Projects finished and quilt hanging

I have a beautiful piece of art hanging in my living room on loan from the artist. 

Isn't it great.  My sister used to do quilting, she now is into costuming dolls--check her pictures on Flicker.  She is the Dress Maker and her stuff is fantastic.

Here are a couple of detail shots of details from the quilt.  I never had a quilt of her's so I am enjoying the loan.


100 Projects to Finish 

I finished a couple of the projects from my list.  I have started small and finished some recent work.  
The first is the Angel Muse that I started with my sisters last October.  I loved her, but she needed some hair so that she was a little more "frantic".

Her she is at the end of our weekend.  The face could be better, but with the help of my sisters, she looks pretty good.

Here she is with the "upgrade", I think the hair balances the skirt that I put on her.  I hung her on the door to my studio.

So this is the entrance of my studio, my Muse Angel reminding me of the necessity of creation.




The other two projects that I finished were the samples from the Orenburg Workshop that I took in January.
I knitted a small sample of an orenburg shawl.  The construction is very interesting, designed over the ages to give a shawl that can be produced for sale and that has some wonderful lace stitches.  It is knitted in one piece with only the final corner grafted, quite different from all of the other traditional shawl shapes.

 Here it is before blocking, 

 and here it is after blocking.
And per my Finished Project criteria, I have it mounted and in the binder notes from the class.

I also did a sampler of different lace stitches that are used in Orenburg shawls and it is finished and in the binder also.

Here it is unblocked...

And here it is blocked.

I really liked the lily of the valley pattern.  I was finally able to get the honeycomb stitch to work and learned the "stars" pattern.  The Stars gathered in the stitches a lot, I would probably need to add stitches to balance the use of it in a shawl.  
Here it is close up:

I think that it is an interesting lace possibility. 

Anyway, there is the start of my three year journey to finish One Hundred Projects from Storage or 100P's. 
I am looking forward to getting some boxes emptied.  

I have been wondering about adding house projects to the list.  I guess they fit the criteria, they are taking up storage space, I have spent money on them and never finished them.  I am still deciding on them...what do you think?



 

100 UFO's

I had my sick January again this year...what a pain.  This year was infected sinuses brought on by the horrible cold and cough I seem to get each year.  It has been about 4 weeks and I am still coughing a lot.  Probably the bad air and talking on the phone all day (what I do at work) has contributed to the length of the cough.  I will continue to use the inhaler when I need to (I try to limit that to less than once a day), I will run the humidifier (bought a new one that seems to be working well) and I will corner the market on cough drops (I really like the Ricola).  


My Beginning Weaving class started last week and after four hours of talking, I started to cough so bad I lost my voice and had trouble breathing.  That was the end of class!  Hopefully this week's class will be better.
During our threading of the looms, we talk about all sorts of things and one class member mentioned rewarding herself for finishing up 100 hibernating projects.  The more I think about this the more I want to do the same thing.  I can easily come up with the one hundred and in fact have started a book with a project a page.  I have entered 52 so far.  

As usual, I have set some parameters for myself.  I will consider it an unfinished project if I have bought something and have had to store it.  And it is not a finished item until it is ready to use, give away or sell...it cannot go back into storage.  So this will eliminate the handwoven yardage...it needs to be turned into a finished item.  The list does not have to be done in order, and I think that the three years she gave herself is a good amount of time.  Some of the projects can probably be finished in a week, but some (like knitting sweaters) could take much longer.  So I gave given myself three years and I am starting today.  I will darn in the ends and do the wet finishing of the stitch sampler from the Orenburg lace class with Galina.  

The class was wonderful, by the way.  She has insights and information about the craft that is done differently than I usually do with my knitting.  Add to that the lace stitches (I have wondered about the "wheat" or "lily of the valley" patterns, but had not put in the time to figure them out), it was nice to have a class with quick instruction to get it done.

Thanks to the recent little snow storm, the air is clear and the sky is blue.  I am off today and I want to get to the museum to enjoy the Trevor Southey show before it comes down.  His work is wonderful to stand in front of and just enjoy. 

Workshop with Kathrin

Last October I showed you the fun weekend I had with my sisters.  But I had another fun weekend with my weaving buddies.  The local weaving guild brought Kathrin Weber to give a workshop on painted warps and weaving them.  She has some great work that you need to check out at Blazing Shuttles.  She dyes the yarn, warps and weaves the fabric and then sells blankets, bags and other beautifully colored items.

We had three days of fun with her.  I usually take a workshop to spend some fun days with my friends.  I have been weaving and such for over 30 years, so usually I am happy to pick up a couple of new ways of looking at things and some ideas for better teaching my classes.  In this class I got a couple of "wows".  She had a couple of tips that I will be putting into my working mode and exploring a few new things.

We started with looking at her wonderful use of the dyed warps.

She talked about how she does her work and how she puts the warps on the loom.  She has very specific ways and she offered several tips that I plan to try on my methods. 

We all worked on getting the warps on the looms...Kathrin helped where asked for and we got down to work...some got down more than others.

Julie really got into the "power warping"

 and she really got an audience!

My warp going on...

Here it is weaving, I have about 1 yard more to go.


The last day we did some dyeing.   I bought some of Kathrin's measured warps and I also measured and brought some of my own to do.  I loved that she used paper or fabric under the warps to soak up the extra so there are no "blended" brown places on the warps.  She also winds and stacks them in a great way to get the shifting on her warps.

I had several pieces of cotton cloth that I had left from a dyeing for quilts class that I had taught and I brought several warps to try her techniques on.

First I wet and crumpled the fabric on the table then I laid a couple of warps on the fabric.

When I painted the carpet warp, I guess I got a little too much dye in the mix and ended up with OMG pink, orange and blue.

After washing (and Kathrin's method of setting and rinsing is great) the color toned down some but is still think it falls in the heading of OMG pink!  Here's the fabric...

and the yarn.  I think I will do some bag fabric with it.  The dyed fabric could be lining, or straps...we'll see.


I also did some warp for a jacket yardage and the fabric could be used for lining, facings, bindings ...

I think that I will have to dye some more solid color to go with this so I will have enough width to get a jacket, but it should be fun.


I had a great time in the class, it is always fun with my weaving buddies.  I also learned more that I expected to and that was great.  And I have several projects to add to my UFO stack...damn.



 

Christmas Decorating and Memories

I was late getting decorations up ...again.  I'm beginning to think that they just need to stay up...no I just need to set up a weekend that we can get it done after Thanksgiving.  This year that weekend, I was out of town teaching.  Next year I need to put it on the calendar and not schedule anything else, or we could do it Thanksgiving weekend.


Anyway, it was fun looking at the many ornaments and the joy I have remembering their meaning and where I received them.  


I have two that are very old and quite funny looking.  I guess they reflect the time they were made.  They belonged to my Great Aunt, she helped raise my mom and her twin after my grandmother died (the twins were about two and a half.)  The little elf/santa looking men are playing instruments and from what Mom said there were other players, but these are the only two left.

Aren't they cute and funny.  I love to get them out each year and remembering Aunt Louise.

 
 The red one seems to have some type of percussion shakers and the green one is playing the mandolin.  I wonder what the other instruments in the set were?  And why are they on ski's?

This wooden star was sent to me from Germany by my dear fiend Linda when she and her husband were stationed there.  She died three years ago after a ten year battle with cancer and I love having this memory of her.  At one time there were two stars, but some years back one got attacked and chewed by a cat.  

This little creche was one a a number that we had on my tree as a child.  It is only a couple of inches high and is a plastic piece, but it brings back memories of putting them up on our tree and each year seeing if we could glue back the small pieces that had fallen off in storage.

When we were first married (wow that was over 30 years ago!) I used to buy kits and make ornaments.  This was from a kit of plastic pellets and metal frames.  You put the pellets in the frames and then baked them to melt the plastic so it would  look like stained glass.  I had lots of fun making them and I have kept them all these years.

For many years when the children were young, we would go shopping for a new ornament for each of us.  We all developed large collections.  This year we did it again for the first time for several years.  So here is the one I added this year to my collection of interesting sheep.

A couple of years ago, Mom decided to stop putting up a tree.  She had down-graded to a small tree for several years and decided that there were enough decorations around the house that a decorated tree was not needed.  She decided to get rid of all the old ornaments, I that is where I got the old instrument playing elf's, and the little creche.  This was another piece that I got, actually I got several of these.  When my brother and sisters were young we used to make ornaments.  This group was made from plastic lids...we drew the designs on them and put them in the oven to shrink them.  There are a bunch that we painted.  It was so many years ago that I don't even remember the ones that I painted.  I took a few and then each of the siblings took some.  They bring back many memories of how we made things and all the ideas that my Mom had for us to do.

 This wonderful picture is about two feet square and a wonderful gift I gave to myself a couple of years ago.  I had loved this artist's version of his "Old World Santa" since I saw it in the 80's.  At that time he had prints of it.  A few years ago when my Mom and sisters went to an presentation of his and his daughter's work, they had the new print on canvas and I decided that at last I would get it.  It took several months of paying on it and the frame, so when I brought it home the first year it hung up all year.  Now I greet it each Christmas and spend some time looking at the wonderful face and details on it.

 This last piece is a felt advent tree that I made when the children were very young.  It is about four feet by two feet and I loved the pattern when I first saw it.  Because the children were so young, they didn't share well and we needed two ornaments a day so each could put one up.  
It took me a while to make the tree and body done, so I was spending each night desperately making the little ornaments so there would be two the next morning for them to put up.  I remember how thrilled I was when I got three or four done in a night because then I had a back-up in case I did not get the two required ones done each night.  Now I look at them and are amazed that I was able to do them.
I love looking at each ornament that I take out and we all still love putting them up.  We still have the rule that you don't look when reach in the bottom pocket.  No picking favorites, we just get what comes.

Anyway, there is a few of my memories that I enjoy each Christmas decorating season.  Do you have a collection of memories that you have built up over the years?  

 

 

A fun Weekend

I have had a couple of fun weekends.  In October I spend the weekend crafting with my sisters and in November I spend a weekend weaving and dyeing multiple-colored warps.  Both weekends were great and I got to do some new things both times.

It took my sisters and I several weeks to find a time we could all get together, but it worked out great.  Mom and the four of us spent three nights and four days at a condo in Park City.  We stayed up late talking and spent the days making ATC, Dream Angles, and sculpting paper clay. 

 

We had not done a lot of planning for the crafts, so each of us brought up boxes of possibilities.  We could have been crafting for weeks with all of our stuff.  We really want to do it again, maybe we will be better at how much we bring up...

 

On Saturday, my younger sister taught us how to make ATC (Artist Trading Cards).  We started with a deck of cards and applied paper, paint, pictures, glitter, and anything else we could find in the boxes.  My sister is in an internet group that trades card, so she has made a bunch of them and we all had fun with them.  I ended up re-layering the one I did because the first picture was not so great, so I just covered her up with another one.  I didn't layer an antiquing paint on it and I wish that I had.  With the scrape booking I had done with a friend, it kind of transferred over, but with ATC it was on a smaller scale.  The second card was easier.  I really liked the one that Mom did and the extra that Annette added to it...Italy.

Sunday, we did the Dream Angels.  My sister had got some Styrofoam  bodies at a art store sell and had purchased them at a deal.  She had covered the body with paper and fabric for the dress and painted the arms, legs, and faces.  We had to paint faces, and I am not good at that.  Two of my sisters paint very well and with their help, I ended up with a pretty face.  We just painted the hair, but I want to add mohair for a wilder look.  They all looked wonderful and we were able to talk until late in the night.

Because we were working on the table each day...we just let everything stay there.  We did clear out between each craft, but we were not able to eat on the table until the last lunch just before we left.  We ate out several times and brought easy breakfast food for the morning.  

The last day we did paper clay.  This was a new experience for all of us.  Luckily, Lori is a great sculptor (check out her work at her blog, lorimetcalfdolls.blogspot.com).  Between the four of us, there were two little witches, Lori did a cute little boy in costume for Halloween and I did a pumpkin.  Lori helped me with some great googly eyes, and a chicken lipped grin.  Thanks to her help, my little guy looks great.  The paper was so thick on mine (mostly with the ridges on the pumpkin, but also the eye ridges) that it took several days with a fan blowing on him at home to get him completely dry.  I want to add forked sticks for the arms and will probably add a little trick-r-treat bag to finish him up.  He will be a great decoration for next year.  Even though he was not done this year, he, of course, was displayed and looked good.

The last night, we were up late again and the snow started to fall.  By morning, we had a very white world out the window.

After we had packed up, we decided to finish up the food left in the fridge and made a great salad for lunch.   After spending 4 days, we finally got to have a meal on the table.

After looking at all the pictures again, I can't wait until we can do this again.