bagels and color - what a combination!

I meant to blog last night. I uploaded all these pictures and then must have gotten sidetracked and gone to bed early. Now I am dilly-dallying my morning away with this post, when I should be working on STUFF. These are whole wheat-everything bagels -- my favorites, available at the best bagel bakery on the planet, in the next town from me. Notice how dense and chewy they look (that's because they ARE). They are not over-inflated white cotton bread in round shapes, as you find in alleged bagel shops around the country. The "everything" consists of salt, sesame seeds, poppyseeds, garlic, and onions. To die for! Toasted, with cheddar cheese and tomatoes - my breakfast.

Now, back to what I was going to post last night. Because I am fresh out of ideas, I continue to do therapy sewing. This means cutting strips without rulers and putting them together sort of randomly till I have enough units to inspire me. Who knows when that will be? As I was playing with strips, I realized that my favorite part is working/playing with color. Lovely as these are, I took them down from the wall and decided to shift gears a little bit. Most of them have been sewn together, so I put them aside for later and moved on. I had sewn together a rather laid-back combination the other day and then decided they were too blah. What could I do to liven them up? I inserted this slice of really ugly fabric I had printed, which is on pg. 93 of my book. Amazingly, a skinny piece of it works just fine here!and then I thought it would be better with another contrasting strip. Yep.

What would happen if I did this instead?

A different direction, yet again.and on and on...

So now I know what happened last night. I got so busy playing with different combinations that I forgot everything else. COLOR!! Do you find it easy? Do you find it difficult? If you have issues with color, what are they? What gives you the most problems? Talk to me. I'm putting together a color workshop that I hope will be different from everybody else's and I'd love your input.

what is it about color?

In my old age I am going crazy with color on my feet...mostly because it works with the black I wear on my body to make me look thinner. An illusion, of course.


As you know, if you have been reading my blog for a while, I am partial to Birkenstocks (and Arche: I have a yellow pair and a red pair) I have umpteen dilapidated pairs of beige, khaki, black, and other neutral Birks which are wonderfully comfy and worn out and have been soaked with water, splattered with paint, and are a basic embarrassment if I am getting DRESSED. Enter Birks in color. I will always regret not buying a bright red pair some years ago (I was too repressed) and am making up for it now, maybe. I love my denim blue ones on the right, my Mango Birks in the middle - and the other day, lured by a $20 off Internet coupon, I could not resist buying the orchid pair on the left. I just opened the box tonight and even though they don't go with anything I own, they make me happy. Why am I bothering to tell you this? Is it art related? Well, in a sense it is because it is about color.

The psychology of color is fascinating. In the 1980's when I was a genuine, certified Color & Image Consultant (stop laughing) I was telling people what looked good on them and nevertheless, continued wearing drab colors myself. What you feel comfortable wearing and what looks good on you are not necessarily the same. Look at your art. Do you make it in the colors you wear? Or is there something else at work there? I'd be very interested in hearing how you feel about color, how you relate to it, and how differently (or not) the colors in your work play out vs. what you wear and surround yourself with in the house.

I don't own anything mango or orchid except those shoes. In small doses, wonderful. But otherwise, give me brown. And YOU?