This is the pinyin spelling for the Mandarin character for "heart"! My thought for this February is "Xīn", which is an emotional component, or radical, in many Chinese characters, like yearning, love, even forget!
Seemed appropriate since Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year (the first day of Spring festival) are on the same day this year! And one of the traditions for Chinese New Year, besides jiao zi, is a branch of cherry blossom... at least that is what I remember from Beijing, that and the couplets that decorated the front doors of each and every house. Kind of hard to portray a jiao zi in beads, I don't know characters well enough to embroider a couplet let alone bead one, and no way do I have the skill to do a tiger (this will be the year of the tiger). So...
So two pieces of fabric, one a pink batik which almost looks like cherry blossoms and a deep red Asian fabric with couplets printed in a lighter red; a branch of cherry blossoms in three shades of pink beads attached a matte blue-green metallic seed bead stem, and the character "Xīn", very stylized (apologies to those who can write characters!), in red seed beads. I had a preconceived idea of how I wanted the cherry blossom branch to go, but it did it's own thing and I decided to vary the blossoms according to background and to exend the beaded branches with Kreinik very fine braid. Thanks to Robin for advice on how to smooth out my backstiched lines, and to everyone on BJP Blog three for the example of letting the beading tell me what to do!
Gōng Xǐ Fā Cái (Congratulations and Prosperity) to all, especially those of you who are tigers (your birth year would be 1998, 1986, 1974, 1962, 1950, and, if you are like me, older than dirt, 1938!)
I'm so curious about your knowledge and experience with the Chinese language... And I love, LOVE your beautiful piece... so clever to make the two fabrics uneven and the blossoms different on the two fabrics. It's subtle and beautiful and joyful! Much heart here! Robin A.
ReplyDeleteMy knowledge and experience with Chinese comes from two years living in Beijing, three months studying Chinese (Mandarin), and learning that I'm so tone deaf that even taxi drivers corrected my pronunciation! Basically, I was only basic baby steps in pinyin; I could identify a few characters; count to 1000; and I managed to bargain in street markets with the aid of a calculator! Otherwise, I'm a total loser in Mandarin!
ReplyDeleteYou are a total winner in this piece though Carol! I can only agree with Robin in that I LOVE this piece. It breathes such tranquility and yet because of what you have done with the fabric and beads it is vibrant and alive at the same time. I must look up what you have done to january!
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