Fashion Embroidery

by Inge Jacobsen

Embroidered books

Lauren DiCioccio

Dutch Artist Berend Strik

This is embroidery on photographs, for a very haunting effect. Click here to see more about the artist.

Why Devon Miller-Duggan’s Christmas Tree is Still Up

One of the weird things about having been raised as a New Critic—or maybe it’s just a natural inclination that learning to close-read Eliot in the 9th grade brought to the front of my brain/personality—is that I do tend to read pretty much everything as having layers of meaning for me to pull apart. Which is mostly great fun. So I helplessly apply that even to stuff like noticing when different neighbors dump their Christmas trees. Which means that I get a nasty sort of smile every year when the first tree to hit the curb is outside the house of the guy who runs Campus Crusade for Christ. His wife NEVER smiles at anyone in the neighborhood. Neither do his kids. I’ve never understood evangelicals who are grim—I mean, if you’re so sure of your own salvation, why wouldn’t you be cheerful?

But this post is actually about Christmas trees. Maybe you were hoping that you wouldn’t have to hear any more about it until after Halloween. Well, I’m not done with it. I don’t mean the theological side of it, not entirely, though I am much more oriented toward Incarnation than toward Resurrection as a Christian. Nope, I’m talking about the excessive, exhausting, blithering decorative practice of Christmas. Or, more to the point, why my tree is still up and my lights are still on.

I was taught to decorate a tree by my father. My father was a dentist. Most dentists are profoundly artisanal by nature and very often aesthetically obsessive. My father certainly was. Decorating the tree was a very specific and slightly crazed process: First you put the lights on and make sure they are perfectly, beautifully, lavishly placed. Then you turn the lights off to put the ornaments on—bigger ornaments toward the bottom. Every ornament must be hung so that it can hang freely (the tree should be able to shiver slightly when anyone walks by), and if it doesn’t, then you can trim the branch to make it hang right—but you must trim the branch so that it doesn’t look trimmed. You must make sure the tree is lavishly arrayed in ornaments. Then you do the tinsel—one piece at a time, each piece hanging freely (scissors help here). Then you turn the lights back on. And your tree is magical. God, my father made a beautiful tree. You can imagine how he was about the lights outside. The angriest I ever saw him was one year when local boys went on a bulb-shattering spree. Those boys were very lucky that he never caught them.

I’m much less obsessive than he was (my family might dispute this), and do different things with the tree every year (all red, all green, all this or that), but I am still finicky as all get out. I gave up on tinsel 30 years ago when I realized the cats were eating it, though.

Since a tree is essentially a huge floral arrangement, and floral arrangements are, by definition (not a huge fan of silk, me) ephemeral, why would you expect it to last very long? Besides, the needles fall off, don’t they? Not always, esp. if you’re careful about what sort of tree you buy. Still, the holiday is over by 12th Night/Epiphany, so why’s my tree still up? Aside from the fact that it still has its needles.

It makes my husband goofily happy. He grieves when it finally comes down every year on his birthday (mid-February) or right before Lent, whichever comes first. He grew up with Eugene-O’Neil-Irish-family Christmasses (ever seen the SNL Disfunctional Family Christmas skit?). And Christmas was pretty much the one thing my family was good at. Seamus has rejoiced in the folderol and fa-la-la of my family’s practice for 35 years and shows no sign of stopping. So the tree stays up and the outside lights stay on to brighten winter nights for as long as we can keep them. Unlike my mother (who lives in a bed-sit on our ground floor), I don’t actually have to fight him to take things down by that time. She’d leave her stuff up all year if I wasn’t able to convince her that it’s more fun when it comes out (the day after Thanksgiving, NOT the day after Halloween) if it’s been packed a way for a few months.

Besides, didn’t Dickens suggest that the world would be a kinder place if we all kept Christmas in our hearts?
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Read more by Devon.

Seattle Yarnbombing

Whimsical Dr. Seuss trees and light poles are springing up in Pioneer Square’s Occidental Park, thanks to local artist Suzanne Tidwell.
Tidwell is participating in yarn bombing, sometimes considered a form of graffiti, which uses colorful yarn instead of paint or anything permanent.

These “trees in sweaters” photographed by Miriam Bobkoff

This photograph from a local article. To read more…

What is the music played by a silent oboe?

http://www.myraburg.com

Embroidered Worlds

Kristen Chursinoff

Ultra Yarn Bombing: Installations by Olek

Street Crochet artist Olek–http://agataolek.com/home.html

Thanks to Isabel W.S.
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And check this out! Sudasi just sent it–
Yarn-bombed music video by Seventeen Evergreen - http://boingboing.net/2011/11/04/yarn-bombed-music-video-by-seventeen-evergreen.html

Wendover Yarnbombing by Carol Hummel

Yes, this is Wendover, Utah–the abandoned airforce base. This installation–or major yarn bombing–was done by Carol Hummel.The buildings are still here–I can see some right now–but alas the crochet was temporary.

The artists writes: The Wendover works were completed during a Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) art residency in Wendover, Utah during the summer of 2007. The pieces utilized 300 crocheted “cells” ranging in size from 12” to 36” in diameter. Building upon ideas in earlier work – masculinity vs. femininity, man’s intrusion upon nature, comfort vs. confinement – this series explores the repercussions of injecting (wo)man-made objects into the Utah environment. When the cells intrude upon the existing environments, they form vibrant viruses. Oozing out of mountains and over buildings and bunkers, blossoming in the stark white Salt Flats, the viruses are beautiful – colorful, intriguing, mysterious – as well as dangerous – intruding upon the natural landscape, covering and smothering native plants and habitats, injecting synthetic material into natural environments. They shift between organic and artificial, decorative and deadly.

http://carolhummel.com

I just found this to be an amazing response to a landscape I’m grappling with.

Sneakers on the Wire

I’ve been looking at a fantastic book–YARN BOMBING–The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti by Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain. They have a sneakers on the wire pattern. To go with it, I thought I’d reblog my obsession with the same.

We took a nice walk under the moon, down by the river, which was dry. But cold air welled up out of its canyon and refreshed us. This neighborhood contains the edges of so many things–rich and poor, rural and urban, shabby and chic. Really mostly shabby, but my affection for it makes it charming in its details.
And as always walking back home I wondered: who threw that pair of tied together sneakers over the telephone wire. And why?
I asked around. A common response was: drugs, it signifies a drug house. Or–bullies stole them and tossed them up. Or–a party! Drunken revelry! Sports victory!
Then the practical–someone had time on his or her hands. And a pair of sneakers.
My friend Julia Deisler wrote them a tiny bit of homage:
‎”… under the moon and on winter nights when low-lying snow-laden clouds and reflective snow make their dangling silhouettes newly visible and mysterious (or something like that)”

But then Rich, my live in reference librarian, referred me to http://www.snopes.com/crime/gangs/sneakers.asp
A look at this site basically agrees–it might be drugs, turf, a party, bullying, etc. etc.
Mostly I just like that those sneakers are there. They dangle, a marker in the urbanscape that might or might not mean something. Someone else had suggested that maybe they were an art installation, like at SITE Santa Fe–perhaps a bit inadvertent.
Beauty is everywhere.
And that evening, walking home, I catch a glimpse through the laundromat window, of a man and a woman folding a large white sheet together.