Raven and Sparrow

Welcome baby

My first grandchild was born on March 12. Her name is Sophia Tovah Webb. She and her mother are doing very well and are now at home. Whew. The experience of being a grandmother is way less painful than becoming a mother, but I have been surprised by how it emphasizes my awareness of mortality.  I feel like I am floating atop an immeasurable sea of life that contains everything that has happened since the beginning of time. I am lucky that most of my immediate family is still here with me on the surface (my dad will celebrate his 88th birthday this Sunday) and now we are joined by this new adorable sprig with all her charm and potential. However, as she emerges into Being, others are slipping back into the all encompassing waters. Hazel's dad is gone, Dee's sister Noreen died just as Sophia was being born, a good friend has been diagnosed with lung cancer and I am feeling my own age beginning to press upon me. The arrival of the baby, with its joy and fear and tension has cast a beam of light into the abyss and I can see us all here alive atop all that have lived before us and all that are waiting to be. Each of us rises just like Sophia into a material existence that offers specific experience, and then takes that unique life back into the whole, which is rich beyond our ability to imagine. It is our never-ending story. I wish for my granddaughter a life full of love as she flowers into the person only she can be, and I consider my own trajectory and the opportunities for growth that still await me. May the light of life shine upon us all.  

Banner finished....almost

Download IMG_0501

Hit this download for the song. It was the only way I could figure out how to attach it.

 

Well, it's done, except for the baby's name. That won't be bestowed until she is born, so I left a blank space on the title panel for later addition. This is a long, awkward thing that may not measure up to the time invested in it, but it feels good to be finished in time. (Come on, baby!)

 

 

 

Banner bits

After many an hour of embroidery and handwork, I have got the components of my lullaby banner almost ready to go. There are nine pink panels with the lyrics to an old song embroidered on them, and six rough unbleached cotton strips that carry the chorus. The lyric panels are backed with the same cotton to make a frame for the pink parts and to give them more substance. I originally meant to fringe the white edges like the chorus strips (not quite finished), but then I decided that would be too much fringe and turned the edges instead. You can see from the one that is showing the back side that I didn't allow enough fabric to make a double turn when I cut and so had to hand overcast all the edges. (It probably would have been too bulky anyway.) I used Jude's (www.spiritcloth.typepad.com) glue stitch to attach the pink to the white. Now I plan to string them along a length of bias tape so they can be hung in the baby's room. I may still need a title strip, but I want to put the baby's name on it and that is still undecided. I will probably put a blank piece in for now.

I am not at all sure about this project ...maybe it will look half-assed and silly, or be annoyingly cumbersome. I do know that it wanted to be made from the moment I thought of it and so I have tried. 

Baby banner

Last weekend we had a baby shower for my daughter-in-law Becca and her baby girl in waiting, my first grandchild. It was for family only, which meant almost twenty people were there. As I prepared for the party I thought I would like to make a banner as decoration. It was an idea that leaped immediately into form, although after about a week I realized that finishing it in time was not possible. Still, it wanted to be made and so I have continued to work on it.

I started with an old, slightly tattered and stained dresser scarf made from finely woven linen. I mordanted it and put it in a bath of combined lac and fustic. Lac is the tree insect from Asia whose resinous secretions are the basis of lacquer and Chinese red. The extract I use gives a strong pink similar to cochineal, but a little grayer. Unfortunately a lot of the resin is still present in the extract so it has to be boiled and strained before it can be used.

Adding fustic, a yellow from India, to a little bit of lac produces a warm pinky coral.

When it dries it goes a little more raspberry, but I got the value I was hoping for. 

I am planning to make a multi-paneled banner using the words to a sixteenth century Christmas carol, somewhat adapted, with the chorus embroidered on longer, thinner strips made from a rough open weave cotton.

 

This is where I am so far. As Liz and Rachel say: "Watch this space."

The baby shower went well. It was unabashedly girly.