Turns out that spirals are to be found everywhere I go, especially iron spirals. I’m beginning to think that there’s nowhere on this planet where I would be bereft of my twirly friends.

My favorite spirals from this trip were from the 11th century, covering a church door in a tiny French village.

Inside the sanctuary were a wooden Madonna and Child from the 13th century, of the kind I’ve only seen at the Metropolitan Museum, and a wooden Jesus on the cross, dressed like a monk and looking oddly friendly. He has been in this same church since the 10th century, with the first written account being from 1130-something when a monk came to see him on pilgrimage. Blows my mind – the longevity of handmade things, and the power of objects.

I hardly took any pictures in our busy 3 days in Scotland, but here’s the cupola at the train station in Edinburgh, taken as we ate breakfast before catching the London train:

During our handful of hours in London I apparently only took pictures of the ground. It amazes me what variety there was in just a few blocks. I took a couple more when we visited Perpignan, in the southern tip of France. I’m loving them all together in the mosaic.

And yes, those are my shoes. Oh how I love them.

Walking in New York, you see spirals everywhere. Or at least I do. I’ve started photographing them – these ones from the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn:

The more you look, the more you find.

In other news – I’ve been tagged for 2 memes in just a couple of days. I have my thinking hat on and I’ll post soon…

I have circles on the brain.

Shula, of Poppalina, has started a flickr group called Mosaic Monday. Mosaic Maker is the whatever-it-is that tiles your chosen pictures – it’s good playin’.

I took these photos on Sunday while we ran errands in Greenpoint; searching out the rumored new kitchen store, where we happened upon a demo on Gefilte fish, and exploring the Polish bookstore with it’s strange and exciting Easter finery. They also have an exceptional collection of commemorative Pope John Paul paraphernalia if you’re ever in need.

I passed the green boots, sitting out like that, on my way home tonight.

Meabh Warburton’s post, Disappointing Day, sends my thinking in several directions:

To delightful collections of useless objects similar to her son’s bowl of broken pencil leads. I have a small jar filled with the little zig zag ends I cut off zippers at a time when I was sewing dozens of zipper bags.

In the same drawer I keep a box of cat whiskers, picked up off the floor with a “thank you!” to the cat who gifted it.

My thinking also goes to how difficult yet necessary it is to fail in the studio. It’s good to hear Andy Goldsworthy saying he makes a lot of crap when I admire his work so much. I’ve also heard that the Modernist painter Rawlston Crawford said “I reserve the right to make bad art”; a good reminder not to get too precious about results.

But when time in the studio is limited, and desperately needed, I need the encouragement that comes from success. Or at least from being satisfied with the general direction. To finally be working, and then look at the piece and see it’s limitations; that’s hard. So it’s good to know that I’m not alone, and to hear about the bad days.

Noodling around the internet today; I landed at Magpie & Cake where I saw this photograph of artist Chris Cobb’s installation, There is Nothing Wrong in this Whole Wide World, at Adobe Books in San Francisco.

Reading the quote from an interview with Cox I found this:

In some Native American cultures, if you make something, you have to then sleep with it next to you overnight, so that the object is transformed through your dreaming.

A little synchronistic encouragement from the universe after my last post.

I love objects organized by color beyond any reasonable explanation. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction and pleasure similar to when I color matched my mother’s sewing supplies as a child.

Something I still do with my own.

Stash is almost as good a word as swatch. It conjures squirrels, eccentrics, and tubs filled with yarn – all good things.

Liza sent me this article which argues that we should change the way we think about our stashes of craft supplies and consider them instead a collection. There must be something in the air because the Yarn Harlot had just posted about “pet skeins” of yarn, and The Next Stop Will Be was coming out about his accumulation of watches.

I love collections, like with like. As a young teenager I told my grandmother that I wanted to collect something, and soon afterwards she gave me three small boxes.

The silver one in the middle is from her time in India and still contains red pigment used for bindis.

Over the years those three boxes were joined by more, like this one from a friend who traveled to China:

and these four in my bathroom.

Good thing she didn’t get me started on something large!

Looking through my photographs I found these four that belong together:

unfurling on a fence in Astoria, Queens,

my new blue glass,

favorite pajama bottoms,

and the fireworks last July 4th.

Some of my holiday ornaments are still up, I can’t bear to put away the snowflakes hanging on my windows just yet. They’re cotton crochet that has been blocked and sized to make a rigid ornament. In the daytime they look like ink drawings on the sky, and at night they reflect the light, white against the darkness outside.

Looking at them day after day has brought me back to drawing mandalas. There’s something so soothing about developing a pattern from the center out, and magical in the way I can’t anticipate what will happen as it grows.