I have a guest post up today at Katy Elliott's blog about making salt dough ornaments. For more pictures, go here.
sunday tune: julie doiron - snowfalls in november
With the big move to the city and this lingering, mild fall, I feel like I have been put under some sort of spell where time has changed and become unfamiliar. I've missed seeing snow this month.
imaginary outfit: going to the thanksgiving parade
We have a lot to be thankful for this year. We are grateful that we are in a place, new as it is to us, that feels like home already. A lot of that, for me, is due to you, the people who visit this blog. It's been a place of steadiness for me in a season of change. Since we've moved, I've discovered a ready-made world of new friends and neighbors waiting for me thanks to the community of readers that has somehow grown up around this site. They have made what could have been an incredibly lonely time a wonderful one.
So, readers met and unmet, vocal and silent - thank you. Happy Thanksgiving.
the shimmering light of stars breaking through
In cosmic brush strokes of glowing hydrogen gas, this beautiful skyscape unfolds across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy and the center of the northern constellation Cygnus the Swan. Recorded from a premier remote observatory site (ROSA) in southern France, the image spans about 6 degrees.Credit & copyright: Daniel Marquardt. Via APOD.
the sight of a mountain whose snow-covered peak rises above the clouds
Middle: Canadian Pacific Railway advertisement, depicting Banff's Mount Assiniboine c. 1917.
Bottom: Edward Theodore Compton, Weißhorn-Nordgrat vom Bieshorn. 1908.
finer feelings
Finer feeling…is chiefly of two kinds: the feeling of the sublime and that of the beautiful. The stirring of each is pleasant, but in different ways. The sight of a mountain whose snow-covered peak rises above the clouds, the description of a raging storm, or Milton’s portrayal of the infernal kingdom, arouse enjoyment but with horror. On the other hand, the sight of flower strewn meadows, valleys with winding brooks and covered with grazing flocks, the description of Elysium, or Homer’s portrayal of the girdle of Venus, also occasion a pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling. In order that the former impression could not occur to us in due strength, we must have a feeling of the sublime, and, in order to enjoy the latter well, a feeling of the beautiful. Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime. Flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed in figures are beautiful. Night is sublime, day is beautiful. Temperaments that possess a feeling for the sublime are drawn gradually, by the quiet stillness of a summer evening as the shimmering light of stars breaks through the brown shadows of night and the lonely moon rises into view, into high feelings of friendship, of disdain for the world, of eternity…the sublime moves, the beautiful charms…
…The sublime is in turn of different kinds. Its feeling is sometimes accompanied with a certain dread, or melancholy. In some cases merely with quiet wonder. And in still others with a beauty completely pervading a sublime plan ... Deep loneliness is sublime, but in a way that stirs terror…the sublime must always be great. The beautiful can also be small.
Immanuel Kant, Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
i have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library
(Post title courtesy of this dude.)
i read, much of the night, and go south in the winter
Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better Looking: With a Selection from the Left Bank
...
My home is where my books are.
Ellen Thompson, A Book of Hours, 1909
(Each day this week I am posting on something I am grateful for. Today - books. )
Post title from this. First quote originally discovered here. Painting (a favorite): The Green Book, by Harold Knight.
this weekend
- pop up flea
- from the house of the dead (we are going Tuesday night)
- hurricanes
- bodies of light
- preparations
Image: Monsieur Dressup by Anna Thomas at loyalloot. Tailored collar, cuff, and pocket out of maple. I so want this for my wall.
treasure trove
What a treasure chest.
a contented mind is a continual feast
Late 19th century hand-knit mittens. The verse on them reads:
One thing you must not borrow nor never give away,
For he who borrows trouble will have it every day.
But if you have a plenty and more then you can bear,
It will not lighten yours if others have a share.
You must learn to be contented then will your trouble cease
And then you may be certain that you will live in peace
For a contented mind is a continual feast.
My mom sent me the link to these today - she's collecting ideas for poetry mittens. These are in the Smithsonian. The verse feels fit to the season, with Thanksgiving coming up.
sanquhar
Images from The Future Museum.
the terrible knitters of dent
During the 18th and 19th centuries, virtually the whole population of Dent and Sedbergh was engaged in knitting, especially during the Napoleonic Wars when there was a huge demand for knitted gloves, socks, stockings, jerkins and caps for the army. It was said that the men, women and children of Dent knitted so fast and furiously that they became known as the ‘Terrible Knitters of Dent'.I love the idea of intimidatingly awesome knitters.
Photo from here.
home (ii)
Wool, wool-fabric applique, wool braid, and wool and silk embroidery. In the Smithsonian's collection.
Details:
home (i)
Artist unidentified (possibly Otisfield, Maine) c. 1840. Wool appliqué, gauze, and embroidery on wool. 29 x 53 in. At the American Folk Art Museum.
in circles, stitched
anni
Layer after layer of civilized life seems to have veiled our directness of seeing. We often look for an underlying meaning of things while the thing itself is the meaning.
Anni Albers
From top:
Wallhanging, 1924.
Cotton and silk. 168.275 x 100.33 cm.
Black-White-Gray, 1964.
Reproduction of a 1927 original. Cotton and silk. 147 x 118 cm.
Ancient Writing, 1936.
Rayon, linen, cotton, and jute. 149.8 x 111 cm.
Open Letter, 1958.
Cotton. 58.4 x 59.7 cm.
City, 1949.
Linen and cotton pictorial weaving. 44.45 x 67.3 cm.
All © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
gunta
Weaving is an old craft which has evolved principles upon which even the mechanical loom must still build today. A high degree of handcraft, dexterity, skill and understanding must be acquired, and these are not, as in the case of tapestry, to be nourished by imaginative power or artistic feeling. The coming of grips with the flat loom, as its natural result, the limitation of materials, the restriction of colour, the tying of the form to the weaving process.
The use of a material, on the other hand, limits and determines the choice of the elements. Conclusions about function are always dependent on the conception of life and the living.
Gunta Stölzl - excerpt from “The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop”, 1931.
From top:
Wall hanging, flat-weave with partly reversed harness, 1923.
Samples for curtain fabric, 1926/27.
sheila
Her wall hangings have the living warmth and the thickness of fleece; their complex structure and their shadows seem to chisel out perspectives attributable only to dream palaces; they offer the mellow depth, radiance and mystery of the starry sky. Nothing better than this art could provide altogether the adornment and the antidote for the functional, utilitarian architecture in which we are sentenced to dwell. It enlivens it with the dense, patient work of human hands, and the inventive charms of a creative mind constantly stimulated by experiencing the gamut of those new materials which modern industry supplies, while remaining faithful to the immemorial rules of the most ancient perhaps of all the arts of civilization.
Claude Lévi-Strauss on Sheila Hicks.
(2 or 3 things has a post from a while ago with great images of her travels and sketchbook.)
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