A family member (who shall remain nameless...) asked me to make them some artwork for the wall for Christmas. Hmmm...I was drawing a big blank, until recently, when reading a cookbook, I found inspiration. Crescent Dragonwagon's Passionate Vegetarian is a huge book full of personal stories, poems, quotes, and yes lots of recipes. The piece that struck me was the following poem by Karla Kuskin:

Write about a radish

Too many people write about the moon.

The night is black

The stars are small and high

The clock unwinds its ever ticking tune

Hills gleam dimly

Distant nighthawks cry.

A radish rises in the waiting sky.

 

Rather than write about a radish, I'll make art about one!

I cut a piece of wool felt, steamed it over the tea kettle, and stretched it over the neck of a gourd which was handy in my studio. I kept pulling, stretching, and steaming the felt until it was smoothly shaped.

After letting it dry, I stuffed it with wool, and added a root of a twisted piece of wool with thread root hairs.

Needlefelting was next to add a pink radish top, and cover the top of the radish where I had sewn it together, and would attach the leaves.

I used green wool felt for the leaves, with a floral wire vein and stem. (Forgot to get a good picture of the leaves!)

OK the radish was looking very...radishly, now on to the dark night sky.

I took a great workshop with Susan Shie years ago and thought her spontaneous quilt making style would suit this project. So, without measuring or sketching, I cut some of my hand dyed fabrics and laid out a simple landscape.

I couldn't figure out how to incorporate the radish, it's scale was off. A quilt big enough to incorporate the radish would be to unwieldy for a gift size project. I soon decided the quilt and the felt radish would be a suite of two, a diptych maybe? The quilt ended up with a fabric radish that works better. It is hand stitched with many seed stitches, and the poem is written on the bottom hill.

The back looks neat too:

This has been a fun, satisfying project-Steaming and shaping wool felt has great potential for future projects! I hope the recipient doesn't figure out this is their's until Christmas morning, but I had to post about it, its what I've accomplished lately!

I hung out with Katie's boys (and mine too!) the other day, and everyone enjoyed playing with play dough made by our friend Ada.

Julian made trees:

Avery and Isaac loved putting play dough in the jars, and taking it out:

Eli made puffs of smoke:

They were so into what they were doing I had time to organize my embroidery floss box:

Well, it isn't finished, the lower left corner is floss that I untangled but has yet to be wrapped around those silly little bobbins. I know this is a somewhat meager collection, but I can usually find a color that works for whatever I'm doing!

It's so fun when the boys all get into something and work contentedly together. I hope the older they get, the more that will happen!

I committed to help make a nativity set for our church this year. I was worried that I would not get it done in time for Christmas, but after a day-long crafting blitz, I have something to take to church on Sunday: 

They are made from a simple Waldorf style head on a cardboard cone body with wool-wrapped wire arms. I used some nice hand-dyed pink silk for Mary's dress and felted wool sweater for Joseph's cloak. They are not dolls to play with, but "figures" for storytelling and decoration. Julian is campaigning for the three wisemen too, but I don't know how much more time I can spend on this project! I was thinking some needle felted sheep would be fun. Here's a closer look at Mary and Jesus:
 

One of my favorite things about these dolls is their size. Mary is 15 inches tall! Joseph is about 16 inches. I have some old barn wood that I am going to use to make a simple stable, but right now it has snow on it! Julian is delighted that last-night's snow stuck around on our north-facing hill. 

I am glad Katie broke the news of the grant I recieved from the KY Foundation for Women. Its bad enough that I record all my projects here, It feels obnixious to share my big victories too! The project I proposed was to continue work on a series of art work which includes my "bottles", and other fabric vessels.

These pieces are made of a sandwich of outer and backing layers of fabric-muslin or silk, with wool felt inside. I hand stitch through all these layers with embroidery floss. I made up this method of construction after being frustrated with the flatness of the art quilts I had been doing.

Here's the artist's statement for this work which was part of my grant submission to KFW:

I have always loved old things. Not fine antiques per se, but the objects used in everyday life. Who knows how many squeaky doors my diminutive oil can has remedied, or how many pie crusts my lovely battered rolling pin has produced? I set out to capture the spirit of these old objects in my new work, three dimensional sculptures that are crafted out of fabric and thread.

The process of observing an object, making a pattern of it, and bringing a replica of it to life out of fabric, is a satisfying challenge. These pieces are made out of two layers of cotton muslin, with wool felt sandwiched between them. The three layers are “quilted” together with seed stitches of embroidery floss. I see this process as making quilts with structure, a form. It is a labor intensive process to hand quilt the seed stitches over the surface of the piece. The time necessary to do the work by hand is crucial; it serves as a calming, meditative activity, and ages the piece. As the surface gains the texture of many stitches, the piece acquires some of the spirit and patina of old things.

Balancing the many aspects of my life has become a complicated task. I am a partner to my husband, a mother to two young boys, an artist, aspiring yogi, gardener, friend, sister and daughter. The difficulty of finding time for everything recently brought to mind the ancient alchemists who attempted the impossible task of turning base metals into gold. I sometimes feel my own aspirations of domestic tranquility, artistic fulfillment, and a meaningful relationship with my family is similarly unachievable.  I’ve heard rumors about amazing women who do manage to keep all the balls in the air, just as I’ve read accounts of alchemists who were successful in their quest. However wildly unbelievable both of these claims seem, I am hopeful.

Ultimately, I envision composing still life compositions entirely out of my hand stitched fabric sculptures, loosely inspired by woodcuts of alchemy laboratories and the still life paintings of the old masters. These ‘shelf-scapes’ will be a visual representation of my own internal work as I attempt to conjure space, time and quiet for myself.

I am so excited to get the chance to carry out ideas I have been scheming about for months thanks to this grant. The money is distributed by the first of the year, so I am gearing up for major art making after all my christmas crafting is over!

It really is winter. Predictions for snow are what I hear on the radio, we need a fire in the stove pretty much all the time, I've dug out my long underwear. Wasn't  it only a few weeks ago that we harvested the last batch of marigolds?

I won't show you these plants now. After several hard frosts they are shrivled and grey, bound for the compost pile. I used to hate marigolds-too garish in the garden, but, ever since my first dye garden ages ago, I've been their biggest fan. They give great rusty oranges and golds and they are very prolific bloomers. I made 5 or 6 harvests this size this summer, despite a bad drought year. I dry them on screens or in the dehydrator, bake them briefly to kill any unwanted stowaways, and store them for future use. You can also use the leaves and stems, but I don't dry them, I don't want to go overboard indulging my squirrel-ish tendicies!