Tag Archives: blog

cool

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Today WAS cool.  Blessedly cool.  I damp stretched a small house quilt, continued quilting one of the Middle Passage quilts (shown above and below), started a patch on a silk jacket, ran to SuperSavers, cleaned up the kitchen, wondered (again) why I blog, and did some reading.

Today, I offer you this — fiber in action – here

and pose the question:  Why do YOU blog?

[This started as a comment to others’ comments, but I’m putting my thoughts here instead]:

I love the connections here (in cyberspace), too… I find fiber artists’ blogs to be witty, generous, and inspiring, on many levels – not just creatively… and I would miss them terribly if I somehow found myself in a hut at 9,000 feet above sea level with no internet access.  In fact, blogging and connecting online were the things I missed the very most that year-plus-a-little that I worked 9 to 5.

I, do, however, need to learn to manage some reactions I seem to repeatedly have… and to continue to work toward finding what, exactly, my style here wants to be… not unlike with quilting itself.

 

Looking at the sky

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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?

 

Website or No?

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I’m thinking of taking down my website. It is dead-ish. I never update it and only feel bad for not updating it. It doesn’t really represent my work anymore. But, maybe I’d like to replace it with a very simple, do-it-yourself website. Do any of you have thoughts about this?

Do any readers have strong feelings about blogging vs. maintaining a website?

Or, more generally, what cluster of social networking is working best for people? (Blog plus facebook page?)

Is the answer different for selling? I notice some fiber artists link to etsy, some to big cartel, and some to a post on their blog.

Another Nude — SoulCollage Card — Fertility

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Fertility -- Council Suit

Fertility -- Council Suit

Just made this card — a celebration of fertility — in all its beauty, moisture, flesh, and mooniness.  This card has a parallel in the Major Arcana of the Tarot Deck– The Empress, No. 3.  Here is that card from the Rider Deck:

rws_tarot_03_empress

There are some similarities — the watery background (waterfall vs. bayou), the inclusion of grains (wheat vs. corn), the red drape, a seated female.  The primary difference lies in time of day — mine is all about the dark.  This ties my figure more to the classic associations of dark/female/unconscious.  It makes my card’s female a little juicier, I think. Perhaps more about the drive to procreate and the act of procreation, and less about the raising of offspring.  Both, however, are seated in their power and fertility.

In putting this collage up for viewing, I am thinking more about blogging and less about archetypes, however.   Somewhere I read the suggestion of putting “Waylon Jennings” and “taxes” in one’s tags to drive traffic to your blog.  I bet these days Sarah Palin might work, too.

From my own blog experience, adding any words relating to sex brings traffic.  According to the dashboard on my wordpress sidebar, the consistently most active posts of mine are the following:

  • Nude thread drawing
  • Mammogram quilt
  • Birthday buns.

The pattern is a little disheartening.  Based on my small sampling, this post ought to be an active one.

The female figure, by the way, comes from the Boston MFA’s press release on the current exhibit of 16th century painters from Venice.  I hope to go!

To read more about the exhibit, here are two links:

the bostonist
enticing the light

And here is a link to a blog discussing The Tarot and other spiritual matters (thank you for The Empress image!) —

Magic of the Ordinary

Maybe tomorrow, thoughts will return to the image.