Ikebana

 I learned today that Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, values withered leaves and bare sticks as well as blossoms in order to represent the cyclical aspect of nature as to honor all phases of life.  I've been admiring the dropping petals and newly-exposed inner flower architecture as tulips slowly fade, droop, curl and then drop their petals.  So here are some Ikebana-like sketches of the last phase of the tulips.

On the left is a petal that has just drooped down, hanging on like a loose tooth.

Then early this morning I got to see what 7 degrees looks like on a ridge top with the sun getting ready to rise behind it.  Ice crystals covered the trees up there and they sparkled and shimmered in the approaching sunlight against the blue sky and the shadowy west face of the mountain.  Astonishing! 

In the Woodswind

Walking in the woods today while snow was spitting and the wind was gusting in our new cold front (single digits predicted for early tomorrow morning) I noticed what a woodwind instrument the woods can become.  I would say an alto recorder specifically, at least that was the sound this morning.  Occasionally there would be light percussion as trees would tap against each other, but mostly various alto tones as the wind moved through the various apertures. 

I decided to grab whatever caught my eye and bring it home to draw in warmth.  The first thing that grabbed me were some pieces of wood from a disintegrating tree trunk-- the woodworm patterns looked like Morse code or early computer punch cards.  Then I found a branch without bark that had channels dug, again by woodworms, and they were definitely patterned. 

So I got onto the theme of the mystery of seeds and also patterns in nature and then onto the definitely humbling but certainly comforting idea that nature (or the universe or a god or intelligence-- the generator of all those patterns and processes) knows infinitely more than our little brains, even enhanced by computers, can ever possibly know.  And how good it is to watch a clunky little acorn send down a tail/rootlet at the precise time and in the perfect direction to bore into the soil before the ground freezes, with no sign of a stem-- just the root and a package of food, anchoring the baby plant to a patch of ground where it can wait out the winter, slowly creeping its root tip further and further in the direction of water.  And meanwhile the  shell is disintegrating as the food supply diminishes, going back to the ground and recycling itself with the help of the tannin that also gives it its bitter taste that wards off creatures that might eat the seed/little root/plant.  (I think the wind is affecting my mind--  But really, think about it!)

Mountain Viewing from Inside/Outside

I opened my eyes this morning and realized I could see a mountain without even stirring from my bed.  The trees are so thinned out now that views have opened up where they were only hinted at before.  At top left is what we can see when we look toward the west in the direction of sunset and moonset at around 7:00 in the morning.  The mountain face reflects the eastern light and stands out as a glow behind the evergreens.

At bottom left is my old friend, Jones Mountain, the source of the fierce winds that howl down our street on nights like tonight.  This view is from our front door window at a little after sunset.  Since we live halfway up the mountain, it doesn't look like much more than a big hill, a nice feng shui cushion.  The label should say SOUTH, not north.  We live on the north face.

On the right at the top is the north view (not the south, as the label says), out our kitchen window, at sunset when the mountains to the north are reflecting the apricot glow from the sunset.  Below is my favorite, the east view, where the moon and the sun both rise.  Tonight's almost full moon floats up like a big fat balloon.  We can just barely see this view from my studio window.  For a better view we walk down to the fence in our backyard.

The mountain sunrise above was taken by Jacob last Wednesday morning at Beaver Lake in North Asheville.  See his blog to learn more about this photo and especially to see more of his work.

Abstracting Form

 Yesterday morning I sat down to do some line illustrations for a new web page, and I didn't get up for three straight hours. 

 These are really simple line illustrations meant to inform.  The hard thing is drawing the salient lines since lines don't actually exist in the real world.

Today I carved five little rubber eraser blocks from drawings I made last week of some of the frozen Charlottes.  Still not sure where if anywhere these are going, but I like what happens when the drawings are translated into a more abstract medium.  In a way these are related to the line illustrations because carving the prints is a matter of finding the salient-if-non-existent lines and shapes to communicate forms.  (I will probably redo these a few times until they feel right.  I like the little one on the left and the second from the right best right now.  What IS it about these little ruins?)

Old Tulips, New Boots

The tulips fold themselves in half when the heads get too heavy for the stems to hold up.  They haven't lost any petals or shriveled up;  just this folding like a heavy sigh.  Meanwhile the slow-to-emerge amaryllis is racing ahead and even has a new little shoot from one of the far edges of the bulb.

I rescue the droopy blooms and stand them in little bud vases, where they still smell sweet while being cut flowers.  This afternoon P and I drove downtown to do many errands including stopping at the Y to work out.  When we passed the cow field at the end of the road there was a low-lying cloud stretched in front of the mountains like a canopy over the wet cows.  One of our errands was to Tops to buy new boots for me, an xmas gift from P.  We ran into D and H at Tops, and H had just spotted the same boots.  They are yummy!

Reviving PieceWork Drawings

 Way back 4 1/2 years ago when F and I first started our little business of recycling packaging materials into wallets and bags, I used to paint each new design and post it on our fledgling blog.  We had started with one design, a square wallet with an antique (i.e. used) button as a closure, and one material-- Kettle potato chip bags.  We spent a lot of time experimenting with other materials and troubleshooting our design.  Meanwhile friends started eating Kettle chips and saving the bags for us. Then someone left a bright blue Purina chicken feed bag on my doorstep, and our chicken wallets became very popular.  A few months after that, a friend's son asked us if we could design a wallet that would be better to sit on than our lumpy little square with the button (which we had thought of as a wallet that would live inside a bag).  And so our second design was born:  our Ultra Slim.  I painted it, and posted it to the blog.

Those original drawings were annotated, pointing out the features of the wallets.  I enjoyed doing them and actually kept it up through that first year.  At the end of the year we had 12 designs, and we made the  paintings into a calender, which we gave to our material suppliers as a thank you.  

But the next year business sped up, and I couldn't find the time to do all those paintings, so I gave up and started photographing the new designs.  Now here we are four years later and approximately 1200 wallets and things later, and I think it's time to bring back the paintings.  Above are paintings of 

one of our new wallets.  As many of our products are, this one was suggested by a friend.  She had seen a very similar wallet but made out of leather;  she preferred the light weight of our material and the fact that our material is recycled.  So we tweaked the design a bit and made it out of her favorite coffee bag  (coffee bags with their aluminum lining having proven to be a great material for our wallets).  The wallet, which we call the Vic, costs $23 and will be posted on our blog and ready for purchase very soon.  It has a card case on the front that you can access very quickly even with the wallet closed.  Inside there is a coin or extra card pocket that flaps up to disclose a billfold.  The whole thing folds into a compact 3 x 4.25 inches.  You can specify any color or theme that you like for the material;  as always, you can specify that it be made a different size and with a button instead of Velcro.  If you absolutely NEED this wallet NOW, email me at weRpiecework@gmail.com or comment here with your email address.

 The second wallet illustrated here is my personal favorite at the moment, and it, too, was requested by a customer who wanted a wallet even smaller than our smallest to date.  She didn't even want to bother with credit card slots.  So we designed this very sleek and minimalist billfold with a pocket inside for very small cards and two pockets for credit cards as well as a billfold.  It's great for carrying in your bag but also fits perfectly in a pocket for when you don't want to carry a bag.

We're selling this one, which we call the Virginia,  for $14 on line, which includes shipping, and a little less if you're local and we can meet up to hand off the wallet.  It will soon be on our blog, but in the meantime, you can comment here with your email address to order it or email us at weRpiecework@gmail.com.

By the way, these are drawings # 3766-3769, but I think I should be able to count them double since they took me a whole morning to do!

While Eating Good Luck Food

I made a new ricebag (actually a popping corn bag from a popcorn company in Pierre, SD) notebook for this new year.  The paper is all handmade-- student paper from when I used to teach papermaking every fall semester.  You'll notice on some of the pages the names of the makers as well as the contents of the paper.  This first page has onion skins added to a base of abaca.   The drawing is of E and B's chickens, made as I watched them scratching and picking in their run this afternoon.  Love these chickens!  Wish I had somebody willing to keep predators away so that we could have our own couple of laying hens;  but with approximately 20 ground hogs, a roaming pack of coyotes, the occasional bear, and Jesse around, things don't auger well for chickens at our place.

E and B's dogs are extremely polite.  But when E lured them into an adjacent room to eat their doggie ice cream while the party guest were eating dinner, the dogs daintily picked up their little cups with their teeth and carried them back into the livingroom to eat with everybody else.

At the top left is a group of interesting things on a table top in the livingroom.  The bird is a large hawk that we saw as we were walking down the street after the party.  It was dark brown on top, lighter brown underneath, and with a white tail.  Enormous yellow feet and a serious looking curved beak.