The sky was distracting and overly busy, and rather than cover it up, I removed it.

I had wandered around my bins a bunch of times before finding the grey cotton, which I consider to be perfect.

The sharp line along the bottom edge of an arlee barr swatch kept grabbing my eye in a bad way… and so, even though my intention was to keep as much of the swatch visible as possible, I added a “tatter” from Deb Lacativa to bring some of the dark of the midsection down and to slightly interrupt that otherwise distracting line.

A still life from my sister’s mantel. 

And, more stars and reflections from Salem on Christmas day.  What wish would I wish upon a star tonight?  The first day of 2012?

One of the New Year urges I am feeling that is relevant here, is the desire to write juicier shit on this blog.  I find the reporting that I stick to in order not to make myself wildly vulnerable, boring, to be frank.  It is tough to be soulful enough, consistent enough, productive enough, or funny enough about my stitching work to add the kind of verve and zest that make a blog worth visiting.  So, how to do? Any ideas?

One idea is to abandon my strict policy of not including quotes from my large library of inspired writers, out of copyright diligence.  Who cares?  Does anybody check?  It’s not like I’m about to be ‘discovered’ and therefore have to be original across the board… Thoughts?

Another idea is to devote a day a week to a post of non-craft writing… I could groom one piece of writing per week to share here.  Things like character sketches, pages from the journals I kept for the boys as babies, writing that comes out of writing prompts (right now I’m ticking through the prompts on creativewritingprompts.com) or my Thursday writing class.  I’m conflicted about this because when I see too much text on a craft blog, I skip away.  But maybe others are different? And, if this energizes ME, and ONE OTHER person, does it matter if it is being offered to an audience primarily interested in pictures?