I did a Tarot reading to explore my creative block….

I deal the cards until I come to the a Major card.
In answer to the questions:
What drives me? - The Chariot was the first and only card.
What blocks me? - there were six cards before Le Pape appears.
Advice? - Temperance was the next card.


I’m driven by the will to achieve, but I’m failing to take the reins and have been left stranded by prevarication. I lack confidence in my abilities - not so much technical, more conceptual.
Its time to make something for, and about myself…. something that in years to come my great grandchild might come across and treasure.
To make this ’thing’ I need to break out of constrained thinking, and stop worrying about making a mess and wasting materials. I need to trust the process and allow this thing to evolve.

There’s more of course. I could spend hours exploring the cards, but already an idea is starting to form.


I first read Clarissa Pinkola Estes _Women Who Run With the Wolves_ in the early 1990s, and it remains close to hand. There’s a section entitled The Scapecoat…
… is a coat that details in painting, writing, and with all manner of things pinned and stitched to it all the name-calling a woman has endured in her life, all the insults, all the slurs, all the traumas, all the wounds, all the scars.



A few years ago I worked through an unhappy period by making ‘painful’ fragments - torn, burned, manipulated fragments of fabric, fibre and thread. I called them ‘A hundred tiny hurts and a few bloody big ones’. But as I worked them, I found myself adding more and more tiny areas of sparkle - the silver linings, the glimmers of hope, the pearls in the oyster.

I don’t want to make a Scapecoat. But I would like to make a Lifecoat…. something that charts the triumphs and tribulations, the achievements and the losses, the hopes and the dreams I have had and continue to have. I feel the cold more these days, and with the central heating set to the minimum to do my bit to save this amazing planet, I need a robe to keep me warm and comforted at home.

So today the plan is that I shall make myself a robe, using the softest fabrics and embroidered with metaphors of my life. Tomorrow I may regret stating this decision, but at least it’s a foothold out of the quagmire of indecision.

inspiration

The multi-talented baba_prague from Magic Realist Press - also at http://baba-studio.livejournal.com/ has been posting pictures of the doorways of Prague. And in so doing has resolved my issue of what to do with the central panel.

A doorway! Complete with doors that open [and close] and a vista beyond.

When I can find time I'll write about my fascination with doorways, thresholds and liminal places. But finding time has been impossible of late..... actually, not true - the problem is finding the right balance of time and energy. But I have a whole week's leave next week, and nothing on the horizon to steal my time and energy away from sewing. I can't wait!

Its impossible to get a good overview, and this pic is dominated by the 'yet to be decided' centre panel.

I'm aware that Erica is not keen on the mermaid and galleon. More about the reason for their inclusion later...

The flowers growing in the roots of the trees are from a bolero/waistcoat worn by Erica when she was 5 or 6

I seem to have lost sight of the purpose of this blog.
Self-consciousness causes me to hide. If I post my work, there's no escaping the faults. If I stay silent I can delude myself that tomorrow I'll do better.

I shall be glad when the moon phase side of the quilt is complete. I'm looking forward to the more abstract, less obvious metaphors that I can work into the solar festivals side of the quilt. But I don't want to hurry and make a pig's ear of pulling together the moon phase panels. I think I may pause soon, start the other side and return to this when inspiration strikes.

Some pics:

ooops... its been too long and camera battery's flat. Pics later when battery and me are re-charged.

Knitting

Here's what I'm knitting:

Its a strange yarn - 70% wool, 30% soybean protein fibre. It knits easily, if a tad too easily [if that makes any sense], its beautifully soft and drapey and I love the colourways.

I particularly like this colourway, but I'd need to adapt the pattern to make it waist length or just below.

I really like this simple sweater, but as I can't wear wool next to my skin I prefer to knit jackets.

Really struggling with these horrible new specs, my first pair of varifocals. I think I prefer generalised haze, rather than the strangely misshapen, if wonderfully clear in places, view of the world. I chose what I felt to be the least-ageing frames, but caught a glimpse of myself in the supermarket looking extremely stern. I do think stern can be useful, but its hopelessly removed from my wish to look like a serenely ageing Pre-Raphaelite beauty [not that I ever remotely resembled one in my youth].

I'm at the mid - its all shit - stage.

I'm to collect my first ever pair of varifocal specs today. I suspect that, able to see the world clearly in quite a while, it'll look even worse. But I've come too far now to make anything other than superficial changes, so I'd just better get on with it... a metaphor for my life, as much as my sewing, I reckon.


I'm satisfied with the almost completed mermaid and galleon, and owl and moose [mooses? meese?]. But as you can see, I made a major fuck up requiring the base fabric to be cut away so that the galleon and owl scenes are awkward, bulky appliques. I can hopefully loose the edges in the ditch when I quilt, or maybe I'll come up with a better way of dealing with the mess when I have some distance from it.




And speaking of distance, I'm off on Sunday for a week in Cromer, Norfolk, with my mother [holds breath, crosses anything crossable]. Actually, she's remarkably fit for 82. Its all in the posture, I observe - standing straight takes years off.

I've decided not to take any sewing - my confidence wouldn't survive the withering appraisal of my paltry skills. I've had my eye on the Rowan Tapestry knitting yarn for quite a while, so what better excuse [and excuse is needed, because the yarn is uncomfortably expensive] to knit something new - pics to follow.

cloissoine effect

Lunar Moth - in progress


City of dreams

I need to outline with embroidery, but don't want to 'solidify' and lose the ephemeral effect. Still pondering...