Blogger has gone a bit crazy on me, but I'm trying to keep up my glacial posting schedule and crank out one post per week so I'm just going to write below the photos and not log off and plan to come back later. Later seems to have a way of eluding me.
This week I've got a feather pendant which I made from a French pattern from L'atelier de mimi. Her blog is linked in the photo caption and has some beautiful examples of her plumes. The little butterfly is a charm from Gardanne Beads and the quatrefoil bead is turquoise dyed magnesite. The pattern uses 11/0's and 15/0's of the same color. I pulled out some dark bronze Toho beads that had been rolling around in the bead cabinet for some time. I got to whip up a fun piece and tackle my stash at the same time.
The final photos above are shots I took in the light box which my mom gave me a few years ago. This is fitting because I made the Blossom lariat for her. I wrote all about the piece in an earlier entry, but I will repeat that the blossoms are a pattern from Leslie Fraizer (Trumpet Flower Necklace, Beadwork Aug/Sept 2012). These flowers have captivated me. I just finished another lariat in a completely different (and very Pantone Spring 2013 colorway), but I still need to photograph it.
Finally, my husband has continued to build onto his mother's house in Mexico. A few years ago he had a bedroom/bath room suite built, and now he has bumped out the living room. He wants to make sure that his sisters' families will all have plenty of room to visit their mother during the year when he can not be with her. Unfortunately, all this building has really taken a toll on her beautiful garden. I have a feeling we will be working on that next. Below is one of the new windows in the living room and some calla lillies growing next to nopal cactus.
Two books caught my eye in the school library yesterday:
by Chloë Sayer
The colors on the cover are not quite as garish as they appear here, but they are bright, or I should say, Son colores vivos, because my classes are working on describing clothing they buy when shopping. The embroidery got me thinking about making a peyote cuff pattern based on Mexican indigenous embroidery. I bought a few pieces of Otomi embroidery while I was in Mexico this winter and I started thinking I needed to work up a design, but have not jumped on it yet.
I love the bright colors and mythical creatures. Even though I usually don't go for solid brights, to me, there is something so cheerful about these pieces. And as for designing, I have so much trouble with blending and pairing colors that using bold, saturated swathes seems to be what I need to remove a mental roadblock and make a pattern.
A few nights before Christmas, my husband and I went into a nearby town to visit his cousin who was selling his jewelry at a craft fair. David, who studies graphic design at school, gave up a job in marketing and joined a collective of artists from the state of Hidalgo who travel the craft fair circuit together. For some reason I did not take my camera, either because it was night or because it was too cold to take my gloved hands out of my pockets, but I have no pictures of a man working on embroidery like the piece above. He had drawn out the design on muslin, stitched around the edge of each shape, and was stitching across to fill in the shape. I could hardly move my fingers, let alone contemplate holding a needle. Below is a huge spray painted sign for an auto repair shop that David painted.
all over Mexico business advertise by painting on the walls outside of their shops - this is by David
David and his wife are Rastas. My husband, who is rather straight-laced, told me that his cousin was a hippie. We had to explain to him what being a Rasta was about. While we were looking at David's booth, my hubby kept picking up pieces and showing them to me and saying, "this one has another pretty flower/butterfly on it, maybe you would like to get it." Finally I had to laugh and explain that all those pretty flowers and butterflies he was seeing were marijuana leaves. The poor guy did have eye surgery a few weeks later so maybe it was just his poor vision, not his misunderstanding of his cousin's lifestyle that confused him.
David and his beautiful wife
The second book I grabbed is Sherri Haab's Beaded Macramé Jewelry:
She has a great technique in here for using a chain of lark's head knots to create a loop for a toggle or button. I have made a couple macramé bracelets recently and was looking for a better was to for a loop (better than just doubling the cord and tying a knot). The book is filled with gorgeous pictures which make me want to run and pull out some C-Lon or Griffin silk cord right now and get to work.
These pictures are from around town. I stayed in the tiny town of San Lorenzo Sayala (actually it is larger than Q'town were I live) and made frequent trips down the mountain to or through Tulancingo. Tulancingo was originally intended to be the capital of Hidalgo, but in the end Pachuca won out. I took many, many photos from the car as we drove around the states of Hidalgo, México, and Puebla. Most of these were taken on December 30th, the last day I was visiting. Inside cities all was concrete walls, usually brightly painted or sprayed with ads and announcements, outside the cities all was stone from fields. Everywhere it appeared as if the entire country was simultaneously being torn down and built up before my eyes.
View from the front of the house looking toward San Lorenzo Sayula
I really want to see the above view when the sunflowers are in bloom. All those brown dots in the foreground are dried sunflowers. Every where we went in this central area of México I saw sunflower seed heads. It must be glorious when they are in flower. Somewhere between the foreground and the houses in the background is a dry river bed. In fact there is also one that runs in a gorge some distance from the back of the house. One this particular bit of land is undeveloped so my mother-in-law has a nice view and doesn't look onto houses directly across the street.
Looking toward the church in San Lorenzo
We went to Mass on Noche Buena (Christmas Eve). My husband didn't want to go, but his mother is quite devoted so I decided we had to take her. Remi wanted to sit in the back row and his mother wanted to sit in the front row. We ended up in the middle. When Mass was over we spotted my father-in-law with his mother a few rows up. Remi's parents split up nearly 25 years ago, but his is a one-church town and they all get along.
Remi in the kitchen with his grandfather and grandmother
Remi's paternal grandparents have 12 children, 11 of whom lived. Despite the stern looks (and they are tough cookies!), their house was full of music during the holidays. I caught his grandmother dancing around the kitchen with about four of her daughters. She hid as soon as she saw me trying to take her picture.
...not much. Not too much beading, and none that has been in front of the camera. Before the holidays I finished a commission piece (Hi Jordan - that was your piece) that I really love, I made earrings that I took to Mexico for some of the ladies in my husband's family, and I made Diane Fitzgerald's celtic trefoil for my mother-in-law, but had problems with beads breaking (I think I officially hate Delica's ceylon bead).
None of this was photographed. I'm not certain what I was thinking other than it was might cold in mid-December just before I left and I do not have an indoor photo booth set-up. Maybe this is one of my resolutions/goals for the first part of this year.
When I returned home, I started playing around with Marcie Abney's pattern in the latest Beadwork.
Working with her contribution to the Simply Seeds column has gotten me thinking more about how I can combine small patterns into larger pieces. Repetition.
What is out back behind the house in Mexico
The cacti don't look giant until you get someone in front of them.
The view from the front porch of my father-in-law's house at about 7875 feet above sea level.
My father-in-law built this house, but is now building another in town because he is afraid the cliffs above will begin to fall on his house. The sheep like to knock on the front door in the morning to be fed.
Sheep coming to greet/beg for food. Check out the brick work on the window sill and at the roof line; he did that himself. All the timbers extend to the interior and across the ceilings inside.
I just got back from Hidalgo, México where I visited with my in-laws for two weeks. We did a bunch of touristy stuff like visiting Teotihuacan, Real del Monte, and a former hacienda in Santa Maria Regla and we visited and were visited by every living relative in Remi's family. I have a mountain of mail and laundry to deal with, dogs to walk, and work tomorrow so this just a little glimpse at the trip.
At Teotihuacan at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun with the Pyramid of the Moon behind.
Adding a rock
Feeling the power of the pyramid at the center of the top
We stayed until the end of the day
We ate and ate with the family. Some nieces and a nephew, and in-laws.
church and ruins at the former hacienda in Santa Maria Regla
Father-in-law Roberto and Remi inspecting the stone work. Roberto is a mason.
looking down on those barrel vaults with basalt prisms in the hills behind
looking up in Pahuatlan, Puebla
...and looking down
And now Blogger and I are having some communication problems so I will rename this Back from Mexico, Part I.
