Barely Beating the Buzzer!!!

It happens every year, as regular as ,say, Christmas.  Gifts are completed at the buzzer. the last to be loaded into the car for the trip to wherever.  Some packages just have no hope of getting mailed in time- thankfully those on the receiving end are thrilled to get them whenever.  You see , they KNOW me, perhaps they don't quite understand me, but they KNOW me!!  ( And I LOVE them for it!!!)  ( Click on each picture to enlarge)

This year the Best Buzzer Beater was this scarf that I knit for my Mother in Law.  The yarn is called Monarch, it is made in Italy.  It comes in glorious colorways and looks really special when finished.
 The gal at the wonderful new yarn shop in Fredericksburg assured me it would only take a couple of hours.  Other scarves of this type had  been a snap,so what could go wrong????  WELL, I was confident till I unwrapped the yarn and saw that all of the wonderful texture and color came from a mass of thin and sticky filaments of fiber that had to be sorted through in order to find the stitch!!! ARGH!!!!!  I quickly had to abandon the metal #5 needles and go out to purchase a set of bamboo needles as the yarn , once stitches were located, insisted on sliding off the metal needles.  Cursing, swearing, throwing of yarn ensued, even the dogs decided that they could find quieter spots to snooze. The 40% off coupon at least cured the sliding stitches bit and the shop had #5's in stock, miracle that!!  We were due to travel north to gather for Christmas Eve with Tom's family at 3 pm.  That was the hour that I determined the baking would be done, I would be ready and gifts would be wrapped tagged and bagged.  The last stitch was taken on the scarf at 2:45.  The wrapping was accomplished with a gift bag- boy do I love gift bags!! I only wish that I could get to a point where I could have the time to make my own gift bags,  Perhaps next year, or not!!!

 I did a bit of Christmas shopping in my studio and took care of the rest of the in laws in that fashion. Very satisfying to pass on some wonderful hand crafted items that had not been purchased yet!  For my college sophomore niece Sarah, I had started a journal project.  This project came in a close second to the Buzzer Beating scarf.  As the cookies for dessert were baking, I was finishing up the binding and binding embellishments on Sarah's journal.  I am not really sure if Sarah is one who might journal but if she had a neat hand made book, made with her in mind, perhaps she would become a journaling type.  that was the justification behind the gift, anyway!

Spine with embellishments of hand made beads, jewelry bits ( some of the ugliest dated jewelry can make the most wonderful embellishments!!) and glass beads.

The cover paper is done with a fun technique that starts with severely crumpled paper.  Then varnish mixed with mica powders is brushed over the wrinkles, allowed to dry and then the paper is sprayed with spray acrylic inks and coated with a gloss sealer.  Pretty snazzy,  eh???   (these colors are perfect for Sarah!)

The foundation of the book was a french bread pizza box.  It appealed to me as it was long and thin and a very unusual shape for a book.  The first signature cover page on the right was done using a gesso resist technique. (Another favorite of mine)

I included several pockets throughout. The pocket on the left was created from a paint brochure that I picked up in the paints isle at our local Lowes home store. Great images with great color and they are free hand outs!!

Here you can see tow signature covers done with gesso resist and messing inks techniques similar to what you find on Roben Marie Smith's fabulous blog!!  Super messy and fun!!

  Sarah has thoroughly enjoyed the hand made gifts that I have made for her in the past and goodness knows I cannot afford the items from shops, that she aspires to own!!  She is majoring in Environmental Studies and Marine Biology, so I added images and used colors that would fit with her interests and hopefully will inspire her to document her experiences or joust use the journal to gather bits of her life.  We shall see.  She seemed to be very pleased when she opened the gift and had to be cajoled to open other gifts as she was quite interested in looking at all of the details.  A very good sign!! :)

 I did get in some holiday baking as these Almond Filled Swedish Coffee Breads have become staple gifts for the holidays!  Wish you could small the incredible fragrance of these babies!! YUM!!

I am still working on gifts to be shipped out to my brother and his family in Ethiopia- yes, they have moved again and are now settled in Addis Ababa ,the capital city.  My Sister in Law Elise  is working at the Embassy and brother Peter  is digging in and creating soil wherever he can find interest and spots to do so!! 

As Elise has her birthday today December 26, a late package seems to be appreciated to extend the festivities! I have started Monarch scarf number two and am working on jewelry and art quilts for the whole family. 

 Wouldn't EVER wan to be without a project!! Check back here soon and you can see what  I have cooked up for that part of the family!

I hope that everyone had a nice Christmas and holiday in whatever form you celebrate and I want to wish a Happy Boxing Day to all of my British, Canadian and Australian friends!! ( Someone please educate me on how one celebrates Boxing Day these days!!)

In With The New Year and New Habits!!

This week has gone by in a haze of coughing sneezing and sleep! We have all succumbed with the younger recovering much faster than the elders!! SIGH!! We are all coming around however and looking forward to the New Year to come. I have spent parts of several days down in the studio finding bare floor, filling the outdoor garbage can and organizing. I am making great progress and I will be sharing some images with you soon! I also ahve gessoed some jouranl pages as I am determined to get more disciplined at using my journals to focus my efforts and to become more productive and less scattered. We shall see. I ahve so many ideas racing around in my head at any given time, that I am often paralyzed by not knowing which project o wrok on when. My jpurnal should help serve as a receptical for the chaotic idea traffic snarl in my head.

So tonight I am planning on sitting down in front of the fire with my black pen in hand and emptying my brain of the creative ideas taht i ahve been trying to track. I simply added some watercolor squares of paint to the pages to provide boxes to contain the river as it flows out and onto the page.
As I was recovering this week, I picked up another quick knitting project. I amde this Moebius cowl from a ball of blue mohair that was left over from a past project. This was a very interesting project that is created using a long circular needle and tworows of caston stitches that run like a rainroad track till they finally end in a single twist.

The definition of a moebius shape (strip) according to Webster's is:

Mö·bius strip (mā′bē əs, mō′-)
a one-edged geometric surface with only one continuous side, formed by giving a 180° twist to a narrow, rectangular strip of paper and then connecting the two ends together
also Möbius band
Origin: after A. F. Möbius (1790-1868), Ger mathematician

This was great fun and knit up in about 3 hours, including figuring out the cast on. there is a great You tube video by Knitter Cat Bordhi, that covers the cast on in depth. Got to love You tube!!!

You can see the single twist at the top of the above picture. Once the knitting was done the scarf was done- no seams no blocking - ready to wear!!! I am wearing it now in fact and it is so nice and warm, with no scarf ends to worry about dragging thru one's soup!!!
I was warned by several knitting friends, this project can become addictive!! I am going to make several more in various sizes (they can also be pulled down over the shoulders to become a wonderful warm shawl.

Today we decided to travel up towards DC, to IKEA, to check out the selection of sofas. We have had our current sofa for 18 years. It has had two new slipcovers and has been hauled across this country several times and has survived for 9 moves. It is tired , poor thing . We lucked out at IKEA and found what ewe wanted almost immediately and at a wonderful price. The worst part was waiting int he warehouse area and then the unpack of the boxes to stuff the whole thing in the back of our Ford FreeStyle. Year sof packing and moving have made both Tom and I very skilled packers and despite sceptical onlookers, we got it all in!!!

Here is Tom amidst the unpacked parts on our family room floor.

The dogs were quite stressed as we dismantled the old sofa and lugged in out the door. They were not happy!!! More unexpected human behavior, throwing off their doggie groove!!! I was about to put the couch throw blanket into the wash but decided that it might be better to wait. As you can see Buddy agreed!!

Pepper, on the other hand, climbed up on the recliner and sat there sighing heavily, registering her discomfort with the whole event. It seems that some things will take some getting used to, or not!!!

So we are going into the New Year on the mend, chasing this wretched virus out the door! I want to thank all of you for all of your wonderful comments and support . It is the companionship,comments ( I love, love, love getting comments) and friendships that I have made thru blogging that keep me at it. I never imagained how much of an impact this blog would have on my art life and my personal life in general. I hope taht the new Year holds wonderufl things for all of us and that we can all grow in our mindfullness of others who have needs greater than our own!

Is It Done.........

I am thinking that it is!! I added a few touches and I am very happy with it. I have not decided whether it will be submitted for the call for art, but it is a step towards submitting a piece. It is at the very least, a start of the process.

I created some new collage papers to use. i made some text, paint scrapped green paper and created leaves for the pears to add another color and to spread move the eye around the entire collage. I think that the green really gives it another jolt of color and works well with the other colors in the collage.

Here is a detail of the leaves:

And another:

So now to seal it and frame it.

The next little project was a new pair of earrings. i am not sure why I HAD to Create these NOW but I just HAD to. That is how I work most of the time- I get an idea and I have to run with it. I do write things down for latter use but sometimes I just have to DO IT NOW!!!!

Thesew ere such fun to amke and I used what I have!!!!! LOVE THAT! STASH BUSTING!!!!!!

I used some of my vintage mother of pearl buttons, white glass beads and ss wire, hand dyed silk ribbons to make my fun new earrings! The buttons move as they are a bit off center as the wire goes thru one of the two holes in the buttons and the bead spacer lets the buttons rotate. They remind me of the Jetson's decor!!! I think that I must make more for my Etsy shop!!

As many of you must know, there have been terrible wild fires in Australia. I have been terribly worried about many of my art friends who live in Victoria ,the area affected by the fires. The pictures on the Internet and in the news have been horrendous and heartbreaking. All of my gal pals are fine but very sad and a bit shaken. I ahve been e-mailing back and forth to check up on them during the past several weeks. I decided to deal with some of my worry by working on a page in my journal. I used all of the postage stamps that I have saved form all of our art correspondence and added their names as a small symbol of my feelings for them and to focus my prayers for their safety. Working on this pretty simplistic page really helped! Art therapy in action!!

soory for the glare- I counted the pages with gel medium and I did not notice the glare when I took the photo!