Joyce Makes Art

Spring Knitting Weather

She who must be obeyed (that would be my eight-year old), has absconded with my  long awaited Handmaiden silk ribbon yarn.  "Make me a mini-skirt" she commanded airily as she left the room.  Because I live to serve, as soon as I can do the math to recalculate Colinette's Giotto Mini-Skirt pattern, I will be casting on.  It will look better on her, than it would have looked on me, in any event.  It is really pretty yarn that isn't available on their website, but that I was lucky enough to get my hands on.  Pictures forthcoming.

Ellie only got her grubby little hands on the Handmaiden, because I had pulled out all of my spring yarn and was eyeing where to start.  I haven't knitted with a ribbon yarn before, so I decided to warm up with a little tank made out of Colinette's Giotto in the Paintbox colorway (an ebay purchase that I was ecstatic about).  It is essentially just row after row in moss stitch -- very good meeting knitting.  Not particularly mind boggling although the needle is a bit prone to slice through the ribbon, so I think I'm going to have to beware.  Knitting with this yarn gives me a chance just to see how beautiful it is  It really could pass for silk and the colors are mah-velous. 

I'm also swatching for new socks, hopefully for myself this time.  I have misplaced the ball band, but I have emailed the store where I purchased it, in hopes they can identify it for us.

Isn't that beautiful?  This is my last pair of self-patterned socks for a while, as I received the new Interweave sock book I posted about last week and can't wait to start in on those patterns.  This yarn, however, has been on top of the stash box in my bedroom for months, calling my name.  It got too loud to ignore.

Here are some tidbits from my early morning.  On the other end of the leash is my neighbor George, being walked by his dog and my cat.

Harry & Hermione love Little Miss Ellie, and they come running to see her when it is time for their walks.  They also take great delight in stalking her....and attacking.  The kittens have now befriended all of the neighborhood dogs and go running to see their friends Pierre and AJ too.

Can you see how beautiful it is getting here?  Everything is coming out.  My roses are blooming.

The dogwoods are out and my lavender is in full bloom.

I grow an obscure tall garden iris called Eleanor's Pride, that I planted when Ellie was born.  It was a Dykes award winner in the 1961 and is subtle and lovely.

And we even have early blooms on our Meyer Lemon tree.

It is truly spring, and if we can manage to survive the pollen, it's going to be a wonderful one.  I'm off for one last day of work this week, and then a mad weekend of children's birthday parties, visits from out of town friends, and yarn dyeing.  I'm going to rave at length about my Mama Bear skein winder, which arrived on Wednesday and proved incredibly easy to assemble and use.  I wound up a test skein of my British Blue Face Leicester and dyed it.  Two new loves in one week -- this skein winder and this yarn are going to be making my weekend really enjoyable.  The pink yarn is the first bath of a yarn I'm working on -- Meagan, take note.  And the undyed skein is some bulky merino I'm playing with.  I have been wanting to add a bulky sweater yarn to my line up and I think this one is going to be it.  It is incredibly soft, evenly spun, and the first few test skeins are looking great.

I just love spring and all it holds in store!

Socks & Plastic Tubing

Socks.  At long last, socks for my darling Ellie.

Doesn't she have pretty ballerina feet?

The final word on Colinette's Jitterbug sock yarn is that it is not as lofty as the Blue Face Leicester yarn I love so much, but the colors are so fantastic that they more than compensate.  The yarn is beautiful and Ellie says they feel very soft.  This is my favorite sock yarn to date and best of all, the yarn really does all the work.  I just used my basic sock pattern.

Now I have a question for y'all.  What do you think I'm going to do with this? All of the Judge's friends with dirty minds are precluded from responding to this question.  It's not like that.

Pictures....

As promised, I have pictures.

No sock pictures yet, but soon.  Just a bit of Kitchener stitch and they will be done.

In the meantime, I have handpainted Bamboo ribbon yarn for the last two days.

This is destined to become a little sweater for Miss Ellie.  There will also be four skeins of it available in the Elliebelly store on Midday Faire this Tuesday at noon.  It is the softest yarn I have knit with in a long time.  I never really thought I was much for ribbon yarns.  I am in the process of rethinking this -- in a big way.

I've also had some time in the studio.  This is a little bit of a graphics fool around.

And this little piece, called Ella in Red, is from my journal.

I am off to play with bad cats, finish up the pot roast, and Kitchener stitch the socks.  I will be back with more photos later.

What, no pictures?

I know, I know.  We all need knitting eye candy, and it's wrong to hold out on your friends and not post photos.  In my defense, the only thing I can say is that it has been a long week at the day job (the thing that permits me to buy all this yarn), and since I was out of town, photos weren't much of a possibility.

I did chug along on the jitterbug socks, and anticipate having a photo to show you by the time the weekend is over.

Since I am pictureless (and supposed to be doing taxes at this moment), I thought I would share with you a few books I decided to buy this week.  I have cut way back on book buying, and am forcing myself to go to the library.

But, since I have the sock thing so bad, I decided to go ahead and buy Interweave Press's new book called Favorite Socks.  Several of the patterns seem to be calling me name and I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a pair of lace socks for summer.

I also decided to splurge on Stephanie Mcphee's (Yarn Harlot) new book, because she never fails to make me laugh out loud, hysterically, much to the annoyance and embarassment of my children, which is worth the price of the book in and of itself.

I also pulled out an old favorite book, and took it along with me on my business trip.  I like the basic sweater patterns in this book, and was thinking about modifying one for my soon-to-be-a-school-year-yankee son.  You can imagine my total joy when I realized that one of the sweater patterns was written for my all time favorite yarn, Colinette's Point Five, which I have a small stash of in case it becomes unavailable due to global warming or something like that.  Really, I like this yarn so much that I live in fear of being unable to get it.  But, I digress.  The Yarn Girls Guide to Simple Knits has a cool pattern using Point Five and the minute I finish taxes, I'm off to see if I have enough on hand to cast on.  Forget the soon-to-be-a-yank -- I'm going to shamelessly knit a sweater for me!

Weekend Wrap Up

I wanted to share a couple of quick things before the work week starts back up.

First off, I finally finished a painting I've been working on for several weeks.  I have to qualify this by saying that I'm not a painter and don't have any pretensions of ever being one, but I'm doing this to just try and stretch my personal boundaries a bit.  It's nice to just relax and enjoy something without feeling any pressure to perform.

The words on her crown read, "There was a legend in the city."

Second, cat pictures.  This time, our bobtailed cat Dragon.  Forgive me for linking you -- I told the whole story when I listed the yarn at Midday Faire.  Although the yarn she has become enamoured with is for sale (well, a little bit of it is.  It's mostly for her.  Not like I had a choice.) it can't be purchased until Tuesday at noon, so go enjoy the story without the risk of engaging in impulse buying. 

Third, bad dog.  Our stray dog, Trouble, manage to escape this afternoon.  The judge is usually fleet of foot, but he was enjoying an afternoon siesta.  By the time he caught up with her, she was behind our house in the alley, and apparently she put up a fight.  He was the loser.  You can't quite tell, but his pants were ripped for about 12 inches down the leg.  Trouble was treated to hot dogs.

Finally, a couple more harbingers of spring.  It's beautiful here.  My lavender is getting ready to bloom.  It's Grosso -- the kind where the bloom looks like a little bee at the top.

And our cherry tree is about to be in full bloom.

I hope it's beautiful where you are, too!

Music, Not Movies

This week's prompt for Wednesday Stamper was movies.  I really love films.  I had every intention of staying on topic.  And we've had a Quentin Tarantino Fest in my house all week, watching Kill Bill 1 and Kill Bill 2.  It seemed like a rich source of inspiration.

But, like so many things in life, it wasn't.  I was stuck on the image of Uma Thurman on a yellow motorcycle.  Stuck on one of my all time favorite lines in a movie as Uma looks at her arch-nemesis, the one-eyed Elle Driver, played by Daryl Hannah, poses with her sword and intones "bitch, you don't have a future."  I really enjoy the layers upon layers of commentary and parody in these movies, despite, or maybe because of, all the violence.  Just like I like layers upon layers in my art.

But I never did make Movie Art.  Instead, it turned out as Music Art.  For some reason, I ended up with Stevie Nicks's song, On The Edge of Seventeen, stuck in my head all week.  And, while I was fooling around in my studio, it suddenly came together in art.  Strange, because I'm generally not inspired to make art by music.  But it was wonderful because my daughter, who is thankfully nowhere near seventeen, was with me and we bounced ideas around together and played with the piece until it felt just right. On the edge of seventeen.  It makes me think of all the potential in people at this stage in their life.  Will she make the right choices?  Will there be a happy ending?  Maybe I was thinking about the movies after all.

Playing With Photoshop

My friends Karen and Joanne are the Photoshop Goddesses.  They do the most amazing things.  I'm not nearly as comfortable with it as they are, but I do like to play, and I've learned a lot from them.  I played with some of my old collages to try and make business cards and magnets, and I'm so happy with the results I thought I would share them.  For the most part, I literally layered pieces of art one on top of the other and moved them around until I liked the effect.

This is my new business card.

And this is a sort of fun, oversized postcard to send out with orders.

This is going on my magnets.  I love magnets.  I used to have hundreds of them on my refrigerator, but then I got a refrigerator that has a door that they won't stick to.  I still miss my magnets and try to send them out in most of my orders.

I have an early morning soccer "game" with Ollie and some friends and a birthday party later in the day, but for most of the weekend, I plan on hanging out with the kids and making art.  This was a really fun warm up.

Knitting Porn

It just seems too good to be anything other than porn.....

I love the process of turning a heel.  It's still slightly mystical to me, the process by which the three dimensional heel cup magically appears.  I know it's all in the math, but I prefer to be seduced by the mystery and I love the way it looks when it appears.

The there is the frill seeker scarf.  I'm not as sure about it as I was just from looking at the picture.  It seems sturdier, sort of more along the line of overstuffed Edwardian matrons than in the nature of the frilly, sort of silly-but-elegant fusion of cashmere and wool mesh that I had envisioned.  I have decided to give the pattern a chance, but if it doesn't work out, I'm going to shamelessly frog and create my own pattern, sort of less compacted frills and more in keeping with my original vision.

I did learn something very cool, though.  Lion Brand, that yarn we all love to be too snobby for, is quietly building an empire of knitting videos on youtube.  I stumbled across one while looking for how to knit with the mesh tape yarn that forms the ruffles on the scarf and found this:

I will now have to force myself not to spend endless hours learning new knitting techniques when I am supposed to be, ahem, working.

And look at this!

That is five kilograms of blue face leicester sock yarn.  I agonized over this yarn.  I researched.  I fondled endless samples.  I was obsessed.  My favorite knitter pals, some of the other moms from my Sept98 parentsplace pregnancy board, decided we wanted to do a sock-a-long.  I think this is going to be the perfect yarn -- an incredibly soft, lofty, but washable BFL.  Oh the joy of dyeing this fluff!  We haven't decided on colors yet, but I cannot wait to get started!

Because it came in kilos, instead of skeins as I originally anticipated, I was cruelly forced to purchase a skein winder, since I'm a bit suspicious of my swift's skein winding abilities, and winding skeins around the lid of my hope chest, which I do for self-striping yarns, is unbelievably tedious.  My dear friend Vicki turned me onto this awesome skein winder call the Mama Bear and I am now eagerly awaiting its arrival.  The man who makes the winders is really nice.  I can't wait to start winding skeins.

In the meantime, I am making myself happy with my new bamboo ribbon yarn.  I've dyed it a pale celadon, one of my favorite colors on wool, and am trying to decide on a palette to paint it in a multi-colored dab effect.  I am set on purple and maybe a really brilliant orange, but am still playing with the whole idea.  As much as I would like to convince myself that this yarn is going to end up on my body, Ellie has been eyeing it, which probably means it's time for me to start looking for cute little girl patterns with ribbon yarn.  Any ideas?

Spring is here!

Spring has come.  I walked out the front door and found this beautiful critter waiting for me.

"Spring is here", Ellie told me.  "He's a messenger."  "It won't be cold anymore."  "Wasn't it nice of him to come tell us?"  "The goddess sent him."

It makes me wish I was eight years old again!

Early this morning, I finished my piece for Chris's Artistree scroll.  I'm incredibly sad that this round robin is almost over.  It has been really fun.  For Chris's journal, we each created a sort of fabric plaque for her huge scroll, depicting our ancestory.  I chose my maternal grandmother, the daughter of an immigrant Russian tailor, because I think my love of art and nature started with her.

We went out a few minutes ago and found more proof of spring

We even have sunbathing kittens.

Now I'm off to celebrate.  The wonderful Tuesday sent me an incredible box full of Trade Joe's goodness.  I'm a transplanted Californian living in the deep south, and the absence of Trader Joe's here is still something I can't get accustomed to, even after almost twenty years.  So Tuesday's box was pretty darn welcome.  Lots of chocolate and Asian flavored food.  I'm off to savor the chocolate truffles and then I'm going to put some of the amazing soap in my bathroom.

We also received our annual package of homemade Hammantaschen from my Mom -- the traditional cookie for the Jewish holiday of Purim.  Five minutes after we opened the package, there were this many left.

Shortly after the photo was taken, the remainder had disappeared.

Cool Things

I have some knitting to show y'all today!  First, my Clapotis. Finished.  The word Clapotis takes on almost mystical significance when it rolls off my eight year old's lips.  She loves to wear it -- perfect for staying warm after ballet classes.  I love how she says it..."Clapotis."  Almost like it's a prayer, or maybe, the answer to a prayer. 

I like my Clapotis a lot too.  Today is the first day I haven't worn it and that is only because I wanted to wear my Anthropologie Shrug, which I haven't shown a proper picture of before, so here it is.  The yarn is Colinette Point Five in the Toscana colorway. 

And here, strangely enough, is the same colorway in Jitterbug sock yarn.  I started this sock, just the ribbing, Tuesday night.  What you see here is the result of an unusually productive Wednesday.  Admittedly, I knit during a traffic jam on I-20 between Birmingham and Atlanta, which lasted for about an hour, and gave me a significant jump start.

This weekend I have got to do some research and pick out a skein winder, so any advice would be very welcome.  I have several kilos of different yarns on the way here, and would really like to find something more efficient than my niddy-noddy for skeining them.  If anyone reading has a recommendation, please let me know!