:: counter pose necklaces ::

I’ve Pleated Beauty" href="http://letter9.us/2008/05/05/the-last-pleated-beauty-bag/">written before about counter poses: moves, in yoga, designed to counteract one another. A gentle forward curl done after an intense backbend, for example. A way to help the body release and relax. This is often how I think of sewing: as a counter pose to everything else I do. As something quiet and done purely for the benefit of introducing something beautiful and functional into the world.

I’m working on another quilt now. The last one I’ll be making for me for awhile. This one’s meant only just for me and no one else. It’ll be my blanket for nights when I’m chillier than Brian, for when I need the comfort of something heavy, for when I need something to curve into like a peanut curves into its shell. I’m making it exactly my height and just wide enough to cover my side of the bed.

But of course quilting is such a slow, cottony process: Colorful Time Filler" href="http://letter9.us/2008/07/31/colorful-time-filler/">a process that weighs on me like its final product will in the cold winter months. It’s like a reluctant meditation. And I find myself, these days, needing something quick and beautiful and creative in a different way. I find myself needing to make small things. Graphic things. Things I can wear out into the world.

So I learned how to make these:

Pendants made from wood (many people use scrabble tiles), paper, and a special glassy glaze. I’ve been working on some made from magazine pages. I just love taking a different eye to magazines: an eye that’s looking for small bits of visual inspiration rather than information or edification. This is a project that forces me to look at things differently than I normally would — to think about arrangement and space and cropping and color.

And it’s a project that’s done in 28 hours with only a minor amount of hands-on time, making it the perfect counter pose to quilting.

Plus I get to wear them. I get to wear a necklace no one else on this earth owns. And that’s pretty cool.