Happy Valentine's Day

Yay hearts and X's and O's!

For the sake of a name

I finished a pillow for Cormac who was born a couple weeks ago. He has a nautical themed nursery. So, he has a whale of a pillow.

This day at EAM

Nesting

A flash of feathers caught my eye this morning, and I was so pleased to see that a bird family has been busy kicking the snow out of our old gourd shaped bird house and diligently padding it with straw and grass. I give an official, super, big welcome home to my birds-and by extension spring, new life, and all things green.

I wish I was taller.

Sometimes I think in new yorker cartoons.

Caroline's Hedgehog and Color Therapy

 I finished a namesake pillow for a girl named Caroline who likes hedgehogs.  She turns five next month and her uncle commissioned this pillow.  I hope she likes it; I really enjoyed making it.  Embroidery is fitting my mood lately.  That said, I'm beginning a couple of large projects --paintings and quilt.  The stacks of fabric and color combinations warms my heart and fuel my creativity.  (I'm finding motivation hard to come by lately.)  I need to find a burst of energy somewhere, because I have a show at a library branch in Oak Park in March, and there is a lot of wall space available!!!  Yikes!  Also warming my soul are the coffee filter hearts that my kids made last week.  We tore down the paper snowflakes deciding we had enough snow outside. 

I

First Painting of 2014!

 Hearts, hearts, and hearts for my Messy Business class.  We are making mobiles and experimenting with different techniques of painting:  golf balls and plastic car.  Also we painted on shiny paper which we will add hand prints to next week.

I dropped off my first painting of the year to OPAL for February's show about the human figure.  I painted Penelope and experimented with having the abstract background be of equal value as the figure.  I was most interested in contrasting the lines of her body with the chaos around and behind her. 

I guess this integration of extremes reflects my inner turmoil at present and desire to have it coexist with the controlled aspects.  My thoughts these days mostly end in questions marks, and it seems like the thick cloud coverage and layers of snow will never allow for insight and answers.  But, I'm remaining hopeful knowing that the mud is there under the snow and that under the mud are bulbs sleeping until spring.