Thinking out loud

Only one more Daily Notes strip is needed to complete my year of stitching. I need to lay them all out and see what 2016 looked like. Each week I also sewed the scraps together into a larger quilt-top- very randomly. I've done some nui-shibori on it and overdyed it in indigo, and the piece is already being stitched up with imagery related tot he brain and perception. I'm hoping to finish and display it with the Skirkanich work I did over the summer at the exhibit we'll have at Westttown School in March.

That leaves me wondering about next year. I really enjoyed having an "assignment" for myself to work on each week. Although by the time August came it started dragging, I rallied through the Fall to finish strong. It's strange how over the summer, when I have all the time in the world I work less than during the school year when I'm busy beyond measure. 

I've been debating about a project for 2017. I don't want to continue the daily note strips. I want to start something different. The weekly format fit well with my schedule, but the size of the weekly piece must remain small enough to complete in a week.

 I liked the photo collages I made last spring, but the collaborative aspect collapsed. I think I could keep up with a photo a day or at least a few a week. These are 2 versions of a photo collage layering up, filtering, and thresholding images I took this past week during a trip to Quebec. The threshold effect loses some of the imagery, abstracting it a bit. I could print the images on fabric and then stitch over them. I could screenprint them...

 I saw an interesting exhibit at the Musee National des Beaux Arts du Quebec by Diane Morin. Rows of model trees were set up in front of strips of LED lights which projected the shadows of the trees onto a large screen. As the light program strobed sequences of light combinations across the rows, the shadows flickered and shifted, like watching stop motion videos of plants growing or like watching trees fly by your car window on a foggy day. It was entrancing.. she called it "Machines a Reduire le Temps" or Machines for compressing time.

Also at the MNBAQ I saw a retrospective of Pierre Bonnard, whose color sense I have always loved. There were several snapshots in a case, some of which were everyday scenes of people in his life, and others looked like visual sketches working out painting compositions. There were several self-portraits I'd never seen before. He seems to always put his face in shadows so you can't really see his eyes.

Maybe I should do some more self-portraits. It's a way of freezing time. We change so much as we get older. My inside vision of myself and my outward appearance don't really match anymore. My daily notes project started with thinking about each day as a pixel of the bigger picture of life. The final view of all the strips should reveal how my year really was. Perception as a concept is something I'd like to keep exploring...

Another idea I had was to do something called "The Sky is Falling". All the news every day seems to cause a doomsday feeling. I'm worried all the time. If so many terrible things can happen everywhere all the time, what is there to stop it from happening here? But maybe it's just the media playing Chicken Little with me. Art is cathartic. So a thought I had was to screen a picture like this of the sky and stitch my worries or concerns each week- images? words? fragments? a piece of sky falling. Maybe I could print  it large and cut off fragments...

I don't know yet... 

I will finish my last daily notes strip tomorrow.

I'll take photos this next week.

I'll think some more.

Skirkanich 5

When I think about the brain and MRI imaging I always thing of Rorschach blot symmetry. We have bilateral symmetry in our bodies, but not every function in the brain occurs bilaterally. Activity may be localized to one region of the brain in charge of a particular specialty, but even then information passes all over to communicate to the body for movement or the mouth to speak, etc. During our lecture on force networks the idea of paper crumpling came up as something that creates a network of folds and tension points. I wanted to combine these to ideas visually but I didn't want an folds or crumples in my final paper. I started some inkblots on a piece of folded mylar, then transfer printed it to watercolor paper (I might want to try a different, smoother paper as I didn't like the resulting texture in this one) I made  bunch of those, adding some watercolor by reprinting over the india ink. I did try crumpling one of my watercolors, but guess what? Thick watercolor paper doesn't like to crumple!! I folded a piece of newsprint in half so my crumple would have bilateral symmetry, then overlaid it on my inkblot and used a seam ripper to poke holes through the papers to transfer the crumple nodes to my painting. Finally I stitched black thread to create edges between the poked nodes. I'm going to take all my experiments with me on Monday to share with the group. Depending on feedback I may continue doing these or maybe continue my polka dot nodes instead.
However, there is still something dissatisfying with these. I'm really only exploring the basics of what a network looks like in these pieces. There is no corresponding data resource that I am trying to visualize. I feel they would be more meaningful if they were connected to a data set in the real world.... But what should that be and how will I find it?

Skirkanich 4

Something about all our talk of networks and topology and brains made me think about hyperbolic structures and crochet. Crocheting mirrors some network structures. I think of a crochet stitch like a little pi symbol, with a loop at the top (a node) and two legs (edges). A hyperbolic surface curves to maximize surface area. In physical space it takes up 3 dimensions, but topologically it is flat. If you have an endlessly branching network (each node subsequently branches off to two new nodes ad infinitum) eventually you run out of physical space to place the next generation of nodes as they branch outward and the surface begins to curve. The brain appears to have folds and ripples like this- it's one way to pack a lot of surface area into a small space. I made this small hyperball in a rainbow variegated yarn, which when complete reminded of the fMRI colorations showing activity and connection. I might make another in white and then stain specific areas.

Just as I felt a need to explore the topology idea in my previous post, I also want to explore different network structures. I played with "inking" this polka dot stamp I had with gradations of watercolor. It's beautiful, subtle color. The polka dot stamp creates a consistent and reproducible field of nodes upon which to play. I first did a little pencil and watercolor work (below) inspired by some discussion of the "Plinko" game.

Then tried a branching network, stitching the edges and then painting in the resulting negative space- the holes. I didn't quite understand the lecture we had that discussed brain topology and "holes". Have to think about ti some more. I'm still playing.

Skirkanich 3

I'm sure we were given an intro to topology during our lecture week because it helps consider networks as something to be analyzed independent of physical space. To think about connections and networks in the brain, you might need to pull them out of their tightly clustered physical confines and examine them simply in terms of numbers. But the concepts of topology itself blew my mind! I'm accustomed to the middle school level of geometry and understanding the structures of cubes etc in physical space. Imagine being able to stretch apart the vertices however far necessary to just look at the structure of vertices connected by edges. The visual possibilities sparked my curiosity.

On the way home on the last day of our lectures I happened upon the overflowing dumpster outside of the School of Design. Among the discarded sculptures I found a little model of a tetradecahedron made of thin cardboard. It seemed such a perfect little model of the math ideas we'd heard about over the week. I was reminded of Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs piece, and so I painted the cardboard form in a complementary gradation, painted a geometric version of it unfolded, painted a topological version of it stretched out, and painted its definition. They are all visualizations of the same object. They all represent a tetradecahedron (or cuboctahedron). Which version would allow someone to understand the object best? Do you need to know what something is in physical space? Would a definition provide enough information? If you saw it topologically would you make the jump to geometry easily?

I think where I am going with this is that this is why we are involved in this internship at Penn. There is more than one way to understand information- and maybe you can't fully comprehend a science until you look at the information backwards, forwards, flattened, stretched, and insideout.

Skirkanich 2

Today marked the beginning of my internship in network visualization at UPenn. Our cohort of 6 artists and 6 high school students listened to lectures on creativity, networks and cognition. My favorite was Scott Barry Kauffman from the Positive Psychology center and the Imagination Institute 

He spoke quite a bit about the development of creativity and the personality characteristics associated with being a creative individual. He related much of what he explained to children and teachers, which made it all feel very relevant to me. It's ok to daydream. There's lots of kinds of intelligence and paths to becoming successful. The "foot in the door" is a good way to find your path towards your dream. And the noise or default mode of the brain is where imagination and creativity thrive.

Speaking of creativity...

Executive function in the brain may inhibit creative response. If we can turn off the quick parts of our brain that want to name things and filter out unnecessary information, then the slower daydreamy side can do its thing much more easily. Think of a everyday object. What is it's purpose? Boom!--your executive function just stormed in and got right to the point. A bat is for hitting a baseball, a chair is for sitting, a push pin is for holding papers to a board or wall. If that part of the brain can be reined in, the visualizing parts of the brain can play and make unexpected connections. A bat could become a railing on a staircase, a chair can become a bookshelf, and a pushpin could help you hold a miniature cob of corn to eat! I'm reminded of the artist Victor Nunes.

The toughest part of the day was comprehending our into to networks. It's really just a way of visualization information related to groups and their relationships. A group may be an individual, an idea, a organization, and they are represented as nodes. A relationship may be shared experiences, a social connection, a geographic relation,etc. and is represented as an edge or line connecting the nodes. Some nodes are more important than others in how they influence the dynamics of the system, and some system dynamics are better than others for transmitting information across the network. Proximity, bridging, popularity, and frequency all effect the influence of individual nodes. Ahhhhhhh my brain is about to explode thinking about all these things. I made the collage above to help me resolve the chaos of information...or maybe it just illustrates my chaos.
If you like visualizing information check out this website.

Daily notes 21-22

Last week my studio time was usurped by an urgent project, so I had no time to make a Daily Notes strip last week. I finally finished #20 on Friday night. Today I put together #21 and #22 to represent the past 2 weeks. Hopefully I can catch up and get back on schedule. I'm nearly halfway through a year committed to this project, and cannot bear to let it lapse.
I've had a gorgeous 4-day weekend for Memorial Day, giving me a taste of summer freedom. Only 12 more days of school left! Every year passes more quickly than the last...

Daily Notes 14-20

Somehow 6 weeks have flown by. Spring stayed cool until yesterday it decided to become 90 degrees. I survived PSSA testing and drama club. I voted. I taught kids how to weave and photoshop and build clay containers. Mama cat had kittens. I rode a bike to and from work nearly every day. I completed a second piece for a children's book illustration. I dropped off work for an alumni show at Moore. School is almost over, and my summer adventure at UPENN will start soon.
I've been doing this project for 5 months now. Life is looking colorful.

Skirkanich 1

I am very happy to share that I've been selected for the Skirkanich internship in Network Visualization at the University of Pennsylvania this summer. They are teaming up artists, scientists, high school students and an art teacher (me!) to explore visualizing scientific concepts- especially how the brain and other networks work. The first resource we've been asked to consider is the video above.
I love thinking about the brain. It's such a complex organ that controls everything we do and say. How do we end up being such unique individuals with different ways of thinking? How does creativity work? How is it possible that I can think about how I think??!? I love it. This video shares research about how semantics are stored in the brain. I've heard about there being a "language center" in the brain, but this video seems to refute the idea of language being only in one place. Words and their meanings and related categories are grouped all over the brain. I'd like them to do more study on how foreign language is stored in the brain and how the translations may be grouped. Is mere and maman and annecigim and mom all stuck in one spot in my brain? Is that why I mix up french and turkish and english words all the time? And why do I feel a throbbing or strain in my left temple area when I'm trying to think of a word? Or why do the words breakfast, lunch, and dinner seem interchangeable when they come out of my mouth? How do the words get from auditory processing to understanding to saying? Could there be too many connections?
I like how in this video they used color to help map out categories of words and where they lived in the brain. I also found it interesting how they kept changing the way the brain was represented- sometimes showing all the wrinkles, sometimes butterflying it out, playing with 2D and 3D versions.

I expect I will continue to post more about my experiences as I go through the internship- as long as I'm allowed to share openly.

Daily notes 8-9-10

Week 8 was very creative. My daughter won a regional Shakespeare Monologue contest, I got a bit carried away with teaching color theory, I turned 38, I helped my 7th graders make about 80 clay creatures (leaving my hands dry and cracked from clay all week), I showed my screenprinting students how to create Benday dots, and I had a lovely walk in the woods.

In preparation for week 9 I dumped out my scrap box and went digging. But it really is starting to feel a little stale now. If anyone wants to send me scraps of fabric I'd happily do a small exchange (just comment). My aunt sent me some, which will find their way into one of these strips sooner or later.

Week 9 brightened to match the warmer weather, perhaps. I was thinking about math and surface area, braiding, types of mark, different roles I have at work, a little Moroccan inspiration,and another walk in the woods. Someday I really need to find somewhere closer to the Wissahickon to live.

 The strip for Week 10 has begun. March has not started off very well- but every day is just a pixel in the bigger picture. I have to keep remembering that.

Two months worth of strips now hang in my studio. They are starting to really look like something substantial, and I have a glimmer of what this will all look like in the end. I am enjoying the daily ritual  of journaling and the weekend ritual of finding fabrics and stitching. It's becoming a positive habit.

Daily notes week 4

I've decided on a loose working title for this project, which will be "Daily Notes". i'm not thrilled by it, but the name is helping me organize pictures... I've kept this project going so far for 24 days. The assignment strategy is working to keep me focused and keep my fingers busy. Here is a bit of progress from week 4:

 All week long people were talking about the impending snowstorm to hit the east coast. or me this translated to lots of anticipation and waiting. It's been very cold. My magazine collages for the week seemed very dark, but then the fabrics I chose were rather light. So I overlaid a piece of itajime-dyed navy blue and white organza over the patchwork to tone things down a little.

Monday was filled with friends and family as I enjoyed a day off from school in honor of MLK. A visit with Anne Minich, one of my favorite artist friends helped me feel like this project is worthwhile. Her house reminds me o the descriptions I recently heard of Louise Bourgeois' home where the whole building exists in service of art. It's always inspiring to sit with her among her books and art and shells and driftwood.

Tuesday was long and tiring, but I had an amazing time with my basic design students at Fleisher exploring organic and geometric shapes in balance with each other.
The rest of the week was a rushed blur of end of the quarter grading at school and anticipation for the snowy weekend.
Again, Friday night found me rushing to my scrap pile. Before I emerged from my studio corner to think about dinner, 2 inches of snow had fallen from the sky. It snowed through all of Saturday, and I was in bliss, eating lovely food, stitching, and watching movies.
It's Sunday again, and icicles are dripping from the eaves. We shoveled out, but are in no hurry to go anywhere. This week's stitched strip now hangs with the others, and January is taking form and color on my wall. One more week and I'll have a month's worth complete.

New Year, New Project

I've always been exceptionally good at doing school assignments. I always found some way to fulfill the requirements but in a way that also satisfied my own sense of creativity. Having the prompt was what helped- some exterior stimulus to get the ideas flowing. But you only get assignments when you are in school. Although I'm "in school" every day, I'm always the one giving the assignments. I seem to be very good at coming up with assignments and interesting challenges for my students, but for some reason I seem to struggle with challenging myself in the same way.

I've been thinking about how to best arrange my life to allow for more personal creative practice. I don't want to reach the end of 2016 with so little to show for it as I did this past year. So, I've analyzed what works and what doesn't for me. Schedules and deadlines push me. Regular habits keep me consistent in work and exercise. 

I considered an "artwork-a-day" project but realized it would be too much pressure to complete something. Have to be realistic. But once a week might be doable. An every day habit of journaling is sustainable. I noticed I kept that up for 4 months last year. I can top that. Now, last year I made a piece that felt very personal and beautiful and expressive, which was prompted by an assignment in "The Artist's Rule", a book by Christine Paintner that the Cathedral used in a weekly book study last year. It was to make a book of days, marking your hours, finding moments for prayer and creativity. I made a long, narrow embroidered strip with color blocks representing each time period of my everyday schedule. As we are starting to go through the book again, I was reminded of the piece and the simplicity of it.

So assignment part 1: every day, jot down any significant events, feelings, colors, patterns, images, or experiences. Cut out a square of magazine paper colors, patterns, textures, etc. to collage into my sketchbook. By the end of the week I have a color sketch of a piece laid out along with a wealth of images, words, and sketches to draw from for inspiration.

Assignment Part 2: Sunday is art day. I know, I make art every day. But it's Monday-Friday middle school, Saturday community arts, and I'm exhausted helping other people be creative and annoyed to not be creative for myself. So on Sunday I'll use the results of Assignment 1 to gather fabrics that best match the color collage sketches. I iron and cut them into 3 inch squares to be sewn together as a strip.

Once the patches are sewn into a strip, I back it and topstitch it. The machine sewing is quick and gives the piece a finished look from the very start.

 Finally, I can spend most of Sunday afternoon or evening embroidering. But if it takes longer I can continue stitching through the week.

So far I have completed 2 strips. The first one only represents 3 days because January started on a Friday and I began the project on Sunday, January 3rd. For week 2, the longer strip was a challenge. I pieced it on Sunday, January 10th and got some stitching done. However, I stupidly chose seed stitch to fill a significant area, which took forever. I stitched a little through my substitute day, some more Wednesday night, and finally finished it on Thursday evening. Having the deadline of the weekend was good pressure.

I've so far managed to keep up the journaling for 15 days and finished 2 strips. I was so excited to get started this Friday evening, that when I came home from work I dumped out my whole scrap box to find the best pieces for the week so far, cut and sewed them up already. The strip awaits Saturday and  Sunday's colors now. 

This is the first time in months I've felt motivated to spend real consistent time in the studio. I hope I can keep this momentum, and that it won't be just another failed resolution. I think that sharing intentions helps build a sense of accountability. I am not going to stress about "having an idea",and I'm not going to worry too much about how it turns out. I am going to keep the format consistent and then see what happens over time. It will be an interesting experiment to see visually over time how I experience the world emotionally and visually. Happy New Year!!

competition and emulation

I had a good and unexpected conversation with a colleague this afternoon that made me think about work ethic and drive. We were talking about my alma mater, and I mentioned some individuals from my graduating class that I have felt in competition with ever since undergrad over a decade ago. At the time, my sense of competition was tinged with jealousy, almost a sibling-like rivalry for professor's attention, and later for career opportunities and recognition. But now I'm seeing this sense of competition as something incredibly healthy and vital for my artistic life. I have to keep working, teaching, exhibiting, BEING an artist, because these other people are DOING it, too. And I am. And it's what has led me to be who I am and doing what I'm doing.

In my first graduate education course at Tyler, my professor asked us to think and write about our former art teachers. Many people had positive memories, but my most memorable art teacher was one who frustrated me (while a great teacher, he'd always draw on my paper, which made me really mad- so I'd erase his drawing and do my own). As an art teacher now, I have a sense of pride and perhaps superiority because unlike him, I do not draw on my students' papers. It's a little silly, but it's something I hold myself to. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even bad experiences, frustration, rivalry can be as valuable as the caring, attention, and encouragement we receive from others. They can drive us to be better, push us to succeed, and prove ourselves. They keep us on the road to success.

Bella Vista Patterns

 I need to collect more imagery. The idea of neighborhood patterns is still playing in my brain. A walk around Bella Vista before my class at Fleisher yielded these. Above is the sanctuary door at Fleisher.

 These are two walls, the remnants of a recently knocked down building.There's all different wallpaper patterns- I find it fascinating to see these ghosts of buildings. I'm sure I'm not the only one. And I'm sure it's not the first time I've mentioned it.

I should walk around some more neighborhoods.

Summer studio

IS HOT!!!! I got into the studio around 10:30 today, and the lovely sun that streamed in Winter mornings keeping me cozy is now steamy light warming up the space a little too much! It was 88 degrees. Time to get a fan in there.... However, by noon the sun had shifted and some cool returned. Looks like I'll have to do afternoons over there instead of mornings. Despite the heat (why, oh why am I doing big pieces that drape over me while I work?!?), I made some progress on my graffiti sampler:

 And inspired by yesterday's museum visit I came up with an idea for a potential series and did a sketch:

 Just for fun, here's a peek in my sketchbook from another visit to the Wagner last week:

 Above is a pattern in some brain coral, and below a pattern in a sea fan. I love how patterns replicate themselves in a fractal way in nature, and systems in all structures mimic each other. How is space best filled? How to create flow? Grids and branching are found everywhere.

Mind Map

I'm having a great semester with my 11-13 year old silkscreen class at Fleisher (partly because my daughter is taking it for the first time too!). The group worked so efficiently, that we ended up having time for an extra project. One of the adults who takes an evening silkscreen class had left an awesome sketch behind that reminded me of a system or diagram, but which was very open-ended for interpretation, and it gave me a great idea for a project. I wrote out lots of words on slips of paper and had the kids pass a bowl, take a word, and sketch whatever the word brought to mind. After several rounds, they had lots of disconnected imagery. We played with the copy machine, duplicating, shrinking, and enlarging the images, then headed back to the studio and made a collage that would make the images make more sense. Another copy machine trip turned the collages into a photo positive to burn our screens. They printed, and then added color to one print with colored pencils. They cut it into an organic shape, cut out some construction paper arrows, and then headed to the main stairwell to combine all their prints into one installation that made sense or became a system. My daughter's print is at the very bottom and has a sleeping dreamer. The kids thought their images could be a dream system.... an excellent way to make all of these disparate images come together as a cohesive whole. I love working at a place that lets me work as an artist with kids, and lets kids have authentic artmaking experiences. They work in a real studio with real art materials, and we let the work transform and change depending on what happens there. It's easy when I have 8 kids to work with. I wish I could find a way to work more in this vein in my elementary school. Art teacher and teaching artist seem to be different roles, and a lot of it depends on the institution one works within.

How to pass the time

I have a new sketchbook. On Sundays my daughter has a 3 hour language lesson, and I stick around to socialize with the other parents. On our way in today she told me I should write and draw pictures in it for a story. I asked her what it should be about, and she said, "The fox who stole winter". I asked her to elaborate a little, and she proceeded to spin a tale of a fox who worried about skinny rabbits, and who wanted it to always be warm and sunny so the rabbits would come out and fatten themselves up on the grass. So I sat and drew this for the first half hour:

I think it would make a good myth- how the fox got his white-tipped tail... trying to sweep up the snow.

The brain is an amazing thing. Where do such ideas come from? What made her think of foxes? How did this image spring from my imagination and pen? How lucky I am to share a creative spirit with my child!



First Month

 Well, I managed to clock 20 hours in the studio in the moth of January. I'd like to aim for 40 a month (the equivalent of a regular work week a month, but those kinds of hours are going to have to wait for warmer weather when the building is a little nicer to stay in for longer than an hour!

 In those 20 hours I managed to nearly complete the window portrait I've been working on for over a year. I did some dye monoprinting for the background of a large wall piece and completed a small color study and picked out fabrics for it.

 I also experimented with some dye painting, and started a shibori landscape piece. And yesterday I finally pieced together the shibori and bridge printed piece at the top of this post. I don't feel like I got as much stitching done as I wanted, but my surface design experiments are going well. It's interesting to measure my artistic time and effort. Since I'm paying for the privilege of a working space now, I want to make it worthwhile.

This is a good start.

New Space!!

 I'm so very happy to finally have a studio! I have enough moved in now to start some work. After hauling boxes up the 4 flights of stairs this morning I sat in my new chair and started an ori-nui shibori piece inspired by the landscape panorama in my previous post. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but just the fact that I sat and made something there felt wonderful!

 One reason I couldn't resist renting the space was because of the great light through the 2 windows, and the view that looked out over Port Richmond to New Jersey. I can see the el and the trains passing, the church near my house, and the Betsy Ross Bridge from my 4th floor studio. It's worth the stairs.

Sometimes the city landscape is too much, though, and I long for trees. After my studio time this morning we headed down to Wyeth country and visited the Brandywine River Museum. The river at sunset was gorgeous. I love driving down Route 1 through the hills. It seems I always come down here at Wintertime when the landscape around Chadds Ford most matches Andrew Wyeth's stark watercolors. I'm filled up with the beauty of his contrast and restrained palette. I think I'm still going to stick with my love for the panoramic.

great color video for kids!

I really love OK GO.
They also have a great video inspired by Rube Goldberg machines:

sashiko and origami think-cloth

Last Winter I had my Stitch and Surface students do a sashiko project (a Japanese patterned quilting/mending tradition). As a sample piece I had done a little piece of black thread on white cotton sandwiched with a black calico and had stitched an intersecting key pattern onto it. So it's been sitting in my sewing bag all year waiting for inspiration. At first I thought I'd make a whole bunch with different patterns and then sash them together as a quilt, but who am I kidding!

 I haven't taken down the garland of paper cranes we made for Christmas yet- they're not Christmasy and they brighten up the winter doldrums- and as I stared at it I wondered if I could make an origami crane out of fabric. A scrap of orange and an iron later, I had a slightly floppy fabric crane and a sudden inspiration for that sashiko piece.

 Every once in a while I make a little "thinking cloth" to get ideas out of my head. I heard this week that we're receiving a ton of radiation due to massive solar flare activity. With the word  "radiation" in my head and these Japanese-style elements in my hands I started to think back to the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima last March. I wonder how things are in Japan nearly a year later...

The black areas of the radiation symbol are stitched in black running stitch, and the yellow areas are colored in with fabric marker. Then blue waves were added in, inspired by the warning symbol for tsunamis, and with a slight reference to "the Great Wave" by Hokusai. Two of the lines were whipped to make the edge stand out more.The orange crane was added last with a backstitch around the perimeter of each folded area, flattening it out. Finally the whole thing was bound in black double fold bias tape- my latest favorite finishing technique.
This piece might end up in my solo show with other "thinking cloths". What I love about it is how simple running stitch can work.

I've had a really relaxing Candlemas Sunday- stitching all morning, a gorgeous choral service at the Cathedral, and some good home cooking tonight. It certainly recharged my batteries for the coming week.