Yes, I've been fiddling with fiber a long time. Here's my darling in his prize-winning Mummy costume hand wrapped and spray glued by yers truly. He even went so far as to shave off his mustache so the facial Mudd would crackle properly all over his face.
We won a bottle of champagne for best get-up!
My "Bride of Frankenstein" costume was not quite as successful. There was not enough hair product in the world to get all my hair to stand up like Elsa Lancaster's did in the movie.
Pushing these silk scraps around to my bidding makes me think about pushing paint (again).
I thought about giving them transparent wings but these are walking beings, stalking beings, not flyers by any means.
Voodoo appears to be the soul of Halloween here. In fact, when people start knocking at the front door, he is usually already in hiding.
I haven't really been able to get into the spirit of Halloween since my boys (um, 23 & 27) and the rest of the neighborhood kids have finally figured out that they are too old for trick-or-treating.
Strangers seem to truck into my neighborhood to stand mutely on my doorstep holding out a plastic grocery sack with no clue as to the spirit of holiday. I fully suspect that my candy is being confiscated from them and resold in dollar stores all over the community in the coming year. No one seems to understand or care either "Trick or Treat" or "thanks!".
I'm tired of ten year old girls who look like they will leave my doorstep and spend the rest of the evening hooking on the corner. I'm tired of boys pretending (all too well) to be thugs.
We have a cat door that opens onto the entryway right where the kids stand waiting for me to open the door. I wanted to reach through the cat door and grab them by the leg!! but it was pointed out that more than one dolt would probably fall down the stairs and sue me for instructing them in the spirit of Halloween.
Well, all this griping is moot because this year, I have to work, as in YES! a JOB! and by the time I get home the candles will be out, the candy gone and the spirit flown for another year.
This year even Karma is singularly unimpressed with my efforts.
All that stitching and still there are design flaws. Value issues abound. There's a lack of focus. Something about the figures is annoying me.
You just get your nose down too close to the technique at hand and the big picture gets away from you every time. Something drastic has to happen here and, for the moment,
it's escaping me.
Although half my checked bag was taken up by sewing stuff and things to work on, there has been little time for the luxury of a few handstitches.
Here's a little inspiration from my mother's blue glass collection. She used to be a wildly indiscriminate collector and would even hoard Noxema jars. This one I like a lot.
Sixty years ago today my Mom and Dad were married at the Episcopal Church in Armonk, New York.
Today I heard for the first time that they went to New York City for their honeymoon.
There was dinner at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe restaurant where a rye whiskey and soda was 11.28 (in 1948!) and Jascha Heifetz serenaded the newlyweds at their table. They went to Radio City Music Hall, saw a Hitchcock movie "Rope" starring Jimmy Stewart and stayed at the Clinton Hotel.
This evening we celebrated together.
The bundles that spent the night in the dye container came out very underwhelming. Looking around you can see I have little taste or patience with pastels so they are on a back burner for the moment.
While rooting around in the stash I found these two hot little numbers that had been mummified with soy wax just waiting for something exciting to happen.
We'll see what transpires tomorrow.
Here are the bundles standing on their heads on a felt pad soaked in soda ash solution and sprinkles with some dye powder. I'll stay out of it for the night.
Jackie thought they looked like bones. Hmmm. Now that I look back on them, they did. I have to roll some more tonight and see what comes of it.
I made this jug in 20o3
at the Painted Potter and for the first time it's going to decant something delicious.
I'm mentally packing some art to take with me on an upcoming trip.
The blocks will be backgrounds for a new piece that will have some very different appliqued things along the lines of the recent sketches.
The little bundles are in for a dye experiment this evening. I'm tired of coming home exhausted, feeding
like a pig and then going to sleep.
Unused to working for a living, I have been putting in very long days and console myself with the knowledge that my schedule won't be like this when I get back from NY. Tonight, some music, some wine and some Arting around.
Remember my cool new tool? I had a day long panic recently because I couldn't put my hands on and was afraid that it had slipped out of my bag and was LOST, but then I found it.
I hate that I haven't been using it but the problem is that I can't find a suitable notebook. A hasty purchase turned out to be a disappointment but now Black Cover has come to the rescue in my search for a Moleskine alternative.
I'll be thrilled if I win the set but if not, there's a Borders just across the parking lot from my new job. I think I'll go take a peek today 'cause I really want to get my hands on the large one. New ideas have been passing by and I've been jotting things down on scraps of paper that more often wind up in the wash.
And thanks to MarieZ for tipping me off to this contest!
My hope won't measure or be confined, my hope is expansive and has a wonder filled full moon today, my birthday.
I got up early because I wanted to steal some studio time from a busy day and make my own HOPE banner. I confess to not having read the rules or the mission or any of that stuff and it looks like something is odd here. I just liked the notion. Having hope means looking to the future beyond any troubles or concerns of the present. Before anything else, one has to have hope. I have a lot of hope for our future but I feel like, at this point in time, I have to protect it like a candle in the wind.
I have to remind myself daily that a lot of people feel the way I do and it's not just the folks who put stickers on their cars or go to rallies and get on TV that get the job done. It's also the people who have HOPE.
The translation from pixels to cloth continues to please me.
As most of my stuff , it's a bit wonky but I thinking about mounting this one somehow so all will true up eventually.
Feeling much better today. Being recently under the weather gives me a good excuse to avoid big issues like pressure washing the pool.
Instead, I spent most of the day working on making this come to life. Unlike Jude, I have no patience for silk's delicate sulkiness and am only too happy to pinch it, stab it into submission and then nail it into place with a million little thrills.
Much related to my new job, I have a new appreciation for my Janome.
I have been knocked flat by some sort of domestic Montezuma's revenge. You don't want the details but there is no good way to lose ten pounds in two days. Now that I can sit up for fifteen minutes on a chair that is not porcelain and have the energy to thread a needle and pull a stitch, I've started work on what will be a very slow cloth.
Something about the scope of my design mind has contracted but things that might have died on paper will get a second chance in cloth and thread.
I've been in a nesting frenzy for a few days, cleaning things that have given up waiting to be cleaned. Wanting to paint ceilings, beating carpets...all the things I should have been doing whilst essentially unemployed. That time is drawing to a close. In the meantime, there's some arting going on.
These are some soft muslins that I dyed yesterday and a piece of cotton batting that did a little clean up work and turned into something quite interesting. Yes, more flings on the horizon and there's a slew of sketches for some smaller work. Seems like there's a market for some smaller, less pricey pieces. I have a pile of them squirreled away but I think they need to be mounted on canvas so they won't be mistaken for potholders. Any advice on mounting small works to canvas would be welcome.
I've decided to upgrade my Trunkt listing to premium and will be listing some of my Flings for sale there. Might as well take advantage of all their marketing efforts.
And here's my sewing chair cushion with the printed photo of Karma on it.
This dyed scrap will be incorporated into it. It's from a long ago find on the public beach on Naragansett, Rhode Island.
The weather here in GA holds perfect and I put a batch of fabric into the soda ash pot yesterday. Once it warms up this afternoon I'm going to be dyeing a small batch of fabrics for some new directions. Got to get that Carnegie entry rounded up too.
...is not something I normally get into but Frank Ze's Scribbler lends itself so nicely to it. I go there from time to time to sketch. Too many times I find that when I put an idea to paper it stays there never to be hatched.
Putting ideas into a computer program seems more like dreaming about something than actually doing it.
Makes you wonder how many pieces get wasted .
