2100

 

Dear Everyone,

It's time again for me to exhort you to roller skate!  Sometimes, just occasionally, I despair of convincing you; I feel even, a little resentful that I keep on asking & asking, and you just don't seem to respond.  I often blame myself:  I must not have asked correctly, I wasn't convincing, I wasn't firm enough, I wasn't enthusiastic enough, silver-tongued enough.  I have a thing here to try, though, and it is this:  you don't have to take my word for it.  

If Kia Miakka Natisse doesn't convince you, I'll try again, in another hundred days!  Meanwhile, I am going to try, and try, and try again to get adequate at the challenging 3 turn.  Here are some how tos, if you want to join me!   How one, how two, how three.  And, how it might really look, to work on it, if you aren't at the level of Video Skate Instructor!  

storied trees

 

Trees 1, watercolor on paper, 2002, Mats Gustafson.

Dear Reader,

I am back at my job; yes, I know, I don't know whether it is a funeral or cause for celebration either, but I am there in any event.  Thinking about light and paper, as I do at my job, I am also thinking of what makes a good watercolor painting.  You can make them a lot of ways, but some of the best ingredients might include:

attention

delicacy

love for the subject

Mats Gustafson has some paintings of trees and rocks that come to mind as good examples.  If you really want to nerd out on, or dive deep into Mats G., (taking care to ignore the fatuous title) watch this film.

On the topic of trees, I have been saving this old oak for you, The Shelton Oak.  And, these, The Trees of Mystery, and this, The Trees of Mystery, singing your song of the day.

yarn-o-matic

 

Dear String People,

These things* are the ne plus ultra of objects for me.  I am trying to make something like them (see above).  The One Cat likes to sleep on it, even partly finished.  The Two Cat likes to wrestle it into a snarled heap.  The three of us together are pretty chuffed with this project, which has been going on for months and months.

My other yarn projects include a sweater with the kind of skinny-slow-splitty yarn that I cyclically swear off.  I am in an ascendant phase of swearing, which might reach its peak in something wearable, and it might just languish in a cute knitting bag until death does us part.  I was betting on the sweater until recently, when I got to the point of the sleeves.  So many sweaters end there, I expect.  Still, maybe it could have a life as a short skirt?  It doesn't even have sleeves, but separating the 266 stitches into two sections of 131 has been a serious blow to morale.  Morale is everything in making.

Anyway, the whole silly sweater thing wouldn't have even been attempted if it weren't for the beauty of these yarns from La Bien Aimee.  So delicious!  I showed them to a friend who said: "My next cat is going to be a skein."

* I really love this artist's work; all of it, the yarn things, the watercolors, the photographs, the clay things.  I am in extreme awe and envy of Renilde de Peuter.  See more of her work here.  As usual, I am asking myself, Why Can't I Be You, Renilde? 

it is coming: spring

 

magnolia

 

petal fall

 

bulbs