Work in Progress

Well, I did not start my focus on Saori weaving as I'd hoped. Instead, I've wound up working with a new Noro yarn, Koromo, and my 1/2 sett 12" triloom, in my old technique of combining woven triangles with crochet, in a freeform construction style.  The triangles are Koromo, and the crochet and embellishements are a variety of yarns, including Noro Aya, Nora Shirakaba, and Interlacements, along with some silk sari ribbon.

I am trying to keep Saori principles in mind as I work, allowing the pieces to be self-expressive, to grow organically.  At this point, I'm not at all sure what the final piece will be, though I am beginning to see a garment, a vest or top perhaps, rather than a wrap, which is what I've done with this technique in the past.

The beginning. Piece No. 1.

 Piece No. 2 started.

Pieces No. 1 & 2, completed.

Starting Piece No. 3

 Detail from Piece No. 2

Detail from Piece No. 1

Art in the Garden

These days I am doing much more writing and thinking and reading than working on my fiber arts. So I haven't really had much new to share here. Today I begin my intensive focus on Saori weaving, so hopefully that will change.  Meanwhile I'll post some things this week about what I have been doing

This weekend, my participation in a show called Art in the Garden gave me solid support for expanding my work focus - expanding, rather than shifting, for I fully intend to keep working on my writing daily as well.  The show was a lot of fun. I sold a few things and sat in a nice wisteria gazebo and wove on my small tri-loom when I wasn't chatting.

The chatting was important. I got feedback on my work, and had the opportunity to talk about it, about how I work and a little bit about my aesthetic.

Most fun of all, was meeting a 6 year old named Liam (center, in the pic above) who visited me as I was setting up, asked a lot of questions about how things were created, listened well to the answers and became my promoter for the day, after receiving an advance payment of a felted river rock. I heard he was running about saying, "There's a famous artist over there. Go see!" He even brought me apples and lemonade when I mentioned I was a bit hungry.  Every artist should have a solicitous, attentive assistant like that!

It is also lovely to do a show with an attentive organizer! Heather Wolf owns the gift shop Willow here in Terre Haute where this event took place. She made sure I had the table and chair I needed, space with some shade, and brought me salad (with a choice of dressing - great gazebo service!) and water.  She also made up nice signs to post at each artist's spot.

If you've been reading this blog awhile, you've probably seen everything in these photos! This was a fun set-up and didn't take long at all. I feel like I kept it relatively simple. Sometimes I think my displays can be rather overwhelmingly busy and the beauty of an individual object gets lost. 

NaPoWriMo2013 Report

Did it!  In fact I ended up with 31 poems.  While I can't share any of them here, I can share this screen shot of my Scrivener application window and the files:

Of the 31 poems, I feel that at least 8-10 are solid and as final a draft as any of my poems ever is. Another dozen are worth spending some time revising and a handful are more possibilities than poems.

I'm quite excited right now about my work flow and what my focus for NaPoWriMo has given me - the habit of sitting down to write every single morning.  For many of the mornings, I did arise from the writing session with my poem completed. For most of them, it was close and I would return to it here and there during the day. 

I'm going with the energy generated by the past month and continuing to write every morning. It is very nice to create a morning ritual that gets me in this chair and, the best part, signals the Muse it's time to visit. It sounds odd, but this has happened for me every year I've completed NaPoWriMo.  

If I sit to write in the same time and place every day, She knows where to find me.

It doesn't matter what time I have chosen, only the habit of it.  One year I was writing at midnight. The next year in the late morning after walking two miles.

This year my routine goes like this: wake up (some time between 7 and 9 a.m, very inconsistent on this), lie in bed opening up to what I might write today, get up,put kettle on,  pee, brush teeth, fix hot lemon/elderberry water, start oatmeal, feed Lily.  There might be some variation in there (a shower, getting dressed, a moment of Tai Chi), but those are the basics of my morning pre-writing routine.

Then I sit to write - always starting out in MacJournal.  I make a new page each month for "Poetry Notes" and there I free-associate and play with words and phrases, ideas and concepts.  I might go back and forth between that page and my journal page for the month.  At some point, there is a click and a few words partner up with one another and another joins them and....poem birth begins. I did not stop until I had at least the bones of a poem.  At that point, the poem gets to move to its own page in a Scrivener folder.

So where am I going from here?  My intention is to continue writing out of this morning routine, and starting this month, I am going to use some of the morning time for organizing and submitting my work to journals and contests. 

And I am going to apply what I've learned in the NaPoWriMo process to my fiber art.  I have not been working on anything new in so long - I feel sort of paralyzed by all my unfinished projects and all the different kinds of techniques I want to work with.  I have a lot of supplies, materials, ideas - and I can't seem to work on anything. But I know I need that work- that tactile, kinesthetic creative work - to balance the cerebral work of poetry.

Dan James at Coach Creative Space asked me a simple question yesterday in the conversation about this post on A Big Creative Yes, the blog associated with CCS:

"What if you had to chose just one artform and focus on that exclusively for a month? What might it be?"

I immediately thought, weaving. Saori weaving.

So that's what I'm readying myself for:  SaWeMo.  Thirty afternoons focused on Saori weaving. 
I'm excited!