TIF January 1

This is my first update for SharonB’s TIFC. Her January challenge is detailed here. I’m excerpting a bit of what she said here for easy reference. “The key concept for January is a feeling we have all had, the feeling of admiration for another. Ask yourself who do you look up to and admire? Why? What is it you admire about them?” And she also gave a color scheme. The two could be used together or one could be chosen alone.

When I first read through Sharon’s post, I said to myself, I’m definitely leaning toward the color scheme. And I started playing with my color chips. And dutifully thinking a bit about admiration. But a couple of days later some snippets of an email conversation bubbled up to the surface concerning admiration. These phrases “sitting at the feet” and “washing the feet” were linked together in my mind as the “feeling of admiration for another”.

So I’ve narrowed my focus in the January TIF to visually express the feeling of admiration by these linked thoughts. I’m someone who admires a lot of other people in a variety of fields. I always have this feeling of wanting to sit at their feet to listen and learn. This is side by side with the idea wishing to serve and acknowledging that the person whom I admire is a human being like me, with their own limitations, faults and sins. Now it’s not that I want to point out these flaws to them or others but to serve them and to keep my perspective realistic about the world we live in. For me this is a healthy guard on my admiration.

I think that is an overwhelming amount of stuff to try and communicate visually in one small piece slated to be finished January 31. I’ve done over ten sketches. And two mind maps. My latest version is using two links of chains, one chair spanning the two links and words. I decided on words by going back to thoughts of a needlework sampler that often contained words as well as an alphabet. I’m going to stitch according to the color scheme in general way, but I’m definitely going to be adding or subtracting colors as needed.

To turn a corner here, I want to point to another great comment that I received on Beaney and Littlejohn. This one is from Vero of Au Fil de Jardin concerning the Double Trouble pamphlet type books of about 24 large pages. This is just a great run down on a number of them from Vero, whose work I love. Many thanks, Vero, for this helpful comment. If you are not already familiar with her work through TaST, one of Sharon’s classes or other avenues, please do visit her blog. Or perhaps one of the best ways to see the full scope of her work is to visit her flickr account.

I’ve just noticed that included in the Beaney and Littlejohn’s pamphlet books is one titled Conversations with Constance. This is Constance Howard whose work SharonB highlighted in a delightful post this week. Perhaps someone who has read this would like to weigh in on this book or another book about her work. I must admit I’ve been spent more than a couple of hours at Goldsmith’s since reading about it. Many thanks to Sharon for that post. Update: Please note, Kay Susan at S’mockery has posted a wonderful article concerning Constance Howard and featuring two of her books. Many thanks to Kay Susan for doing that. And while there, please do look at her own exciting needlework, if you are not already familiar with it.

Tomorrow I plan to be posting on the Indian edging stitch again. That is, if I can snap some photographs between the raindrops that are forecast. The topic this time will be variation.