Red Thread Studio: Slow Cloth, New Cloth, Art Cloth

Arte Y Pico Award and Blog Love

The lovely Arlee at DesignJournal blog has selected me for an Arte Y Pico award for creativity, design, interesting material and contributing to the blogging community. This is just so nice -- thank you, Arlee. I appreciate it so much.

There are 5 rules attached to this award and they are :

1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter what language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself.
4) The Award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte Y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award (blogger in Uruguay).
5) To show these rules.

So now it's my turn to pass this award along to five other bloggers. You may know these already, but if not do visit.

1. Sara at The Fabric of Meditation. First of all, I'm in awe of anyone who can blog so well in two languages. Second, her work is always a wonderful surprise.
2. Harmony's The Journey is the Prize blog about organic fabrics and the world of sustainable textiles. Harmony is a highly creative fabric designer, great businessperson, and all-over nice person who walks her talk very gracefully.
3. Dijanne's Musings of a Textile Itinerant never, ever fails to inspire and move me. She'll probably get this award many times over. Dijanne truly works from the heart and makes you feel like a close friend, though she has many thousands of readers.
4. Deidre's Abstractions blog -- as noted here, I've been a fan of Deidre's paintings on quilted surfaces for a long time, and now her blog is a chance to learn more about her thinking and process.
5. Pilar's Deux Frontieres blog is a brilliant journal of culture, art, textiles, design and life in Paris. Ahhhh. In some of my favorite alternate universes I'm living in Paris or London or another great capital of culture and society, but not today, at least not in this dimension of reality -- so I'm thankful for the blogs that take me there.

In other blog news: As I've mentioned, I write posts for EcoSalon.com. EcoSalon has been picked up by the blog aggregator Alltop.com, so I've spent some time using Alltop. They have pages for the top blogs in many topics, including green news and products, fashion, design, art, books, and a new page for crafts where both In A Minute Ago and Spirit Cloth are featured.

Finally, I've added an abbreviated version of my 10 Qualities of Slow Cloth to the sidebar. As promised, I'll begin my series of posts expanding on this list next week.

Soulful Virtual Morocco and Paris

Clouds so swift
Rain won't lift
Gate won't close cause the railing's froze
Get your mind off wintertime
You ain't going nowhere
(bob dylan)

In France they kiss on Main Street
Amour, mama, not cheap display
(joni mitchell)

 

I had plans, big plans, for 2007 fall and winter travel that had to be canceled when I lost my job -- Paris for my birthday and St. Thomas for New Year's Day, where my dear friend Angela is marrying her handsome international beau Andre. While I have nothing to complain about, I found myself looking out at the icy, colorless Colorado landscape yesterday struggling to accept that my beautiful plans had been foiled.

Better luck next year. For now, I take refuge in the magic carpet ride of the Internet, where I can find textile eye candy from all over the world. One of my favorite sites to visit is My Marrakesh, where Maryam, a human rights and democracy specialist, writer, and editor, captures the amazing beauty and character of North Africa. This post about her visit to Bamako is rich with photographs of beautiful textiles and beads in the marketplace. Her site also gave me an idea for Angela and Andre's wedding gift -- I'll be ordering fabric this week and I'm very excited about it.

Along with Morocco, I have yet to visit Paris -- I don't exactly know how that has happened, but there you have it. When I get there, I will most certainly visit the famous flea markets for vintage textiles. Rosanne Cash, one of my favorite singers and maybe an even better writer than singer, writes so beautifully about visiting Paris. And Croque-Choux is a great blog by an American living in Paris who sews and crafts beautiful things.

Whenever I think of Paris, I think of a revelatory moment I had a few years back when I went with a friend on his mission to one of those container and organization stores. While he shopped, I wandered through this enormous box store full of shiny plastic organizing tools, closet systems surely designed by NASA engineers, endless bright neatness without a shadow or a speck of dust. I was miserable, jumping out of my skin, and couldn't figure out why.

Then I wandered across the street to a store that was designed to echo a French flea market -- filled with fabrics, funky vintage objects, nooks and crannies, color, shades of light and dark, things that evoked mystery and beauty. I was instantly a thousand times happier. Both stores appear to be gone now, so I can't link to them. But the lesson was loud and clear. I appreciate order, really I do -- but order without soul is just, well, incredibly restrictive.

So for 2008, wherever you find yourself, may your life be just organized enough to make plenty of room for creative, soulful sensuality. And may you get wherever you need to be, easily and gracefully. That's what I'm aiming for.