Undulating Diagonals

I've been increasingly enchanted recently, watching migrating birds fly over our area. I usually see them when I'm out driving and oftentimes have to pull over to the side of the road to watch.

This photo is NOT birds in flight, obviously, but the thing that attracts me about migrating birds is the constantly shifting undulating pattern of their formation.

The photo is something called homopolymer blend, and I'm pretty sure it's something mathematical. Maybe kind of like fractals, but perhaps in some other kind of universe.

I love things placed on the diagonal. The diagonal is the hypotenuse, the longer distance than either of the two sides of a right triangle, but shorter than the sum of those two sides. Maybe that's where the term cutting corners comes from, as in taking a short cut to get somewhere.

Anyway, back to my fascination with diagonals...I've got my bed placed at a diagonal in my bedroom (logically because I sleep under a joined peaked ceiling so there's no other option here), my living room couch is at a diagonal (logically again, because the room is small with a bay window and doesn't leave much room for a couch without placing it on a diagonal), the work table in my kitchen is at a diagonal (doesn't cut up the space as drastically were it straight, and it's easier to negotiate around being in the middle of the room).

As I mentioned some posts ago, I love undulating weaving patterns, shadow weave, twill, network drafts, any application where a line snakes its way up and across a piece of fabric. I aim to achieve this effect in my woven shiboris as well although sometimes that works out differently than I had imagined.

And the squiggle has always been a meaningful image or symbol for me. It's watery, it's wavering, it's snaky, it goes up and down, it goes in and out, it scooches along...everything I underline when I write by hand gets a squiggle. One of my beaded earring designs is called Squiggles.

I'm thinking this image may also say something to me about moving upward and onward in life, in that spiral way we do, in fits and starts, growing from the material to the spiritual. No straight and narrow for me, thanks.