I moved again! Please update your links!

Browsing around on flickr, you may stumble across embroidery samples tagged “PLOS”. I investigated a little deeper and found the PLOS Pool, and along with it the meaning of the acronym: Personal Library of Stitches. This flickr group has an amazing pool of images made up of embroidery samplers–huge and tiny, simple and complex, colourful and monochrome. This is great inspiration if you’re into embroidery, and I can also see the images being valuable to illustrators, graphic designers, and those who are interested in line value and texture. Some examples:

I have to say I’m more partial to the free-form samplers. I love the way their stitches flow together organically, like a beautiful mountain or wave.

Needless to say, I’ve been looking at these samplers for a reason–a new body of work which is still just a glimmer in my eye, but will hopefully become real in a short amount of time.

Finally I feel like I’m coming out of my creative slump, which has existed since I wrote the last post here. The end of school really drained me artistically, and I haven’t really recovered from it until now. It’s all because I came across Katie Runnels’ art. A SCAD alumna, Katie founded our beloved shopSCAD and makes fiber-licious assemblages from vintage and collected materials.

Her work is fine art–definitely exploration of materials and aesthetic, but you can tell that Katie pours her heart into her pieces. Yet they’re accessible and (dare I say it?) commercial enough that people want to buy them, own them, and display them in their homes.

This is what I want. I focused for so long on being a designer, being commercial and marketable, going into studio production and having a line of ready-made products for the market. Why? I know myself and I know my working methods. I am a big thinker. I have so many thoughts, feelings, and ideas and my artwork has always been an outlet for that. Why would I ever think to remove that aspect? I would be miserable.

So I’m moving on from here, not sure where I’m going, but with a headful of inspiration to get me there.

Katie Runnels: blog
and website

I am grumpy. Lately I have felt an enormous disconnect between what’s in my heart and what my hands produce. Every few months I go through a cycle of creative energy–sometimes I am a machine, cranking out items left and right. Then I hit a low, where nothing I make is satisfactory to me, and I can’t even begin to manifest what’s in my head. That’s where I am right now. I want to make beautiful things, meaningful things…simple and gorgeous and inspirational. Like so many of the items on the blogs I read.

These gorgeous Christmas ornaments, for example.

Or why cannot I not assemble collages with the masterful composition seen above? Such simple and remarkable beauty.

I am told that I have potential, that I am talented. But sometimes it feels as though my hands are only able to make poor substitutes for the truly wonderful things I see in the world.

I wish I could know that there really is something incubating inside me and that one day I will hatch, so to speak, and come into my own as an artist and maker.

Today two important things happened:

1) I found out I am indeed going to Lacoste in the fall!

2) I purchased an Esther Williams retro bikini in red and white polka dots!

Woo! I just had to show you my two latest Ebay wins–1950’s dress patterns! Highly adorable just before summer. I can’t wait to whip up the little sundress and wear it all the time!

• reclaim summer job
• host summer knitting/crochet workshops
• go to France in the fall

• secure an apartment
• get a corgi

• rock the fibers world!

I was given the heads up to the website Colorstrology, where you can find information about personality traits for each month, along with a pantone colour swatch to match. You can also find the information and watch for your individual birthdate, like mine above. It’s pretty scarily true for me, really. So in honor of my birthday and “birth colour”, I give you items in pantone’s “Veronica”:

In 3-D Fibers class on Tuesday my teacher guided us through a writing exercise intended to free our thought processes from logical, linear patterns. She gave us a prompt and instructed us to simply begin writing, never lifting the pen from the page, and never ceasing motion of the hand. Even if the words flowing onto the paper made no sense, we had to write down our thoughts as they bubbled to the surface. Empty pauses were expressed by scribbles.

Today, reading back over what I thought mindless babble, I can see the usefulness of this exercise. The clumsy words haphazardly strung together are really beautiful, poetic combinations of thoughts. It is utterly fascinating to me to see my brain working on such an unadulterated level–totally uncensored. I’ll share some of my writing with you (complete with mispellings and odd punctuation).

prompted with My Earliest Memory of an Object:

“My earliest memory of an object is a large, rubbery heart-shaped think—faded red w/ battery door on back switched on makes thump thump sound my parents say it mimicks mom’s heartbeat left in crib substitution comforting parents looking in heart under my pillow good to chew on how do I remember this I knew what it did how to turn it on/off as baby knew I was supposed to be soothed by it did not sound much like mom’s real heartbeat out of the womb like a fish onto land baby with adult brain light sheets and blankets did not hate heart”

prompted with My Earliest Memory of an Environment:

“My mother’s womb was comfortable, warm, protective red and glowing like light passing through eyelids I could hear but not see my sister talkng to me, laughing, telling me to comeout I was face up sounds distant like underwater”

prompted with A Place I Dream of Visiting:

“my dream home I retreat to when threatened imaginary yellow kitchen w/ white farm sink white cabinets big windows looking out into garden and trees historical property antique dishes whitewear pitcher early morning yellow sun YELLOW breakfast and newspaper coffee smell french toast fresh-squeezed orange juice beginning a new day happy canary in a cage cherries on the counter fresh eggs from my chickens”

prompted with A Place I Would Travel To:

“I Want to go to Defërden Germany, birthplace of my ancestors before immigrating in 1880’s all my past my histor my identity St. Cosmos + Damien Lutheran church blue doors small river old streets farm pasture little village Northern Rhineland where my blood comes from pilgrimage getting answers will I know these people will they recognize me?”

prompted with Something I Want to Feel:

“the most perfect and blissful sense of simple happiness away from technology surrounded by nature. electronics plastic hatred is everywhere highways asphalt my own fear of danger disconnection I want to feed from my own hands live as intended use God’s gifts”

Deep thoughts brought like a geyser to the surface.