You Can Lead The Bird To The Berries But...

This weekend the cedar waxwings descended on my Yamazakura Cherry tree.

 

 To fill their bellies full of bitty ripe cherries...

Most of the time they are so busy, bobbing and weaving and picking and flitting, that it's all I can do to snap a few shots...



This year to my great surprise, I noticed a pair of waxwings perched on a branch and staying put.

Slowly I moved to where I could see what was going on and set my camera on continuous burst...



At first, I thought it was a loving couple but when I watched the back and forth that followed, I recognized the behavior immediately...

It was exactly the same behavior that I observe at my feeders in late Spring when new bird parents bring their fledglings to the gourmet smorgasbord that I set out for them.

The newly fledged birds sit there dumbly amongst all the seed and continue to chirp for their parents to bring their food even though the food is right in front of them.

And so that's what was happening here.  The fledgling is on the right and the Mama is on the left trying to teach the young adult how to forage and eat his own berry...

Time and again the adult passed the berry to the youngster...

And time and again the little one would try to get the berry centered in his beak...and not quite get it...

And not knowing what to do, he would pass the berry back...

And Mama would pass it back again.  

This time I thought for sure that the baby bird would get it.  I mean that berry is pretty well centered in his beak.   I think Mama was thinking the same thing...

But no.  It wasn't going to happen.  

Just when the kiddo decided to do the flip...the quick motion of tilting back the head and letting go of the berry so he could quickly gobble it up...it got off center...again...

And he passed it back again...

And she tried again...

And he aborted again.  

It reminded me of when I used to put cheerios on Jack's highchair and he would pick them up and try to feed me...and I would eat one...and pass one to him and he would shake his head no and laugh, with his lips pressed shut...and pass one back to me to eat...and so it went...

Except Mama wasn't eating this berry-o and this little guy wasn't getting the idea that he was supposed to.

It went on for minutes.  I have hundreds of pictures of this dance.

Until finally, he squished the berry in his beak and just like that, it was gone.  Down the hatch...

A little cheer erupted from my heart as I watched Mom fly off to pick another...

And Junior just sat there, waiting around...not even trying to pluck his own berry...

For the sake of that Mama bird, I hope I observed the first berry eating lesson of the day and not the tenth!

And we think human parents need patience.

[Note:  Last year's Cedar Waxwing post is here if you're interested.]

[Back update:  Thanks for all the back well wishes.  I'm still lying on my belly and typing this.  Can't sit for any length of time still but I am slowly getting better.  Here's hoping I'll be stitching by the end of the week.]

A Second Pair of Hands

If you had to stitch 118 goldwork leaves on a honeysuckle vine, how many leaves do you think it would take before you felt like they began to flow from your needle?

All of the leaves on this honeysuckle vine have a very predictable shape so it shouldn't take too long, right?

Oh, if it were only that easy.  There are so many variables to account for and I am only now beginning to find a rhythm...on leaf number 86.

Working with Japanese gold thread, couching stitches every 2mm or so, maintaining the twist of the gold, manipulating the koma in a predictable and practiced way, making good corners, etc.

There's a lot to understand.  First, the thread.

Japanese gold thread comes in a hank and it must be split in half and wound onto two wooden spools called koma.  It is very important that the thread be wound onto the spool under tension.  I am using size number 3 and it's imitation gold...



To understand the importance of having the thread under tension, you have to understand how the thread is made.  Gold (real or imitation) is laminated to mulberry paper, cut into strips and then wrapped around a silk core.

While stitching, the wraps can become loose allowing more of the silk core to show through.  This also makes the thread less taut and more wimpy.

Here is a picture of the gold thread that has loosened near the cut end...

It's not the greatest picture but you can see the lines along the thread where a bit of the silk core is visible.

By winding the koma, I can tighten and untighten the twist of the thread.  In the picture below, I have tightened the gold thread; the wraps are closer together and the thread takes on a wire-like quality.



This is how you want the thread to be when you couch it down.  The gold thread shines to optimal effect when the thread is laid this way.

That being said, to turn corners the thread needs to be softened in order to make sharp points and corners.  My honeysuckle leaves don't require as sharp a corners as my cherry blossom petals but I still have many corners to turn.  Softening the twist of the gold at the turn keeps the thread from crimping.  Once I've made the turn, I have to retighten the twist of the thread again and off I go to the next turn.

This means that there is a constant manipulation of the thread wrapped around the koma as I stitch.  Wrapping to tighten the thread, couching the thread, and then loosening the wraps at the corner to allow for an easier turn, and then tightening the thread again to couch down the straightaway section of the leaf.



This dance of the koma, together with the starting and ending the threads for each leaf, means that each leaf can take a good deal of time.  For me, about 22 minutes.  (*wink* That's what that Toggl timer is for).

Next Japanese embroidery post, I'll try to post some pictures of turning corners since a few of you have asked about that.

Needless to say, these koma are very handy tools and I use them anytime I need to couch a non-stitchable thread on a project.  This extra set of hands allows you to keep your thread under good tension so that the couched line is nice and smooth.

Koma are most often sold in pairs and can be made from a variety of woods.  The most important thing when selecting koma is the weight of the wood that is used.  The heavier the better.

The weight plus the squared off ends keeps the spool from rolling and helps to anchor the koma firmly in place.  They really are like a second pair of hands.

You can buy koma from the Japanese embroidery center here .

But don't expect to master their use overnight.

Hundreds of curlicues...118 leaves, and hundreds more turns...

Practice is the teacher.  

That's one thing that the Japanese understand.  Ten phases to teach you.  To test you.  And then you are ready to begin.  

The hardest part for me is staying in the chair.  Resisting the temptation to do something else.  And no, it doesn't get easier. 

Showing up.  Sitting down.  Keeping my butt in the chair.  Stitching for a minimum of two hours every day.  

It's starting to happen.  Competence.  Predictability.  Flow.

The Japanese understand that there are no short cuts to gaining skill.  It's work; it can be hard.

I'm getting better at the struggle.  I'm winning more and more.  My butt is staying in the chair.

On Looking

At the Kimono exhibit in New York City, after I had spent hours absorbing and photographing the works on display, I realized that I had lost track of my husband Jim.

I found him here...



Completely absorbed in I knew not what.

Not wanting to interrupt his meditation, I paused to take in the sculpture which seemed to focus his attention...



In time, he saw me out of the corner of his eye and turned a somewhat faraway gaze on me.

I sat next to him and asked, "What do you see?"

And he said,

"I've been watching this fountain for about an hour.  Of all the people that have walked by this sculpture, less than 50% have bent down to look below the screen.

Of those that bent down, only 1 in 10 have stopped to read the placard on the wall."



"And of those who have read its description, only 3 of them have sat here and checked it out.  I'm one of the three."

I realized I was in the category of walking by without even seeing it.   After all, it wasn't a textile, it wasn't embroidered...I had dismissed it as merely "setting the stage" for the exhibit.

"It's a fountain, and for the life of me I haven't been able to see the water flowing over the edge of the rock, yet it is.  I've been sitting here trying to see the water move and I cannot.  It's really quite brilliant."



I sat beside him, trying to see the water move.  I got up and moved closer.  I squatted down...but no.  I couldn't see the water move either...but it was.  There was a constant flow that wet the top and sides of the sculpture without once rippling or bubbling or breaking surface tension.  It really was brilliant and I hadn't even seen it.

I was reminded of something that author Alexandra Horowitz had written...

Right now, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you.  You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. 

By marshaling your attention to these words, helpfully framed in a distinct border of white, you are ignoring an unthinkably large amount of information that continues to bombard all of your senses:  the hum of the fluorescent lights, the ambient noise in a large room, the places your chair presses against your legs or back, your tongue touching the roof of your mouth, the tension you are holding in your shoulders or jaw, the map of the cool and warm places on your body, the constant hum of traffic or a distant lawn-mower, the blurred view of your own shoulders and torso in your peripheral vision, a chirp of a bug or whine of a kitchen appliance.

It's from her book titled,  On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, in which the author writes of eleven different walks in New York City, most of them through her neighborhood, with eleven different companions.  First, she walks by herself and notes everything she sees.  Then she goes with her toddler, a geologist, an artist, her dog...you get the idea...and records her discoveries as her "familiar" surroundings are new again when seen through the senses of her companions.  I thoroughly enjoyed the read and found myself wanting to take a walk with Sidney Horenstein, a geologist who works for the Natural History Museum and gives geological tours through Central Park.

I came close to that experience a couple of years ago when fellow crazy quilter and blogging friend Betty Pillsbury came to visit.  Betty drove eight hours to Maryland from the Catskill mountains of Vermont.  By the time she arrived, her body was cramped from the car and needed to move so  I took her for a walk on the Grist Mill Trail along the Patapsco River where I walk many times per week.



Once we crossed over the bridge, Betty started pointing out all of the botanical names and uses for many of the plants along the trail.   Not only is Betty a talented quilter and embroiderer, she's also an herbalist.

Her knowledge of botany completely transformed the surroundings I thought I knew so well.  To this day, I smile and think of Betty when I see the Jack-in-the-Pulpits bloom in the Spring or when I spy the Mullein leaves which I now know to be nature's best wipe when you're in the woods and haven't got toilet paper!



Yesterday Jim and I went on that same walk which for us has grown fairly routine.  After walking in silence for some time my thoughts returned to Betty and how the walk was so different for me once I saw it through her eyes.  My wandering thoughts led me to my closest companion, so I asked of Jim...

"What do you see?"

"See that bit of the river, right there?" he said, pointing to an area where the water was running quickly around the rocks, "I thought that would be a perfect spot to show to a group of students.  It's an eddy current.  See how the water flows really fast on either side of that rock but there is a pool of water that stagnates and kind of swirls back around upstream?  That's an eddy.  Once you understand an eddy current you can much better understand heat transfer and using a fluid to cool a surface..."

And he went on to talk of thermal dynamics as we walked along the river holding hands and contemplating the efficiency of various surfaces for cooling fluids such as air.

What a rich world we live in if only we would could see it all.

What do you see?  Even more importantly, what don't you see?

P.S.  It turns out that the sculptor of the fountain above was Isamu Nogichi (1904-1988),  a well-known Japanese-American artist and landscape architect who has his own museum in Long Island, NY and whose sculpture I've passed many times on the Associated Press building at 50 Rockefeller center. He had a fascinating life that included a volunteer stay as an artist in a Japanese internment camp during WWII.  He was almost imprisoned for treason but the intercession of the Civil Liberties Union saved him.

The Making of a Masterpiece: Lessons from the Littlest

Last Christmas, my family drew names for gift giving so that each one of us had one person to "buy" for...we were limited to $40.

I drew my littlest niece.

Having purchased one of those fancy acrylic paint sets (with a coupon),  I had the main item of my gift.  Next, I bought a huge empty canvas (with another coupon) and "wrapped" it.  I printed out a goofy picture of my niece and dressed her in tie-dye shorts, Converse and an art smock with a painter's palette and a brush to hold. 

I also took an old stained white shirt of Jim's and made her a smock to wear like the one I put on her picture...

On the back was the invitation to come to my house...

To make a Masterpiece.  

We had our first date yesterday.

Since Masterpieces don't come easily, we warmed up by painting a few pictures on the paper that came in her kit. 

After an hour or so, we had a feel for the brushes and the paints and that's when the inspiration HIT!

A Unicorn!!!  A BIG One! It's magical and it's sparkly and it could have a rainbow tail, and it could be beautiful!  Oh!  And you have glitter?  OH!  We could add glitter!!!(clap clap, clap, jump, jump, jump)  There's was no stopping once the vision had taken hold.

She shopped for just the right unicorn on the web, printed out an outline of one onto a transparency, and then we borrowed an overhead projector from my neighbor across the street.

After tracing her design, she went right to work...

When it came time to paint on the gesso medium and apply the glitter...Katie, bar the door!

There can never be enough.  And if it gets all over you?  All the better. 

And if you can shower in it...well...

That's existential.

Utter peace settles over you as your transformation is certain...

And then...Euphoria hits.  You have the vision, coated in glitter, sparkling for all the world to see...

Bring it on!  

I have so much to learn from this kid. Which only became more evident when I sat down to write this post.  

Lessons from the Littlest

1.  Never pass up a chance to take a glitter shower.  Never.

2.  Abandon yourself completely to your art, even if it means you start looking like it.

3. Love what you do.  Love it so much that you look like it.

4.  Dare to be...

Different...

And others will follow.

5.   It's a Masterpiece.  It's You.  Sign it.

6.  Become expert at "TA-DA"!!

7.  Share your joy.

8.  Be Grateful.

I found this hidden underneath one of our paintings when I was cleaning up.  Icing on the cake of an already delicious day.

I should be the one saying thank you.

Thank you.