Embroidered Offering - Balance

The wheel of the year keeps turning, so that all thing remain in balance! I recently took an Oath in my spiritual path, and promised an offering. My oath was very much based on the theme of balance, so I thought my offering ought to be too!

It was a smallish piece, just one hoop's worth of stitching. I started out by divvying up the linen into quarters. I've learned that pencil lines wear off rather quickly, so I used regular sewing thread to baste in marker lines.

I did trees for the four seasons. (This is a favorite of mine!) complete with an appropriate amount of foliage - from little buds to nothing! 

 Next, faces! I had never done faces in stitchery before, if is a very interesting challenge. I have a masculine and feminine face, and I tried to make one old and one young. (They both look a bit old, hazards of hard shadows.) I'm fairly happy with how they turned out, but most importantly, the camera thought it was a person!

The final touches were some weather. Sunshine for the spring and summer, rain and snow for the fall and winter. All the things in their own time. Everything in balance.

We had a good bonfire for midsummer, and offerings were made. Welcome to the warm times! But, the days are now getting shorter, good news to keep us from getting too hot. Also good news for us travelers - I'm writing this in Iceland, the sun only set for about 3 hours last night, and it never got dark. I'm loving it in many ways, but sleep is also good! Here's to Balance!

Stamping Cards!

 Last week I attended a class at Share Denver, and rekindled an old love - Printmaking. In High School (and middle school!) linoleum blocks were a favorite medium of mine. I lost a lot of blood cutting those tough grey slabs.

So imagine my surprise (and delight!) when I arrived at the class and was presented with a soft pink block of rubber. It was like a squishy cloud, slicing like a block of cheese, flexible enough to roll across a stamp pad... it was magic. Why didn't we get these in school?! Oh right, they cost waaaaay more than those thin grey linoleum pads.

 I had decided I wanted a decorative set of stamps, so I cut my block down and carved a series of trees. There's two pines, two deciduous trunks, and four different canopies. (That's 8 different variations of deciduous tree, in case you were wondering.)

Did I mention you can carve both sides of the block?! Another reason this pink rubber business is worth it's weight in some mildly expensive metal.

We used stamp pads to create a stack of cards, each one of mine is unique. In fact, if I have three slots, 10 different trees, and two colors of ink I can make 720 different cards. Yep, that's what I got out of my one college math class.

 Things I would do differently in the future.

1.) cut each block to be actually the same size and with straight edges.

2.) Carve my trunks, then print them on the blocks for canopies before carving so the tops are perfectly centered without shenanigans.

3.) Drink more beer first so that I'm less worried about how neat my lines are.

4.) Actually, cutting tools are sharp, maybe scratch that last one.

Now I have generic any purpose cards and the means to stamp matching envelopes! You want me to write you a letter?

Embroidered Tree Skirt

Last year I was inspired to create an heirloom piece for our Yule tree. This is, in fact, a big step for me. I have long despised the holiday season, mostly because it starts in September. I am the 'bah humbug' shouting obscenities at holiday decorations that go up before Thanksgiving, and shoving headphones in my ears as soon as the bad Christmas music is heard in stores.

But, like the grinch, I am softening back to the season. I have always loved snow. I have always loved fire. Now that Yuletide means a gathering of friends with good food around a fire on a long cold night... it's not so bad. So, for the first time, we cut a real tree in the mountains and decorated it with my odd collection of ornaments. Such a tree is worthy of a good skirt!

I decided on several traditional winter symbols - Holly, Ivy, Pine, and Mistletoe. All are noted for staying green through the winter, and thus are considered signs of rebirth, fertility, and heralds of spring.

I chose a different color for each plant, and a simple arrangement of three leaves for each. the backdrop is a linen blend trimmed in red bias tape. I had a heck of a time getting it round!

The happy kidney bean likes it!

My Own Little Piece of the Woods

Ever since getting a wood-burning tool every piece of unadorned lumber has become a potential canvas. Everything in the garden can be labeled, utilitarian can become decorative, and sticks in the yard have a chance at becoming something more!

I had gathered an ash branch from the tree in my front yard, and a pine branch while I was out cutting limbs to be my Yule Log. My boy's folks have some power tools, so I cut these branches into neat little disk on my last trip to their house. A very simple way to get nice rounds, I personally like the bark on them as well.

I burned the outline of a pine on all the pine disk, and a tall ash on the ash disks. I know, super creative of me. Now I have items to use for crafts, jewelry, or to burn as offerings. I've already begun seeking deadfall from other types of trees...

Treasury - Tree of Life

Another wonderful Treasury feature courtesy of my good friend ToadWerks. Give some love to these artist and the curator!

Merry Solstice!

 Today those of us on the north side of the planet celebrate the longest day of the year and look forwards to the slow waning of the sun's light. This is a time of fruition and fertility (in ideas as well as fields and beds.) and a time to work on projects. I'm celebrating by burning pretty things...
   "What! Burning what kinds of.... oh no." That's right, after finishing my Wheel of the Year embroidery I started on a smaller wheel, this four seasons tree of life was made entirely to be offered up as sacrifice. "Sacrifice" doesn't just mean killing the fatted cow, it means "to make sacred" so anything that is offered before a deity is a sacrifice. In the traditions of northern Europe a sacrifice would be ritually destroyed to ensure it could not be used by anyone and was truly a gift. Clay and metal items were dropped in lakes, wood offerings were burnt.
   "But you're not going to destroy all that hard work..." Yes. Yes I am. It's a piece of art for the Gods of old, and it was made with this purpose in mind. I admit, I'm giving it to someone else for the actual destruction, it would be a wee hard to do myself.

And I don't have time to dwell on last years piece, the wheel spins along. I picked up some lovely maroon linen and a variety of colors for this year's project. I've chosen flowers to represent each of the eight high days and the seasonal changes. Tomorrow I start embroidering Lavender for the midsummer. Here's to another year! I hope everyone has a blessed solstice!

The Wheel Doesn't Always Turn One Way...

After a few weeks of very warm weather and a weekend of 80+ F degrees, it spent the last two days snowing. This is actually fairly normal for Colorado, skip Spring and go straight to Summer, then come back around to a little bit of Winter.
I know better than to trust an early season, so all the seeds I've planted are frost hardy. There's a reason we call them "Snow Peas" and Radishes hate warm weather. Of course the tulips didn't miss a beat. In fact the moisture was a huge boon to them! My table will have a fresh bouquet on it for at least two weeks from now.
I finally started on the fourth and final stage of my Wheel of the Year project. Spring will be a light colored tree with small buds and pink flowers. I'm looking forward to bringing the whole circle together, and already plotting a project for the coming trip around the sun. Nothing like crafting to make us enjoy every single season!
What does spring look like for you? I feel it's the season that people are most in touch with, we've kept so many of the old traditions celebrating fertility and rebirth (like spring cleaning, Easter, Earth Day and May Day) that even in modern society we all recognize the return of life. Be sure to get outside and watch some flowers blooming!

Tree Necklace

I've been on a tree kick for a while now, carrying a little nature with me everywhere. My great inspiration has been trees, my favorite finds as well. A friend gave me a tree pendant for my birthday in the fall, I've worn it so much already that the cord is getting thin. I'd been looking to expand my collection of trees. My search has yielded ones that are too big, too heavy, too small, not interesting and then... perfect! But oh, so so expensive.

So the next step for this Craft Bitch is always to just make the damn thing myself. I dug out the bead box and the wire. This is why we can never get rid of supplies, we might need them someday! I shaped the big ring around a spool of thread and started twisting beads on with a very fine wire.
Seed beads are really tiny, word to the wise. I continued my seasonal theme (never too much of a good thing, right?) and made sections of branches with different colors. Spring is the pale buds and pink and lavender flowers. Summer is shimmering green. Autumn a flush of bright reds and yellows.

And winter is the plain silver wires as bare branches. It's always fun to step away from our favorite and most skillful crafts and do some experimenting. My respect for jewelers is reaffirmed, and my desire to shop for more beads has returned as well! I am tempted to make more of these, and perhaps in different colors for different outfits. (Even druids have fashion sense after all).

How have you pushed yourself into new forms of creativity?

New Project, New Craft

Ok, not entirely new. Ever since learning how to sew when I was a smidgen kid I've known how to embroider. But it's rare that I do. A sewing machine is a speedy satisfaction device. But now I am un-expertly picking away at a piece of nice hand-dyed linen with a chunky needle.
There's more to this project tho. A little over a year ago I moved back into a house after several years of apartment living. Making a large garden and yard has helped to put me back into the rhythms of the outside world. The plants need watering at certain times, when it's planting season or harvest time you cannot simply put off the work.
I began to realize how out of touch with the Earth I'd become. It sounds cheesy as hell, but I was a long way from the kid who dug bare feet into the mud summers ago. So as I began to readjust to the cycles of growing things I also renewed my interest in Earth-based spiritualities. I've been meeting with several local pagan groups, celebrating things like the full moons and the solstice. Marking the passage of the seasons. Even when I'm meeting people with healing crystals and too much patchouli I still feel more whole.

So back to the embroidery hoop... since the beginning of civilization people have made circles representing the cycle of the seasons - the wheel of the year. (Picture credit here) I am creating a circular work, a mandala of sorts, that will take me a year to stitch. I intend to finish the summer tree over the next few months, and then wait for the Autumnal Equinox to begin the next segment. A craft project that ties my creativity into the changing seasons. I'll post updates as each segment is complete.
Many of us craft for the seasons - making warm fuzzies in the winter and light airy clothes in the summer, have you ever had your creativity fueled by the time of year?