Joyce Makes Art

Do over. And then, do over again.

The title says it all.  *Sigh*  Do over.  And then do over again.

This is what happens when you don't read the pattern.  Yes, I do have an excuse, several in fact, for being distracted right now, but really.  Not just once, but twice.

I tempted to skip straight to my artwork, but I'll dish the knitting trauma first.  This is the first cuff for my Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rock and Weave Socks.  Lots of linen stitch, and very enjoyable it is to knit.  The colors are much prettier than the picture shows -- the yarn is Colinette's Jitterbug Sock Yarn in Popsicle.  The first mistake was understandable.  In my excitement to be at the end of the cuff, I cast off.  I was excited about trying the picot edge cast off for the first time.  I did it, only realizing after the fact that I was supposed to do the buttonholes first.

So, this morning, I frogged out my pretty picot edge, knit buttonholes and cast off again.  Oops!  Really.  Don't you think I would have read the pattern better the second time through?  i've got to frog again, redo the buttonholes and continue in linen stitch for a bit before I get to cast off.  Oh the agony of it.  I resolve to be a better pattern reader in the future!

Work in my studio is going much better than the knitting right now!  I'm in the thick of my current book in the Pock-et-ful Round Robin.  I'm working in Lesley Wood's Inspirations Book.  The minute I saw this book, I had two related ideas.   I scribbled them down right away.

The first is suggestion -- I draw a great deal of inspiration from things that remotely suggest at something else.  Outlines.  Ideas.  Subconscious images that emerge.  All of these things call to me.  When I got down to work, one of the first things I did was to transfer an outline from a picture I took of a building when I was going to school in Germany over some text.

Suggestion.  I like that it's unclear.  I draw inspiration from things that are less than black and white in their meaning.

The second idea that hit me immediately was the interplay between the words muse and amuse.  All of us who make art have muses.  I'm most often inspired by my daughter.  I won't bore you.  Let's just leave it at the fact that she is a creative genius at the age of nine.  And amuse.  I like to laugh.  Even at dark things.  And I've been in a dark mood, at least in terms of color, lately.  This is the background I have begun.

I'm hoping that somewhere in between muse and amuse, I'll find the inspiration for this piece.  My table, like always, is a disaster area.  No matter how big of a space I start out with, it gets filled up with flotsam until I'm working in about 5 inches at the very edge of the table.

I have some images and leftover bits I'm playing with.

I also have this: The Culpeppers --  a treasured book from my childhood.  It has been eviscerated by Trouble, the stray dog I took in last fall.  In addition to lavishing the entire family with attention, she has chewed up all kinds of things, large and small, including three pounds of filet steak and a futon.  She is part German Shorthaired Pointer, so she likes to carry things around in her mouth.  Unlike a good bird dog, though, she likes to chew them up as well.  And so, this book, which was being read by Ellie, met it's sad fate.

I love this book, though.  I rescued it.  Its sweet little line drawings have a very retro-feel, and I love the text.  I'm planning on dyeing a yarn colorway in these simple, sweet colors.  And I have a feeling that somewhere inside this book, I'll find the inspiration I need to pull together all of my ideas into just the right artwork for Lesley's book.

The Ophelia Tank

This is it.  The tank that spawned my ten week get-fit plan.

It's done, which is sort of appropriate, since yesterday was the end of my ten weeks for completing the tank and losing enough weight to fit into it.

Even though I accomplished my goals, I'm not overjoyed with the tank.  I think I should have done wider straps, and will probably go back and redo them.  The reason I'm less than overjoyed with the straps probably has a lot to do with the weakness in the ten week plan, which was a commitment to lose weight (and I did!  19.5 pounds!) but did not result in any kind of increase in exercise.  I do Pilates one or two times a week, but it's clear to me, looking at this picture, that I might need a new ten week plan aimed at lifting weights and maybe even, horrors, going back to running.  Maybe after we get the last of the kids back to school, I'll come up with a new plan.

I'm also less the overjoyed with the color. Don't get me wrong -- I love the colors, I'm just not sure I'll wear them in fall, and I intend to wear this tank a lot, probably over a tee-shirt, this fall.  So, I'm thinking about over-dyeing the tank to get more fall tones.  The yarn is Colinette's Giotto, a rayon ribbon yarn, so it should over-dye well.

Even with those minor disappointments, I'm tickled by the results of the ten week plan!

A Little Art

I finally got my new scanner hooked up!  It has been a long saga involving receiving a broken scanner, followed by no responses to email and long waits on telephone calls.  But, a replacement finally came and I got it hooked up.  I'm disappointed that it isn't an improvement over my previous scanner.  If anything, it doesn't seem to be quite as crisp.  It is supposed to be a better model and some of my friends who have it rave, so I'm hoping it's user error and I'll get better with it.

For now, I have this pretty little ATC to show you, made with an image from Paper Whimsy on my handmade sandpaper.  I'm so happy to be able to post art on my blog again.  It seems like it has been a long time.  I hope you enjoy this little piece!

Some Thoughts About Swatching

Like a lot of knitters, I've gone from having a devil-may-care attitude about swatching to increasingly, becoming a careful swatcher.  I've even been known to swatch repeatedly to get the right gauge -- something I never did in my teens (which accounts for the blue acrylic sweater of gargantuan proportions).

What I'm about to say is probably obvious to everyone else, but it only recently dawned on me. 

I always have a hard time measuring my swatch and counting up stitches.  Especially with variegated yarns, I keep losing track, even with a magnifier.  Finally, I realized I could just cast on the number of stitches I was supposed to get in four inches to hit gauge.  If gauge is six stitches to the inch, cast on 24 inches, knit for 24 rows (or however many are supposed to give you four inches) and then measure.  If your piece measures four inches, you're at gauge.  If it is over or under, you have to adjust your needle size accordingly.

Here is my current variation: to avoid the curl issue with the edges of stockinette, I cast on four extra stitches.  I knit in garter stitch for four rows, swatch in pattern the correct number of rows, and then do a final four rows in garter.  This creates a nice little frame for my swatch.  It lies perfectly flat so that I can measure the little box in the middle and check my gauge.  Just like this:

It makes it so easy!  I'm probably going to be mortified when I learn that everyone else has been doing this all along, but I figured I would share it, in case it could be of help to anyone.

Not too surprisingly, my gauge in both of these swatches is off.  Off to buy new needles!

Silk & Rayon

I have pictures of silk and rayon to show you today!  The silk is the results of the dyeing process I showed y'all in my last post.  The rayon is my painstakingly slow finishing work on the Giotto tank.  I've been knitting it forever, so I suppose it makes sense I would stretch out finishing it over multiple days.

This is the silk I solar dyed over the weekend.  It turned out beautifully and was an energy efficient process, too!

This is a close up, to give you a little bit better idea of how the crackle looks.  I like the scattered dots with the coronas.  This silk has a very peaceful feeling to it -- I'm very tempted to do some yardage and turn it into a duvet cover.

I've knit the straps for the Ophelia.

I stuck with the three rows called for in the pattern, but am thinking they might need to be a bit wider, which is why I'm dragging my feet on sewing up the side seams.

I'm also not totally sure I like this colorway knit up like this, and have been toying with the idea of overdyeing the entire tank once it is finished.  It may be that I started it in winter, thinking it would be great for spring.  Now, I'm dreaming of a more fallish colorway.

I'm hoping to finish it up in the next day or two, and be ready to model it in my newly less post-fourth baby enlarged svelte body over the weekend.

I've got new yarn for sale at Elliebelly today.  Please take a look!  Here's a little sneak peak of one of the colorways.

 

Blogging Takeover

This blog is being temporarily hijacked by the deranged blogger, who wishes to be known as Hermione Knits.

Our "guest blogger" was unable to resist the allure of freshly laid out knitting, accompanied by Lantern Moon needles.  She found herself uncontrollably drawn to pick up the needles and knit with them.

She made good progress, too!  What you are seeing is the final stages of my 10 week plan.  For those of you who missed my earlier posts, I have been on a ten week plan, using knitting to get down to a healthy weight.  Veteran knitters will not be surprised to learn that it has worked.  The plan was, finish the Ophelia Tank, made from Colinette's Giotto ribbon yarn.  Ophelia had been relegated to the "fed up with it pile" for quite some time.  All that moss stitch in ribbon yarn that liked to split and was generally not all that much fun to knit with due to the constant switch from knit to purl had disenchanted me with the project.  And, in the meantime, I had managed to gain so much weight that Ophelia wasn't going to fit, even if I finished her.

Enter the ten week plan -- two inches and two pounds per week.  My goal was to finish Ophelia just about the time I could fit back into her.  I'm at just about nine and one-half weeks.  The front and back of Ophelia are done and I'm down 19 pounds.  We always knew knitting was a powerful force in the universe, right?

If I can pry the front and back out of Hermione's paws, I need to put them together and knit the straps and ribbing.  It's a very clever construction, which involves picking up the front armhole stitches, casting on stitches for the strap, and then picking up down the back of the armhole.  The armhole edging/straps are knit for each side in this manner and then all I will have left to do is sew up the side seams.

I'm looking forward to it -- with a little bit of luck I'll be able to just squeeze into it.  If it's still a little bit too tight, I'm sure I can convince Hermione to knit me an extra panel, or something.

Dyeing Silk

Did I mention that it's hot here?  Horribly hot.  Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk, so, I decided to dye silk on the sidewalk.  Or at least to dye it in some of my long pans outside on the front porch.

Armed with a little plastic tub and some dyes in squirt top bottles (Procion H for silk), along with brushes and gloves, I went to work.

I uniformly scrunched the silk -- sort of a lazy man's version of even pleating -- and put it into the tray.  The first dye bath was blues and purples.  Actually, I need to back up and tell you that after soaking the silk in vinegar, I put it into a very pale blue dye bath, and put down that first layer evenly over the silk in an extra large pot.  So outdoors was the first varigated layer.  I did the first side and then gently  lifted the silk and turned it over, maintaining the "scrunch" and repeated the colors on the back side.

I let this heat up and then covered it in plastic, followed by aluminum foil, which quickly caused the temperature to soar.  I let it sit for close to 24 hours.

This was followed with a second layer of color, which will hopefully produce highlights.

This second bath will sit, again covered, for another 24 to 48 hours, or as long as I can stand it because I'm dying to see the results.  After rinsing, the silk is reconditioned (sort of like conditioning your hair) and voila, hopefully, beautiful hand-dyed silk.

If you're interested in seeing more detail about this method, I have a full tutorial on Paula Burch's fabulous dyeing website.  There is a link in the upper right hand corner of this page.

As if all that fabulous silk wasn't reward enough, the children were playing outside in our very parched yard while I was working.  I was finishing up when I heard Ellie say "a butterfly!"  It was an amazing butterfly, only the second one we've seen this week.  Isn't it beautiful?

The Start of School (and other oddities)

My two youngest children started school this week.

They are so very sweet!  For our youngest, it was the start of kindergarten, so the Judge and I walked over to pick him up and have lunch after the first day of school.  He was exhausted and in my arms.  We said good-bye to his teacher, she said he had a great day, and as we walked off, he suddenly picked up his head and exclaimed "I REALLY LIKE HER!"  Usually, it doesn't get much better than that.

But, it did, this morning.  He came downstairs at 6:30, dressed in his bathing suit, with a knitted wool vest over a tee-shirt and his backpack on his back, proudly proclaiming he was ready for school (on a Saturday morning).  We are profoundly lucky to have such a wonderful little guy in our life, even if he stumps us with questions like "Do Zombies know that God is up there?" (he pointed) and "Is Dick Cheney really a zombie?"

We're pretty sweet on our other children too.  The Judge split open a coconut this morning, while I cleaned up an incredible yardsale find -- a bookcase for Miss Ellie's room -- and we enjoyed watching their reactions and their efforts to pry the meat out of the inside of the nut.

It is definitely the dog days of summer here in Alabama, and after close to two weeks of over 100` I feel like I'm the dog part.  We're off this afternoon to buy ballet shoes and leotards (Nutcracker auditions are looming, which makes me incredibly happy, among other reasons, because Nutcracker rehearsals mean lots of knitting time for Mommy) and then I'm going to make lots of lemonade and spend the rest of the day sucking it down.

There is no art news today because my new scanner, after three weeks, still doesn't work and I can't scan a blessed thing.  And, I'm not a good enough photographer to take pictures of it.  But, a friend mentioned I have some Halloween ATCs in the newest edition of Somerset Studio, which I haven't seen, so I hope if you get Somerset, you'll take a look in the Expressions section and see some of my work there.  I hope I can get the whole scanner debacle resolved by next weekend and be able to scan art again!

My Knitty SP9 Swap Buddy

I got a package in the mail this week.  A truly wonderful package.

It's high summer here.  The temperature stays in the 100` range. It has been so hot that the power grid blew out in parts of downtown Tuesday morning.  It was a good week for a surprise.

My secret buddy in the SP9 swap hosted at Knitty seems to have a knack for figuring out just what I want.  This is what was in my package.

The pattern is for mitered square mittens and the yarn is Koigu, in the prettiest colorway!  I've been wanting to learn mitered squares and this pattern is incredibly cool.  It is now on my short list of projects to start as soon as I get the kids back to school.  It was the perfect swap package!

It's Thursday, which means I have new yarn going up for sale at Elliebelly at Hyena Cart today at noon, central time.  I hope you'll stop by for a peak and see if any of the new yarns and colorways appeal to you.  Here is a sample of what you will find.  "Citrus Head" is a sock yarn on a Bamboo/Merino/Nylon blend that is as wonderful for scarves and shawls as it is for socks.  "Sun Egg" is a delicious silk yarn that knits up quickly at 4 stitches to the inch on size 7 needles and produces incredibly beautiful scarves in a simple fan and feather pattern.  Please drop by and take a look!

More From The Home Front

A lot of the time in my house, things that are far more pressing than work, relaxation, and even, perish the thought, knitting, transpire.  Yesterday afternoon I had one of those experiences.

I found Ollie, who is four and about to start Kindergarten, in the kitchen, mixing up a large bag of cherries in a big bowl of water, and getting ready to add some flour and sugar.

It was clear we were going to be cooking.

I tried to buy him off with brownies, but he wouldn’t agree.  After intense negotiation, he assented to substitute peaches for cherries, but he was pretty set on his original plan.  I added a couple of extra ingredients, and we made a cake, along with Ellie who wandered into the kitchen and graciously helped out with licking the bowl after the cake was in the pan.

Although I was a little bit worried that this haphazard method of putting ingredients together would make a pretty nasty slush, we ended up with a delicious cake, sort of a fruity pound cake, that would also be delicious as cupcakes.  I thought I would share the recipe with y'all, since I can't show you a picture of the finished cake -- it disappeared too quickly.

                                                            

Ollie's Peach Cake

Preheat oven to 350`/ Set two sticks of butter out on counter

Dice up two fresh, organic peaches.  Allow small child with you to eat a couple of bites.

In a medium bowl, mix 1 cup flour with 1 teaspoon baking powder and a dash of salt (amuse small child by letting him level the measurements)

Cream butter in mixer.  Add 1 cup sugar.  Mix well, scrapping down sides of bowl as necessary.

Add in four eggs, one at a time, mixing after each addition.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla (or cardamon) extract.

Mash peach dice in a small bowl – pressing against the side of the bowl to extract a little juice.  Put half of peaches in butter/sugar mixture and mix.  Then, add half  of flour mixture to butter/sugar and mix.  Repeat again, using up all of the peaches and flour mixtures.  Mix well to incorporate.

Grease or use cooking spray in a loaf pan.  Pour batter in pan.  Bake for 70 minutes at 350` (or until done).

Let cake rest 10 minutes, while mixing up a glaze from 3T sugar and 3T peach (or other) juice. Remove cake from pan.  Poke gentle holes in cake with a spike and pour glaze over cake.  Cool.  Devour.