Some beads and a nostalgia trip

daily stitching July 14

A couple of days ago I wanted to add some beads to my daily stitching, and had the idea to make them stand up in a tower instead of just lie there on the fabric.  And as I started sewing them on, I thought of Sandy Snowden.  Sandy was one of my good internet friends whom I never got the pleasure of meeting in person, although other in-person friends of mine were also in-person friends of hers.  

Sandy lived in England and was an avid garment sewist as well as a lover of quilts and hand stitching and an enthusiastic blogger.  Sadly, she died in 2020 but her husband has thoughtfully left her blog online, and that allowed me to indulge in an hour of nostalgia.

In 2019 Sandy did a daily art project involving beads, 24,000 of them, to commemorate 24,000 Christians in India who were physically attacked in the previous year because of their faith.  She wrote, "I wanted to see just how many 24,000 was." 

Each day for 300 days she sewed on 80 beads, sometimes in towers (standing straight up from the fabric, attached at only one end of the queue) and sometimes in loops (attached at both ends, standing up like an inchworm).  She finished the year by adding words around the edges of the composition.

Sandy's finished project

Sandy put a small sequin underneath each bead tower, for a bit more structural stability, but unless I happen to find my stash of sequins in the very near future, I'm going to do my own beads without that step.

Sandy's project in mid-July 2019

As an aficionada of daily art, I have always enjoyed it when one of my internet friends embarks on a daily project, and I follow along closely during the year. Going back through Sandy's old posts that year, I came across my own comments many times, which made me happy that I had been able to stay in such close touch with her.

I don't know how long I will keep stitching bead towers in my own daily project this year, but I'll be thinking about Sandy while I do it, and about how the internet has allowed us to make connections and friends across the continents whom we would have probably never met in real life.

daily stitching July 15

daily stitching July 16

daily stitching July 18

Networking and poetry

Toward the end of last year I wrote a post about my "found poetry," a technique in which you search out intriguing phrases from newspapers, magazines or books and combine them to make "poems."  One of my internet friends, Sharon Robinson, left a comment that I should check out the work of her friend Judy Kleinberg, who does the same thing.

So I did, and fell in love -- Judy's work is a lot more sophisticated than mine, and she must have one heckuva collection of magazines to cut from.  Partly because I admired her work so much, I decided to define my daily art project for this year as heavy on text.  Every day I have been making a small collage composition that features some text that must be read to be appreciated.  (You can see all my daily art here.)

I follow Judy's blog, and earlier this year she wrote that she had two found poems published in an online website called Rise Up Review, which bills itself as "a landing site for the poetry of opposition."  When I visited the site to check it out, I noticed that they were inviting submissions, and since some of my daily collage texts are highly political, I sent a few in.  Here's one of them:

And this week they were published. 

I was happy to see them on the same page as Judy Kleinberg's work, since she is the connection that brought me to this venue, and more important, that brought me to making this kind of daily art.  I  love the way internet friends expand your life.

Internet friends 2

I've written in the past about internet friends and how pleasant it is to meet them in person if the fates smile on you.  Let me tell you about one of my earliest -- and most distant -- internet friends, Olof Davidsdottir, who lives in Iceland.

In 2003 we took a trip to Greenland which started off with a day of free time in Reykjavik.  I knew that Olof, one of the frequent participants on the Quiltart list, lived in Iceland so I emailed her and asked for suggestions about what to do while we were there.  To our absolute delight, she asked where we were staying and said she'd pick us up.  She gave us the city tour, including the only quilt shop in Iceland.  Then we picked up her husband Snorri from his work and drove to Thingvellir, a national park/magical place about 20 miles outside of Reykjavik.

You may know that Iceland has the world's oldest parliament, which first met in 930.  Until 1789 the parliament met at Thingvellir, an open-air venue that still has remains of rock slabs where prominent families would pitch their camps when parliament was in session.  Yes, they continued to meet outdoors all that time.  You had to be tough to live here!

Thingvellir sits on the rift between the North American and Eurasian geologic plates -- which means you can stand with one foot in North America and the other in Europe.  The land shows many signs of geological turmoil, such as lava rock, chasms and upthrust rock fissures.

Olof's husband, my husband, and Olof walk ahead through the rift

As we explored the site, Olof took us to an area where her family would camp when she was a child.  How much more intimate and wonderful than the commercial guided tours!

I had asked Olof if I could bring her something that was hard to get in Iceland and she asked for Schmetz topstitch needles.  Even with several Schmetz packets and lunch, it was the cheapest and greatest five-star tour we've ever taken.

So fast forward to the present; Olof and I have stayed in touch by email and having perfect English, she reads my blog, although I can't read hers.  But she has started video blogging as well, and last week she responded to my recent post about striped fabrics.  She's speaking Icelandic, but has provided English subtitles, so all us underachieving monolingual dolts can get the message too.