ZEKs LITE

Tablecloth skirt #1

While visiting sister B in Prague, we got out some of her textiles from her various travels. 

She asked if I could make some skirts from them.  Mix and match! she said. 

It's taken me a month to unpack them and get to work.  Scary to cut them up! 

This one has a drawstring, but I think the next one I'll make a little more tailored, with a zipper on the side.  It's not perfectly symmetrical in pattern, but alike on each side.

I do like these angled side pockets though.  The next one will have deeper ones, more functional than these.  A teacher could perhaps stuff a few tissues in these pockets, but not much else.

It's a lot of fun to rearrange the borders with the background pattern and make something new.  I wish I'd photographed the "before" of the table cloth.  I'll do that for the next one.

Here's Z looking lovely in the new skirt.  I'll have to make some for us too!

 

Look at all my color cards

They were laughing at me, E and Z.  "She can't stop!"  It's a form of affection, I'm sure.

Today was Design group, and we had to bring in our study project for Color Interplay.   

I needed to show how colors change relative to where you put them.  This is useful, because I have many mitts to knit, and I spend way too much time choosing colors. 

It's hard - colors in large skeins of yarn change when when broken down into stripes.  In Design we learned that's due to "optical mixing."  So what if I make up striped color cards and then mix and match?

Oh the fun.  The art ladies did exactly as expected: they lept upon the pile and began combining colors and comparing the effects of one upon another:

"This blue looks warm when paired with this color, but cool when paired with this color."  "This red looks pink next to the green and orange next to the blue." 

This is only one third of all my colors.  There are so many more cards to make...

 

More things in heaven and earth, Horatio...

The Art Ladies got postponed a week ago when we had some ice.

Not sure whether this demonstrates an understanding of Focal Point and Center of Interest.  I think it might be more like Split Focal Point...if there is such a thing.

It's made from old photos of the Duomo cathedral in Naples, the Dulles Air and Space Museum and some quilted stars.  It's made 3D with the help of sticky foam bits.

Why we all need the big box of 100 markers

Too many yarn colors is a great problem to have.  But I have difficulty putting colors together, and even more difficulty visualizing how they look as a mitt. 

So I created a coloring sheet for myself.  It's very helpful.  Yes, I can also do this on the computer, but there is something swift and satisfying about markers.  Tactile.

Someday this will be a pattern; the writing process has begun.  The pattern will include a coloring sheet just like this one.

Making my own coloring pages

For Design group, we explored the illusion of space, or depth.  I decided to experiment with colors and overlapping shapes.

This first design uses warm and cool colors.  The warm ones are supposed to advance, the cool to recede.  I also tried putting the duller tones of colors in the back and the purer hues in the front. 

For this design, I played with the idea of a lighter background.  Colors were supposed to be lighter and duller in the background, and purer and darker in the foreground (didn't always work as color blending gave me some surprises). 

My design group suggested that drawing the outlines in white or gold would have contributed to a backlit effect.

Z observed an illusion of transparency.  Whether that was due to the colors, the values, or the shapes, is difficult to discern.

It all makes me want to color more.

Crafty gals

Z and I did a little craft sale this weekend in the little community center in Arlington, VA.  We had constant traffic, a fun crowd, and lots of tasties.

Z sold a lot of collage cards.  She also sold some packs of cards from previous years.  The earrings were not the hit we'd hoped, but she'll have them for Christmas gifts. 

It's a funny thing that happens:  She thought that artsy-grown-ups would like the earrings that looked like pies and cupcakes, but it was the kids that wanted them.  And, as with my mitts, parents won't buy nice things for kids who might lose them.

Z did some drawing during the sale.  At once point she looked up and saw that the woman across the way was drawing us.

Scrappy little totes

Gifts that cost next to nothing.  The zippers from SCRAP, a Portland source for art supplies in the form of industrial discards, and the scraps from H of Marsbarn and others and ourselves.

It's good to have some free time as well. 

Sewing them has been a workout for my spacially-challenged brain. 
So some things end up inside out and backwards... we rip where we sew.

Playing with the art ladies

Here's a belated post -- the gals in the fiber arts guild came over last weekend.  I led them through a slide show about Unity and Variety in design, and then made them paint. 

The gals like to paint.  And they like to color with markers.  Such fun, going back to kindergarten.

I got some greeting cards out of it; I'll have to make many more. We were following the paper-painting directions given by the wonderful Peony and Parakeet.

My doodles can't come close to the complexity and beauty she creates.  She's also makes some amazing fabric/knit/crochet bags. She's got an etsy shop too.

Dying silk with the fiber gals

Saturday my fiber design group met and goofed off.  We dyed silk scarves.

I have no clue how to wear a silk scarf.  But dying was fun.

I ended up with these two scarves, and you can guess which one I prefer -- the fiery one!

This was some of our work drying in C's studio.  We all love her studio.  What a luxury, to have the space and equipment to play in so many ways.

I didn't do this one but I wish I had.  The circles were made with clamped washers and drip-dip dye filling in the holes.

What started as a blue skirt

This is the skirt that Sister B gave me a couple years ago.  She was living in Singapore then, where crafty creations abound.  The skirt was exactly the sort of colors and patterns I like, but it was a bit too long and wide.  Cinching it up was a bit bunchy for me, so I never wore it.

But I felt sad, every time I looked in my closet, to not be wearing it.  So, time for a change.

First, it's still a good skirt.  It just needed some alterations.  So off with the waistband, out with the liner, snip, sew back together again.  Now it's a knee-length skirt.

Immediately after the alterations, Z stole it.  But that is still OK.  It looks really good on her, and I can steal it back.

Now what to make with the lovely leftover fabric? 

A purse!  Because the wonderful red one that H made me is finally falling apart, due to excessive loading-up and wear. The old red bag also made a nice model for the bag I ended up making.

Here is the inside of the purse before I sewed it up; a pocket on one side with a zipper, and a set of little pockets on the other side for phone, pens, knitting needles, etc.

The outer zipper was one of those times where my visualization skills were lacking but I got lucky; It's not what I pictured, but it worked well and I like it. 

I also made sure it had little metal rings to hook my keys to, and to grab for zipping and unzipping. The sides of the bag are slightly padded; I had some thin batting and no stabilizer, so I substituted.

There's a stripe up the side, due to not having quite enough of the blue fabric.  I think the strap should have been blue side in perhaps, to match the stripe.  Or maybe not.  I'm not sure.

Overall, a happy home for a blue skirt!

Messing around with food dye

Just a silly project one afternoon...

I took some Knit Picks blank sock yarn and reskeined it over some chairs to be three times the length, so I could dye long color breaks. 

The food dyes I was messing with were supposed to be more different from each other; I was expecting warm and cool reds and blues.

I tossed on some of the neon purple. I'm not thrilled with the results, but I suspect the socks that come from it will look nice.  No pattern in mind at this time.

Note to self: Mix colors in the bottles, not on the yarn!

Last day of the Guild year

The Fiber Arts Guild had its last day of the year, until we start up again in September.

The study groups presented their work.  For ours, I put together a slide show and we displayed our projects.  We volunteered one of our gals to speak for us (that's what happens to people who miss a meeting).

I'm always interested in what people are making.  The felters were amazing this year.  Some of the nuno stuff was especially good but my photos weren't.

Now for the summer in which I have no design plans, just knitting and maybe a little travel.  And exercise.  Summer of fitness, here we come.  Especially after looking at all these goodies.

Mother's Day bouquets

Sending flowers is special, and expensive.  I tinkered this year with sending paper bouquets that pop up.  I followed the instructions on Extreme Cards and Papercrafting.  There are plenty of videos as well, such as the one on Instructables.

Putting three of these flower assemblies together on vase-shaped paper allows them to fold out 360 degrees to make a stand-up bouquet.  Probably some ferns could have been tucked in between the pages.  Double-sided paper isn't a must, but it's neat.

Happy Mother's Day!

Eggs and other growing things

We dyed eggs today.

I copied H and ordered the tools from the Ukrainian Gift Shop. 

We learned a lot this first time around.  We need more tools.  We need to read the instructions a little more carefully.  But we did get it figured out.  I think I could use these same tools on hard boiled eggs with food-friendly dyes.  The colors wouldn't layer as well, but it would work.  We'd crack fewer shells.

They start out looking all globby, but when the wax is removed, they look very nice.  This one sort of looked like a fried egg.

Here are some more, some made by N, who came over to make messes with us.

Also here is an image of one of the changes we're experiencing.  OK, partly it was the onset of the throat cold, and partly it was just not being into tedious crafts, but I can feel the magic of holiday festivities fading.  I know the fading is a transition, brought on by all the other discoveries, distractions and the new independence of being a teen. The space left behind is not left empty -- we've enjoyed a lot of great new things about this growing up stuff. It's all good; it's just a bit fast. Like a baby that crawls one day and walks the next, the changes are sudden. And it's probably embarrassing to have your mother blog about it. 

Here's hoping the Easter Bunny is still exciting...

Charlie Brown leads design group

Design group came and went. We presented our projects and we tried to learn a bit about rhythm, movement, repetition.  I also tried to fit eight women into our living room, around a long table with a mish-mash of wooden and deck chairs that reminded me of the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special.  Actually, so did the instruction (mine) -- Charlie Brown and I have a few things in common.

So I'm quite certain that being a traveling instructor or knitting teacher is not in my future.  Thank God.  I really don't want to dread such things, and others who do not dread them -- who love the attention -- can have them. 

Meanwhile, I am trying to work on my pink socks while also dreaming up another pattern.  I have actually been dreaming of it -- of the math involved, of spirals, of ribbons.  Some of the midnight-thought has actually been useful.  It's weird to think of these things all day and night long... it is good that my scull is not transparent, physically or otherwise.

Exploring Rhythm, Movement, and Repetition

The Interrupted Man is part of an exercise I'm planning to lead this Saturday, when I get my turn hosting our Design group. 

After we all present our projects from last month (Balance and Scale), I'll have a little presentation on our new topic, followed by some activities, one of which is above.  And then a little movie--Fun!  But I have to clean the house.

Coming up with this activity, I was my own guinea pig.  He was cut into strips, which were reassembled in reverse order.  At some point I got tired of being regular in my strip-cutting and got wavy.  We will all get to do this and then discuss what that did and what effect it had. 

So long as the exercises help us think about the topics and understand them, they will be fine, even if we don't get the results we seek.  We learn from our mistakes even more than our successes, I'm quite sure.

Balance

Yin and Yang in the meatloaf and potatoes.  Ahh.

Balance is on my mind.

First there is my own time management and fixation issues.  Way out of balance.  While E observes Lent by letting drivers merge and not reading any more news than he has to (he's got a newsy job and doesn't need to do more at home), mine has been to deal with some issues of balance.  I fixate, and must learn to put. things. down.  Let. things. go.

Meanwhile, the Design group I'm in is also exploring balance.  So when some much-loved-and-missed Oregon friends dropped in on us today (visiting family in the area) I got a chance to have Art Night with the Ladies.  It was really good to play with R & M at the messy table.

This is the messy table where we glued, sewed, cut, collaged, and I discovered Balance.

Among the papers and fabric (thank you again, H!) were piles of old photo prints.  I happened to have three photos of an art project Z did earlier this year.  Her project was surrealism.  I made it a triptych.

It's just practice.  And don't look closely at the construction.  Can you see that I was working on balance? 

It's not perfect, but it will definitely give the guild ladies something to discuss.

Here is how they look arranged horizontally.

Beaded

Recently I purchased Amigurumi Knits, because it looked like a tutorial in creative shaping for knitters.

Also, my design group has assigned us a texture project.  This is not the project I will submit, but it is evidence of my wheels turning.

Usually I don't incorporate beads into my knitting.  There is a knack to it, that I haven't quite got yet. 

One thing I've learned is that if you're going to string bead soup onto a yarn, you might want some definitive lines of beads, so it doesn't look randomly encrusted.  Unless that's the look you're going for.

The star was fun.  Here it is in its various stages.

Rhombic Hexecontahedron

In this Superbowl week, it is fitting that one would need to go Professor Steven Dutch's website (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay) about Stellations of Polyhedra to find out what to call this lumpy thing.  No, actually you have to go Wolfram Mathworld.

I made the paper model from origami Sonobe units.  And then I wanted to see if I could knit it.

Here are the steps I went through.  This is made from a continuous strand of yarn; no cutting, only one seam at the very end to close it up.

 

After I stuffed the knitted model, I drew in the centers of the pentagonal "sides" in an attempt to make it less of a dragon fruit and more pointy.  I was moderately successful.  Actually, I think it looked best without stuffing.

Ice, polyhedra, and the blue and red room

Z was thrilled about the ice that canceled her exams today.  I am amazed that E made it off to work (20 minutes to scrape the ice off the car).  She skittered off to the town center with a friend.

 

This is the finished thing from quarter wrappers; is not a dodecahedron.  It is a truncated octahedron.

And this is one of Z's "just because" collages, which is on her blog as well, but I had to share it here. So pretty, so cheerful!

Shape and Form

These coin wraps came home with me from a recent thrift store trip.  I'm using them in a project for our Elements and Principles of Design study group, where we are currently working on Shape and Form. 

Our recent meeting focused on how these principles work in two dimensions.  Because I struggle with creating images, I am leaping to dimension three.  (I know, it's a study group, I'm supposed to tackle challenges.  Pthbththttt.  Don't wanna.)

[Side note:  This happened once in college.  I was suppose to create such an image, and then build it in 3D.  I built it first, drew it second while looking at the model I'd made.  The teacher could tell, but proclaimed me handicapped and gave me a B.  This is the same teacher who once called my work "dogmeat."  He was not suited to teaching 101 classes.]

So with these wrappers, I shall demonstrate shape and form.

I predict a skeletal dodecahedron (a regular polyhedron composed of 12 pentagons) in which each wrapper represents an edge.  How many wrappers is that?  I have that math in a book.  I'll look it up and report later.  I'm sure it's a larger number than I have wrappers for (of this size anyway) so I will have to solve that problem eventually.

That issue can mull.  The fact that I am not obsessively knitting right now is some sort of healing today.

What to do with the weird little things

Lately I've been in the groove of assembling jigsaw puzzles in order to make greeting cards.  I'll take bits of the puzzle, put them on some interesting paper, then onto a watercolor paper card. 

Most of this puzzle got sent as thank you notes.  Here's a remnant, waiting for its moment.

Usually I can get the card and envelope to weigh exactly one ounce, for just one stamp. 

When we were at the Museum of American History, I was tickled to find items like this for sale.  In a glass case, as though they were worth a pretty penny.

Doesn't it make you want to dump out your vacuum cleaner bag and make jewelry from all the clicky little bits that got sucked up?  Watch out Z... Your dollhouse food and utensils could end up this way.

Double knitting debacle

Oh, I should probably show you how it came out.  So we can laugh.

My design group all gazed upon it and said together,

"Hmmmmmmmm."

Yes, they could see the intentions were good, but the execution... ah. 

Well, I learend a thing or two about the behavior of double-knitting.  Like that it's really stretchy and doesn't pull in for square stitches like stranded knitting does.  And that you might not want to get quite so complicated right off the bat.

So I showed them another instance in which I got complicated right away, without knowing what I was doing.  Stretchy velour, satin, flannel, and lightweight cottons all at once, while a baby Z crawled around on the floor.  I had never heard of fusible web, paper piecing, foundation quilting... This was Z's one-year-birthday present nearly twelve years ago.  I'm amazed it's still in one piece.

We had a few things to say about it, in terms of positive and negative space.  And value, and color choice...

It's really helpful being around all these different artists.  Some are very careful, some very carefree, but all committed to learning. 

Still making birds

Friend N from knit group has come over a couple times to play.  We make a big mess and work on our birds.  Not finished yet, so no photos, but hopefully soon. 

Mine has some beads on its head. It's really tempting to put them all over its body. Maybe next I'll make something furry... some sort of fabric chia pet.

Fabric critters

The wire sculpture fabric-wrapping fun continues. 

This time Z got involved.  She wasn't keen on the stitching -- I did that part -- but her wrapping was excellent and her color choices are delightful.  She has a fat blue bird with a somewhat aquatic form.

Meanwhile, I felt like adding arms.  And beads. 

The fun thing about this type of sculpture is that mistakes are built into the process.  There will be stray threads, lumps, irregularities.  It's freeing to just let the critter develop into whatever it is going to be.

The sculpture presents puzzles.  For the spine, I wrapped wire around a pencil and flattened the spring it made, then wound it onto the tail with more wire.  Later fabric was glued to both sides of the loops on the spine.

Beady eyes, beady tail.

Bird workshop

Time for the Dookie Bird!

That's the name I gave it.  The birds are the work of local fiber artist Maria Simonsson.  She offered a workshop this weekend in her studio.

We started with a wire coat hanger frame around which we wrapped polyfiber stabilizer.  We made toes with wire and the foundations for tail and head dress.

 

I don't want to give away the entire procedure, but here are some of the results.  Birds come in various forms.

This last one was our
model, and I found myself stuck on the colors, in spite of my usual polychromania.  And it was just plain inspiring to see the studio!

Gallbladder Gone!

I have a photo of E's inflamed and enlarged bile bucket organ... I'm not going to put it on the internet though.  The surgeon teased me about it -- he was sure that's why I wanted it.  He pretended not to hear me when I asked if we could keep it.  Having seen the picture he granted, I understand why we don't want to keep it.

E is sore.  He's full of Perkoset.  Life is hard right now but has the promise of getting better.

Meanwhile, I hope soon to post more pictures of my Dookie Bird.  I attended a bird-making workshop, and I'll share the goodies with you soon.

Making of a mola (or approximation thereof...)

I know there is a lot more to this, and I will take my 25% off coupon to Ten Thousand Villages to see if I can purchase an actual mola and pick at it.  Meanwhile, here is my attempt at mola-making.

I began with a paper drawing about 8" square.  Having done so, I could not at all visualize how it was going to look as a mola, or what would happen once I started cutting and sewing.  My brain just doesn't work that way.  So this was discovery time for me.

The drawing grew out of my Zentangle-inspired doodles.  I cut it out and traced it onto red swirly fabric, which I then stitched applique-style onto purple fabric.

From there I kept cutting out swirls, tracing them onto fabric (first yellow, then green) and appliqueing them in place onto the purple.  So far I'm not sure how this really is mola-like, but it's coming out nice and swirly so I'm happy.  At some point I decided to plop the whole thing down onto another red piece of fabric.

And now I'm fiddling around the purple edges.  At this point I'm just making it up.  I will probably open up some of the purple parts to expose the red underneath.  Then I suppose I can open up that to expose something else underneath...

I feel I might be doing this process in reverse of how it traditionally is done.  Usually the fabrics are all stacked and basted first.  I just can't wrap my mind around that -- part of that lack of spacial orientation, I guess.  But I'm not unhappy with how it's going.  Plus I'm learning needle-turn applique, which I have never done before.  I'm cheating with the thread--using a variegated nylon thread instead of matching quilting threads. 

Doodle-de-de...

I've been doing more doodles.  Also I've been looking at molas.  I think that somehow, these doodles could become molas, thus satisfying the requirements of the fiber arts design study group's project for "line."

I'll have to simplify.  I have no idea how long all those tiny stitches take.  More to come. 

Elements of Design, session 1: Line

I joined the Elements and Principles of Design study group within the fiber arts guild.  We met for the first time yesterday.  The topic was Line.  After treats, tea and a presentation by a member of the study group, we did some semi-organized doodling. 

Here is my "zentangle" drawing.  Now we each have to create a fiber arts piece that illustrates the Line concepts we learned at this session, which will be critiqued at next session.

Joy of new camera

It costs less than the first one, and I like it better.  I promise, promise, promise not to drop it.  I dropped it in the shipping box, before I even opened it.  Oh help me.  Soon the case will arrive, to protect it.

It has an extra wide screen, and with the wide format, what I see is what I get.  I can crop the ends and my 4x6 prints will look a little better I think.

By the way, Z wants to sell bottlecaps for kids' lockers at school.  She's in production mode.

The Plan

Z has reached a critical age: The age of wanting to choose one's clothes, purchase project materials, go to movies, maybe even walk to the town center with a friend to hit the toy store and ice cream shop.

Money.

The monthly allowance thing has never stuck... Stone Soup and birthday money have been sufficient.  So Z hasn't had one.

When I was about this age, I was put on what I now call The Plan.  I was given what I needed to survive, in terms of the most inexpensive of clothes, school supplies, etc. on a monthly basis.  Anything else I "needed"... Earn it, Baby.  Meanwhile, learn to save up for those new sneakers before you outgrow the current ones.  Learn to hit the sales.

To commemorate Z's induction into The Plan, I made her this purse.

Let's meet Oscar Gus! (Day 1 of 3)

After visiting JIKES we headed east, into the land of Applets and Cotlets, to finally meet baby O.

Baby O received his Secret Project gift we've been working on.  Here it is.

And here is Aunt B discovering it. 

I have to admit that quilting when one's child is older is much easier than doing so with a tot running about!  I could afford to be extravagant.  Also every piece of material in the quilt was gifted to us, so it was a no-expense project.  

Stars & Roses

I'm cranking out these babies. 

And I've learned to make the rose.  It's as hard as it looks, but if done several times over, it gets much easier.

How to ship these?  Oh dear.  I may have to pospone the final stages of the rose and bring them flat, finish them in the West.

Various things

Well, Sunday was Father's Day, and E got some goodies.

Z and I continue to tie knots.

And after our guests left, I took off with more origami. 

Since the decorations are for a golden anniversary, I tried out painting craft paper gold for some woven stars.  Paint dries instantly in the sun!

Knots for friends

Recently Z and I have been learning how to tie friendship bracelets.  We have lots of colorful strings to play with.

There's a nice website here to get you started, if you wish to join us.

Folding for the forest folks

We're getting ready for our summer trip to the west.  We will be in Washinton state this time, to visit baby Oscar and the bigger cousins.

I have a friend whose folks will celebrate their 50th anniversary along the Columbia River Gorge, Washington side, at a campground with an enclosed dining area, catered food and festivities.  We'll join them for a couple nights, and I get to help decorate for dinner.

So I've been plotting.  Scrap paper here of course.  All will be in woodsy papers in the end. 

My friend's parents once hosted many Japanese foreign exchange students, so we are going with an origami theme.

There will need to be some garlands -- perhaps of birds, perhaps of inverted hana -- those are the bowl-flower-like pleated things. 

There will perhaps be table vases and paper bowls, coasters with pictures in them. 

Drizzle dying

After my last dying experiment, I had some jars of mixed dye leftover.  I also have some neon food liquid food coloring, half used from making cake frosting. 

This is a sock flat.  Two skeins of sock yarn have been knit together into a scarf, and when dyed, I will get two identical skeins of yarn that can be knit right off the flat into socks.  With a circular knitting needle, I can even knit both socks at the same time.  Whee!

 
Using water bottles with nozzles, I drizzled on my dye mixtures until I had fully saturated it.  Oversaturated, actually, as there was some pooling when I folded and then rolled it up for steaming.  But all of the dye was absorbed; when I rinsed, there was no color in the water at all.

Even though I poured the dye onto the "purl" side of the flat, that side did not absorb dye completely.  When I knit this yarn, there will be white speckles, and the socks won't be as dark or as vivid as the flat looks from the front.

The flat dried hanging from a chair rung, with assistance from the space heater on the floor.

Knitting

So finally I get to see whether my stripes are the right lengths and work together.  They work together as well as they can, considering.  My preference would be to not have ALL the colors of the rainbow in there at once, and not so dark, but these will be fun.

Winding

This is not the easy way to do this.  I think the intelligent path would be two swifts set up far apart from each other.  Still, the job is done. 

The crayon-like colors remind me of an acrylic yarn I played with as a kid.  Mom tacked four small nails into a Tinker Toy wheel, handed me yarn and a crochet hook, and I knitted ropes of i-cord over the nails (didn't know then that it was called i-cord) and watched the colors come and go.

Stripes and a stump

This morning I unwrapped the dyed yarn and was shocked at how dark it all looked.  I dumped it into some lukewarm water and soaked it, squished it, rinsed it, until the water ran clear.

I rolled up the yarn in a towel and squeezed out all the excess water.  Once dry, the colors were lighter.  The yarn didn't take the dye evenly so I have a bit of a kettle-dyed look; perhaps vinegar should go in the soaking water next time.

Considering the hues I had and my inexperience at mixing dye solution, I'm very pleased with the results.  But next time I will steam the yarn over a glass jar instead of a plastic cup.  The cup I used is now shaped like a tree stump.  Surely that is good for something.

Geometry

See the natural rhythms in our simple daily creations? 
Ahh, the circles of life...

Dressing like a stolen car

I love the Muppets episode with Elton John.  Sam the Eagle tells Mr. John he dresses like a stolen car. 

And these socks... they are an experiment, and I would say it's time to get back to the lab.  But I did learn a lot from them.

Also, for anyone wanting a peek at the crazy quilt Z and I are working on, click the link.

Cutting, piecing, ironing

Z and I did some quilt work this weekend.  I get to do the sewing, but Z likes the cutting out and ironing.  Thank goodness -- she is contributing lots of time, and is very precise.  She also selects colors, as we dig into our bags of scraps.

Now, Uncle P and Aunt B should not look because this is a surprise, but everyone else can see a Sneak Peek
here of how things are progressing.

Z & K conspiracy

We're cooking up something good, Z and I. 

Aunt B and Uncle P are brewing a babelet, which they are presently calling Gus.  Gus needs a welcome gift, so Z and I go to work on it together.

It's going to be made of fabric scraps sent to us by H, so it will be gloriously colorful, but will need to have many small pieces because the scraps are small.  Thankfully, I have Z to help cut them out.

And also thankfully, Gus gets to move to a cooler climate (and shorter plane flight away!) this summer.  He'll miss the joys of snakes and lizards in his path, eating durian and ugli fruit, but he'll have need of a quilt.

Back from the bazaars

We're done, and we did well.  I'm starting to add the leftovers to our etsy site (click "TheClutteredTable" link at left.  For now, we've got some children's fingerless mitts and some of Z's cards.  Soon I'll put up some hats and more individual cards by Z.

With newly-earned crafty cash and a tip from a fellow fiber guilder, I bought an inexpensive, well-cared-for used spinning wheel.

It's my starter wheel, an Ashford Traditional.  So I can get good enough to know what I really want.  Just one treadle, simple to operate, lovely to look at.

Craft fair #1

Here's where we were last weekend.  We did OK -- not fabulous, not bad. We've got another coming this weekend.

Z and her friend, A, made and sold purses.  Seeing the artists at work was a draw for customers.

Doings a-transpiring

Apparently I can't seem to get much up on the blog lately.

I've been festering over craft sales and product presentation.  Learning the ways of Maryland's sales tax regulations for craft vendors.  And knitting. 

Also our family is reading aloud together in the evenings instead of TV.  We're working our way through Harry Potter, but I get sucked in, creeping down to the kitchen at night to read ahead by myself and let E sleep.

It's a time of imbalance and weird after-thought dinners, but I'll have something to show for it soon.

Head Trip

There is another world out there that I know nothing of.  How was I to know so many people are walking around with hair and facial attachments that are not their own?  I am so naive.

Incense was burning.  I heard at least three different languages spoken.  From floor to high ceiling eyes, necks and heads dripped with sparkly things.  It was a gaudy feast for the senses. 

This store was only one of many such places all over town.  I can't find stationery envelopes without asking a printer to special order them, but I can find wigs and hair attachments in any texture or color imaginable.

They sold me these two heads for cheaper than I can buy a Styrofoam ball at the craft store.  What fun.  I feel like going back for 20 more.

Impermanence

Back and forth each night, little messages in magnetic sprinkles...

Z sends a kitty, I send a love letter.  Z sends a love letter, I send a kitty...