Samburu, Kenya – 1970

Secoya, Ecuador – 1999

Matako, Argentina – 1939

Aymara, Bolivia – 1923

Karaja, Brazil – 1902

Dolls from The Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History.

The Quilting Bee

Sugaring Time

The Old Checkered House

Thunderstorm

“According to art historian Judith Stein, Grandma Moses was “practical at heart, turning to painting in her seventies after working with worsted wools for embroidered compositions,” which risked being eaten by moths. She painted mostly scenes of rural life. Others have noted that she abandoned a career in embroidery because of arthritis. Grandma Moses told reporters that she turned to painting in order to create the postman’s Christmas gift, seeing as “was easier to make [a painting] than to bake a cake over a hot stove.” Stein notes that “her sense of accomplishment in her painting was rooted in her ability to make ‘something from nothing’, as Lucy Lippard defined the aesthetics of women’s ‘hobby art’ in 1978.” Stein considers [Moses'] quilting work, for which she transformed cloth scraps into useful and beautiful objects, akin to hobby art.”

- Wikipedia (Grandma Moses)

I collected these treasures as I was coming home from Goodwill today. They served as inspiration for my lino-cuts I’m making.

We’ve been closing the gates and giving the chickens the run of the property lately. Last night I got home late after thanksgiving dinner, and it was midnight by the time I shut them in. I tried to count them, and kept coming up short with 18. I gave up , and assumed one was roosting in a tree somewhere. This morning I let 19 out of the coop though, and that was a relief.

It started with a snake. Tuesday morning, a seven-year-old walked into the art room and announced: “I need someone to help me sew a pet snake.” He and his friends were planning a game where they all had pets they took care of, and he wanted to make his own pet, instead of using stuffed animals like everyone else.

So… I took down the felt and the sewing basket, and we proceeded to put together a awesome snake, green with a white underbelly, black button eyes and a forked red tongue. I ended up sewing about half of it closed, but he did the other half, stuffed it, and sewed on the eyes himself.

By the end of the day, his snake was sporting a red plaid scarf, a nine-year-old had sewn a matching set of hat, scarf, and boots for her uglydoll, and two four-year-olds had scarves wrapped around their beanie babies’ necks. Another nine-year-old decided to make his own uglydoll. He designed it on paper, then cut it out and got one of his friends to help him start sewing.

I’s so much fun to sew with felt! I really needed to have my own project, so I cut out a heart in between meetings and sending out the newsletter. When I got home, I sewed it up and stuffed it with some dyer lint I’d been collecting. Not nearly enough though. I’m going to put a donation basket for lint in the laundry room with a sign.

I’m bringing two of my friends to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner this year. I invited them because they just moved here this summer from across the country, and they don’t have the money to fly home for thanksgiving.

I’m a little apprehensive about this. I’m glad my friends are coming. I’m glad they have somewhere to go. And while I haven’t known them for very long, they are both wonderful people who I am proud to call my friends.

What I’m worried about is my family. I love my family, and they mean well, which probably means I’ve lucked out, as families go. But I still can’t help but be embarrassed by them. My extended family, I mean. My grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. It’s just that they all have such a radically different worldview than me, and seem to buy into the consumer lifestyle whole-heartedly, with even more devotion than my parents.

Walking into their houses with their overbearing televisions as the centerpieces of their design-magazine living rooms, I feel out of place and thrust into a different world, one only hours from my own.

I know my friends will understand. They won’t judge me, and I’m sure they won’t judge my family as harshly as I do. That’s not really what I’m worried about though either. Really, I think I just don’t want my friends to see how uncomfortable I am around my own family.

(Above: Papercut I made last year, and just took home this week.)

and enjoying their fires

finishing the commissioned piece

starting a worm bin

fighting against the budget cuts

enjoying spring blooms and only remembering my camera on rainy days.

Professor Soap – Spirit Quest Journey from Professor Soap on Vimeo.

Spirit Quest Journey by Professor Soap (Ryan Mauskopf) Found here.

Rang-ha (in Persian, this means “The Colors”) made in 1976 by Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian filmmaker. Found here and here.

And my favorite, Sean, a short documentary made by Ralph Arlyck in 1970 as a student project. Arlyck made a 2005 documentary called Following Sean, where he follows up on the interview. I haven’t seen this yet, though I see you can watch the whole thing on youtube. I don’t actually know where I found this…

On Saturday I joined the rally at the state capitol in solidarity with the Wisconsin Protests against taking away collective bargaining rights for unions. There were so many people there, I was so glad to see the community come together.

I’ve been reading this book, The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories by Joan Aiken. Aiken is one of my favorite authors, and these short stories about the Armitage family are some of her lesser-known works. (At least less-known to me!) Some of them were published when she was eighteen! These stories are about Harriet and Mark Armitage, who live with their mother and father in a small English village. Due to a wish their mother made many years ago, every Monday is an interesting and exiting one. But magical and unusual things seem to happen to the family whether it is Monday or not. The awesome cover illustration is by Beth Adams.

I decided to wind my lengths of embroidery thread onto cards. It’s much more organized and easy to find the colors I want. I love how beautiful all the colors are.