Author Archives: Jess

Umm…

I’m pretty proud of myself today. I braved a little fiber arts store and an art supply store today. With. Three. Kids. Three ANGELIC children. We had fun! They came when I called them and for the most part didn’t touch things they weren’t supposed to!! And Jonah didn’t scream. NOT ONCE!! I came home with a new sketch book and some rug hooking supplies. I stumbled on this yesterday and my mind has been flooded with ideas. Little quilts–why didn’t I think of that? It’s like drawing and painting with fabric and thread!! I have some friends who do rug hooking, so I’m excited to transform some sketches of my tress and back yard birds into little works of art.

Anyway, not too much drawing today, but all that’s required is some—and it doesn’t have to be good.

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Laddie

I read Laddie by Gene Stratton Porter last week. It was so wholesome and lovely and uplifting. It filled me with graditude for my family—my exemplary husband, my creative children, and my dream to educate them and grow with them. The Stratton family is my model. We will be like them, and someday Barry and I will stand in the place where we started and look out over what we’ve created and be overcome and overjoyed. It is a book I will read over and over—by myself and with my family.

check out Barry’s gallery update!

His entry today will be much more exciting than mine. We went in the back yard and tried out the kids new sleds. They’re just pieces of foam laminated to slippery plastic and they go fast! It was a beautiful winter day.

Here are some pictures from last week, or I guess the week before last:

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(The first picture is bigger because the lighting is so much better. The second one kind of gives you an idea what the finished product looks like.)

“Wooly” is knit with my handspun French Angora yarn and stuffed with clean, but unspinnable angora fluff. She now has a little red scarf and a teddy bear buddy named “Gordon”– I guess pictures for another time.

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, but just can’t figure out how to write about it. I feel this urgency, need, drive, desire–something like that, I don’t know what word to use–to make art.

“One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.”

That’s a quote from Oliver Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstacy, and it’s been going through my head today. The problem is–I feel the must, but I can’t!!! I can’t draw!! It is overwhelmingly frusterating. I am so out of practice…

Anyway, knitting and spinning just aren’t doing it for me.