September-Harvest Moon

I love the colors that occur this time of year, and in the theme of harvest I wanted to include farmer's fields. I wasn't interested in a cornucopia image really, but I did include apples, as it's apple season at the Co-op, and I brought apples for the elephants. I also added extra reds with the sumac, another one of my favorites. This is also based on my father's harvest moon photo.
My gift/harvest for the month was the elephants. I must have took 200 pictures for study for my elephant quilts. I had no idea when I started that project the month before that I would have this kind of access to the real deal. Gotta love Ganesh!

August-Sturgeon Moon

The Fountain. August was a month of being in the flow of things with a new vigor and appreciation. I was invited to help out Brenda with the Renaissance Fair, (August and September were both created while I was at the fair, and you can see the influence of being surrounded by all the commotion, Ha ha) She has a beautiful courtyard with a fountain in it, and later in the month I was given a garden fountain for my home. So the theme was clear. The image I used was more from the memory of sitting on the lake, and my trips to the Headwaters of the Mississippi. Also my father, excited by my project, started taking pictures of the moon each month to send me, so this is the beginning of a collaboration with my father. This is based on his red moon photo.

July-Thunder Moon

Isolation. I think of the isolation just before a big transformation with this piece. I had caught one of those terrible summer flus, and was in bed for 2 weeks. I was out of work, and I was too ill to work on art, and feeling as though I was trapped in a life that offered me nothing but Goo. Then poof, I came out of it, and with a burst of new energy and inspiration, the journal started in earnest, and I also began a new quilt series with elephants and Ganesh.
The image is taken from a summer I spent in North Dakota. Wide open spaces, isolation, and storms galore! In honor of Ganesh, I decided to put something red in each piece of the journal. Somewhere I have a red dragon fly that will go into this piece. The summer I spent in No Dak I experience a swarm of dragon flies in between storms. They were flying in a spiral pattern that just went up up up. I stood in the center of the as though I was in the center of a lazy cyclone and just watched the for a hour. I have never seen that phenomenon again.

Is that cat hair?

My big helper.

Second Time Around-Getting started.

The most important thing I learned with the Pirate Poem, is that HOW it is going to be assembled is one of those things that need to be thought out before all the pages are finished.
With Moon Song I started with organizing the entire 12, well actually 13, pages before I started beading.
*13 round pages for fronts.
*13 round pages for backs.
*12 full moons.
* 65 moons for the moon phases on the backs...don't laugh:)
* 26 edges
and so on....
and on....
Edge pieces...Let me explain.
Having run into such a royal pain getting the Pirate Book put together ( mind you, a square , flat book), I decided that a round book, with graded depth to the pages (like diaramas) was what I needed in my life.
Edge pieces on their way to completion. When the book is bound it will also be round, or crescent shaped, with fairy writing on top.
Example of the flat front with beading started.
Here's the full page unassembled.
*Flat beaded front.
*Moon phase back.
*Landscape piece.
*front and back edge pieces.
Sewing the landscape onto the finished edge piece. I have not been consistant with the order I have been assembling the pieces, and have had to rip out and start over. I jump around alot from page to page and don't always pay attention , though I must say this one is much more a journal than last years book.
Sewing the front and backs of the edging together.
4 of the 5 pieces sewn together.

Basic completed page. This is Pink Moon, which is April's moon. Which I started in April last year, but I didnt start JOURNALING till July, so that's where my journal starts, and this page is still sitting as is waiting for me to get up to it. I am close to start posting finished pages , starting with July soon....Keep in mind the last post was in June...I promise to try and stay with it:)