Miriam Badyrka is The Doodler

Doodle of the Week

I decided to spare you from yet another group of circles, and this group is a veritable potpourri!

Notice  that there is a camel. This is the whole reason I picked this group. I blogged about wanting to start a camel craze. I was kidding, of course, but that is definitely a camel.

I also wonder what 10:40 means. Is it am or pm? What was going to happen at 10:40? Knowing me, it probably has to do with a cooking time. I often write the time something finishes as a reminder to myself. But why would I be cooking at 10 am or 10 pm? Seems strange to me.

Possibly it was an appointment or when I was supposed to meet someone. But since there is no notation, it could be anything.

It is a mystery, just like a doodle, so I am intrigued.

Doodle of the Week

 
More Spring! If you can't tell it is Spring just by looking at this doodle, then there may be something wrong with your eyes. I think this grouping can definitely be traced to time spent in my garden.

Things are happening out there all right, Spring things. There is something glorious about watching the Earth wake up. Colors and smells, that you didn't really even notice you were missing, return to flood your senses. There is nothing else like it.

It is the original poetry. Long before there was language, there was Spring.

And now for something completely different, the Books & Needles project came down on Wednesday. I learned a lot by hanging it.  It made it easier to think of them as connected when they were hung together rather than randomly sprawled around my house. I have some pix (taken with my phone) which I will post as soon as I remember how to download them to the computer.

Yes, I am mechanically challenged. Pity me.

Doodle of the Week

How about this doodle? It feels very African, doesn't it? I think it is because the basket weave patterns make the leaf/pod shapes look like shields. Pay no attention to the random dog sillhouette.

Except, I saw the strangest thing the other day, and it involves dogs.

Zelda and I were at the park. A truck pulls up and the door opens. Two dogs come tumbling out. The door shuts. Were they just abandoning the dogs? I didn't know what to think.

Then, the truck starts driving slowly around the park, and the dogs give chase. They were exercising the dogs!  When they had done a complete lap around the park, the door opened. The dogs hopped in. They drove off.

Who were these people, and were they really that lazy?

Doodle of the Week

How about a whole bouquet of spring flowers?

That is what I think of when I look at this week's doodle. An armload of flowers. If I breathe deeply, I can almost smell them.

How amazing is spring? Everything old is new again. I could do with a less rain though.

I need to do an overhaul of this blog. Clean up the categories so that they make more sense. Redo my profile page... But all that requires spending quality time at the computer, and I really don't want to spend any more time on the infernal thing.

Embroidery #9

                                                              (Slow Doodle 9, embroidery floss on canvas, 8x8 inches)

This is another embroidery in my Books & Needles series.

I have finally figured out that the link between them is the dream state. The folding of the books is directly linked to an actual dream. The embroideries are an attempt to induce or replicate a dream state.

The passage of time in a dream is often different in a dream. When we speak of dream time or use dreamy or dreamlike to describe something, we are speaking of a state where time seems to slow and drifts.

As you all know, I think doodles are the drawing version of dreams. Like a doodle, the embroideries are spontaneous and unplanned. The embroideries look like doodles, because they are doodles, done while my mind is busy with something else.

The act of doodling is altered by my choice to stitch rather than draw. Embroidering is a much slower process than drawing with a pen. The time spent doodling is changed, stretched as it would be in a dream.

The Books & Needles project is on view at Albina Bank .

 (Detail Slow Doodle 9, click to see full size)