It seems endless.  Every time I turn around it is “Don’t forget that!!”.  And the sorting.  I have containers and more containers of yarn and fabric.  Much of the fabric is small scraps, many sourced from defunct silk garments.  So I need to decide keep or give away?  I am sorting by “can I buy this in Edmonton? Will I actually use it in the next 2 years”  if the answer is yes and no it is a giveaway other wise it gets saved however there is an over riding “Love this!!!!!” .  So I now have 3 boxes of fabric and 2 of yarn packed.  The rest is going.  My Housemate had first pick of yarns but since she is not into orange or bright yellow there wasn’t that much to pick over.  She also ended up with some “interesting” tops from my clothing sort, I hope she was not just being polite about it.

All of the scraps, yarn, buttons and bits and pieces and the tree are going to La Ruche, an art therapy studio.  I know it will get much used there in a good way.

The tree.  The tree was made for a stage set.  It hung in the corner and people could hide behind it.  It is 16 feet tall, made of shiboried and painted and quilted cotton.  It has pillow rocks to go around it.  Here it is decorated, in my previous place, as a christmas tree with cute dog to go with it.  I hope they with find a way to use it.

As a break from the stress of getting rid of stuff I went and checked the hoffman Challenge.  Every year they run a competition for the use of a specific piece of fabric.  This year unfortunately the print is giant purple cabbage roses.  No matter how I try to twist my head around this fabric there is absolutely nothing I could imagine in this fabric except a toddler’s dress.  Big purple cabbage roses – I could use the fabric from suggested matches for skin and cut the cabbage roses into snakes?  No because the fabric has to be recognizable – big purple roses!  Just because they call it lavender doesn’t make it so.  My only idea in the middle of the night was to make it into two fat naked female dolls going down on  each other and call it “The Lavender Left” but I doubt that would be acceptable in an American tour.

I have to go back to Montreal mid February, pack up my life there, move to Edmonton, supervise the renos and re-arrange the house and garage and get my pets there too.  But my mind will be in one place and I will have the peace of mind that I am doing the Right Thing.

In the mean time I had a birthday and today I went to spend my birthday money at Sew Divine in Edmonton.  A lovely friendly quilt shop.  They had a selection of to die for greens. The photo doesn’t do them justice.  There will be more mermaids and Medusas to come.

birthday fabrics

Medusa - front

For months now I have been captivated by images of Medusa.  I have drawn her several times and just had to incorporate these drawings into a doll.  After creating the “Mermaid -Breaking Free” I suspect I am claiming my power again.  This lady doesn’t need to break free of anything and doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything either.

She was quite a challenge with all the snakes.  The snakes took just as long as creating the figure!  Eighteen snakes – somehow seems like a mystical number it is made up of threes and nines.

The base is not yet finished.  The pillar is temporary until I get back from Edmonton.  I realized that a heavy plaster pillar was not ideal for shows.

Medusa back

The next thing was the snakes, lots of snakes.  Most of them are being made out of a recycled silk tie I found a few forages ago.  It is a lovely hand painted green silk in all sorts of shades of soft greens.  Perfect for the snakes.  The others will be from a forest green silk that was formerly a blouse of mine.

I spent hours drawing spirals on slippery silk, stitching them, cutting carefully and turning them.  Oh I love my turning tools.  They have made such a difference in the time and quality of the turned fingers and other small, skinny objects like snakes.

Late in the afternoon, while taking a tea break, I arranged the snakes on the doll’s head just to get the feel of how it was going to look, some were pinned but not all of them.  I walked away to do some surfing.  Now the animals get fed at 5 pm but the cat starts reminding people of that fact by 3:30, just in case we forget……  One of my roommates came to look at the result and as we admired the snakes (and the cat who has her private sitting space on my work desk), I go to pick up my almost finished tea and there in the bottom of the cup is a snake…..  The drowned snake – of hand painted silk.  Much squealing ensued, the cat is offended. The snake is removed from the tea and rinsed and rinsed.  I think it has dried up ok, but it will probably end up under the others, it looks different, but that could just be my imagination or that it is all flat and limp.  Maybe after it is stuffed it will perk up.

snakes and tools

During the creating of the little hands and pins for the craft fair I had lots of new ideas.  So I started a new piece.  I am using all the drawings I made this summer as the inspiration.  She will be a Medusa.  The pose will be based on the Titania figure and the head on the Medusa drawings I made of my youngest daughter.  She is all cut out already and I am starting the stuffing and sculpting.  I am using fabric I found in the quilt store in Whitehorse this summer and I found some interesting silk scraps in my stash to make the snakes.

Medusa's skin

I am planning to submit this piece along with the mermaid and the eagle dancing to a call for submissions to World of Thread.   If I say this here I will actually have to do it or look really chicken.  You have no idea how many of these calls for submissions I have blown off, using dumb excuses.

I need to finish it and photograph it before Jan 16th because I head back to Edmonton that day for another month.  Like last time I plan only to bring sketch books and crayons.

Now most of my dolls wear a few beads and are decidedly tropic so I decided to make a winter focused doll – wearing clothes.   I started with the goddess Skadi in mind – the Norse goddess of snow and ice (and skiing) .  As I worked on her, playing with fabrics and poses, she slowly came into being.  Since I had very little time I started with a half finished head that I had laying around.  Doesn’t everyone have heads just laying around? LOL.  I added the upper body and arms over a wire frame for the bottom.  Then I dressed her in layers of white and silver and iridescent fabrics.   As I worked she started to have more to say about who she was.  She is called “Ice Storm”  now.   She brings that incredibly dangerous beauty that is the result of freezing rain, when the country side turns to sparkling ice and your car ends up sideways in the driveway and you crawl on hands and knees to the house, dripping with sweat.

Ice Storm

This is not the greatest picture but I haven’t finished the base yet either.

Besides this piece I have been working on the crafts for the fair the following weekend .  Lots of little hands and fingers:

Mood Ra Hand pins

Weed be gone

The shed has been emptied, we and the neighbours ended up having “free Cycle” day.  I put everything out in the alley with a big sigh that it was free.  All days things went and new things showed up.  It was quite amazing.  Lots of kids toys and clothes changed hands.  One lady especially took my heart.  She took home lots of toys and baby things with tears in her eyes saying “This is hundred of dollars of things!!!  My kids will be so happy!”

After that I plastered and painted the stairwell which got so badly battered in the moves.  I re-arranged the living room so we could have the heat on and re-organized the kitchen so the new freezer would fit.  I had hoped to paint the studio but I just ran out of warm weather and energy.  Oh and all the windows got washed and prepped for winter too.  I am so done with this “simple back to the earth ” life!  Every part of my body hurt and my hands hardly worked at all.  But it is done until the snow flies and has to be shovelled.

But I am back to art.  I am making small stuff for Christmas craft fairs at the moment.  Doll pins, tea cozies, dancing fairies and other things like that. A bit boring but fun to play with fabric again.  It gives my hands a bit of time to recover before I try anything more complicated.  Besides just working with fabric usually triggers all sorts of design ideas.

I will be at the Old Skool Crafts on December 10 – 11  Foires Artisanales Des Fêtes – L’Église St.Michel, 105 St.Viateur O.

A new oil pastel is Medusa.  I got new oil pastels while in Edmonton and this was the piece where I experimented with Ink and oil pastels:

Edith Prickley Tea Cosy

Interestingly on the art forum that I frequent there were some long discussions on doing commissions.  Many people felt that doing them was a form of “selling out” , that some how ones art was corrupted by it being requested and paid for.  For me I have always felt it was a compliment, someone saw my art and wanted something special just for them.  That they trusted my artistic vision and hoped I would be inspired by their requests.  I have always seen it as a way to look beyond my own little box, to get inspired by something I hadn’t thought about.  I have rejected commissions in the past though, ones that wanted me to do exact duplicates of things, and no, I will not make a caricature of your boss.  But as long as I have the artistic control, it is a fun thing to do.  Yes I can get inspired by that shade of blue you love, or that picture of your grandmother, that scrap of fabric, or that memory of your heritage.

Show Girl

The first thing I tried was chalk pastel and a photo of my youngest daughter putting on make up for a vintage fashion show. I did this outside on my upper deck because it was such nice weather.

Next I tried a self portrait.  This was more challenging.  The model kept moving, taking and putting on her glasses.  Very annoying, don’t think I will hire her again LOL.  All the pieces are there, they just don’t seem to be assembled in the same way as on the model. They are 12 X 16.

It was fun but as I was finishing this piece I noticed I had been coughing and my asthma was acting up.  I suddenly clued in to the amount of dust generated by the chalk pastels.  It hadn’t been a problem before as I had been working outside.  This was very saddening, another technique I was going to have to give up for my health.  Resentfully I put the pastels away.

But in the drawer I also had some oil pastels, ones my granddaughter had left behind, the only problem was that half of them were missing -  especially all the “flesh” tones and intermediate shades.  So I picked up a box of very cheap ones and fuelled by my anger of giving up the lovely expensive chalk pastels I ripped through a series of, never again to see the light of day, sketches to learn how to handle these F-ing things.

Witch

The cheap ones were really a pain so I put them aside and started really focusing on what the good ones could do.  The first is again based on a photo of my daughter at a scifi convention in a fairy/elf costume.  The next one is based on a photo an forum friend posted. They are 9 X 12.

Come hither to the ferns

One of the reasons I wanted to play with this is that I am going back to Edmonton next week.  I don’t want to drag a suitcase with body parts and yarn and beads with me again. Plus when I get back I am going to the local sci fi convention Con*Cept  So I am hoping to have some things for the art show since I won’t have time for making costumes.

Titania's Shower