Found poetry 2

Tension headaches

Our fiber art group just scored two huge garbage bags full of old doilies and tablecloths in a variety of techniques -- crochet, tatting, hairpin lace, cutwork, bobbin lace, embroidery and who knows what else.  As we sorted through, contemplating what we'll do with them, I noted how some were obviously made at less-than-expert level craft.

And I thought, as I have so often in the past, that in every single fiber art, the key to mastery is control of tension.

Check out this cute little crocheted doily, made in granny squares.  The white is tighter than the pink, hence the 3-D effect.

When I first learned to crochet, taught by my mother-in-law, I made a fairly large afghan.  I was proud of how neatly it was done, flat and even -- until I finished and tried to fold it up.  Oops -- one end was a good six inches longer than the other!

What had happened, of course, was that as I got more comfortable with the yarn and the stitch, I eased up on the tension and the finished fabric got more expansive.

I have taught many beginners how to crochet, sew and embroider, and have watched myself try to learn knitting, weaving, felting, macrame and many other techniques.  In 99% of the cases beginners' work is too tight.  We clench up on the needle or hook or whatever tool we're using, we pull too hard on the thread or the yarn, we hang on too tight to the underlying material.  We grab that quilt in a death grip and resist the pull of the sewing machine; we wrap the french knot so firmly that we can barely pull the needle through; we tug the weft through the weaving so hard that the selvages bow inward. 

(Weavers may correct me on that last remark -- I think some beginners err in the other direction, leaving the weft too loose so the selvages are uneven and loopy.  But that's the other 1% of tension headaches.)

The problem usually disappears with practice; we relax, we learn to let the yarn flow easily, we develop muscle memory so all the stitches have the same tightness throughout the whole work.  In knitting parlance, we automatically maintain the right gauge without having to stop and measure all the time. 

That's not to say we can stitch in oblivion.  It's still good to stop every now and then, lay the work out flat, check how it's coming along.  Note whether your afghan is still the same width as when you started.  Check that the second sock is the same size as the first one.  Make sure your seams are smooth, not drawn up in a ruffle.  Look at the back of your work and see that the threads are well-behaved, not forming tangles and knots. 

It's not just the sewist that can have tension problems -- the machine can too.  In my experience, Bernina sewing machines, which I love, adore and have used exclusively for almost 30 years, have one achilles heel, and that's tension control.  I have had to learn tricks to keep them from spoiling my work: avoiding threads that the machine doesn't like, making sure the bobbin thread matches the top thread so if it's pulled up too far, it will be less visible. 

All these issues are part of mastering the craft of our art.

 

Why I hate my washing machine -- Exhibit A

A couple of years ago we made a huge strategic error in buying a new washing machine instead of repairing the old one.  Now we have a fancy water-saving model with no center-post agitator.  It supposedly cleans by gently sloshing the clothes around in two teaspoons of water, tossing and kneading and forcing water through them.

I hate it, but that's a topic for another discussion.

The other day I opened the tub after the wash was finished and this is what I found:

The entire load had been tossed and kneaded into a ball, wrapped in a flannel shirt.  So neat and taut, it looked like a ball of dough rising in a bowl.

Weekly art for 2018 -- Found poetry 1

In the 17 years I've been doing daily art, I've always ended the year with a bit of sadness.  I have always been so happy with my choices of daily art projects that I've been sorry to see them go -- the last couple of days are always a desperate choice among several exciting ideas, some of which have been left on the table unexecuted.  I take that as a ratification of my decision to do daily art; somehow it taps into some deep need in my psyche, and that's why I keep doing it.

Last year my project involved text.  I would find phrases in the newspaper or in magazines and present them in ways that said something interesting.  As the year began I wasn't sure exactly how this was going to work out.  I had been in the habit of doing haiku from found text so I spent many, many hours finding, clipping and organizing 5- or 7-syllable phrases.  But as it turned out, I used only a fraction of those haiku bits.

I also experimented with other recurring formats, which I will tell you more about in a few subsequent posts.

At about mid-year I figured out how to find "poems" from clippings that didn't follow the haiku format, and thus much richer in possibilities.  Those turned out to be the most rewarding of the formats I used during the year.  After spending many, many more hours finding and clipping these text fragments, I found myself with hundreds of potential "found poems" in my pile that had never made it to fruition.

When the year ended I first rued all the hours spent on unused clippings.  I don't even want to think about how many hours we're talking about -- certainly hundreds.  I was sad to see the 2017 text project end not just because I loved doing it, but because of all that investment that might go to waste.

As I contemplated my daily art rules for 2018 I thought I would continue doing "found poetry" -- not daily, but weekly, as my regular Sunday blog post.  I like having a regular feature on Sundays, for many of the same reasons that I am drawn to daily art: I like the structure, and the discipline of the recurrence.

So here's the first of my Sunday Found Poetry posts for the new year.  I hope you will enjoy reading them.  And you can check out all the daily texts from last year HERE on my Daily Art blog.

The very first Christmas present

I should have posted this a week ago, but was having too much fun walking on the beach.

For purposes of family documentation, here's Vivian's very first Christmas present ever.  As you might expect from somebody 7 1/2 months old, she had lots of fun ripping the paper off and wapping it to make noise, and paid absolutely no attention to the present inside.

Family lore has it that the Christmas when I was 18 months old I loved to unwrap gifts.  In between, I would yell "More packies!  More packies!"  My parents cleverly rewrapped empty boxes and put them in front of me for several days of delight.  Perhaps all parents should do that for all children forever, to increase fun and decrease consumption.

Over the decades, "More packies!" has been our family euphemism for greed.  We forget that at first, the only greed in very young children is to learn new things, to practice and get better at them, and to delight in the world around them.  May we all stay greedy in those ways for the rest of our lives! 

Daily art for 2018

I've been doing daily art for almost 20 years, in which I determine a rule at the beginning of the year and then follow it every day.  In the past I've made quilt squares, sent postcards, taken photographs, made collages, done drawings and hand-stitching.  In all of these projects the rules have determined the format of the daily work -- all the quilt blocks would be five inches square, the drawings would go sequentially into sketchbooks, the photos would be posted to my blog. The format was set, but the subject matter was totally open.  That approach made it easy to keep track of the work, and made it easier to get started every day, because I knew pretty much what the finished product was going to look like.

But this year I decided to try a new approach, and choose a theme rather than a format.  In effect, it's the traditional rule turned inside out.  Every day's artwork must involve a map, but any format or medium is OK.

When I started thinking about my next daily art project, in October and November, I was a bit apprehensive about this approach.  Was it too loosely defined?  Would I be afraid to work without the net of the strict format?  Fortunately, the minute I heard myself think that last question, I realized that was the dumbest thing I had thought in a long time.  If at this point in my artistic career I couldn't work without a net, I didn't deserve to call myself an artist.

As I was contemplating, I thought of many different ways that I might choose to do a map a day.  I would probably want more than one sketchbook, one for each size and theme.  And I would absolutely require a master book in which to record what I did each day.  But having been away from home for 10 days over the holiday, and sick for a week before that, I have not yet been to the art store to get the requisite books.

When we returned from our vacation on New Year's Eve, I found a package on the front porch: a calendar from my friend Rosemary Claus-Gray.  Illustrated with pictures of her art, it's intended as a permanent notebook of birthdays and anniversaries, but the second I opened it I realized it would be the perfect master list for my daily art.  Clearly the universe is smiling on this project.

On Day 1 I worked on a collage/assemblage piece that's covered in a map, and here it is recorded in the master book.

You can look at the last eight years of my daily art on my daily art blog HERE, and I'll be posting the daily map work too, every week or so.