Doll-Baby Surprise Jacket

 I finally stopped spinning my wheels long enough to try out the concept of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket. Ravelry had a pattern for a doll's size version which allowed me to knit one up in a hour or two and see how it came together, solving the big mystery for me. Isn't it cute?

Now what shall I do with this knowledge? The adult version is intriguing but since this is knit all in one piece, it ends up being a lot of stitches all at once on the needles, which loses its appeal to me. The thing I do like is that there is a chance that no thinking is required to have matching stripes all the way through. I love the no thinking/planning aspect and the using up of lots of scrap yarn in the construction.

See how much sweater there is? I grabbed these pictures and the following ones from the Ravelry site. I am not so happy with horizontal stripes across the vast territory of  the butt.



On the other hand I love how the front looks and yet have complaints about the sleeves and the way they come together. Is there no pleasing me? Why can't I be like the hundreds of knitters of this cardigan who rave about how much they loved making it?

I could go this route and just eliminate the sleeves entirely and get the striped effect. I think this knitter had luck enter into her knitting, just a bit.

I do believe that Guru1 on Ravelry has the perfect near-version.

She writes::I never do a pattern exactly as written - just ask anyone! For instance, on the bottom half of this sweater, instead of doing one back and two front pieces, I chose to do two side pieces. Same basic results but I like the placement of the miters better.
I also chose a lighter weight yarn than called for so that I could follow the instructions for the larger size and end up with 3/4 length sleeves without measuring much.

I love her attitude, so much like mine!
This one has the top down raglan shoulders which I love and can easily fake from a standard pattern in my library. The bottom half can be made in two pieces like she did, which can be picked up not sewn, and if I am careful, I can match the stripes by counting rows.
This may require a teeny bit of thinking, which is all I am up for these days.
Don't hold your breath waiting for a finished project anytime soon. I am still in the deciding stages.

Pear Picnic

Pear Picnic
oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 12x12x1" $100 SOLD


Now I can finally eat these pears! I have been saving them to paint and they keep getting more and more ripe and you know they don't last all that long.

I picked a Brown-Eyed Susan from my front garden and thought it complimented the yellow in the jug. It sits in a tiny blue bottle lent to me last year (!) by my pal Colleen, and I recently promised I would return it as soon as I painted it. I was afraid all this time. Of what? Of painting transparent glass. But I have conquered that fear and will see if I can do it again...soon.

 When I finish a piece like this, I have my favorite parts and in this instance it might be the drapery behind the arrangement. I managed to make it look dimensional and still got that hand dyed look of my fabric.

When I paint I have to gear up and ignore the voice of doubt that still lingers. I play the radio loudly and tell myself, "It doesn't have to be PERFECT". I say that about 20 times an hour, yet I still fiddle with the edges or the shadows or the highlights or the color. And then something amazing happens. It starts to look right, after hours of looking like mush. I cannot figure out how to do that.

Preview of coming attractions

After my knitting group I had the opportunity to shop a bit in town. I went to my fave TJMaxx in search of a pair of new earrings. I got these instead. Small ceramic items that will be used in still life arrangements. For the longest time I have been hoping to find a yellow cup or teapot and still have not had one cross my path. This yellow jug is the perfect substitute and maybe even be cuter. I have one just like it in orange.

 Well, not quite orange, but nearly so. Speaking of orange, the flower pot above is really orange, altho it looks red here. Doncha just love the green polka dotted pitcher? Too kool for school.

The blue mug has a matte finish, which makes it unique to my collection.

Speaking of unique collections...These are bones from deer and cattle that we picked up from the property. Since bones were featured often in Georgia O'Keefe's work, I figured these would be paintable too.

Here's an example. I call this one O'Keefe Homage, 12x12x1" oils on gallery wrapped canvas, $100, email me.

Patchwork Purse

 I had lots of sewing fun with this one, using cotton patchwork to border a silk panel, machine quilting and a bit of knitting and crochet. First came the patchwork, and I found a coordinating piece of my hand dyed silk shantung. The silk was fused onto batting, and the patchwork was sewn in a flip-and-sew fashion on either side. The lining is another piece of hand dyed fabric, this time cotton. The flap was cut from the quilted rectangle and lined separately. This is the method I used with the knitted bag over the weekend. Hey, it worked, so why not repeat it?

I was stumped with what to do about  the strap. I didn't want to make a fabric strap, and my next thought was to make an I-cord with some non-fuzzy yarn and was lucky to find some bamboo in my stash. So slinky and just the right colors! I also used it for the loop closure, chain stitched crochet. The loop matches the double buttons and I was just giddy with this combination.

The finished size is 7" high and 6.5" wide. The instigating idea was to use the fancy threads that I mentioned in the previous post. This thread is from Rowan and it's Egyptian cotton, 50 wt. and it's no coincidence that I also used a few Kaffe Fassett fabrics in this piece.

 For the machine quilting I switched to a finer needle, a 70/9 so that the needle piercing would match the finer weight of the threads. It quilted beautifully.

Easily Distracted

We finally got the desired rain, and it is a bit cooler this morning. Hurray for that. The weather here has been the "I want my money back" variety. It keeps me in the cool house and once cemented firmly in my knitting chair, I began to wander through the leftover yarns. These are all fingering weight, more or less and I want to use them up. Since I don't actually have enough to make something wearable entirely in these colors, I find I must mix and match. Reds, oranges and yellows will have to be gradually added and who knows then what it will become?

I don't care.

Maybe I will figure it out before it becomes an afghan.

Looking at it all this morning, I think I will carefully bag it up and bring it to knitting tomorrow and get off my lazy butt and do something else today.

Remember this thread that I received in the mail? Well, it turns out that these two boxes are worth about $70 and I haven't even tried them out yet. Shame on me. I do think there could be some fabric playing here today. After I feed the fish.

Update::

It took less than ten minutes to switch out the painting studio and return it to the quilting studio. I love this floor, which makes moving stuff so much easier.

Weekend Project

It was like eating potato chips. I couldn't get involved in anything else until this bag was finished. Luckily a series of events made this an entirely enjoyable experience::

Recently our dvd player went kaput. We waited a few days but with four Netflix dvds sitting around it was inevitable that we had to replace the old player. Off to our local Wal-mart and home we came with a new blue-ray super-duper dvd player that had internet tv capabilities.
Usually I am the house geekette and can do the installation of stuff like this. But looking at the directions in the owner's manual, I felt inadequate. Dave got the dvd player hooked up, and we watched a movie easily enough but I wanted to have that new fangled internet-tv thing.
Enter my sister's husband Terry. We call him the Geekolator, which the OED says is a real word. It means One who can talk to tech support.

So Terry came over and asked for a cable that he then plugged into the router and the dvd player and in minutes we were looking at all the internet capabilities now at my fingertips. What this means in its final distillation is that I can save instant viewing films in a queue on Netflix and when I turn on the tv they are all there ready for my viewing pleasure. All the other stuff it provides is really unimportant.

 Now I have 16 films in my instant viewing queue and chose the PBS series on Thomas Jefferson and then watched the Woody Allen movie "Whatever Works' which has a character named Melody St. Ann Celestine and that was enough to keep my interest. NOT Melanie, she insisted, Melody.

These are both films that Dave wouldn't be able to stay awake through, but he plays baseball on Sunday, and therefore I was in my element, knitting and watching my kind of movies.

Needles flying, the bag is finished and lined using the leftover pink Kona cotton, and the Innerfuse stiffener, and is ready to use as a sample for my August knitting guild program.
 Ta-Da!

It's too darn HOT

 Last winter when it got good and cold I stayed inside and knit. Seems like a good idea these days too, since it is so so hot. We have been promised rain for two weeks and nothing but a few dribbles, so the cooling effects are still on hold. Meantime, I am making a small bag for the knitting guild program in August. Just a quicky, instant gratification to be sure.

Here's the shell module purse pattern. Simple slip stitch pattern, but fun. I am not much of a purse carrier, but this month seems to be purse knitting month.  I think this one will have to be lined if it is to be used.

Via Diagonale c'est fini !

This pattern is from Knitty.com and I made it as a sample for our new about-to-open yarn store Three Black Sheep.  It's about 18x9" and is knit from Berrocco Ultra Alpaca.

                                                                                                             

I lined it with pink Kona Cotton to match the pink leather handles. The bottom is gussetted and the bag is stiffened with Innerfuse, a new product to me. It has fusible on both sides and did the trick perfectly. I am so proud of myself getting this done way before the mid August opening.

What you don't see are the zillions of mistakes I made and ripped out and reknit. This is a slip stitch pattern and when I followed the instructions I often got lost, and didn't discover my mistake until inches had been knit incorrectly. Then I would have to unknit them, which with this pattern is not so easy.
 I decided to stop looking at the row by row instructions and just look at what I was knitting. Then the pattern was obvious! That doesn't mean I knit the rest perfectly, but I did manage to correct my mistakes sooner.

When I knew I had to rip out rows, I would put the bag aside for a few days until I had the intestinal fortitude and patience to tackle it again.

Finishing the bag was right up my alley, and I regained my confidence once the sewing part began. I am happy to have conquered this challenge. And I love the final result!

Goldfish Fantasy

Goldfish Fantasy

Mixed Media Collage on illustration board 8x10" $100 SOLD

There are fleeting moments when I have an overwhelming amount of courage and decide to try things that are not well formed in my imagination. It begins with a teeny idea, and then I just do what the painter Jasper Johns suggested:

 Do something and then do something to that.

One hopes things work out, but there is no net for this kind of tightrope walking. I used lots of found objects, which in this case means painted canvas, and watercolor paper, as well as sketchbook drawings which I painted and drew over and pasted onto other pieces of painted surfaces. Then I attempted to draw it all into a composition with pens, pencils and paint.
When I play like this I run on adrenalin and endorphins, holding my breath as it comes together. I feel more alive doing this and then when it is finished there is a great sense of getting off a roller coaster, having survived the experience.

Red Bells

Red Bells
Oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 12x12x1" $100 SOLD


These bell peppers had the greenest stems and I couldn't resist gathering them up. Not to mention their glossy redness, O my! One wants to dive in and wallow in that color.

Three Daisies

Three Daisies

Oil on gallery wrapped canvas 12x12x1" $100 Email me

 It is hard to photograph the right color of bluegreen on this painting, so I am showing it to you on the easel.
These daisies are from my garden and the two vases are from IKEA. Sort of Scandinavian colors too, no?  I didn't plan that actually, but one can't go wrong with yellow and blue. So fresh and sunny.

Who's Calling?

Who's Calling? Oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 12x12x1" $100 Email me.
  I just had to anthropomorphize these funny crookneck squash. Did the phone just ring?

In Transition

 Switching from a quilt making space and turning this into a painting studio was my goal for the day. I am showing the results first but the process of arriving here required finding everything again and putting away lots of quilting things. Not so difficult since everything seems to have a home now, thankfully. This set up does not have a finality to it, and I expect to tweek the arrangement several times as I get down to business. It has been a long time (a year!!) since I painted regularly and I had a myriad of reasons/excuses why, and now I must prove that all the fixes I insisted upon will contribute postitively to good painting results.

First I needed to make a shadow box. This is to create an environment for the still life objects to exist. This time I had a better than ever idea. Using the leftover styrofoam in the garage I cut large squares and taped and pinned them into a 90 degree angle. I already had a nice square for the bottom layer and a table to balance this box. It works pretty well, especially because  I can pin into the walls, using paper or fabric for a background. 

Then I draped the inside with a large piece of hand dyed cotton and set up some veggies for my subject.

I have lots of lights and tried several variations of light and bulbs before settling on this IKEA lamp. I am using a halogen bulb which is bright and white and hot.

I move the light around until I get the kind of shadows or highlights that form interesting shapes on the still life objects. Either one would work, it just depends on the mood I seek. The light also changes the color quite a bit and that may be the deciding factor of where the lamp is aimed.

To me shape, color and light are more important than subject. I have painted some strange things over the years because of this point of view.

Don't expect these tomatoes and pepper to be the subject matter of the first work I will do. They are stand-ins to test the setup.

This tomato was the first delicious tomato of the season. Topped with Genovese Basil from the front garden, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, the slices sat upon toasted and buttered whole wheat bread.

Drool, crunch, gone!