more or less

I had an idea a while ago to make books

and from that came another idea -  make boxes for said books

and because whenever I make two things that have to work together, and that never works out as it should, I spent a bit of time thinking about what should come first, the box or the books?

in the end I thought it would be easier to make the books to fit the box - books I know, boxes not so much

the box first then

I pieced together fabrics for the box cover and am now adding some stitch - not a lot, a few additions to plainer pieces of cloth, texture only

I began with feather stitch, thinking how lovely that would be but as I stitched the rows, I got about half-way through one of them and began to think it might look better done differently

something not so dense - actually, something not so complete

I sat and looked at it for a long time, not sure exactly what I wanted, a few ideas floating around, far enough on the horizons of my mind they were just too vague to make sense of at 9:30 in the evening

the next morning my thinking, though still rather vague, began to expand

I thought it would be a good idea to do some sketching, and perhaps even some stitch sampling to try to sort out what it seemed I might be thinking so I found a small sketchbook that had empty pages still

in flipping through it I familiarized myself with some work I had done last year that was centred on a theme of weathered wood

as I had progressed through various design ideas I began to think about how you can see a whole tree in a branch, in a leaf, in a pine cone...

the drawing below came from that

weathered, worn wood that was once a tall green tree

water and wind take their toll

the strips below developed from that thinking, the form taken from the wood, the embellishments, the sky and the earth... and of course the water

below, a page of tiny drawings extracted from the marks on two pieces of driftwood from the Yukon

I was thinking that in a way these marks form tiny maps of the wood's journey from a tree or branch, complete with bark and leaves, to what I held in my hand

a form of subtraction

I turned back to my stitching, picked up a pair of scissors and made a cut... pulled out some stitching, when I liked how it looked I stopped and tied off the ends

and then I did it again

and again

there are so many ways I could take this... my mind overflowing, fragmented images flowing through one after another, how to catch them before they slip away

I've got paper for sketching and linen for stitching and I'm ready to start

it's the strangest feeling, standing on the edge of excitement