of trying to get my work published.  I have many impersonal form rejections and a handful of personalized rejections that said,' mmmm, close...but not quite what we want.'  I even have two in that category from the New Yorker...one has a handwritten 'Sorry' at the bottom.  The other - my prize - says 'please send more.'  (Of course, I was young and unsure and felt like I'd sent them my best and sending 'more' that would be better seemed an impossibility. So I didn't.)

The last time I seriously sought publication was more than twenty years ago.  With the birth of Molly, my fourth child, I made a conscious decision to focus on mothering rather than writing and art.  Many women do both, but I knew that I couldn't.  For me,  I think it would have been frustrating and neither my children, my art, nor myself would have been well nurtured.

I'm not sorry I made that choice either.

And now, it's my time to be a poet and fiber artist.  While it's very freeing to just write without worrying about publishing, I find that more and more I'm thinking about publication, shows...getting Out There.

So. It may be a futile task, but I am going to consider the poems posted as my first drafts, take them down, rework them a bit and try to find new homes for them.

I'll let you know what happens!

Meanwhile, here's what Sophia wrote when she wanted to practice writing. Sure seems like a poem to me....

poemlove,  Sophia Hussey (2010)

Patrick's Beltane Columbines

Every spring, in greater abundance each year, the crimson columbines appear in the place where I put all the flowers given after Patrick's death.  Here is what they look like this year:

and here is what I wrote here four years ago on May 8:

"...Now I know they are crimson columbine. They sprang up in the place where I decided to pile all the flowers that were sent for Patrick's remembrance ceremony, let them go back to the earth. It's a spot by the back screened-in porch, by a wild, unkempt trellised rosebush. I guess that perhaps there were some of these in one of the arrangements....??

Anyway, before I identified it, I spent some time just looking at the flowers. I thought they looked whimsical and funny, like jester caps...and it seemed an important observation as I have also had the strongest feeling that Patrick, in an archetypal way, was/is like The Fool... there's more to explain in that than I can do right now, but I think it's not a bad way to metaphysically explore some of the meanings in his life and death, and his struggles with addiction, the dichotomy of his own bad choices and his innate wisdom. Well, here's one quote on The Fool as depicted in Tarot:

"This whimsical character is numbered zero because he represents both the beginning and the end of the journey toward self-awareness. Innocent and wise, naïve and deeply insightful, the Fool is often represented in the tarot as dallying along a cliff. He is a risk-taker, an adventurer, someone who lives fully in the present and recognizes that the universe is constantly changing. To less daring souls, he sometimes looks like a silly child. Like Shakespeare's fools, he often has more insight into the drama on the stage than the other characters do..."

Getting back to the flowers that have appeared - once I figured out they are columbine flowers, I looked up flower meanings....several showed Columbine = Folly.

and I shall leave it at that for today... "

My words for this season are "plant and play."
Beltane blessings to all!