Bucket Play

Played with my first indigo vat.

Think I might be leaving this to others in the future!

I'm such a brown person.

Came up with a pair of eyes....

and strips of moons rising on yellow cotton with washers as resists.

Happy with over-dyed rusted cotton.

But the bestest of all is the pile of blue threads I now have.

Oh, yes

and I have one rusty pup with blue polka dots now!

She has to get involved in everything.

Hoola Hoop

Couldn't resist ....

....it came home with me....

Should have seen us try to get it going!

Holy Mackerel.....How did we keep that thing twirling back in the day?!

Skywards

Not exactly a city skyline, but

out here in the country

we do have things that scrape the sky.

Some twirl in the wind.

Some reach for the sky

to warn of dangerous waters....

...while others act as homing beacons.

And some are just handy resting spots.

In the Company of Shore Birds

A day at the beach on soft, soft sand

with shoreline birds dancing and feeding in front of the waves.

When they weren't running along water's edge

these semipalmated sandpipers

preened and preened balancing on one or two nobly legs.

Dancing alongside the sandpipers were precious and endangered piping plovers.

Happily we saw parents herding quite a few young ones
back and forth along the beach.

After diving for their dinner, cormorants perch on rocks....

to dry off and have a gossip.

But back to those beautiful sandpipers
Just look at them eyeing us.

Looking out to sea
and thinking.....what a beautiful day.

September...already

Funny how on September 1st there is a definite change in the air.

As the sun rose it kissed the tops of trees as it always does.

But today it seems to have lost some strength.

The tangled woods have become even more tangled this summer.

Some things have wrapped themselves around other things.

Their lives are all so intertwined.

They're all headed in the same direction...toward the sunlight

but each on takes it's own path.

Dragonfly

He didn't fool me hiding among my weeds!

Always Allow Time for Percolating

Finally back in the studio....Feels good.

For me working in the studio is like life itself 

or at least the ebb and flow of the oceans that surround me.

I work in great bursts of energy followed by

periods of slow percolation and reflection

and then the energy returns.

The rusty gate has been percolating for a while!

The design was not working for me.

Some weight was surely needed along the bottom of the piece.

All it needed was a thin strip of rust....wrong!

Luckily I pinned a wide strip in place expecting to cut it back later.

But,

viewing it from a distance,

it occurred to me the width of that strip was perfect.

Now the piece looked balanced.

And the few random echoes of the more precise shapes above play an important role

I think.

Parts of the clover leaf spirals were lost in the new seam.

The eye will want to follow that curve.

Some kind of stitching will do the trick.

There are echoes of triangles that need to be developed.

I see many hours of stitching in the near future!