Embroidered Thoughts: Back to the Nib

My fingernails are cut short since I've been playing in the dirt of my flower garden, planting like crazy to fill in the vast space of the new plot. Each time that I view my nails in their sorry state I remember how lovely it was to dig down in the warm dirt and transfer the plant from the plastic pot to the earth. With my gardening exploits and the ability to spend time outside (before the EEE mosquitoes descend at dusk), my embroidery has taken a back seat and I'm also at the point in my current piece that is pretty much mindless stitching as I fill the values of the background around the three figures. Needless to say, it's not very stimulating and even stitching to Netflix (well, I could not stitch while watching the Tudors - it had my rapt attention - poor Cromwell...!) becomes a chore. I think that means that I need to wrap up this piece once and for all and move on.

Today, I decided to take my pen and ink (using a real nib) and sketch a few of my flowers. I especially like the look of the cone flowers and the black eyed susans as they lose their petals and look like something from a Tim Burton movie set. As I was drawing I was reminded of how interesting it is to cover the total space of an object be it a room (as in the stripping of wallpaper, scrubbing, patching, sanding and painting of my dining room) or be it an object that I am observing and drawing. With the morning glories (before drawing them) I had only observed their color and the activity of the tendrils as they wrapped around neighboring plants - but today, I noticed the pattern of the veins of the leaves, the negative spaces between the leaves and the blooms and the line of the tendrils. It was the same observance with the textures of the black eyed susans and the delicate striations of the lines of the petunia.

So this is the result of my labor of observing with some license in placement. I also needed a new piece for the dining room wall - almost instant art. But as an exercise, this was a way to stretch that "seeing muscle" of objects and perhaps to provide me some guide for the next piece to be stitched.