2020: A Year in Photographs

2020: A Year in Photographs

January: Things start off easily enough. I release my Rhino Pouch and post it in my Etsy shop.
January: Created YouTube Channel: Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand.
February 20, 2020 – Posted my first Youtube video.
March: Designed and Posted my Abstract Pouch in my Etsy Shop
Found out I’d been granted a two week artist’s residency at the Chateau D’Oquevaux. All set to go in April, 2020, only to realize that wasn’t going to happen. Rebook my air travel for July, 2020 and hope for the best.
March: New York City becomes the epicenter of the Pandemic.
March: Home sewn facemasks become a thing.
And so do empty Manhattan streets in the middle of a day during the week. Pick a day, any day, the streets were empty.
March: A sobering moment when a mobile morgue parks just blocks from our apartment. NYC is unable to keep up with the numbers of people dying from COVID. Mobile morgues like this one begin showing up all over the city to contain the overflow.
April: The eerie silence of a great city in full lock down.
May: A little pandemic humor
May: And some beauty amidst the horror
June: Stores board up their storefronts in response to the demonstrations against rampant police brutality.
June: Design and release Otter Needle Roll
July: Outdoor dining transforms the streets of New York and brings a little magic to a stir crazy populous.
July: Design and release River Rocks Pouch
August: With little else to do, I continue to design, and release my Rock Gardens Bag
August: Celebration of my 60th Birthday on our roof with a couple of socially distanced friends.
September: Visiting an empty Highline
September: Design and release eyeglasses case.
October: My improvisational stitching idea continues.
October: Design and release scissor’s case.
October: A bike ride heading downtown.
November Humor
November: Fall in New York City
December: A little snow in New York City
Finish second improvisational stitching piece: “Perseverance”
December: A quiet Christmas.

Happy New Year!

A Little Snow in NYC

A Little Snow in NYC

Any little bit of snow is exciting news here in New York City where we used to get several big blizzards a year, but now, not so much. So in anticipation I went out for an early morning stroll and had such a lovely walk. I made a video of my morning outing and just posted it on my YouTube Channel: Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand.

As often happens when I’m video taping while exploring New York City, I ended up reminiscing about when I was a Parsons School of Design student, a roommate who used to keep a pair of cross-country skis in her apartment and would ski down Fifth Avenue when a good storm ripped through the city. I remembered a trip my husband and I took to Iceland, and three days into it, I fell and shattered my right elbow. The photo below was after I’d had it stabilized, so that we could continue our trip.

As I strolled along the snowy New York City streets I decided to wander over to Madison Square Park and then found some old photos of the Victory Arch that was built just to the north of 23rd Street and the Flatiron building. The arch, celebrating the end of the first World War, was subsequently torn down.

Looking north – The Victory Arch

A few photos of my walk, but if you want to see more and hear about my various adventures, watch the Youtube video I just posted.

December 17th, 2020 at around 8am in Union Square, NYC

These days we hardly get any snow at all, so this storm was greeted with a lot of eagerness and excitement, by young and old. The two photographs below are from a snow storm we had in February, 2009.

Have a great day everyone!

A Commitment to Show Up

A Commitment to Show Up

I’ve been thinking about relationships a lot. Perhaps that’s because I’m coming up on my 20th wedding anniversary with this awesome man. Our relationship has seen its ups and downs, but we are committed to doing the hard work of showing up for each other no matter how painful and difficult that may be. As a result we have entered into, what I think of as, our golden years together. I love this man more today than those first few years when we met and decided to have children together. I am well aware of how fortunate I am, it helps that he is as committed as I am, and is also funny, smart, kind, thoughtful, complicated, a great dad, a great friend and all around amazing human being.

Or maybe I’m thinking about relationships because it’s the holiday season when we typically fly to Colorado to visit my mother and sister, but because of the pandemic are unable to do so or maybe it’s because this year has thrown a couple of relationships into stark relief. I have had to come to terms with the fact that a few were not what I thought and others that have only reaffirmed how wonderful they are. I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned from both.

I’ve mentioned before that my husband and I start the morning reading something, usually something philosophical or a meditation of some kind. This morning’s reading began with a quote:

There are two equally dangerous extremes – to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.

Blaise Pascal

When I’m stitching the magical moments come when things just flow from one idea to the next – easily, magically. But there are other moments when everything I stitch feels wrong. Color is often at issue. If my base color is one that I don’t find particularly appealing, then everything I subsequently do can feel off simply because the base color isn’t one that speaks to me. The trick is finding the magic even then.

As many of you who follow me on Youtube know, I’ve been struggling with my latest improvisational piece. It uses a flesh-colored hand dyed piece of linen as its base, and it’s been problematic for me since I took that first stitch. Still, I’m determined to continue, if for no other reason than as an exercise in working through the myriad issues that are coming up for me. And what I’m learning is that if I’m committed to something, really committed, I am willing to have the difficult conversations, I’m willing to hang in there even when things get problematic, I’m willing to keep showing up. And when I do that, something magical always happens. (Of course if we’re talking about two people then BOTH people have to be willing. It won’t work if only one person is willing and the other isn’t.)

With the piece shown above, this is the magical moment that occurred a few days ago. I don’t know that it’s enough to shift this piece from an exercise, into something that I’m able to fully embrace, but I’m getting there and I’m going to keep showing up for it and see what happens!

2020: A Year in Photographs

Stitching with Gimp and a lot of Laughter

If you’d like to laugh and explore stitching (or in my case attempting to) with silk gimp and the thicker gimp that Painter’s Threads hand dyes, this was the live stream I did yesterday. Warning: We laughed A LOT.

My attempts at using the crinkly silk gimp became more comedic than informative… However, I am determined to continue investigating this beautiful, if challenging thread, and what I’m able to do with it. So this is just the beginning. By the way Mary Corbet, who is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to threads, stitching, and everything and anything to do with embroidery, is such a great resource. If you click on her name above, it will take you to her blog. She also has a YouTube Channel, where she demonstrates stitches.

So here’s the thing… I am a designer first and foremost. I love playing with threads and seeing how I can use an unusual thread in a different way. My approach to hand stitching is from a design point of view. When I’m working with a thread, like gimp, whether the crinkly silk gimp or the thicker cord Gimp from Painter’s Threads, I am thinking about color, texture, and how I can use it so that it creates something interesting. As I design, I’m considering size, shape, dimension and how all of that fits into the piece I’m working on.

For my River Rocks Pouch, I used all three of these gimps in different ways. A couple of the shapes on that pouch I added gimp French Knots, which I love.

2-Wrap French Knots using gimp
Silk Gimp used for the Running Stitch, French Knots and A Variation of the Whipped Woven Circle.
Crinkly Silk Gimp Couched around the edge of the shape.

I’m off to the last remaining quilt shop in New York City in a little while. I’ll be filming it, and will post tomorrow morning. So if you want to come with me on my little adventure, tune into my Youtube Channel Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand tomorrow. Until then, here’s to exploring and stitching!

2020: A Year in Photographs

Sleepless In New York City

On yet another night of sleeplessness I decided it was high time I found out where the whole – count sheep and fall asleep – idea originated. Which, oddly, led me to the discovery of Goats Parkour and the fact that sea otters love to eat sea urchin, which, as facts go, is kind of interesting, particularly at 3am and, anyway, who doesn’t love sea otters?

While googling – “the origins of counting sheep” I learned that this was something shepherds did before going to sleep in Medieval times, but a 12th century fable refers to counting sheep in the Middle East, suggesting this has been going on for awhile now. The article then ends with this sobering thought,

“Origins aside, the practice is an awful sleeping aid.”

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/58192/why-do-we-count-sheep

Which, I have to admit, kind of took the wind out of my sails. The final sobering sentence of the piece speculated, “Maybe that’s why Don Quixote preferred goats.” Which took me to this… I know, I know…

Watching this last YouTube video made me reconsider my whole, I’ll-start-exercising-again-once-this-whole-pandemic-is-behind-us thinking and so I got up and did some exercises. All of this was done before 4am and I’d just like to interject that New York City, despite the pandemic, is busy at 4am. I know this because I see all the lights on in buildings viewed from our living room windows, but I digress and anyway, my point being that you can cram a LOT of things into the early morning hours if you’re strategic about it.

While exercising, my mind immediately leapt to otters, because that’s where the mind goes at 3:30am while exercising in a semi-dark living room in Manhattan. That’s when I discovered the first video I posted, thus ending my short-lived-newly-discovered-exercise-routine, which, okay, you really can’t call it a “routine” when you do it only once, even though your intention is to do it daily, but never mind.

So then I began designing a new project, which turned into TWO new projects, because that’s the way I think – if one is good, two will be even better and anyway it’s not even 5am – the first features an otter and some sea urchins, and the second features mandalas, because otters can only be upstaged by mandalas in my opinion, though otters AND sea urchins are a hard act to follow. Still, undaunted, I plunged onward.

I also decided that I would video tape the makings of both projects, so that I will have, not just written instructions, but videos as well. By the way if you have any interest in either project please take the poll I embedded in yesterday’s tutorial, I would love your opinion.

All of this brings me back, full circle, to sleeplessness… I have no answers, though I read that counting your breath, as opposed to sheep, can be helpful, but then, when would I find the time to get all the things I want to do, done?! That was rhetorical.