Puttering Around ...

Ukpik

     Well, these days my husband, Don, is hard at work in his woodshop making some scroll sawn products for the craft show next month. Therefore, he's tracking all sorts of debris up through the house, which is keeping me busy with Mr. Vaccum. I've got most of my products packed up for the show, and that leaves me to make some sort of thing to display some of the smaller jewelery items. I have to go for a little walk out back later, as I'm thinking of cutting a small hardwood and trimming back all the branches, then spray bomb it some Christmas color and secure it in an attractive and simple base. That ought to solve the problem rather nicely and after all, it is a pre-Christmas show. 
     Since we had several days of wet and cold weather, I've been playing with some little critter designs, trying to capture the cute factor. Who's old enough to remember the Ookpik rage? I was a kid but I remember everyone had to have one. I got one at some point and it was really cute .. all furry and big eyes. Of course, ookpik is simply the Inuit word for snowy owl and it's more correctly spelled Ukpik in the Canadian north these days. However, they were to die for cute so here is the rendition I came up with. These are needle felted and around three inches in height. The feet and tail form a tripod allowing them to stand alone. 

   Yesterday I began spinning again, using my drop spindle. I have so much natural white short staple medium wool from meat breed sheep here to card. Since I've already carded a bucket full to the needle felting stage to use for core wool, I decided to try spinning some and make at least 100 grams. Here is the start of a fairly fine single ply. I've mixed in some long staple BFL (oooh .. so soft and silky) at about 25% that was dyed a lilac color. Today I'm working on the other single ply, not yet photographed. I'm mixing in about 50% violet dyed Corridale and then I will be plying them together. I hope it will be fine enough to make a thick pair of mittens. At least that is my goal. If it turns out a bit too coarse, I'm not sure what it will be turning into. 

Checking Out that Wet Felting Thing

     Yesterday was one of those wet dreary days that I really didn't feel like doing mundane housework or anything remotely related to domestic work. I thought it was time to learn something new. Between the three loads of laundry, I managed to absorb quite a few YouTube videos on wet felting and decided to start with the little blue bracelet shown here. Using a piece of hemp tied to the correct size to fit over my hand, I carefully wrapped layers of wool around it and proceeded to wet felt. The bracelet didn't turn out half bad. Yes, there was a large fold on the inside ... so large in fact,that it looks like I used two cords and fused them together. I used too much wool in the whole piece and I carved some away to show the inside purple color, carving too deep so that my sliced area kind of caved in. Acceptable though and once the beads are added, it will be a truly unique piece. It's a bit chunky but like I said, too much material. 


    Then I moved on to the rope. This turned out really well and was much easier than needle felting them so I'm fairly pleased. I could have continued felting this for a much thinner and stiffer rope, but at this point I wasn't sure what to use it for, so stopped at a point where it was flexible, strong but still soft. I think should I need a stiffer rope, I could just repeat the process on the same piece. I really like the rope. 


    By this time I was rather pleased with myself and thought I'd move on to something harder, like a beret. This requires a resist and I had everything set up and ready to roll in no time, with my corrugated cardboard resist, netting, bubble wrap, hot soapy water, etc. Things started to go wrong ... the soap bottle slipped from my hand and broke open on my ceramic kitchen floor, creating a treacherous terrain that had to be cleaned up right away lest I slip and break my neck in the mess. I worked at this piece a long, long time ... and I was really tired when I deemed it completed. However, I could see it was  still too big. Why wouldn't the darn thing shrink? I worked at it some more. Until it came time to cut the hole for my head, I still hadn't really decided which side was up but stuck to my plan anyway.   Once I cut the hole, I had to work on the edges a lot to keep them from coming apart ... and consequently the bottom of the work got a lot more fulling on it than the top, which was thin. It' could have used more wool to begin with. There were a couple of holes in it!!! I managed to push them together but it is way too thin on the top and seems just right on the bottom. Where I'd folded the overhang wool over to the bottom made all the difference. The thing is way too big ... the hole is the correct size but the beret looks like an extra large pizza on my head so it's now a nice piece of wool for  cutting up to become part of another project. I really messed it up but enjoyed the learning experience of it all. I think I can mostly see where and what I did wrong ... but it would have been nice to have an instructor to yell at me at the time I was doing it so the mistakes could have been corrected then. The top of the beret is a lovely weight for a laminated scarf though ... so maybe sometime soon, I'll attempt one of those. Even though it's too thin, I'm surprised by it's strength.


     Did I mention I feel like I've been hit by a truck? Wet felting is a great upper body workout and I likely should have paced myself a little better and not tried to do all three projects in one day. I can barely move my arms this morning. I'm disappointed in the beret and it did use quite a bit of wool. I'm rather intrigued by the whole experience and it's neat to watch the fibers do what they do when hot water and soap is added. It's not likely we're ever going to have an artist of the caliber of Andrea Graham here to hold a workshop in this neck of the woods, so I'll have to rely on instructional videos. I want to try making a bag with a resist. I've been checking out some of the ones Andrea Graham teaches and I just love the look of them. I'm a bit scared now that I've mucked up the beret project, but I have learned a lot about the wool, and it seems to me that the only way I can get this skill is by practice, so I'm going to work on some kind of design for a bag very soon. All in all, the learning experience was very well worth the effort, sore muscles and I did get a neat bracelet and rope out of it. 


     Here I am again .. a couple hours later. I've had another brainstorm and I think it will either work, or be a total disaster with no grey area in between. I'm cutting another resist, just a bit smaller and turning the hat inside out. I'll add more wool and work on that side a lot more and try to ease the material toward the center. I'll have to work on the other side as well, so nothing gets out of center, but not quite so much. Besides, there's only one way to fix sore muscles and that's to work them out. Wish me luck. I haven't given up yet!  I need to learn to see with my fingers (which feel like I haven't any fingerprints left) by touch and I will not let a bunch of wool defeat me! 

Amiryha: Spirit Mask Wall Art

     
     This is the second Spirit Mask work. I've called this one Amiryha and she is a sister to Zharyha. The story is the same. After much consideration, I decided to leave the tails off this one ... I don't find they add much to the work and only serve to lengthen the piece for display purposes. I think she is busy enough without more embellishment. This one has blue sand dollars, dyed in my kitchen sink with vegetable dye. They are very interesting to make once the main mask is shaped. That is where all the work comes into play as it's done over a form I fashioned out of large styrofoam balls. I have some new felting pads coming soon, so I'll make a new form from my two old pads and I think that will make my life easier for the third mask. How many of these I make will depend on sand dollar supply, which is getting dangerously low. Time to hit the beach again. I'll also be searching for small crab shells .. the smaller the better. I'd like to use them on one of these masks as well. 


I'm keeping pretty busy with my art these days, but I must admit, I'm getting a bit shack whacky, so I think it's time for a mini vacation. I'm looking at sometime in May for a trip to the South Shore, where I'll spend one night with a dear old friend who lives in an inspiring place beside the ocean, and one night with my cousin Deb, artist and owner of The Wardroom Gallery. Really looking forward to that. 
Last weekend one of my higher ranking relatives spent the weekend with me here. We got out for a nice dinner and had some leisure time to catch up. This coming weekend I have a social event to attend on Saturday night in Halifax at the Lord Nelson Hotel. I'm not sure what time I'll be returning here, or if I'm spending the night in the city, so have made arrangements for a dog sitter. 


Having done all that spring cleaning awhile back, I managed to find a place for everything in my studio, and promptly forgot where some of those places were. Some of my tools are now a bit hard to find and I was disgusted to realize I'd put my felting needles away and couldn't find them anywhere. Frustration set in! I ordered more and they should be here soon, and of course, found the old ones in the meantime in a little drawer labelled "needles". Duh! Anyway ... it's a good thing as I ordered smaller needles this time. I've stopped breaking them so I should be good to go with the smaller gauge.  That's a lot of felting needles, but I've fashioned tools to hold multiple needles (my favorite tool takes four) so I'll use many of them that way. Needle felting has become slightly more popular down this way, so perhaps I can also sell some of them in smaller quantities, but in any case, you can't really have too many needles. I'll likely have to go through a learning curve with the smaller ones too, so some will get broken at first. I have a ring to finish this afternoon for a customer but that's all the creating I plan to do today. It's dreary, chilly and looks like rain so I'm going to treat myself to a "no" day. Just relax and watch the tube, read or nap. I deserve it. 

Zharyha and Easter Sunday

     A couple more small details have been given to the Spirit Mask. She has tails on either side of her head now, with some crystal and small glass beads added, the idea being that the wall where it will eventually live is lit in the evenings often only by the warm glow of the fireplace. I was hoping to catch some of that light in the crystals and have it reflect and glitter occasionally. I've been making more sketches, so she will have family. I've started working on a second one already. She now has a name and a story to go along with her. 

     Zharyha       She and her sisters are spirits who live and play in that mystical place where surf and sand or rock collide. They dance in the sea foam, playing on the crests of the crashing waves. They watch over this home of theirs and make sure the ocean and shoreline are always in harmony when they meet, as the friction erodes the rock away to form substrate for the beginnings of new life. These spirits are more visible now, in our lifetime. This is due to the increased density of the sea foam, from pollutants and chemical changes in the water. This makes the spirits' job much more difficult, and they often weep with the howling gales over the slow, but inevitable loss of their environment. Please help them survive and respect the symbiotic relationships of nature. 

     So, besides that, yesterday was a fun day. Being Easter Sunday, most folks have family commitments, but there's still a bunch of us old single birds out there, so we got together at the home of a couple of old friends and had a big feed. We started with appetizers of crackers with black pepper goat cheese, burn yer lips off guacamole, and smoked Genoa sausage. Then we moved on to the main meal which was a big ham dinner with several choices of vegetables, hot cross buns, home made pickles and beets, three kinds of mustard, oh my! Everything was so good and it looked like everyone had a pretty good appetite. Dessert was fresh made lemon cake and pumpkin pie. This is where I gave up ... I had no room left for dessert. None ... nada ... not the barest crack or crevice.

      I had brought Daisy along with me to play with their husky. Both the dogs were tied outside all afternoon and played each other out. They both enjoyed a portion of leftovers from our dinner. I took her home in early evening. She was played out and getting cranky and I had overeaten so just wanted to have a nap. That is exactly what we did as soon as I got home. I had lots of sleep and felt rather chipper today. Managed to get several hours worth of mundane chores accomplished and actually enjoyed doing it. I'm going to cook a nice pork tenderloin supper with fresh broccoli ... healthy and lean, watch a little tv, do a little felting and go to bed early in hopes I feel this good again tomorrow. 

The Masks: Repairs and Additions

These masks belong to a friend of mine. During her move across this vast country, they met with the misfortune of being smashed to bits. Poor things .. they are made of paper clay and quite fragile. The big smash weakened them in places where they didn't actually fly apart, and my friend was devastated at the extent of the damage. They are hand made by some artist which I'm not familiar with, but they do have markings and numbers on the inside, if anyone knows who the original artist is. I would like to know. Well, my first instinct was to write them off as trash, but out of respect for the artwork, I agreed to try to save them. The black one had the most damage. Shards were collected from both sides of the face, but under the chin was mostly missing, so had to be rebuilt. I made wool cords, with multiple tails and glued them to cover holes, rebuild the jaw area and generally cover the cracks that showed after the glue up of the paper clay. The owner has seen the pictures and loves them. She's already making plans for where to put them up in her new place. I'm not sure where these were originally purchased, but if I have the story correct, it would have been at an arts and crafts show here in Nova Scotia say about 25 years ago. My friend has been all over Canada since then, and they had survived all the moves except this last one. 

The bone colored mask had much less damage and only one small hole. This was easily covered with wool ropes. 


The spring cleaning is still going on schedule. I'm almost up to the studio, which I'm leaving to last. If any of it is going to run over time, it's going to be the studio. So, I realize, now I'm procrastinating. Off I go with my cleaning supplies .......

Another Mild, Wet Day

I'm learning to type all over again. My ergonomic keyboard kicked the bucket yesterday and I decided to retire it, rather than fix it again.
I was getting fed up with sticky keys and praying for the @ sign to work. I switched it out for a standard keyboard and find it so small. It's cut my speed in half for now but as time goes on I'm sure I'll learn to use it without so many mistakes.

It's another wet dark day but at least it's warm. It could stay like this all winter and I wouldn't complain too much. Maybe palm trees would sprout in the spring and we'll become the new Florida! Yeah ... nice to dream.. I'm off to check out a new bead supply place in a little while. I need some pin backs to sew onto some brooches I felted. I have a huge bag of red wool and hope to get some brooches sold for both Christmas and Valentines ... hearts are very fast to make. I did a small lobster to make a pin, but don't really care for it. It was harder to sculpt and although it turned out well, lobsters just aren't cute. I have to figure out some small stuff to sell as people just aren't spending big money right now. If the craft show was any indication of the state of the economy, everybody wants stuff for next to nothing and appreciation for the craft seems to have flown out the recession window. Keep trying ... I keep telling myself that perseverence will someday pay off.

I'm back now from what turned out to be a bit of an adventure. Before I left, I had searched out my destination on Google Earth. It clearly shows a road that runs parallel to the 102 and runs southeast of Miller Lake. Do you think we could find the end of it off the Aerotech Park exit? No Sir! We saw a one lane road with a gate ... no public road going that way. Then we spotted a sign pointing to the Old Guysborough Road ... aha! It took about 10 minutes of driving before we were both realized we weren't heading in the correct direction. I hauled the smart phone out and booted up the GPS ... sure enough, we were heading back home the long way. We turned around and went all the way back out to the highway and proceeded to Fall River and went in behind the lake, and had no trouble finding the place.

What a lovely couple! The online bead supply place is run by a wonderful young British couple and their platinum blonde, cuter than kittens, little boy. Brian and Hollie are so very nice and just a pleasure to talk to. Brian liked my dog too. Big brownie points there. They run a home based online beading supply company and carry quality products. By the way, they've informed me that road with the gate is the one we were looking for, but is impassable by vehicle anyway. The way we came is the only way to get there. So, all in all, it was more than worth the trip. Good luck Brian and Hollie. Check them out at http://www.thebeadingroom.com/ . From there you can access their blog which is also very interesting. So, now I have the pin backs I need for my felted pins and I had better get busy as they don't sew themselves to the felt.