For starters

I started my january piece for the BJP. It took me some time to get everything together, but I even managed to find a long lost small treasure chest I got when I was a kid. I knew I had saved up some small trinkets from when I was a little girl, and because I want this piece to be about my little sister I hoped to find it so I could incorporate some.

For starters, I knew there had to be a broken hairpin in there, with two tiny little doves holding a heart between their beaks. I had found it too lovely to throw away at the time, after it lost its use, and because it belonged to my sister I wanted it to be part of the piece. So far I haven't been able to decide how to fasten it to the felt though. The doves are so tiny and delicate that I cannot think of a way that does them justice and won't harm the pin even more. I'm still out on that one.

Among the many other things I found were a Danish øre (the coin with a hole in it) and 3 Swedish öre: I just superglued them to the felt. The ribbon came from a Swedish julbocken (a christmas decoration) that came out of the box broken last year, and has the right colour blue. These Scandinavian things remind me of the many summervacations we spent together in Sweden and Denmark when all three of us were little. At that time my sister was still the boyish, joyfull girl I want to remember most.

I wrote earlier that I wanted to cut a hole in my piece because of the loss I feel after her death. I guess cutting the hole was the hardest part of the piece so far. But I did it. Right after I started with the Danish coin, ribbon and a peyote beaded bezel, I took up my pair of siccors and cut the hole. I trimmed it with a picot stitch and mounted a black buddha bead right in the middle. I felt very relieved after I had finished this part. As I said I not only found one Danish coin, but 3 Swedish ones as well and so far I have been beading around them for the next phase. As I mainly used different shades of blue, I added some green and was amazed at how well it worked. It made the blue stand out better and added life to the piece.

Next thing I realized that I had 3 separate divisions in my work that were not connected. The simplest answer I could come up with was: then just bead a path to connect them and so I did... Today I have come to this point and with one week to go on januari I hope to finish in time, so when I write again I will be able to tell you more about what this first journey was all about and what it brought me.

I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).