Grave statuary

Why is it that so many of the statues in cemeteries depict female figures? From our meanderings in a cemetery in Montreal, we saw a number of beautiful examples of statuary, particularly female figures. We saw this one when we first came into the cemetery, and were struck by its lovely lines and the eloquent way it depicted grief -- "how original!" we thought. Then we saw several others with the same design, and figured there was some mortuary catalogue with this headstone as one of the designs. *Sigh* It lost some of its eloquence after that. But it's still quite pretty.



This one had a bit of added whimsy, since someone replaced her bow with a stuffed animal (honestly, it wasn't me!).

And, of course, angels could be of either sex (or sexless), but seem to be depicted as female or feminine in many cases:


I love the way that metal gains additional texture with age -- she almost seems to be weeping. I'm not sure what the significance of the large feather is, though.

So, why are women keepers of the dead -- why are we charged with grieving and mourning and watching over the graves? Is this found in all cultures?

Giving myself a hand . . .

Well, more like 1100 hands. Illustrations of hands, that is. I scanned in 1166 19th-century illustrations of hands from one of the Dover publications of permission-free images. Now I have lots of handy (pun intended) digital illustrations for use in my artwork. Whee! Here are just a few of the illustrations from the book:



I love illustrations and clip art -- I get all kinds of ideas percolating when I look at them. I wish all the Dover books came with CDs, but at least I can digitize the images myself with the scanner. I have a number of other Dover books that I will scan in (in whole or part) when I have time -- that way I can build up a library of digital images to use when inspiration strikes me.

Today's visual inspiration

From a cemetery in Montreal, Canada. I love the strong vertical lines in this statue, and the swooping curve of the trailing sleeves. There is something very elegant in the clean lines, and her pose is peaceful and meditative, without being too sorrowful. Again, I see the Art Deco influence in these statues.

Today's visual inspiration

Art Deco details from the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City, Canada. I think these types of designs would look fabulous as surface design elements on a garment -- I'd love to interpret them in gold foil or embroidery on a coat or jacket. I'm not usually drawn to Art Deco, but just look at those luscious spirals and elegant lines -- beautiful.

Pondering the elements of design

I came across three photos I took of this lighthouse on the St. Lawrence river (near Tadoussac in Quebec, Canada), while we were on a whale-watching/fjord boat trip last year. Each one placed the central design element (the lighthouse) differently within the frame:

The lighthouse is centered, small and distant

The lighthouse is centered, larger and closer

The lighthouse is still larger and closer, but now off-center

How do these different types of placement affect the response to the photo? I generally like the main design element to be large, close, and centered (as in the second photo), but in this case, I didn't. The second photo is fine, but looks too much like a stock picture or a postcard. The first photo, while not providing as much visual punch, gives me a sense of the lighthouse being lonely and isolated, which seems appropriate as a theme. In the third photo, I get a sense of movement and energy that I don't get in either of the other two -- I should remember that an off-centered design element can be very engaging. Which one do you like best, and why?
Addendum: I hadn't thought of it, but someone pointed out that the horizon line also differs in these pictures -- the third has horizon line more horizontal and the line of the hills is just below the largest part of the lighthouse, which is part of why it is so pleasing.

Today's visual inspiration

I love the textural quality of this. Can you guess what and where it is?

Lessons from the garden: Weeding, pruning, and thinning

When I first began gardening, I thought mostly about adding to the garden (that is, putting in plants), but a big part of gardening involves subtracting from the garden through weeding, pruning and thinning. These are still the tasks I have trouble with, but they are important components in all aspects of life.

• Weeding: Weeding is about eliminating unwanted volunteer plants. Weeds are constantly cropping up, and they have a tendency to crowd out the desirable plants, leaching away water and nutrients and creating a messy look to the garden. So we pull them up. The lesson here is to be vigilant in looking for weeds in our own lives. Are there projects or commitments or activities or habits that you don't want, that are stealing energy and time from your goals and priorities? If so, it may be time to uproot and eliminate those unwanted aspects of your life. But remember that something may seem like a weed to one person, but not to another. I am determined to uproot every pokeweed plant in my garden, but I have a friend who loves to watch the birds feast on its berries. To me it is a weed, but not to her. Just because something may seem like a waste of time to others, doesn't mean you must eliminate it -- you are the only one who can determine whether it is unwanted in your life. And sometimes, the unintentional plants are a delightful contribution to the garden -- I'm happy to see the petunias that re-seeded from last year's plants, even though I didn't intend for them to be there. Just because something is unplanned, doesn't mean that it is necessarily unwanted.
• Pruning: Even desirable plants need to be cut back from time to time. Not only do we cut away the dead wood, but we cut them back to make them smaller, to train them to a particular shape, to encourage more vigorous blooming. Pruning helps maintain healthy plants and keeps them from overgrowing the space. Yet I find it difficult to motivate myself to prune -- the holly gets bigger and bigger, but isn't that good? The rose brambles take over an entire corner of the garden, but how could that be bad? Yet now the holly is pressing against the house, and that spectacular rose now shades the lavender and coneflower. Even desirable parts of our lives can become too big and unwieldy and may begin to crowd out other goals. Sometimes we need to check the balance in our life, to make sure that some activities or commitments haven't exceeded the space we meant to allocate to them. I have always enjoyed baking, but at one point, I had so many people on my holiday cookie list that I ended up baking cookies for days on end. What had been enjoyable became a chore; I needed to scale back, to prune. Is there something in your life that has grown too big?
• Thinning: Every year, I put in vegetables from seed: carrots, kohlrabi, radishes. I sprinkle the seeds in the ground and am rewarded with rows of tiny seedlings. This is when I'm supposed to thin the plants -- to remove enough of the seedlings so that the remaining ones have space to grow. Every year, I resist thinning. How can I remove perfectly healthy plants and throw them on the compost heap? I pull a few and then give up, figuring the rest of them can fight it out. But by being unwilling to thin out the plants, I doom the whole lot of them to become thin and pallid, unable to develop fully. This really is the hardest lesson for me. I want to be able to do everything, to teach and research and sew and bead and dance and read and garden and cook and bake and write and take art classes and learn Arabic . . . but I can't do it all. If I try, I end up doing a little of everything rather poorly, or taking on commitments I can't fulfill. I have to be willing to prioritize, to thin out the activities that are less important, so that I can achieve my goals. I struggle with this constantly, and I keep hoping that I don't have to thin. Maybe all those carrots will do just fine on their own. Right? The garden keeps trying to teach me to cut back, to eliminate, to clear space for what matters. Maybe one day I'll actually learn that lesson.

Lessons from the Garden: It takes work

I've been doing an inordinate amount of gardening this summer, and I think I'm seeing connections between gardening and the rest of my life. Today's insights are all about the work involved in gardening:

• Be prepared for ongoing maintenance work. While there are some things in life that one can finish and be done with, most require ongoing maintenance: Touch up that paint job, work on your relationship, feed the dog. Every time I turn around, the garden needs to be weeded . . . or mulched, or aerated, or whatever. I don't think I knew when I started this how much ongoing labor is required to keep up a garden.
• Some tasks aren't fun. No matter how many (many!) times I weed, I never really enjoy it -- it's sweaty, grueling, unrewarding work. Again, this is true in so many areas of my life: no matter how much I enjoy something, there are always some parts of it that I just have to slog through.
• It always takes you longer than you think. I may go out with the idea that I will weed the entire front garden that day, but I'm lucky if I can get a quarter of that done in a day. This is a lesson I never seem to learn -- with every project I undertake, it invariably takes me *much* longer than I expect (this is known as the planning fallacy).
• Putting effort in early on can save you effort later. If I were to really weed thoroughly in the early spring, there would be fewer weeds later in the summer. But I never have enough time to do a thorough spring weeding, so I pay for it later with many more hours of weeding. This isn't true of all things in life, but it's worth remembering for some things.
• You don't have to do it all yourself. I do most of the gardening work myself, but I have a landscaper come in to do things that I don't have time, skill, or tools for -- I have them do tree planting and pruning, for example. And then, of course, Q has been a huge help -- not only does he help me weed sometimes, but he spent hours putting in our new, wonderful paths. Again, this is a lesson it's hard for me to learn -- I tend to think I have to do everything myself, but there is no shame in getting help from others.

Beaded bellydance belt

I finished beading this belt last year, but never got around to taking pictures. I'm working on the matching bra at the moment. Click on the pictures if you want to see them full-size (the details are clearer in the larger versions of the pictures).

The front of the belt

Detail of the central motif on the front of the belt. I sewed on every bead and sequin individually -- these are not appliques. The motifs are a mix of glass seed beads of various clear and silvery tones, Swarovski crystals, and Czech glass beads, edged in sequins and more glass beads. The top edge of the belt is edged in bugle beads and sequins.


Detail of the fringe. I designed the fringe and sewed all the beads on individually; it's a mix of silver-lined, glass seed beads and three types of Swarovski crystals.


The back of the belt.

The back of the belt; the angled shot gives a sense of the dimensionality of the beading.

Detail of the central motif on the back of the belt.

This beading takes an amazingly long time to complete and I can't even estimate the number of hours or the number of beads in the project. But I love the way it came out.

Various projects

Summer projects have begun! I have been working in the garden a lot (weather permitting). There are a number of lovely new pathways, thanks to Q (yay!), so I've been trying to design within the new structure. For all my effort, the front garden needs another weeding, a few more plants, and some mulch, but for now it houses a baby bunny most days, so I am content. The back garden has some vegetables and a few flowers, but I still need to work some beds and put some more vegetables and flowers in. I put in some new shade plants in the beds along the house, which were looking a bit unkempt. The deck strawberries have been producing a bit of fruit (yum!), and the Alpine strawberries have been fairly prolific. The first crop of raspberries is just starting to ripen, and I put in two new blueberry bushes. So I'm running a bit late in the garden, but it is slowly getting done.

I made my first bellydance costume bra from scratch this week. I ended up making muslins of three different sizes of a Kwik Sew underwire bra, none of which fit perfectly. There was some gapping in the cup under the arm, so I just put in a dart there, and I cut down the center connecting piece a bit. I think the sizes run a bit big, because the cup is bigger than I am used to. For the final version, I wanted it to be sturdy enough to take a lot of beading without collapsing. So I made the main bra out of reinforced denim (from old jeans) with some stiff interfacing, and then I created the front cup section out of two layers of buckram and fusible fleece and basted that into the denim bra. It is super sturdy! Then I made another version of the bra in the velvet I am using for the costume and covered the bra with the velvet (with hand basting). Now I'm beading it, which will take a bit of time, but is the part I like the best. I'm repeating motifs from the belt, but changing them around a bit. I finished beading the belt a while ago; it just needs to be lined and sized for me (have the hooks sewn in). It's been quite a while since I've had a new dance costume, so I am eager to finish this one.

There are a couple of home repair/renovation projects that need to be finished, too, so I've been calling contractors and trying to get those underway. Hopefully soon! Then there will be some painting to do when they are done.

It's amazing how busy I feel, given that I'm on summer break. There is always so much to do!