The Block: Aid Recap & Art Feast in August

3 Years ago today was the last time that I had a tent with an artist's booth set up. It was at Bridgefest also put on by Lansing 5:01.  The Block: Aid 2 weeks ago was a great opportunity to get my tent out, give it a good wash and see just how much stock I have at home right now.  It was enough jewelry to fill a little more than a 6 foot table, which is what I usually have to work with.

Bridegfest 2018, Photo by McShane Photography

(thank you Jena, I love this photo of us)

The turnout in Downtown Lansing was really nice and refreshing. You can tell people are ready to be out mingling, eating and dancing again. I always think that once I get set up I'll have some time to get beading done but I was mostly talking to a lot of people and it was good to see a bunch of friends. Part of me wished I was a little closer to the music, but on the other hand I had about lost my voice by the end of the night.  It encouraged me to apply to Art Feast in Old Town this year. Which is practially my back yard:

Art Feast 2021 is August 21, 10:00am-5:00pm
I've always wanted to go to or do this event but I didn't feel I had the time or flexibility in the past. (Have I mentioned how much I love the job that the COVID shut down led me to?)  Getting another show of my jewelry on the books has made my want to play with new bead colors and get some new jewelry made again. It helps that we're slowing starting to get comfortable being out again so I'm actually wearing jewelry other than earrings.  

I started this bracelet last week and it's a fun color grouping along with a much wider St. Petersburg Chain Bracelet than I've made before.  Of course I'll have a more detailed post when it's finished but here's a sneak peek: 

Return of Checkers and the 4th Wave of Ska Music

Since High School I've been following ska music. My love of it started with Reel Big Fish which was my first concert at Clutch Cargos back in 1997. I have gone to ska shows whenever I can for an upbeat live concert fix for the past 24 years.  Last year it felt like there was a huge resurgence of ska music. Maybe it was just that I had the time to really explore more as musicians took to social media during lock-down. With the ska documentary "Pick It Up" coming out it just feels like the internet and Instagram has blown up with a 4th wave of ska. Two-tone checkers pattern represents the music, there's a whole background on it, watch "Pick It Up!" Clothing, record covers, you name it, it's the visual key that this is ska, especially wandering around a town before a ska show, you can point people out and say "I'll bet they're going to the show."  Now checkers are back! I just saw a customer at work wearing a checkered dress...I don't think there's a concert going on near here this week.

Checkers are popping up everywhere, there's a bit of checker in Interior Design in THIS article.

I'm excited to see checkers back, it's how I pattern my larger weavings and they are my go-to when I don't know quite what to do with an idea.  I just start to move it into checkers.

Video: Adding a tiny bangle to a more normal-sized one.

Speaking of not knowing what to do with things; I've been staring at these tiny bangles in my studio. I was making them for something "less expensive" to sell, but they're not fun to make, they don't keep their shape in the same way that my larger bangles do and I'm just not that happy with them as a product.  Not selling or making much jewelry in the past year has really reminded me that I need to make what I love, not just "stuff" to sell.  I have a day-job so that I don't have to do that!

The bright colors of this year's Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2021 collection  has checker built into it and the images may have helped me realize what I needed to do with these bangles. The Tim Walker photographs in particular are really fun, (check those out HERE), so I started with the turquoise tiny bangle and just started to bead checks.

I wanted to keep going so the warmer colors were what I picked up next.

And of course some fun earrings:

So I'm taking those little bangles and putting in checkers between them until I think of something else to do with them.  I love how they're turning out. I knew eventually something would come to me with what I needed to do!  You'll be able to find the first bangles at The BLOCK: AID in downtown Lansing on June 10th, I'm doing a pop-up booth for this event. My first show in a long time.

Interested in new ska music? I've been putting together a playlist on YouTube HERE.

Ballet Turtle Drawing

(Final image for card)

My niece's first ballet recital was last weekend and I really felt that the ballet cards I did find were lacking...  So I decided to make one myself.  My turtle, Crush, was the inspiration.  He gets up on his rock under the sun or the light and stretches out into what look like ballet moves to me. 

He was sitting up on his rock last week and I snapped a photo then just sketched the below drawing from the photo.  My drawing background from college is a lot of scientific illustration classes so I tend to draw realistic. I decided he needed ballet shoes to finish it off.

I often miss drawing, my hands are usually busy making something instead of using a pen or pencil.  This was a nice opportunity to to just unplug into a little bit of drawing while I grab on to my very random inspiration. 

Between the sketch and the colored-in Photoshop version I'm not sure which I like better.  I tried to put pink or purple in the background on the final version but blue just seemed to fit the best, maybe becasue it feels a bit like water. I post about the cats most of the time, but Crush's tank is in my office and we hang out in the mornings while I have my coffee and journal or get my computer-work done. It's hot out today so I'll probably take him outside to play in the yard while it's nice so he can get some full sun. 

Video: Hand Stitching Leaves Together

I am in the middle of working on a leaf panel for my large Leaf Me Alone installation piece. My larger works take one to three years to finish so in this time there are a lot of posts about the process and progress rather than finished works. I wound the warp was wound years ago along with the smaller warps for Leaf Me Alone 1, 2 and 3.  The weaving came off the loom last year but is still not completely finished, I'm picking away at its leaf panel, making leaves as I play in the studio or bead on the couch and on-the-go. I collect them and choose what needs to go where as the piece forms. In this video I talk about choosing what leaf goes on next and how I stitch it to the leaves that are already forming the larger panel. 

I've made another process video. I'm not a fan of making videos or hearing myself talk in them for that matter.  However, it's the way that social and marketing is going. I find that when I'm scrolling around on the internet or social media I often will stop on videos of things being made, even if I have no interest in the thing. They're mesmerizing, especially the sped up time-lapsed ones.  I'm working on posting more video of my processes to capture where I'm at now in this moment with my work and how I create. My moments change and I've found that my artwork will mean one thing to me when I'm making it, but give it 5 or 10 years and it has a new meaning for me. When I give presentations about my work, they are never the same. I am constantly changing; my feelings towards different works can change. 

I enjoy looking back on past posts now that I've been blogging for as long as I have.  I'm hoping I'll appreciate these videos more as time moves forward. 

The Long Answer to "What are you knitting?"

    One of the projects that I keep in my purse to keep my hands busy is knitting my thrums.  I've been tying the short pieces of rayon thread together and knitting them into strips for a few years now. I currently, finally, have a definite reason to be knitting them. I get asked all the time "what are you knitting? (or making)" and this one is hard to describe. Fabric. That's the short answer...and this is the long answer:

    Thrums are the leftover pieces of thread or yarn left on a loom when the weaving has been cut off. They pull off the bars they were tied on to easily so I just throw them in a bowl of them that I have started. I began keeping them because I think they're just so beautiful, these little knots of leftover hand dyed rayon, and decided I'd just make more fabric with them.

    They knit up with a far different texture than the weaving they helped produce. I don't knit anything fancy, just open and loose knit so it ends up being a very stretchy open-knit fabric. 

Past knitted strips

The video I posted is a time-lapse of tying thrums together during a zoom meeting, knitting and then using the dissolvable fabric to make the knit strips into leaves.  It's another one of my tedious processes which is the kind of process I enjoy. Below you can see the difference between a leaf with the woven fabric versus the knitted fabric. It's quite pleasing to have some more texture.

Woven Leaf on the Left, Knitted on the Right

Knitting Project: My Little Secret Crop

I was talking to my friend Sarah and she mentioned this cute crop top pattern on Ravelry.  I looked up My Little Secret Crop by Jessie Maed Designs and loved how versatile the pattern is and how she encourages you to use stash yarn. As much as my initial thought was that I have no business wearing a crop top at my age, I decided to ignore that and try my hand at knitting this top. 

I have recently purchased a pair of Levis that are flared "ribcage" jeans which I would just describe as super high-waisted stove-pipes so they allow me to wear a crop top without any unsightly bulges sticking out. I've always loved the vintage 70's look and I think this top, the yarn choices and the pants all make it come together for me. 

I was so proud of myself, I sampled ahead of time and ended up using 3 strands of yarn at the same time to get the correct gauge. The rust colored yarn is a bit scratchy so it took me about a month of knitting in the evenings to finish this without rubbing my fingers raw. I haven't done a burn test on this yarn to see what the content is. I was a little worried that it would be too uncomfortable to wear at the end of the day, but as I used to say "fashion over function."  After washing it I've found that it is comfortable to wear and I love it! 

About this stash yarn. I met Sally through Reach's Not So Silent Night holiday fundraiser a few years back. She has some of my beadwork and I've done some repairs on antique bead pieces for her. She told me she had nice yarn from her mom's estate that she wanted me to have. Last year we finally had a good time to meet when she was in town for me to come pick it up.  I'm still sorting through it, much of it is a little thicker than what I use for my regular (double weave) weaving but I use anything and everything when I tapestry weave.  When I decided to make this crop top, I found this wonderful rust speckled yarn that may actually be from the 70's to use as the base of this top. It has the turquoise and pinks in it so using them as accent stripes made sense. The images of the various top combinations on Ravelry were inspiring and I definitely liked the striped ones over the tops with just one color.

2020 and 2021 is really the first time in my life I've spent a lot of time knitting other people's patterns. From the beginning of my knitting career in elementary school I always preferred to figure out how to make something on my own. Most things were very blocky because I didn't know how to do much. This past year I have been knitting more of other people's patterns and I'm finding it more relaxing (it's all figured out for me), and I'm learning a lot more. The straps to this top are double knit, which has recently come up as a thing I thought I should learn. It's double knit on a small scale but with the pattern showing me how to do so it was a quicker learning process and now I'm letting it roll around in my head as to how else I could use this (and how can I knit it like I do double weave pick up). I also learned how to do a three needle bind off. Mind. Blown. Which I actually needed to do for my next knitted top's bottom hem. It looks lovely and no stitching anything together afterwards. 

I've already worn this top twice and I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be making more of these.

Cat Collars

I've toyed with the idea of making collars for the cats for a while. We have discussed at length how much Clark loves watching Bryan play Mario on the TV and how we should find him a Mario collar. Well, JoAnn's finally had some Mario fabric that we liked and I ordered break-away buckles and D rings for the project off of Amazon.

I didn't feel like getting too fancy, I just folded, pressed and stitched once seam.  Clark gets Mario/Luigi fabric.

I used the orange Star Wars themed fabric for Morgan's collar. (The cats did not want to model for photos)

And I used purple leopard print for Lois.  The break-away collars do work, Morgan managed to get attached to something at some point and tear his off. these seem to hold up as far as staying nicer looking on them. Collars usually get all fuzzy from the claws scratching on them, but the cotton fabric is holding up well. 

I haven't been blogging as much, work has been busy and I've been sinking into my knitting when I'm at home, or preparing for spring yard work and projects (I ordered windows to install in my garage! Woo!). I have 2 seminars coming up with the Michigan League of Handweavers Virtual Conference in May which I need to update and flush out those presentations/workshops. I'm getting the hang of this Zoom presentation thing, I was the Speaker for the Weaver's Guild of Kalamazoo's April meeting and had a little demo to go with it.  I'm finding that while we are doing these Zoom meetings I should take advantage of presenting from my studio by showing off the processes I'm using at the moment.  It's something that I rarely get to show or share live on these larger works, and I can talk and stitch or weave while answering questions or describing what I'm doing.  I think and hope that Zoom presentations of this magnitude will continue even beyond when we start to meet in person again.