Lisa and the Convoluted, Hazy, No Good, Very Mediocre Process

A book (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst) 

comes to mind when I write this blog post...

So my process in a nutshell 

(ha! My mother always annoyingly says "to make a long story short" and it is not ever short!)

After a weekend (September 17-19) wandering the streets of Manhattan 

and drooling over the architecture there...

I thought that somehow, I could incorporate my love of these old buildings

 into our latest challenge...

And I even blogged about it early on

(September 24th to be exact!) 

and I was happy with my first rubber stamp...

so I made a bunch more...

And then, I painted on fabric paper 

(sorry no photos taken of the strips of tissue paper being glued onto muslin)...

and I even bought a bunch of colored zippers...

At this point, things were going swell 

though it was getting a little hard to move about in my small sewing room at home...

and it got worse...

which was okay because, I moved most of my messy stuff into a studio on October 1...

along with two other fiber art friends...

so there was painting, and cleaning, and  moving for days...

followed by a trip up to my hometown of Ottawa (including my first speeding ticket---ever!)

to hang out with family while my dad had some surgery on Oct 6,

but I did return to my project, 

stamping on my painted paper fabric....

adding some free motion-stitched lines and some zippers....

 

which was put on the back burner while I prepared for and attended 

 a reception with our fiber art group's exhibit and presentation (October 10-11)

in Old Forge NY...

 

eventually my sewing room became unbearably messy, 

 so I cleaned...

and now that it was clean,

why not start another project that was in my head? because I don't have enough going on...

and take another weekend off 

to go to the Sheep and Wool Festival (October 17-19) with friends....

I mean,

don't we all need another craft and project for distraction????

by then the zippers had been separated and sewn to make a fire escape...

but there was another hiatus to enjoy a glorious weekend 

(now it's already November 7-9) of mindfulness 

(ironically defined as a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment) 

and yoga at Kripalu with my sister-in-law...

and then spending a couple of days photographing the snow...

and ice that befell us...

which looked pretty but now is all gone and 

we were fortunate to be far enough from the snow belt of Buffalo...

and all of a sudden,

it is November 23rd...

and my project that now measures 26.6" x 22"

no longer seems so exciting, mediocre at best,

has been set aside as a... 

"yeah that seemed like a good idea at first but now longer interests me so much"

kind of project!

I could have just dropped out of this challenge

(it would have probably saved you a bit of time with all the reading!)

but I figured it was worth showing everyone that

not all projects end like we had anticipated

and the process often has a tangled textile history!