Snow-driven burst of creativity

 

We have snow on the ground. It would be enough for snow-dyeing. And I wouldn’t even have to negotiate with my son as to who gets which piece of the grounds because he is not interested in shoveling snow anymore. But I don’t have any pfd fabric in the house, haven’t prepared anything. It was interesting that several people approached me during these past few months whether I might take dyeing fabric for selling up again, and I was almost tempted to order a shipment. But there is really not a whole lot of time left besides working full time, and the temptation wasn’t quite strong enough.

Yesterday was very crisp and clear and cold, too, and on a drive to the next village where I dropped something off I got out of the car a couple of times to take some pictures. 

 

And in addition to that crispness, which made my creative juices flow I also saws Sidnee Snell’s post on Instagram of a quilt she had shown at the last zoom session of our 20 Perspectives group, and that got me really inspired. So I have been working on my piece for the upcoming challenge. I am not going to talk about it in detail here, just show a few pictures. 

I had the idea to repurpose one of the two sketches I contributed to the Patchwork Gilde @b.lange.patchwork ’s challenge for rendering swear words in textile form for the next magazine on the topic ‘150’. Before the pandemic I had bought this piece of fabric with prints of Frida Kahlo, 

 

and I took one head to turn her into a ‘Heulsuse’ (cry baby). 

 

I really liked the back view of it before I added the tears, but alas, that's gone now.

Now I am adding on to that piece, and it will make a nice detail of the finished quilt which is due by the end of February. I am using some of her features for special effects, too.

 

I decided to put the features into separate six-point-diamond arrangements, though.

 

 On the side, I am still working on my advent calendar spinning, I am up to date!

And yesterday I decided how to proceed with one knitting project where I will be running out of one kind of yarn eventually. I am changing colors in the lower part of the sleeves, and will do so in the bodice as well.

 

A good day, on the creative side.

By the way, the chicken don’t like the snow, they are staying in the area under the cover where there is still bare ground.

 

 

Developments in the background

 

My son and I spent a few nice days in Cologne at the beginning of the month. We went to the chocolate museum, 

 

the sports museum, 

 

My son found his Olympic grandfather and is taking a picture as proof.

and one day we took the train to Bonn to go and see the Museum of History of the Federal Republic of Germany. This museum is free of entry charge, and it is so filled with interesting information that it is well worth going there more often. 

 

One of the very famous pictures in connection with the
building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Of course, that is not easily possible for us, living over 500 km away, but anybody who happens to be near should take the opportunity!

I was surprised to learn that my son claimed he had never heard of the famous Cologne Water:

Even more surprised, when he claimed he thought it smells pretty good...

 I took him into the Cathedral where we listened to a short organ recital and prayer, sitting opposite the famous glass window by Gerhard Richter.

And I went and visited Ernst Barlach's Soaring Angel, couldn't leave the city without that.

Then life turned very busy, as work became more intense again. Our hospital went back to full schedule in the operations room and thus I am not in danger anymore of being sent around to other wards ‘helping out’. Which means my period of vocational adjustment finally turned serious indeed. There are days when I am optimistic I will make it, and others when I think I will never be able to fit everything into my brain, differentiate between the various systems of implants for hips, knees, or get the whole procedure memorized... Today is one of the latter, but Friday was one of the former.

Pedestrians in front of the Messe station just before we returned home from Cologne.

 

Meanwhile, some things have been happening in the background. It started in the summer, when Susan Callaghan gave a talk at one of the online meetings of the regional SAQA zoom meeting for SAQA Europe/Middle East. After finishing the talk she mentioned she was planning to start an international quilt group, would people be interested to join, get in touch with her... Initial difficulties with zoom links almost discouraged me completely, I had even started writing a mail in which I said I was not going to join the group after all, but something made me change my mind, and am I glad I did. The group has taken off with the speed of lightning, and today is our first reveal date, within the group, but we are going public in a few days. Here is a detail shot of my first piece.

"Bridging the Cultural Gap" (text messages???), detail. 40 x 43 cm, 2022.

 More about this in a few days!

Freezing cold...

 This morning's view out of our kitchen window...

Ode to the Big D

My good friend Kathy Loomis and I have been writing e-mails to each other, sometimes daily, for almost ten years now (this was what I wrote about our Daily MailProject, and we have done others). Right now, due to the circumstances, we are writing under the self-imposed title “No C”, meaning that we won’t mention the virus or discuss the illness. Of course, the whole world’s life is not only influenced by what is happening but our lives are affected just as well, but we are both trying to look at and write about the things that we would be doing without the virus, such as cleaning our studios or working on some pieces of art. Making masks, again, is something we would not have done if… but it can be mentioned. As you see, the title is intentional, and we can take our certain liberties.  In any case, the “No C” has given me the idea of writing an ode to the big D.

Because it is dandelion time here right now. 

And I love dandelions. 

In all their shapes, stages, forms. 

After the rain...

in company...

amongst peers...

On Instagram I saw a post by @lizzigodden about how she had used dandelions as artistic inspiration, and that, of course, is much more sophisticated than anything I am going to do with dandelions here. Just photos.

I know, they are considered a weed by serious gardeners. But I am only a gardener with limited abilities, certainly only a limited amount of dedication to maintaining a tidy and neat garden, and I simply love flowers. And ‘weed’ is a classification by definition only, a very subjective way of naming this flower. 

It could equally well be called a wildflower, and everybody would be perfectly happy. So when I found myself taking lots of pictures of dandelions these days, and came across that post on IG by Lizzie,  I decided to chant and sing the ode to the D here, as it had been brewing in my head already anyway. They are great for bees (and bees need anything easy to get in these times!) and I like the honey that comes from mainly dandelion fields, they are incredibly yellow (and I love yellow) and the have these fantastic stages of mutation from the yellow half circle to the fluffy white balls with each and every seed and a private paraglider to start off into another life cycle. 

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do that - let the hair grow out into a little paraglider and take off, to start over, anew, at a different place...