THRASHing it out

I woke up this morning knowing that I wanted to go to the studio and spend a good bit of time on the new rug.  And I did.

New rug.  New start. 

A thrashing-around time.  A sense that nothing's coming together yet. 

I did a lot of "reverse hooking" today, taking out parts from my first attempt that I thought were far too garish.  Then I re-hooked those parts in a more muted color and the result was...gray, gray, gray.  Not really...but that's how it's "reading" to me.  In short, it's way too muted now.  So tomorrow I go back in there and reverse hook some more.

...Thrash, thrash, thrash...

That's how it is when something new is underway:  very challenging.

Yet somehow, it was all good.  The day was sunny (now there's a good start, after all the gloom, rain, and cold) and warmish, with a strong breeze.  The light was great as it came in the studio windows.  I opened the windows and the breeze flowed in and the trees were singing as they danced in the wind and I could hear kids shooting hoops in the park across the street.  I listened to a dharma talk during the first hour and the work was very meditative.

I trust that I will figure this out, that this creative process will emerge into something intriguing.  And I plan to enjoy every loop along the way.
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Meanwhile, the ArtLounge got in touch to say another 15 people have signed up for next Thursday's class.  I am thrilled and can't wait to meet them.  What fun!
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Last night I experimented more with the scratchboard tiles I was talking about in the last post.  Unlike my previous attempt, this time I actually did manage to find both a gold underlay tile and a silver underlay tile.  I had promised someone on Facebook that I would show her what those two looked like, so I did a quick tangle on each and set about taking a picture to upload.  OMG--these tiles are so hard to photograph.  The highly reflective gold and silver surfaces resulted in a lot of color distortion.  In actuality, there is no color distortion on the tiles at all.  Here they are:

GOLD UNDERLAY ZENDALA

SILVER UNDERLAY TILE WITH FEATHERFALL TANGLE

Now having played a bit with the scratch board tiles, I realize that I am not that keen on using a stylus to tangle (even after I realized I could sharpen it in a regular pencil sharpener).  And in the end, I prefer using gold or silver metallic pens on black tiles, rather than scratch board tiles.  But they were fun to try, and I think kids would totally love using them.