Or nue dragonfly

Or nué (literally gold shaded) is a kind of goldwork perfected in the 15th century in Europe. Strands of Japanese gold or other gold threads are couched down with different colors of thread to create the image. As I was stitching this piece, I had about half a dozen needles threaded with the different colors [...]

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Starting again

It’s not as though I hadn’t done this technique before–putting felt over the string padding before attaching the gold purls. I discovered that the felt provided a firmer shape and sharper outline for stitching the gold when I made a wedding album for my son and his wife in 2003.

This was a practice cloth. I’ll [...]

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Drug use and the counter-culture

My posts about the counter-culture 19th and 20th centuries, have generated a few comments. (Go back and have a look at them.) Although I was not a hippie–too old and too achievement-oriented at the time, I did smoke marijuana. Here’s the evidence:

I even bought a pound of it from a friend in Berkeley and [...]

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Hippies, Transcendentalism, and balance in my life

It was frivolous and flippant of me to compare the 19th century Transcendentalists and those influenced by their thought with hippies. Rather, they were the counter-culture of their day. Just as in the 1960s and 70s in the U.S., there were many varieties of expression of Transcendentalism among those who were part of [...]

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Having a day off

I have re-learned a bit about handling these smooth purls, by practicing. And I have found that Sulky is not good with goldwork. It was very difficult to remove the Sulky, and even as slowly and carefully as I did it, some of the edges of the purls caught on the paper and were snagged [...]

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Struggling

As I wait for delivery of the gold supplies I’ve ordered, I’ve been using materials at hand to try stitching the gold S correctly on a practice cloth. First, I used gold sadi. This purl is slightly larger than the gilt purl I plan to use.

This is better, but still not good enough. I haven’t [...]

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Stitchin Fingers

Hear ye! Hear ye! In case you haven’t already discovered it, Sharon Boggon has done it again. She has initiated yet another venue bringing together people who are interested in and/or making things with textiles and fibers and anything else that can be combined with textiles and fibers. You can visit and join this social [...]

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Women Artists Win!

This is the title of an essay in the current New York Review of Books that I urge you to read. Ingrid Rowland writes about women artists throughout Western history. She begins with painters, but in the middle of the third column, she argues that art is not limited to painting and proceeds to go [...]

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Earlier goldwork

So far I have removed the gold purls and the pearl purl outline. Before doing so, I added a few other stitches so that I could see how the Sulky would tear away. There’s still the cleaning up of threads and removal of the string padding to do. Allie, you were absolutely right. It feels [...]

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I have decided

Having sent an order for gold purl and other supplies to Tanja Berlin, I am going to put on a Teaching Company DVD, sit comfortably in my recliner, and, using my Sit-on-It frame holder to hold the frame so I can use both hands, I will laboriously and carefully unstitch the S. Then I will [...]

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