just a little side trip

over the weekend we made a quick trip to our daughter's house to help out with a little home repair project

since the current knitting I'm working on is for her, I couldn't really work on it while we were there

so, here are two afghan squares all ready to be shipped off --- I'm thinking I may put the supplies to do a couple of these in my hospital bag, so I can work on them if I'm feeling up to it

meantime, I have been working on setting up to work on the first of the mixed media architectural pieces to be framed

I'll be doing the bank first

Progress pictures to come!

new projects

As you may recall, yesterday I was babbling abount needing to start on a new project to get jazzed up to finish some old ones.

I can report that I did, and I am.

Although actually these drawings have been resurrected from about two years ago when I originally thought about this project then couldn't figure out how to do anything with it.

So, now that I'm more seriously working on beaded pieces that go into frames, it seemed logical to pull this out and reconsider it.

The plan is to create 5 pieces as a series in frames. There are two that got me started on this idea in the first place --- that very first one that is the theatre and the last one that is a bank.

We'll see where this goes.

Meantime, I started doing the embellishment on the giraffe print last night, and it's looking good!

Thinking about the "here after"

as in "what did I come in here after"?

I loved being on vacation --- I had a great time working on art projects with my friend. But now that we're home I find that I'm at the "boring" part of some bead work and the "are we ever going to finish this" part on a quilt.

And it's hot, which makes me want to just lay down on the tile floor under the ceiling fan with the dog and do nothing whatsoever.

Add to that the fact that next Friday I'm having surgery so I'm trying to put the house in order so it won't make me totally crazy while I'm recovering and can't just go fix whatever is bugging me.

{sigh!}

So, I need a new project to get me jazzed up enough to work on stuff.

While I was in California someone suggested it would be cool to make a lion out of beads (have you noticed there have been a series of African animals on the scene of late here?).

So I'm thinking about lions and whole new ways to make animals -- as in doing the skeleton out of wire then covering it with batting and unbleached muslin then working beads over the entire thing. (Wow, where did THAT idea come from).

and then of course there is that series of architectural pieces to put in frames that I was thinking about before we left

and the piecing of a suitable border to go around the giraffe print

but I digress -- Oh yeah, that seems to be the problem!

Blocking --- It's not just mental

Most of what I usually knit does not require "blocking"

Part of that is because I usually am using "un-natural" fibers -- acrylics, polyesters -- that do not require blocking, just a run through the washer and dryer and it's done

This project, however, is a whole other critter

This yarn is made of bamboo. I got it in the sale bin during a recent visit to one of my favorite yarn shops.

There were exactly two of the little 82 yard balls of this in the same color (and two of another sort of gray color which I did not like). And the price was low enough that I just couldn't resist getting some to play with.

What I did not expect was that it would work up so neatly

I had decided that I wanted to try the lace technique in a larger format so I could actually see (quickly) what I was doing. This stuff was great for that.

And now I have another finished project --- or I will just as soon as it drys.

Who knew blocking would be so much fun?

What I did on my summer vacation

Remember those compositions we had to write the first day back to school?

I've decided that the teachers were just trying to get a bit more prep time, so they gave us a "make work" project. (I also hated those compositions because we never did anything all that exciting over summer vacation when I was a kid --- hours and hours of laying around in a hot house reading and the occasional camping trip)

Anyway, since I'm talking about my vacation in this post (and the last one), I thought I'd share some things with you.

I had the best of intentions (and we all know where those lead!) to do actual physical journal pages with drawings, etc.

I did exactly ONE of them, and here it is.

Actually I learned some really important things from this idea and my failure to complete it:

1. I'm better with a camera and a computer keyboard than I am with a notebook and a box of pencils --- my drawing skills are just not up to the task of creating (to my satisfaction) some of the complex ideas I wanted to convey.

2. When I'm on vacation I don't spend a lot of time reflecting --- I spend time observing and doing --- and reflecting time is when I do journal (or blog) work.

3. It's okay that I didn't get all that drawing done because I had a great time, did some wonderful art projects and have some fun stories to share.

Odd things seen on the road #1: Windmill Farms

In the two and a half years since we last drove to California, a lot of windmills have sprung up.

These are not the old multi-blade water pump for the stock tank sort of windmills.

No, we're talking about those tri-blade high tech wonders that are becoming a part of our nation's power grid.

I for one find them fascinating --- and I'm happy to see them showing up on the top of hills that are otherwise covered with sagebrush in areas (like Wyoming!) where the wind seems to never stop blowing.

For years there has been a place called Altamont Pass in northern California where one of the oldest windmill farms in the country was. We drove over Altamont specifically to see if those windmills were being upgraded to the new ones. They are --- and they have added many, many more windmills too.

Odd things seen on the road #2: Dairy Cows and Moose

No, I'm not kidding.

When you drive Interstate Highway 80 (the most direct way to get from where we started to where we wanted to go), and go out of Wyoming into Utah, you go down a sort of narrow valley that has a lot of smaller family farms.

In the past I have seen fields with sheep, cattle and horses all together.

This year's trip was a whole new adventure.

As we're slowly crawling along in traffic (it's road construction time), I looked over into the field and saw 6 dairy cows (you know, the black and white ones like on the California Cheese commercials) RUNNING across the field.

I've seen a lot of dairy cows, but I can't remember any other time I've seen them running anywhere. It was puzzling. What were they running from?

But wait, there in the field ahead of them is another animal --- a female MOOSE! They were chasing the moose out of their field!!

What a hoot!

Odd things seen on the road #3: Urban Transportation?

In same areas along the highway, the road runs parallel with streets in little towns along the way.

As I looked out in one area I saw what must pass for urban transportation for one guy at least.

He was riding his horse, with his mule in tow and two dogs running along side right down the middle of the paved street into town.

I wonder if he was headed to Walmart ---

Odd things seen on the road #4: Air Travel?

This seemed to be the trip for oddities of machinery intended for air travel.

#1: Two helicopters without their rotors on trailers behind pick up trucks --- one seen on the way out to California, one on the way back.

#2: A little yellow airplane suddenly appearing from behind a burm that ran along the highway apparently taking off from a little runway that we couldn't see.

#3: Crop dusting with a small bi-wing plane in the Central Valley of California.

#4: A small plane flying at about 10 feet off the ground parallel with the road across the salt desert.

Odd things seen on the road #5: Dust Devil

We've watched dust devils from the car for years as we've driven back and forth to California.

They always look like little dirt tornados, kicking up dust and then disappearing.

This was the first time that we had actually felt the impact of one of them.

As we were driving along I spotted one out in a field ahead of us. Because of the speed and direction of both our van and the dust devil, we had the experience of driving through it --- or it running over us.

After that brief and somewhat scary experience I can tell you that I think those folks that chase after full blown tornados are nuts!

Odd things seen on the road #6: Back in Time

As we were coming home we saw two fully restored Model T Fords headed the other way.

It was pretty amazing to see them rolling along --- although not at 75 miles an hour --- in with the other vehicles.

Makes me think of a lyric from the musical Ragtime:

See my people?
Well, here's my theory
Of what this country
Is moving toward.
Every worker
A cog in motion.
Well, that's the notion of Henry Ford!
One man tightens
And one man ratchets
And one man reaches
To pull one cord.
Car keeps moving
In one direction.
A genuflection to Henry Ford!

(I have some thoughts about this politically as well, but we won't go there on this blog!)

Odd things seen on the road #7: Awesome Animals

As on every trip, I notice animals. Here then is a sampling:

1. A praire dog sitting on the edge of the highway as if he were counting cars as they went by.

2. Antelope in the fields with the cattle. (Unlike the dairy cows and the moose, the cattle didn't seem to mind)

3. Deer -- but none of them alive. I can't remember ever seeing so many dead deer along the highway.

4. Racoons in any state don't appear to explode on impact --- it must be the slick fur.

5. The last day of our trip we went up into the Colorado mountains with our daughter and son-in-law. On the way back we saw 3 elk in a little meadow by the side of the road. The bull elk was amazing --- the most enormous rack, and all in velvet still --- such an amazing creature.

So, just what did you do on your vacation?

Catching Up

I'm back!

For the first time in a very long time we actually spent two weeks on vacation!! Weird ---

As we have done shows and traveled for those in the past few years, our "vacations" have usually consisted of an extra day after a show to visit a place we've not seen before or to visit briefly with friends.

This year, since I will not be doing any shows that I'll be traveling to, and because a dear friend was celebrating her 80th birthday, we made a trip to California.

The point of the trip was that she and I got to "PLAY"!

In this post I'm going to talk about about the projects that I've worked on the past two weeks, then in another post in the next couple of days, I'll talk about our travel "adventures".


Project #1: The Angels
You may remember this project from a while back.

Even though in general I was pleased with the way it came out, I have long maintained that doing faces, especially human like faces, in any medium is not my strongest suite. This piece was no exception, so I took it and the fabric markers I had originally used on it with me, hoping for some help with it.

The suggested fix? Darker markers to do the shading/highlighting of the eyes, nose and mouth and under the chins.

The result I think is much better.

Project #2: Rubber Stamping
That we should be messing with rubber stamps at all is sort of funny as neither of us have ever been all that into the whole rubber stamping craze, but when we recently got involved with cutting rubber stamps from our own drawings, we got a lot more interested!

These are the pair of zebras that I cut and the first stamps of each of them.

There's only one problem with this -- my original plan was to have two zebras that would FACE each other --- except I got the transfer to the rubber wrong, and so both of them face the same way ---- Pfffttt!!

Okay, that means that I need to cut one more, but I'll have to get another sheet of the rubber stuff to cut first.

Project #3: Rubber Stamping and a Painting Technique Lesson
You probably remember that I've been sort of giraffe crazy of late, and that has spilled over into this project too.

There at the top is the giraffe rubber stamp, and underneath is the stamp with the embellishment of an added tail and mane that are drawn on with a fabric marker.

Because my friend has taken all those classes in painting techniques that come along with a BA in Fine Art she gave me a techniques lesson on using various sea sponges to create the tree and the ground beneath the giraffe.

My plan next is to use thread and beads to further embellish this and to create something that can be hung on the wall from it.

And yes, I'm thinking about something that will involve even more stamped animals.

Project #4: Dye Workshop
Ok, perhaps we should have labeled this "playing with dirty soap"

This project involved squirting dyes into a pan of shaving cream to form patterns then laying the fabric over the pan to take up the colors and patterns -- sort of like you do with marbling techniques on paper.

After that you pick up the fabric and let it dry for about 24 hours before you wash out the shaving cream and residual dye.

And these are my pieces from the project.

My plan is to use them as parts of more stamping/embellishing projects in the future


The Shopping Spree
This was not a trip where I did a whole lot of shopping for anything.

I did get the chance to go into a quilt store in San Jose while we were there and picked up a piece of fabric for a wall hanging we are working on that is titled Breakfast on the Hoof.

The "cow print" fabric was just too cute to resist especially since they were having a sale.

And here's the next question --- which is more useful, the purchase or the bag?

Since I work with lots of media, the bag will be just as good to have as the fabric!

A Project Complete!
One of the things I can do quite well while riding for hours in a car is knit.

While we were traveling I completed the last of the mittens for this year's Mittnz challenge.

I'll be sending along my picture this week.

Since those were finished by the middle of the second day out, I started working on this year's sweater project. Because sleeves are usually the last pieces I knit and I usually dread them if they are just plain sleeves, I decided to knit those first this time. And I'm now within 10 rows of having both sleeves complete.

And there have been some other knitting experiments which I will be sharing in the next few days, incuding the purchase of some absolutely amazing silk yarn.

And so there we are.

I'm back, I played, and now there is a ton of laundry to do ---- more soon!

last minute odds and ends

You'd think after 4 loads of laundry, helping to mow both lawns and packing for our trip that I'd be too tired to do anything but go to sleep ---

But no, the brain would not stop babbling, so after all of that I worked on the beaded band for the balloon piece, and on the Christmas quilt project, and knitted on a mitten

Then I drew this little swan

Another addition to the doodle collection -- and a possible candidate for creating a rubber stamp from

I packed my rubber stamps and the materials I have on hand to make more of same (tools, rubber for cutting) hoping that we'll get to play with that idea while we're in California

So after breakfast we'll pack the car and head on out

Watch for posts on the road and while we're in California "playing"!

Giraffe!

Finally complete!

And isn't it adorable?

I especially love the ears!!

While the ears looked like they would stand up okay on their own, I ended up putting a pipe cleaner on the outside edges of them by doing a single crochet over the pipe cleaner all around.

The nose is two rows of contrasting color single crochet too --- worked right into the knitting stitched in a curve around the nostril outline.

And see how long the neck is? I used a piece of 1/2 inch PVC pipe inside, and the butt is weighted with a combination of plastic doll pellets and copper beebees.

Yes, this is definately the most off the wall critter I've created yet!!

So today (even though it is NOT Monday) I'm doing laundry so I can pack for our trip. We will be heading out to our daughter's tomorrow, then on to California on Saturday morning. I'm planning to blog some while we're gone, but probably not every day. I'm taking along a paper journal kit to do drawings, etc., on the road, so I'm hoping to have some of that to post when I return.

time to get busy!!

The package is here!

ordered last week and arrived last night

This means I will definately have a big project to work on in the car as we travel

yippee!!




ok, back to work!

glue resist and balloon backgrounds

The fabric that I did glue resist on went through the washer with the laundry yesterday

The color seems a bit more muted and not so speckled

Even after the trip through the washing machine, there is some stiffness to the places where the glue resist was.

It's not as stiff, but it is definately different that the rest of the piece

I think this piece now needs a lot more embellishing with stitching, stamping, beads, etc. I may make it into a pillow --- we'll see



I realized I had been talking about the background for the balloon piece, but I hadn't let ya'll see the great painting the DH did for it!

Here it is

Even though it's hard to see in this picture, this is painted on a piece of clear plexiglass, and the paints let the light come through really well --- which was exactly the "look" I want for the back of this piece.

The beadwork band for the inside edge is coming along.

The strip began there on the left side where the dark blue of the mountain begins and I'm now about half way through the green on the bottom edge. (And I'll be real happy to get the green done because those are the one bead I'm using that has to be sorted for size, thickness, etc., etc., because they were a bulk purchase.)

movin' right along

mittnz, progress report and "image"

So here is the 6th pair of mittnz

Only 3 more pair to go, and I started another pair (bright pink!) last night, doing about half of the ribbing before I got too sleepy to remember it is supposed to be K2, P2, not some other odd permutation of that count!

Which means I need to think about picking out the yarn for the other 2 pair to be knit and getting that packed up for the car trip.

I'm happily anticipating the arrival of "The Yarn", which is supposed to arrive tomorrow (according to the UPS tracker). Just about this time every year I start knitting a sweater that will be a Christmas present, and I figured that getting it before I start on a cross country car trip will be good as that will give me lots of swatching time. And hopefully it will be well underway by the time we return!

After thinking about possible ways to put color inside the shadow box frame that will hold the balloons, I decided to do a strip of beading that will go all the way around.

Here is the little "map" I drew of where the colors need to go based on the painting the DH did on the plastic for the back.

This little piece of beading is the bottom, dark blue edge of the mountains, and I'm starting to make the transistion there to the green section

My thinking about doing this beading strip is this:

1. The reflective quality of the glass will brighten the inside of the frame and improve the look of the piece

2. I can stitch through the beadwork at the top and the bottom to attach the balloons and "suspend" them in air

I can tell you that working on this strip reminds me clearly of why I don't do bead loom work. This folks, is the beaders version of 999 rows of garter stitch ---- it's boring, best done while watching an interesting TV show or movie!

At least one of you has noticed that I've been playing around with the format of this blog. The answer to the question asked on my last post about this is -- Yes, all of the above!

Part of the issue at work here is I'm working on revising my website, and that always leads me to examine what all of my studio online presence looks like. Right now I'm trying to decide if I should change my Etsy shop as well and make the whole "who are you?" issue clearer by having everything carry the same name. (When I first set up the Etsy shop I was deliberately trying to create a different "persona" for some of my fiber arts things, but all of this work has merged since then!)

So be patient with me here as we have a sort of mini "identity crisis" and try to figure out what we want to look like.

a little more work

and the final ballon is complete!

the DH has finished painting the piece of plastic that will be the back of the shadow box frame

now it's on to creating a beaded band to fit all around the inside edges of the frame



meantime, we're still fussing with the frame for Birds in the Mist

even though the test sample looked pretty good, the attempt on the actual frame did not, so sanding and re-gesso-ing is probably the next step, then another approach

yesterday I mailed off the two necklaces to Fire Mountain Gems for the competition --- I'm now back in "waiting" mode

and the premium book for the State Fair is now available, so I can think about entering things there --- my main complaint is that this year the catagories I usually enter in are supposed to be turned in on three different days instead of all on one day like they were last year ---- grrrrrrr --- I wasn't really planning on making three drives down to turn things in --- sure would like to know what their thinking was on that point

I really am putting in quite a bit of work on projects just now, but one of the biggest ones I can't talk about here --- all to be revealed at a later (after Christmas) date

so there ya go

Playing around

the glue dried

and this is what the piece of fabric looks like after I sprayed it with dark green dye over the glue "drawings"

oh yes, I put salt in the dye spray, but I don't think it got totally disolved because the result has those little "spots" of more intense color

I like that the flowers really show up -- I was actually surprised that it worked so well

I don't like that the flowers are still "stiff" and a little sticky when they are damp

when I do my dark laundry load next week I'm going to toss this into the washer and see what happens --- I'm hoping that will remove the rest of the glue residue without loosing the image

we'll see

I got a very cool envelope in the mail yesterday from my friend in California

we've been working on similar projects, and since I've been sending her pictures of what I've been doing, she sent me some pictures of what she's been doing

got to LOVE this elephant!

on her note she says she cut this rubber stamp out of that nice white rubbery stuff from the craft store -- she must have had one of the really big sheets of it, because the actual print is 6.5 inches tall --- sooooo coooool!!!

I'm hoping to get to make a print or two of this elephant on a shirt I'm working on when I go to California ---- I think he'll go nicely with the giraffes I've been working on, and together they'll be just the thing on a jungle themed shirt

time to get movin'

another balloon

the third balloon for Carried Away

I was concerned that the vertical stripes would be a problem on this one, but they worked out very nicely

So now it's on to the last (and biggest) balloon, which is a checker board pattern --- I hope --- we'll see how stitching that goes







Before I actually draw right on the frame for the Birds in the Mist, I decided a test on some scrap lumber was a good idea

What I learned is this: some colored pencils will take being coated with a sealer and some will not

Most of the blue and gray tones I tried did just fine, but the browns and rusts just disappeared --- interesting

So, those cattails were drawn on with a Micron pen after the sealer was dry

I think that will work

So now it's on to the frame itself!




When I was talking to a friend we were discussing an idea that we saw in that wonderful Complex Cloth book.

In the section about resists, it suggests using Elmer school gel glue as a resist

So, yesterday I decided to experiment

I used the bottle of gel glue to draw freehand right on the cloth

You can see the designs here as pale blue against the white (this picture was taken after the glue was all dry)

Next I'll be getting out the spray bottle and spraying some sort of color over it, then we'll see what happens.

Today I have a doctor's appointment, but she did call me yesterday to tell me the biopsy report came back all clean. I will still be having surgery in July, but there is no cancer. I am very grateful for that.

Time to get rolling!

Mittnz #5

and another pair complete!

usually I make one entire mitten then the other, including the thumbs, but on this pair I knew I was really close on having enough yarn, so I knit the hands of both first

hence the contrasting thumbs!

so now it's on to pair #6

Carried Away

at long last, the promised pictures of the progress on the balloons

In the pictures these two look like they are the same size --- but if you look closely at the size of the individual beads, you'll see that the yellow one is actually smaller

(Ok, not a lot smaller, but smaller!)

Yesterday afternoon I started working on the next one which is a sort of pastel rainbow vertical stripe, and it's coming along nicely

Meantime, the DH is working on the back ground piece

So before too long I'll actually have to figure out the whole "how do I actually suspend these inside the frame" issue --- which should be interesting

Recognize these?

Aside from carrying the color out onto the frame from the beaded Birds in the Mist, I wanted to add something on the frame that takes the picture even further

I think something like these will do that job nicely

Yesterday the DH brought in a piece of scrap wood that I coated with gesso so I can experiment with how I will paint on the frame --- or draw on the frame --- I'm going to try colored pencils and markers and maybe even paint (though I'm not near as good with a brush as I am with a needle!)

Onward!

actual progress

I finished the bead work on Birds in the Mist

In this picture the beadwork (which has not yet been sealed or trimmed) is laying on the table with the frame I picked out to put it in

The idea is to carry the design of the beadwork right out onto the frame with paint or markers or colored pencils or something (I'm still working on that part)

It looks pretty neat --- even though I had to really scrounge to get enough of those dark blue beads to finish it up --- it took more of those than I realized it would to make the drastic change in the shape

So now I can spend some time doing some drawings to determine what I want to do on the frame


You may recall seeing that drawing on the left back when I originally did it.

I liked the little nibbling giraffe so well that I decided to try to cut a rubber stamp of it

There on the right at the bottom is the stamp that I cut --- at the top is what the image looks like when I stamp it

I'm really pleased with how this stamp came out, and I am seriously considering using it to stamp along both sides of the button band on a shirt I've been thinking about altering --

No, I'm not all that smart either that I could just draw the head on the rubber material and start cutting to get it right --- I used some software on my computer to take the scanned drawing and print it like a negative so I could remember which parts should be cut away and which parts needed to stay.

I like it a lot!

Work on the beaded balloon piece is also progressing --- my daughter has given it the title "Carried Away", which I really like. The DH is working on painting the plastic panel which will be in the back of the frame with transparent colors, and it's looking really good. Two of the four balloons (and their baskets) have been beaded --- ok, one of these days I'll remember to bring those to the computer and put them in the scanner so I can show you what they look like! Today I will start on the third balloon ---

If you've been reading here for a while you may recall these two pieces that I did early in the spring.

I had entered them in a competition sponsored by Fire Mountain Gems (a supplier that I use almost exclusively for many of my seed bead projects).

I knew that the acceptance date on the first round of the competition was May 30, but I figured the notifications would be email, and when I didn't hear anything for the first couple of days in June I just figured it was the usual stuff. (And frankly, I've been sort of caught up in the health issues this week and just wasn't thinking about it much.)

So I was totally stunned to reach in the mail box yesterday afternoon and find this letter from Fire Mountain telling me that not one, but both of my pieces had been accepted through the first round of the contest.

Now I have a questionaire to fill in about my work and each of the specific pieces and the pieces themselves go off to Oregon to be considered for the second level of the competition.

Uh, I'm still in shock! Being pretty used to "throwing stuff against the wall" and having it just rain back on me, when something finally "stuck" I'm not exactly sure how to react.

Wow!

Anyway, in the next couple of days the DH will bring in the cases so I can retrieve the pieces and I'll be working on the questionaire.

unbelievable!!

Mittnz #4

One thing I can do while still groggy from pain meds is knit a pattern that I've done many times before

So, in the last two days, another pair of mittens for the great Mittnz 09 challenge

ok, only 5 pair to go!!

and now perhaps a return to what resembles normal for a few weeks anyway

Mittnz #3

here they are, all complete

the third pair of mittnz for this year's challenge

so now it's on to the next pair (same size, different color)