Maria Wulf Full Moon Fiber Art

Our “Giving” Birch Tree

Snake skin curled around birch bark

It’s about every other day that I bring in wood.  It’s been warm so we’re not using so much.  Most of what we’re burning comes for the farm.  Logs from the maple, apple and birch tree that came down in the past couple of years.

It’s good dry wood, and each time I pull a piece out I think of the tree it came from.

The birch has taught me how birch bark is even better for starting fires than newspaper.  Jet fuel, I think each time I set a match to bark and it burns so hot it ignites the kindling in an instant.

That birch bark is also beautiful, in a way it seems wrong to burn it.

This morning I found a snake skin curled around a piece of birch bark. The textures were so various and the colors so compatible, I had to take a picture.  Then I put it in the window wrapped around a birch branch that I kept putting aside, because I couldn’t bare to put it in the wood stove.  It’s has legs and a body this birch branch, too human to burn.

Then, this evening Sue texted a picture of one of her students with a Christmas Tree made from the same birch tree.   When that big branch came down last December,  I cut up the smaller twigs, filled up four or five paper bags and we brought them to Bishop Gibbons.

Now Sue’s students are making those branches into art.

I’ve beginning to  think of our  old Paper Birch as the giving tree.

On of the students from Sue’s class with thePaper birch Christmas tree he made.

Wet Days

I took this picture a few days ago when there was still snow on the ground and the sun made a morning appearance.

Now it’s mud and lots of water.

The marsh has overflowed into the south pasture.  It’s the first time I’ve seen that.  Our farm house was built up high. Who ever chose the spot knew what they were doing.

Although I’m sure the landscape has changed since then, the overflowing marsh doesn’t threaten our home.

I keep meaning to ask certain people, who I know hunt, when the last day of hunting season is.  But each time I see them there is something else to talk about and I forget.  I have a feeling the coming weekend is the end of the season.

First thing I’ll do is trim the marsh bushes that have grown over the path and fix the Gulley Bridge.  Well, maybe not the first thing.  If I can get over the stream in my muck boots, I imagine push back the bushes and get back to the woods.

Blue Bailing Twine Art

Yesterday was almost as warm as today but without the rain.  That’s when I tied the piece of slate to my Blue Bailing Twine.

But I forgot to post the picture showing my progress.  So here it is today.  Yesterday I also opened a new bale of hay.  But it had orange bailing twine holding it together.

So I guess my Blue Bailing Twine Art will really be blue and orange.

Zip Note Cards Coming Soon

Zip In The Snow Photo by Jon Katz

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but today I gathered and send off three photos of Zip to be made into note cards.  Two of the photos were taken by Jon and one by me.  There’s Zip in the snow, Zip on Under the Apple Tree and Zip in the Hen House.

The cards will be 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4 “.  There will be two of each image to make a pack of six cards.  The pack will be $25 including shipping.

Brad from A&M Printers (we are fortunate to have a printer in town) sent me back the proofs today.  I expect to have the cards sometime after Christmas.

Here are the two other photos for the cards….

Zip Under the Apple Tree, By Jon

Zip In the Hen House

The Budding Flowers Of “My Truth Has Wings”

Taking out the stitches of the appliqué from one quilt

Rain beaded on my windows distorting the world outside them.  Zip only came out at the end of the day to see Jon.  The sheep and donkeys stayed in the barn all day.  Only the the hens seemed to love the warm rain.  They wandered the farm, pecking at the saturated ground as if it were spring.

The gray day made my studio cozy,  the rain an excuse to stay in and get a good days work in.

And I did get far on My Truth Has Wings.

I began the day by removing the hand stitched appliqué from an old quilt.  The green stems and leaves of its flowers were perfect for the flowers that would be growing beneath my wings.

I’d used a part of this quilt as the backing for my Mother Mary fabric painting.  Much of the appliqué was worn but there were more squares in good enough condition for me to repurpose.

Once I had the stems and leaves removed, I went on to removing more appliqué from the quilt I’m using as a ground for “My Truth”.

Taking the flower appliqué apart to configure into another flower

Whenever I’m removing stitches from an old quilt, I think of the person who sewed them. So often the stitches, the threads, hold when the fabric gives out.  I am undoing their work.  Releasing whatever they put into the quilt.

It is destructive, but also transformative.

The two emerging flowers before I sewed them on

I reshaped the flower to create two more.  Buds at different stages, growing into the flower in bloom.

I hand sewed the flowers, stems and leaves.  I think it gives them a more organic, less formal feeling.

It was dark when I left my studio, but the hens were still out pecking around.  I bet I get an egg or two tomorrow.

I think a strip of red on the bottom  will complete My Truth.

A Gift Of Snails

One of my new Ramshorn Snails that Jackie gave me.

“I was demolishing a lettuce leaf, my oval raspy-toothed mouth opening and closing like a flesh valve as I oozed along on my own self-generated glistening slime highway.  The lovely green blur all around me, the lacework I was creating, the scent of chlorophyll, the juiciness-it was pure bliss.” From  “Metempsychosis” by Margaret Atwood

The day before my friend Jackie sent me home with a plastic bag half filled with water, two aquatic plants and three Ramshorn Snails, I was reading Margaret Atwood’s short story Metempsychosis.  It’s about a snail that gets reincarnated into an adult human.  I can tell you the snail is not happy about it.  Not the evolution of species that we humans like to think.

Needless to say, I loved the story, but when I read the passage above, I felt a great nostalgia and longing to have a snail living in the farmhouse again.  A snail whose “raspy-toothed mouth”  I could watch on the fish tank wall as it “oozed along on [its] own self-generated glistening slime highway.”

Atwood made the idea of being a snail even more appealing than I ever imagined.

When Jon and I got to Jackie’s house, the first thing I did was look at her fish tank.  Jon and I had fish tanks for many years, but when something went wrong and the fish all died last year, we decided not to get more.

It was a good decision, but I didn’t realize how much I missed my snails.  So when Jackie offered me a few that I could have in a small bowl I was…well…thrilled.

These snails are small.  Smaller than a dime, but they will continue to grow.  Last night when I got them home and into their new tank, all three started moving around. I gave them some snail food and this morning they were busy munching on the dissolving pellets.

Ramshorn snails are pretty hardy, so I’m hopeful these three will be around a long time.

The snail tank. Big enough for a couple of plants a rock and three snails.

Zip’s Hen House?

I was checking for eggs when Zip jumped into the hen house this afternoon.  He doesn’t seem to be trying to claim it as his own,  he’d probably mark it if that were his goal.

I actually got the feeling he was messing with me.  Or maybe looking for another Hen House photo shoot.

He is hard to resist.

I hope to get together three different images of Zip this week and send them off to Brad at A&M Printers in town to be made into cards.

I’m thinking this latest of Zip in the hen house maybe one of them.

Full Moon Fiber Art