slack

i have been a slack blogger and even slacker artiste. little progress has been made on my traveller's blanket but it is evolving in my mind.  and no progress has been made on my challenge piece.

on the other hand i had a birthday last week and Kind Dog gave me this most beautiful ring (and matching earrings)

the house is full of spring flowers

and i had messy play this afternoon making paper with lots of silk in it

 and this afternoon we strolled down to alice's bookshop in rathdowne st and picked up a few gems viz.

at last a finished object

ormer ecstasy - inspired by richard lord's wonderful undersea photos

a liberating and comforting quote via mags' blog - thanks mags :) 

But why explain pictures?No meal can be made more exciting by a running commentary analysis of the flavours. Everyone has a different tongue. Pictures need no literary introduction. What they always need are open eyes and minds free from preconceived ideas.

sur le weekend

2 blog posts in 2 days!  - after the recent drought that seems like a minor miracle. but given the Excess of Life Events over the last few months, a slow blog is hardly surprising.

this weekend was free of commitments and we spent it gently. i tried my hand at low immersion dyeing for the first time at home (i had a play with it at grampians texture last year and loved it) and ended up with some quite usable pieces

this green batch reminded me of the plane view of darwin harbour and will be used in an aquatic piece:

i am starting dijanne cevaal's online traveller's blanket next week and am really happy with this combination. i dyed the purple/blue piece and the green is a length of silk chiffon.

deep macbethy reds and cerulean blues are out on the washing line but just as exciting.
and here are some more pics of our beach adventure yesterday. Kind Dog is showing a natural bent for collecting :)

beach therapy

this evening we drove south to get a dose of ozone, ocean therapy and beach treasure collecting.

  i played with the camera apps on my phone - the tilt shift one is especially addictive.

  and the panorama one

 more photos tomorrow - especially of the beach treasure and Kind Dog was very pleased that i didn't ask to bring either of the two dead seagulls home...

july

caput mortuum - a little more detail

now that blogger will finally let me in i can tell you more about my challenge piece. uploading from flickr is better than nothing but doesn't allow for much lyricism.

when the theme 'animal kingdom' was announced i did not want to do something cutesy or representational. then i remembered the great rat battle of 2010 - my backyard looked like the last act of some murine hamlet.....
 

  

 and then draped ophelia-like among the violets, was the mummified remains of another victim.

 

 

  I printed the photo onto different weights of silk - dupion and organza and planned to use them in the december self-portrait challenge. but it was too painful and i abandoned that scheme for a while.

so this is the planning stage of caput mortuum (which literally means 'dead head' and is a rather brownish red blood colour in artist's materials)

 here it is pinned together before stitching and burning - one of the challenges of this piece was finding a decent adhesive - spray adhesive works the best so far but isn't entirely satisfactory as it doesn't bond the silk entirely to the linen. fusible web i abandoned as it leaves a sticky residue on the sewing machine needle during the free motion stitching as did wet glue.

 here is the finished product -

 i found a piece of red cotton mesh that i had rather unsuccessfully tried to dye black but for the project was just the right shade of caput mortuum

 and it forms the next piece in the self-portrait series - echoing elements of this