How to RePurpose a Hand Knit Sweater

Step 1:  Put the sweater on a chair and walk around it for three months until you can no longer ignore it.

Step 2:  Identify a pattern that will be a suitable replacement and without the annoying attributes of the original sweater, i.e., too large and gauge too dense.

Step 3:  Start snipping and ripping.

Step 4:  Wind onto a Knitty Knotty and tie into hanks.  This is a twitchy step because the wild and energized yarn is wild and energized.

Stage 5:  Put the hanks into the sink and given them a nice warm soak.

Stage 6:  Squeeze out the water, blot in a bath towel and hang to dry.  This will be my NCAA knitting and I'll have you know that I placed my $5 pool entry on Gonzaga for the win.  Go Zags!!

Scoff if you  must, but over 20 years ago I placed my $5 pool entry on the Arizona Sun Devils and I won.  I bought this watercolor from Jodi Rossi, author and illustrator of the children's book, Gully Washer.  (Sorry about the reflections) My scientific method was to choose the team most westerly of the two in each game which in the end came down to Arizona.  This year I picked Catholic schools.  Go Zags!  I look forward to this tournament and the connections I have to people in our pool, and yes, we go back 20 years

I know I showed this in my last post but I kept thinking about it, wanting to see it, not wanting to pay for another frame.  Last week I finally resolved this by using double-stick tape and attaching it to a framed picture already hanging in our bedroom.  It's a watercolor that belonged to Ian's dad, one that his dad really enjoyed.  After I couple of days I asked him if he noticed anything different in our bedroom.  It took him quite a while, we both laughed, and we left it there.  I call it Ginkgos in Love.

Today I hung another of my prints.  I used this frame that was upstairs, trimmed down a monotype that I like and call it Sunlight on the Bayou.  As you can see I've been bitten hard by the printmaking bug.  I'm also weaving up for storm of dishtowels for Fiber Market Day in Prineville in two weeks, same old, same old.

Point of Celebration:  Our snow is gone, melted away.  Also the construction machines that have been noisily in process behind our house are getting ready to put down pavement.  I think the end is in sight, or hearing :)

It was a productive day

Thursday was the fifth and last session in the Introduction to Printmaking class.  Our final subject was Monotype and since I took a class in it last fall, was happy to have the refresher.  I printed six times that night and this one is my favorite.  In fact, I hung it in the bedroom.  I'm waiting to see how long before Ian notices something is different.

This is the "ghost print" which is an option if there's enough unexhausted ink on the plate.  I turned the ginkgo leaves over since they still had ink on the underside and put them back on the right side.  I like this print too.

I couldn't print my Lino Cut plate last week since it wasn't finished.  I finished it Monday on my volunteer shift and printed it before class.

I asked Michelle for permission to take a photo of her shirt.  I really do need one of these!  We work hard during our class periods, standing the entire time.  There's just no time to sit.  I've made good friends in each class and since we can use the studio as members, these friendships have continue to grow - yet another reason why I love Bend.

I've come down to the final week before the final session of Pat Clark's drawing class.  Our actual class ended a month ago but Pat came up with a little something extra.  On the last class we were all given a 16" x 20" piece of watercolor paper and put our initials on the back.  Pat set up seven drawing stations and we had 2 minutes to do a contour drawing of the object.  The thing on the left is a chicken foot.  The piece of stick was my contribution to this collection of lines.  At the end of 2 minutes we passed our paper clockwise to the next drawing station.  I was stumped because I need a center section to remain unpainted and don't have enough skills to know how to do that.

I met with Pat at her open studio session on Wednesday afternoon and got some answers.  I bought some masking fluid thinking I'd just have to mask the whole area but reading about it, realized that it's only for small areas.  Pat told me to make a template and attach it with blue painters tape.  I attached this yesterday and did the wash background.  Today I painted in figures, watercolor on the left side and acrylic on the right.  I'm starting to feel more confident with watercolor, especially since I've discovered I can manipulate it with my finger.

I removed the template today and it's pristine - huge relief!

I explained to Pat that I had to keep that area white so I could collage this piece on but she just shook her head and said, no collage - no glue.  Gleep.  I'm pretty content with this project and obviously it's not a work of art, just a work of learning experience.  She had listed three directives for this:  1) Dominant color - yellow ochre; 2) Must have an architectural detail - window; 3) Must have an element: earth, fire, water, air - clouds, ala Rene Magritte.  I was feeling pretty smug until she said - No glue!

As for Maudie Mae's broken wing, I bought mountaineer webbing from Gear Fix, a business right next door to the A6 studio.  I was dropping off my Tai Chi shoes there to have the forefoot stretched when I realized that the shoe guy might be able to put in a rivet.  Here's the old and new webbing.  He was impressed that the 60-year-old cotton webbing had lasted as long as it did.

This is the unbroken webbing but as you can it was just a matter of time before it broke too.

The new webbing is perfect and there's that wonderful rivet.  I got everything back together this morning and was able to weave two towels and start a third. I didn't realize that the old webbing had started to stretch so that the apron rod wasn't square to the breast beam.  I noticed the difference today almost right away.  

I was devastated when the webbing snapped and I was at a loss what to do next.  I can't help think how both of the things I worked on today had that in common.  I didn't know what to do to fix things but when I dug in and went to work, the solutions evolved in the process.  It was a productive day.

The Best Laid Plans

I'm out of towels in my Tidepool color way and since I've woven them a number of times, just quickly glanced at my notes.  Oh how I wish I would have taken a few more minutes.  I paired two colors that don't belong together in this setting, the green and gold on the right.  I've since wound a replacement bout and labeled the other one to use in a Harvest set of towels.

This set of towels is having a hard time getting off the ground.  I wove about 2.5" before noticing a glaring sleying error.  Threading errors are a pretty quick fix but sleying errors take time.  I went for a walk and fixed the mistake afterwards.  I had to shift 5" of warp threads one dent to the right and then relash.to the apron rod.

It's still cold but we've have had some blue skies the past couple of days and it's refreshing to finally be able to get out into the field for morning walks.  Especially since my five-year-old SAD light bit the dust three days ago.  I ordered a replacement from Amazon and got it about an hour ago.  I'm sitting in front of it right now!

Once again, I addressed my loom only to have the webbing to the apron rod snap in two.  I was aware that it was looking pretty frayed but I certainly didn't think it was this serious.  I had to go to two places for replacement webbing and two places for new brads to replace the ones currently being used.  Both sides need to be replaced, just not today.

I recently completed two huck scarves so at least I have them to add to my inventory for Fiber Market Day, March 25th.  I'm crossing my fingers that the loom repair will just be an annoying blip.

Keeping Busy in a Dark Month

 The Zinnia towels are off the loom, tagged and ready for sale.

And the orange codpiece got wrestled into the shape of a carrot, manhandled I must say.

 These are all the pieces that I had time to knit, minus the cucumber I whipped out at the last minute.

The market bag is done.

And when I put them together they look like this, all ready for Olivia's (my great-granddaughter) 4th birthday next week.

I even made a birthday card for her from a monotype print that I wasn't very pleased with.

And speaking of printmaking, last night was the fourth class in a five-class series called Introduction to Printmaking.  We focused on linoleum cuts using Gomubond, a material softer and more malleable than linoleum.  Speedball makes just three gouges 1-3 so I carved each bird with a different tip.  The thinnest is on the left and #3 is in the middle.  We only had 2 1/2 hours last night so I need to go in to the studio some afternoon to finish this up before our last class next Thursday.

Of the three we've completed, my favorite technique is collograph, and while I did like the lino cuts, I didn't enjoy dry point etching much at all.

Knitting Up a Storm

I woke up to rain on the skylights this morning and it's continued on and off all morning.  We're ready to see the snow go.  According to the Bible story, a rainbow is God's symbol to Noah that he will bring the rain to an end.  I'm ready for that too.

I bought a book on how to knit stuffed animals but after knitting all the pieces up, was simply incapable of sewing them together in any fashion that was remotely cute.  I threw these pieces in the trash, put the book in a library donation pile and knitted Owen the blue bear.  I learned that I'd rather do all the shaping on my needles rather than do it this way.

At least I thought that's what I preferred until I got to the end of this "carrot" and find that I have knitted an orange codpiece.  The Arumagami book is challenging but I managed all the other veggies in the book, just not this one.  I'm looking on Ravelry for an alternative pattern.  I need to hurry though as Olivia's birthday is March 1st.

These are the veggies I've knitted so far and the garlic is my favorite.

I finished the market bag last night but in looking at it this morning I realize that it's inappropriate for a four-year-old girl.  It's just too big for her.

I tore it back this morning from 100 stitches to a base of 80 stitches.  The lace pattern is simply Row 1 - *knit 2 tog, YO* repeat, and Row 2 - Knit.  It should go quickly but if it has to be late, I'd rather it's cute and the right size.

I've been knitting away on my daughter's scarf (which she has asked me to sew into a cowl) but since her birthday is in April and this is almost done, I'll set aside for now.  I look forward to seeing it blocked.  These are all colors that she loves and wears.

I made the mistake of signing up for two art classes that were offered concurrently so have been spending huge amounts of time on my projects, and in fact, I have a class tonight which is five-week course sampling four printmaking techniques.  I did take my bin of handwovens to the last session of my drawing class and sold a couple hundred dollars worth, including the iridescent scarf, and they've asked me to bring my stuff back to our next session.  I've been weaving like a mad woman, in between everything else.

And then there's the issue of body maintenance - I try to get to three Tai Chi sessions a week and continue with my home program in follow-up to four months of physical therapy.  This week my body took a beating, starting with a visit to Urgent Care Sunday morning because I woke up with my right eye glued shut.  Stye!  Remember those?  I spent 2 1/2 hours in the dentists chair Tuesday afternoon getting prepped for a crown and tomorrow is my one-year follow-up mammo.  It's been a year!

My mother used to say that the demands of caring for her old body had become like a hobby, one she didn't like. Speaking of my mother, I found a box containing papers that she had saved.  I had a number of boxes in our garage in Red Rock but procrastinated in taking care of them to the point that mice made nests of most everything.  Ian found the mess when packing up the garage and put anything salvageable in a bin.

One of the boxes lost to the mice was all the artwork that I had saved from my kids school days so I was delighted to find that she had saved this of Christina's.  I'm using it as the image for my Dry Point class tonight.

Ian went to Costco Monday while I was at A6 for my volunteer shift.  iPads were on sale and this one came home with him.  He's already claimed my old one and can't believe how much he likes and uses it.  I'm deliberating on whether or not to buy an external keypad. I'm cheap!

Books, Books, Books

I got on a kick last year which influenced my reading for about six months.  It all started when I found a deaccessioned library copy of After You Marco Polo by Jan Bowie Shor.  My mom and I had read it together in the early 70s and I've always remembered it.  It was even better the second time.  The book was published in 1955 and I read it in 1969, then again currently. It surprisingly retains it's relevance as the backdrop is the Silk Road which has been heavily bombed after years of war. I love cultural geography books and this one is at the top of the game.

After I finished that book I wanted to read more about the region so got onto Amazon to see if they had anything relevant or interesting.  I found The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan which 238 readers had given 4.5 stars.  The author does a remarkable job of condensing 5,000 years of world history into 500 pages. It was a slow read and I found myself picking it and putting it down, trying to digest the interrelationship of western civilization with the rest of the known world. If you read nothing else, read the last chapter, or the last two chapters!

This reminded me of another book that I had enjoyed years ago - Caravans by James Michener and I bought this too, this time from Dudley's, a local and very cool Indy bookstore.  Michener wrote this over 50 years ago and his Afghanistan then is just relevant than it was when he wrote it.

The narrator is a Yale man, posted by the State Department to Kabul who ends up inadvertently striking up an unlikely friendship with an American-educated Afghani engineer who has a passionate vision for his country's future. I'm glad this was my book because I ended up writing all through it, but the thing that made me the most sad was when the engineer quipped, "Do you know what I expect...seriously? When a thousand men like me have rebuilt Kabul and made it as best as The City once was, either the Russians or the Americans will come with their airplanes and bomb it to rubble."

I had received a prepublication copy The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach about the same time and since it's set in Belarus, it seemed on-topic to me.  It ended up being what I call a stick-to-your-ribs book, it's going to hang around in my thoughts for a while.  I have never read anything like it.  I kept trying to pigeon-hole it, thinking this is what Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward would look like as a YA book, but that wasn't quite right so I thought, this is a Russian version of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars but it was so much more than that.  It's a coming of age story for children who won't have the opportunity to come of age.

What do you say about a hospital in Belarus that exists to serve children born with birth defects following the Chernobyl meltdown?  The beginning is a little awkward as our narrator Ivan, born with multiple birth defects, introduces his fellow "asylum inmates."  The hospital staff are less than admirable with the exception of one extraordinary and wonderfully compassionate nurse.  Ivan and leukemia-patient Polina strike up an unlikely friendship followed by romance in the face of their devastating odds, and it is their pluck and determination to live and thrive that are at the heart of this book.  For the subject matter, it's surprisingly easy to read.

For Christmas Ian had given me My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author who won the Nobel-Prize prize in literature.  Pamuk does a great job of putting faces on lives of 16th century Istanbul. This was a good companion book to The Silk Roads.  However, by the end of 400 pages I had grown impatient with their Islamic rule of order. One man noted "my dearly departed mother advised me that there were two types of people in the world: those who were cowed and crushed by their childhood beatings, forever downtrodden, she said, because the beatings had the desired effect of killing the inner Devils: and those fortunate ones for whom the beatings frightened and tamed the devil within without killing him off." If you liked Humberto Eco's book The Name of the Rose, I think you will like this.

Happy February!!

I must say that February looks an awful lot like January which looked an awful lot like December.  Mind you, I'm not complaining.  We're getting used to parking on the snow and ice and wearing snow boots for daily footwear..It's just that I've never lived anywhere so cold that snow doesn't melt in between storms.  It's good weaving weather, that's for sure.

It's good for knitting too.  I finished Owen's birthday bear and got it out in the mail today.  This little blue bear is handspun blue-face Leicester that I put in an indigo pot a couple of years ago at Mim's house.  The dye came off on my hands while I was knitting so once I was done, he got a good dousing in a vinegar bath to fix the color.  Either that worked or else I was finally able to rinse out the residual dye.

Laura was in Bend today and stopped by before going home to Prineville.  She wanted to see what I was working on so I showed her the second set of confetti towels.  She said they're the tide pool colors of her DIL's kitchen and she bought the one on the left.

And speaking of dish towels, this is Pat Clark, our amazing instructor and mentor to many at the class critique last Saturday.  She gave us a new assignment and again two periods of open studio, so at the Monday night session Sue brought up my colorful dishtowels.  She bought several towels from me at the guild holiday sale last November.  Pat stopped by visit Mary Wonser with whom I was sharing a booth and ended up buying a couple towels too.  Helen announced she was tired of hearing about my wonderful towels.  She wanted to SEE them.  So they asked me to bring them to the final class session this Saturday.

As I was leaving our open studio session today, Pat reminded me to bring my woven items and to not be embarrassed to attach price tags.  I told her that I've been setting examples aside and hoped it would be okay if I talk a little about color blending in weaving.  She loved it so I'm going to get to talk a little about optical color blending.  I think they're going to be blown away by iridescence.  I know I am.

I started a dish towel warp in the bright happy colors of zinnias.  I've been a little frazzled this week and was squeezing out a few minutes here and there, and as you all know, haste makes waste.  I was short four warp threads.  The few times I've done this before have resulted in a tangled mess so in desperation I wound nine years of the missing threads onto a TP roll and secured it with a sock looper.  I posted this to 4-Shaft Weaving on Facebook and another weaver said that when this has happened to her, she winds the yardage onto a bobbin in a heavy shuttle and sets it on the floor for tension.  I will definitely keep that in mind.

I had some time today to start dressing my loom.  I cannot wait to see how these colors build and develop when the optical color blending happens.  I was careful to make sure that there's a light value in each pair.  I have an example I'll show on Saturday of two analogous colors with the same value that lost their way.  I'm a little nervous about talking to art school artists about color but at the same time I'm really excited about it.