Spring Arrives

I'm all aflutter with Spring!  Are you??

The color combinations for Spring almost speak for themselves.  I used lavender and a lime green that looked sooo much like the new grasses growing along our country roads.

Life is good and I've begun  another circle project thinking of blue and gold for the coming month. 

" It is spring again.  The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart." Rainer Maria Rilke

A Color Filled World

Over the past few weeks I've been absorbed with color. 
 

I have been experimenting with color, using the combinations that I see all around me.  I want to thank Pamela Zagarenski the artist of www.SACREDBEE.com. Her cards are delicious tutors when it comes to the lovely colorful, yet soft combinations she uses.

In fact I recently took a bunch of her cards with me to the fabric shop where I used her colors when choosing floss for my next project.  What fun!!!

What colors do you find yourself using these days?

"Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it." - Tagore

Flying A Kite

As we ease into Spring I realize that its my desire to soar, to fly, to swoop and then go up and up. I'm finding I can certainly dream of soaring and make dreams come true by spending my days creating kites.

Colorful, lighthearted, whimsical kites to take me, in my mind, high up in the sky and off to magical lands.

"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country." - Anais Nin

Spring Fling

A couple of weeks ago I walked under trees with bare branches.  I strolled over to a Forsythia that was barren.  I noticed a couple of daffodils but otherwise our neighborhood was still in winter.

And then the sun started shining and the blooms appeared. 

I am surrounded by color, beautiful color.

I am in love with our earth and its beauty.

"Spring has returned.

  The Earth is like a child that knows poems."

Ranier Maria Rilke

November's Sky

As I write this the rain is coming down outside.  Steadily, since sometime in the night, it fills the dips in the roads and makes puddles everywhere.

These pictures were taken a few days before the rain, but as you can see the sky was overcast and predicting rainy days. I did want to get a couple of fall leaf color trees off to you -- before they are all gone.

Its been one of our best color seasons -- does that mean it will be a cold winter?  Does that mean it will be an early spring?  The seasons bring so many questions - and often the answers aren't anywhere near correct.

Guess its best to take each day as it comes savoring its richness in whatever form we are given.

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot

Abundance

If I had nothing else to be thankful for - I can always go to the word 'abundance'.  We all have stashes -- but mine seem to grow every fall. That's when the fiber shows appear and all manner of 'goodies' are on display.  Now who am I to deny a person a sale, especially when one can get 28 yards of fair trade silk chiffon strips for $4.  One of my dear friends and I split this find - and still I'll never, ever use all of my share.  In the meantime it hangs above my desk so that I can look at it.  Sometimes that's enough of an excuse to add to my stash - the 'look at factor'.

And then there are the craft shops that have those bins in the back where they sell 'stuff' for $1.  Okay - pretty hard to walk past that.  Who in the world needs a huge bundle of pom-poms?  Certainly not me -- but the colors were fun, the puffy balls fun to touch and well...

Never a knitter nor a crocheter will I be (due to the fact that I lack the dexterity of a walrus) but does that mean I don't have yarn in my stash?  Of course not -- there it is this 'puddle' of softness, sitting in a wire basket along with other acquisitions.  

What can I say?  These things make me happy. Its easy to justify it all as 'pieces of art' in a raw form - many of them destined to never go further than their studio setting. They are doing their job of exciting me each and everyday with the beauty of fiber. 

"Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance." - Epicurus 

Color Ideas

I must admit that color/tones/hues are somewhat of a challenge to me.  I need help to come up with a color scheme that 'works'.  Recently, on a trip to the home improvement shop, I stopped by the paint section.  I often collect their individual color chips for inspiration, but this time I picked up several of the brochures. 

  The theme was shown on the front of the brochure.  Inside each brochure the rooms were painted using a series of colors/hues/tones that enhanced each other.

I couldn't help but be  'wowed' by the brochure that had yummy chocolate truffles as the cover picture.  Now what could be better than using my favorite treat as the base and seeing what works with it - yum!

"The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts." - Marcus Aurelius

Oh My!

You won't mind if I pat myself on the back will you?  If I send up a big 'high five' to myself?  If I hire a band and have a mini-parade?

This was what I had before.  Drawers filled with plastic bags.  Bags filled with skein upon skein of embroidery floss.  It was piled everywhere.  It was overflowing the drawers. It was a disaster when I wanted to begin a piece and had to strew it all over my work table to see what I had.

For some reason the 'organization bug' hit me at the end of the year and I started wrapping my floss around bobbins, labeling them with the proper color number and putting them into neat and tidy boxes.  All the green shades together here..

But many, many hours and colors and skeins to be  wrapped ahead.  A project not finished but truly started to my complete happiness.

"True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Birds of a Feather

My two colorful birds have taken flight.  Each of them looking quite perky in their pastel feathers.

In order to get a little variety in textures I worked the background of these punchneedle pieces in reverse punchneedle.  I'm not sure that I like it -- but there you are, I'm never one to go back and redo a whole piece.

I loved working with these colors and the theme was quite light almost as if I were myself, taking flight.

"The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind." - Carly Simon

Design Seeds

Love color?  Run, don't walk, over to this site - Design Seeds.   I love to spend a few minutes now and then just wandering through the pictures - the colors - the combinations.

 

 

Well maybe more than a few minutes...

 



 

When you get into the site you have the choice of specifying the types of colors you're looking for - be it natural themes or seasonal color blends.  And on top of that you can sign up for their Fresh Hues blog - which will pop up on your email every so often with either a creative quotation or a color hue of its own devising.

I can never get enough color in my life, can you?

"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." - Claude Monet 

Silly Me

In the past, my work has tended toward the muted, often aged, darker colors.  Perhaps I thought it would make my work seem more serious.  I'm not sure why I would even want to be 'more' serious -- that was for the time of my life when I was studying, working, being a 'responsible' adult.

These days - while my age gets older, my mind gets younger.  'Let's celebrate' is more often my call these days rather than my earlier, traditional 'let's think about it'!

I won't say that 'serious' colors and themes won't crop up now and then - but for awhile I'm going to play - perhaps even be a bit silly. 

"Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans.  It is lovely to be silly at the right moment." - Horace

An Ode to Whimsy

As I recently started back into punchneedle I realized that something was missing from my work.  So I started to explore a little whimsy -- fanciful designs -- fun, bright, light colors.  This little bird design popped up ready to be colored with tiny loops and thread.

What colors would I use?  What combinations?  Out came my stash of Wildflower threads from Caron.  The color combinations in these thread skeins are always a wonder to me.  I can stand and look at them, hung up in the store, forever - except that the store has certain hours and eventually I would be thrown out.

With the choice of "Painted Desert" in hand I began to add some DMC floss in colors to match. Bright colors, fun colors, whimsical colors.

I leave you with the quote below - because I believe it will become my daily motto over the next few months. 

"Today was good

Today was fun

Tomorrow is another one."

Dr. Seuss

"Design Seeds"

 

Have you met Jessica Colaluca?  If not, you must do so...

I call her a color collector as she graciously shares with us color combinations along with lovely pictures.

I can't tell you how much I enjoy viewing this site - filled with nature, color and shade combinations I might never have thought of myself.

I've been trying to work with some new colors in my own life and Design Seeds  has given me a whole new world to discover.

Wander over to Jessica's site - I promise you'll be amazed.

"Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it." - Pierre Bonnard

"Journey" - Heart

This heart became what it is in spite of any preconceived ideas that I had.  I began with the spiral button.  You probably already know that I love spirals - a circle that is open - never closed, always moving (just as hearts should be).

As I worked, the whole 'planned' color scheme changed - more toward 'jewel' tones than I had planned.  The design spaces also lost the boundaries that I had originally planned for them.  My lesson learned is that no journey, not even a thread journey, should be overly planned.

"What you are comes to you." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spring Has Sprung

A sunny afternoon - a walk around the yard - the marvel of flowers where it seemed not so long ago snow lay on the ground.

Some are quite showy, others are small and easily overlooked.  

Some look like small lavender lanterns.

Some look like small white orchids.

All of them beautiful and the answer to nature's promise that spring will follow winter.

"Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light". - Theodore Roethke

The "Flying in Circles" Bird

This colorful fellow is obviously 'going in circles'.  Round and round go the colors and surrounding them is a deep purple color. I suspect this is probably a pretty rare bird -- for purple and orange are not commonly seen (together) in the natural bird communities. 

My inspiration for this color combination (purple and orange not being two colors I would normally even consider) was this skein of 'Wildflower' cotton.  When I saw this I thought 'wouldn't I love to see this color combination flitting outside my studio window?'  For now I shall have to satisfy myself by having one nesting in my studio with me.

"Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?" - Rose Kennedy 

"Winter Trees"

Here is what I see looking at out the window these days!  I decided to create a punchneedle design reflecting this 'winter' scene.

Now that it is completed I have decided that enough with these drab, cold winter pieces.  Standby for some brighter colors - as bright as my 'quiet' personality will allow anyway.

Off with the blahs!  I'm thinking spring and sunshine and color!!!

"She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel". -- Florence Nightingale

Pretty In Pink

Greens of all shades surround us here in the western North Carolina mountains. It almost hurts my eyes to take in green everywhere.  But as spring progresses there is a new color in town -- pink.

Its everywhere and I'm loving it!!

"Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature". -- Gerard De Nerval