Reappearing [and Painting Challenge, Part 1]

Hmm, so much for posting regularly! I have been sharing some on the insidious Facebook, but that is really not ideal. There are plans in the works, some of which were unplanned--I did not plan to start hunting for a house again, for example. I'm starting to get my feet back under me, and hope to get better at balancing things.

In the meantime, here are some photos of bits & pieces of things that I've made this year. One of advantage of blogging regularly (I tell myself) is that it gives me a record of accomplishment better than digital photos tucked away in virtual folders.

My most recent project is a challenge to paint 30 faces in 30 days, an idea I got from Galia Alena. Days 1-4 are below.

A taste of what has been going on--more appealing than packing boxes, yes? I'm not as close to having a regular creative practice as I'd like, but despite everything, I do feel like I'm starting to make progress. If I can nurture it through the next six months or so, I hope to be able to root it firmly once the housing situation is under control.

Ring out the old...

Just a few pictures so I can squeeze in one more post while it is still 2013! They are things in progress that have been worked on over the past few months.

But first, a kitty picture. As of November 30, Beatrice has lived with me for a whole year. She is truly a different kitty than the one I brought home--she is affectionate and talkative, and has relaxed enough to be curious and sit on pieces of paper, and I can walk over to her and pet her and she doesn't skitter away--unless she has a reason of the sort discernable only to cats. This is the characteristic loungy kitty pose, in which most bathing takes place.

A tapestry sampler and an embroidery, both of which were started several archaeological layers ago:

Happy New Year!

Triangular Tidbit

A number of years back I became enthralled with Central Asian triangular amulets. Where did this all start? Reading "The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindu Kush to Razgrad" by the intrepid Sheila Paine, and her book "Amulets: Sacred Charms of Power and Protection," not long after. Many of the triangular amulets I have spotted in pictures since then are really simple, barely more than triangles of fabric scraps. Some are more elaborate, and naturally I needed to make an elaborate one. I'm also quite smitten by mirror embroidery, so mine needed a mirror. And, lest the result be too stuffy, a googly eye. (Against the evil eye, get it?)

The mirror and the eye are attached with shisha stitch, and supplemented with smatterings of [uninspired] embroidery. At some point I produced a fingerloop braid to hang it by, and then it went dormant. It was in this stage for at least--yikes, maybe four years? Ladle Bug*** is observing:

(Seriously, Blogger? Why do you insist on rotating this?)

Recently I came across it--still miraculously in concert with its fingerloop braids and its assortment of cloves. Cloves were used on some amulets, and I had cloves, so I thought I should include them. The ones I used I believe I salvaged after making chai. While they were sodden, I stuck them on pins to make holes for eventual sewing purposes, and left them on the pins while they dried to prevent the holes from shrinking so small I couldn't get a threaded needle through them. So there were two or three straight pins full of dried cloves tagging along with the other ingredients.

Here it is--made three dimensional, cloves attached, tassels in progress. I wanted fancy tassel heads, and so I figured a bit of padding was in order (hence the black circles). Each bunch of cloves is on a short piece of wire with a rolled up loop at each end to stitch through. I think I would just use thread another time.

A close-up of buttonholing in progress, and a view of the tassel fringe. It is overtwisted and plied back on itself after a bead was positioned at the bend--so, no cut ends.

Linen is not satisfactory for this, being resistant and not having much body once you get done. Also, there has to be a better way to do it; I would love to watch a Central Asian woman make this kind of twisted fringe--they manage to do the overtwisting and beads AND incorporate that into a woven or twined band. I have to ponder a bit more and maybe do some experimenting. Or maybe I'm on the right track and the reason I used shortish lengths of string is why they change colors frequently...they are also using short pieces of string, because maybe it's just a pain to do.

Here is the amulet, finished:

And one more of the in-process photos, so you get the shiny mirror effect:

I think the only reason this remained unfinished for so long was that I got stuck on what to do with the embroidery. But this summer when I found it I decided--whatever, I just want it done, and I left the embroidery as it was. It is nicer done than waiting in limbo for a solution. It has been hanging by my desk at work for almost two months now; I cannot attest to noticing any effect. I think evil eye may not be a problem in Hillsboro, and this particular amulet doesn't seem to alleviate any normal work irritations--but I enjoy looking at it, so it helps in that way!

***Ladle Bug, aka Spoon Bug, joined my household a few years ago. I have a card saying, "Briana Kaufmann and Peter Neufeld."

Acrylic Interlude

Last Sunday, Kim and I attended the Open Painting session at The Loaded Brush. We had a really good time, and I have a new, completely-finished painting on my wall--and it's BIG by my normal standards, 16x20. I really need to paint more. It's so fast!

Curious how the last owl I made was also pink! Pink is not my favorite color, or even my second or my fifth favorite color. But it is cheery. Hot pink is pretty good, especially with orange. (This may be a side effect from having lived in New Mexico.) I think that's how this owl ended up pink--hmmm, the background is red and orange and yellow. Pink will match. Plus, I'm not very good with mixing colors, so staying reasonably analogous helps.

Here they are together for scale:

Before the painting class, I had thought, "Owl." Then, warm or cool? At the class, I got paint and went back to my easel...and I had red and yellow and white, so obviously warm was the choice. It will end up hanging in my studio, but for now it is on the much more accessible wall by my dining table.

TAST 15: Stem Stitch (plus lots of other things)

I finished this over a week ago:

(Get it? Stems out of stem stitch.)

I have strange issues with stem stitch. Like, I tweak it so it looks a little more like I want. A few years ago Kim was working on a really intensive embroidery project. She had decided against stem stitch because of some issue, and I said strange, I don't have that problem; I just change it thus and so, and she gave me a Look (we may have been on the phone, I don't recall, but I'm sure there was a Look) and said, "That's not stem stitch."

Anyway, when I started this one, I decided to change the stem stitch so I had a wide stem. About halfway down, I realized I was not doing stem stitch. It was satin stitch. So I was VERY CAREFUL and did the skinny stems really using stem stitch.

Lovely examples at Pintangle.

I have spent some time off and on with this old fabric painting/embroidery sample. At some point I picked it up again (Needs To Be Finished) and realized it was boring because of the colors. Added orangey red; much happier. (Need to re-start TAST soon, before I lose more ground in my catch-up.

I did some painting - these are stages one and two of my Vision Board, started during the Midsummer Muse teleconference with my favorite Muse. I need to finish up this weekend, but I will have to visualize very hard to channel sun energy because it is totally overcast with intermittent sprinkles and I am wearing a sweatshirt in order to be warm enough to have the windows open. My bare feet are on the chilly side, but not past the threshold where I need to give in and wear socks.

[this is one of those times I get really annoyed at blogger; it keeps rotating the picture]

I made the little spirally squiggles mainly because I intensely needed to use the shiny watercolors. I was sorry after I did because I soon discovered they are definitely in the way.

Last weekend, I went to the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon and had to bring some yarn home. It made me inspired to finally get the white warp finished and off the loom so I can weave ORANGE:

(Purple and green had to come along with orange.)

I cranked through the plain weave, but then I had to do something cool for the end - and wove twelve narrow tabs. It was time-consuming: two hours to weave three inches. The start was the slowest because I had to pay very close attention so that I did not accidentally join them together. Eventually it occurred to me that there were 24 selvedges instead of 2; not really a problem in 8/2 cotton, but it could be a challenge with finer threads. There were lots of tension problems for the last bit of the warp, but I didn't agonize over it, and as I hoped, it seems to have evened out after washing.

The tabs make me very happy.

Marking out the spaces:

Close-up:

Making progress:

Nicely-posed, nearly done:

Off the loom:

Washed:

Spring? and Plans

Mother Nature was doing spring cleaning, and she found...some leftover winter.


To answer Elmsley Rose's question - yes, there is another project planned. This is what it looks like now:


(You're right, it doesn't look like anything - at this stage it is just bits of ironed cloth. It has been at this stage a couple of weeks and I'm starting to get ready to do the next bit...I seem to not like the orderly preparation stage, and I expect I will progress much more rapidly once I get to the fun part.)

Of course, there are lots of other things I could work on, instead - here is a peek into one of my new drawer units (a lot of organizing happened in January) - one collection of unfinished embroidery things:


Unfinished projects are truly a lot more inspiring when they are in a drawer, easily accessible, rather than stacked in small boxes and baskets, which always end up under things or in another box.

And lastly, soon I hope to write the long-planned post, which has to do with this item (now finished, but that picture is for the "real" post):


Oh, and P.S. Monday I was looking at Sharon B's blog Pin Tangle and this time I feel compelled to do Take a Stitch Tuesday, even though I'll be over three months late starting. It will get me to test out all those stitches I've read about but never tried, and make samples like I've been kinda wanting to.

And that REALLY is it. I need to go to bed. Good night!

"Historic" Embroidery

A couple of weekends ago I finally finished the teeny tiny last little bit of the interminable lion embroidery. I *think* it might actually be my first embroidery - the first one started, at least!


The main point was to try couched/laid threads, as in the Bayeux Embroidery. At around this time I read Heraldry for Embroiderers by Vicky Lugg, and was smitten by the heraldic lions. I made a lion...and it came out rather unsatisfactory (bad edges).

It is on (14 count?) cotton,and I decided the cloth didn't look very appealing at all, and I should embroider all over it. Problem one: using leftover weaving linen. Bad idea because 1) you have lots and lots of short lengths (and since this was before I knew about starting/ending threads with no knots...lots and lots of knots) and 2) it quickly wears to the point of fuzzy catastrophic failure. Problem two: huge difference in density between lion and background. (And I didn't remember that when I made the "white pods" embroidery!)

Anyway, I plugged away at it for intervals, but it has been dormant now several years, practically done. I gave up on a few things I wanted to do - it has enough issues that there was no way to "fix" it, and so many knots that it would have been impossible (I really wanted claws).

Oh - and to fix the bad outline around the lion, I twisted two colors of embroidery thread into cords, and couched them down.

Also done, shades of white/stitch variation sampler. Some of the effects only show if you are at an extreme angle (picture two). My hands-down favorite is the diagonal satin stitch. My hands-down unfavorites are left as examples of what not to do.



I suppose eventually I will lose track, but today is eight weeks without kitty.

Apparently August

It is still cool - not that I miss the 100+ weather we can get, but I've only worn shorts about three times this summer. I have turned a fan on twice.

I never got around to posting this, from early July.



Such a tiny embroidered face looked...wizened. But I decided to just finish anyway, because I knew of no rule precluding a tiny feather-cloaked lady from being wrinkled. Er, the cat hair is, ah, for scale.

No embroidery since then, as six weeks ago I (sprained?) two fingers on one hand and they still don't work right. Frustrating in a lot of ways, including that the weather is perfect for schlepping and organizing, except you can't do that one-handed. I had planned on doing the outdoor closet so I could install a hook to hang my bike, and I need to repot some plants, such as the hens & chickens the jays keep vandalizing.

Instead, I've read a lot, and managed to start getting back to painting. Hence the pods. Here are the next two stages:



Time for the little brush on the black and white painting; I think one more session of black and white before I add color. The colored painting...I'm somewhat stymied. I accidentally made a large pepto pink - yikes. Maybe it will help to get an apple to model for me. I need more practice figuring out how the different paints work together...which is after all the reason for these studies. And seeing the pictures all together reinforces my niggling suspicion that the last time I worked on them I made them worse. Some of it is my photography - even dry they're kind of shiny. And the camera seemed pretty unhappy with bright red and green.

July?!

Where has this summer gone? - or, where has it been? Because it just really finally got here. It's hard to be convinced by the calendar when the weather is cool and overcast.

At any rate, the weather has been almost completely like summer since last weekend, when I went on a hike:


(If you look at the large version, you can just barely make out one of the hawks that was circling around and around--one of the tall grasses points at it.)

Yesterday Princess had an excellent day.



And I finally got in gear and did some painting--two new in-process and one probably almost done practice piece from a while ago:

The pomegranate/seedpods are experiments in that one is going to be only colors, and the other is starting off with the black and white underpainting as per the workshop I took a couple of years ago. Initial notes: I "get" black and white. Instant color is fun. And I tend to either use very little or way too much Liquin (thinner).

Another project! And a plethora of pictures.

This is the embroidery that was the antidote to the math embroidery. I started it Monday and sewed the last few beads on Friday! It has to be a record. (Blue linen, DMC embroidery floss and beads, 2 1/2 x 3 3/8 inches.)



I've been kind of hankering to do an owl for a while, and a week ago I realized it would be now. I didn't actually expect this particular owl, but that's what happens sometimes.

Speaking of birds, I've been watching the heron family in the park next to where I work. I have a bunch of pictures - the nest pictures aren't really much to look at, but a few times I've been lucky to find a heron parent hunting. This one is from yesterday.



I continued my walk, and hit the avian jackpot - for I was passing the heron tree just as a heron parent swooped in for a landing: feeding time! It was a prolonged and raucous affair. The youngsters truly sounded like dinosaurs as they clamored and squabbled and jostled and flapped. (They used to sound like hoarse geese.) (Horse goose? That must be worse than a pig dog.)

Then when I got home, the light was just right to inspire a quick bit of photography. I made these a few years ago, and I still enjoy them. They consist of birch twigs, abaca paper (handmade by me!) and linen thread.



To completely round out this post, a nap kitty photo. (She's still grounded, and she is way calmer. I may allow bathtub again soon.)



I could have titled this post "The Owl and the Pussycat!"