Beyond

One of the nice things about falling in love with a new technique is that it can keep you going even when there are a thousand delightful distractions like long conversations with our grown children, reading and rereading a new book with a grandchild, deciding on how to replace an old bathroom vanity top with something that suits us, walking on the beach with an enthusiastic Golden Doodle. Even as the holidays sped by, I kept working on a small piece that used my scrunched texture technique combined with untextured bits on top of the scrunching.

"Beyond" is 7 x 10 inches and made of various hand-dyes hand-stitched to batting and backing with perle cotton. 

And thanks for the company on this brief ramble!

Resolution

Snow falling has that mesmerizing effect, that pull toward contemplation, that makes us think of newness, beginning again, the possibility of real change, and with blizzard conditions approaching our Massachusetts home, there is plenty of snow to watch.

Add the fact that it is the second day of the new year and I begin to search for pencil and paper to write down some resolutions.

But I don't often do well with resolutions:

RESOLVED:
I will spend more time with friends and family
                         AND
I will spend more quiet time in my studio.

I will take my work more seriously
                   AND
I will laugh more often.

I will post more regularly on my blog
                          AND
I will spend less time on the computer and more time on my work.

I will believe in myself
                AND
I will question myself.

I could go on. My resolutions often take the form of paradoxes and I become like someone trying to walk in two directions at once. But no matter how absurd or antithetical the two parts of a paradox become, according to the classic definition of the word, it can suggest a truth. And so perhaps my best resolutions on this snowy second of January 2014 are not to ignore all the contradictions and seeming impossibilities of my life but to see where they can lead me--and to keep the bird feeder filled.

Happy New Year!