It took me eight years to get around to finishing this!
It began when over the course of a year I kept hearing the song "Angel from Montgomery", by John Prine and/or Bonnie Raitt, after never hearing it before, and it was always in my head. Part of the chorus is, "Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery / Make me a poster of an old rodeo..." Being a fan of craft swapping, I couldn't help but interpret that as a request for a handmade flying angel and a rodeo poster.
It developed into a little art book from there.
The pages have chipboard bases, and the cover is knit handspun yarn (one of the first batches I spun). There is also embroidery, needle felting, stamping and collage. The pages are just bound with a couple loops of waxed thread. I printed lyrics onto a reclaimed paper grocery bag, and everything came from stash. I wanted to add some bead-weaving and crochet to the mix just to see how many crafts I could fit into it, but I was more ready to simply
finish.
Cover:
And the pages:
"I am an old woman named after my mother / My old man is another child who's grown old"
"If dreams were thunder and lighting was desire / This old house would have burned down a long time ago"
"Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery" (pop-up angel-lady can be released from the tabs over a map showing the Montgomery, Alabama area...it did take a while to find that specific map!)
"Make me a poster of an old rodeo"
"Just give me one thing that I can hold onto / To believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go
When I was a young girl I had me a cowboy / Wasn't much to look at, just a free ramblin' man"
(Note that he's holding a ferocious chihuahua - I used the
image with permission and it had an amusing backstory)
"But that was a long time and no matter how I try / The years they just rolled by like a broken-down dam"
(Chorus repeat)
"There's flies in the kitchen, I can hear them buzzin' / And I ain't done nothin' since I woke up today"
"But how the hell can a person go to work in the morning, / Come home in the evening, and have nothing to say?"
(Chorus repeats)
So, part of why it took me so long to sit down and finish this project is I have no real connection to the song; I just had the mandate to make the angel and the poster, which didn't make a ton of sense on their own! I have no plans for it, so
I'd be happy to send it to someone who does have a connection with the song, as a freebie craftylittlemonkey's mom is going to be the recipient!
