Bath Day

Lucy's Diary: What a miserable day! Mom made me take a bath! I hate getting wet and to make it even more worse, dinner was fifteen min. late! You better believe that Dad will hear of this when he gets home!

My Hats on The Big C!

A while back I rented some of my hats to the producers of the Showtime series, The Big C. These are screen shots from their website. The ep. is 7, How Bazaar. This opportunity came about through Elm City Handmade. It was nothing I ever thought about doing but I thought, why not? We thought that the program would be airing in Sept. which is why I just went looking for it. But it may have run in the spring. We don't have Showtime so I really don't know. If you're a fan of the show, could you let me know? It's probably just as well that I didn't know what they had in mind but it only looks like my hats are getting run over! Except for one squished styrofoam stand and one hat that needed to be washed because they dropped it in a puddle, everything came home intact. Would I do it again? Yes!

Experiments in Color

I'm working on expanding my use of color by doing some small acrylic sketches.

Oh, Yeah! Polymer Clay is Fun!

Last week I taught a bunch of polymer classes. It's been while because I've been busy with paintings and fiber projects. There was a point at which I kinda burned out on the clay and drifted away to felting sweaters and making hats. I'm not thinking of getting back into the big vessel projects that I used to do. Nope, I'm having too much fun making jewelry! Some of it is for myself and some will end up in my Etsy shop. I just read an excellent book,The Blood of Flowers. (http://www.amazon.com/The-Blood-Flowers-A-Novel/dp/0316065765)The protagonist is a young woman living in Iran during the 1600's. She and her mother leave their small village after the death of her father. Taken in by her father's half brother, they work as servants. Her talent at designing carpets and her determination to make a better life for herself and her mother kept me reading well past bedtime. The book inspired the paisley pin and pendant. As a funny side note, I learned that the Farsi word for a European trader was farangi, which the writers of Star Trek Next Generation changed to Ferengi. And I thought they just made that up!

New Painting

< Two 8"x10" paintings for the Summer Greene opening. I'm currently working on a 16"x20" of my three Japanese kokeshi dolls.

My Heroes, Kaffe Fassett and Sophie Digard

I'm in love with the work of Kaffee Fassett and Sophie Digard and see them as kindred spirits when it comes to pattern and color. Sure, Kaffee's color is more intense and they work at different scales, but they both hit my design sweet tooth the same way. Small gauge crochet is wonderful, just look at Irish crochet. Sophie takes that scale and makes it work in sophisticated colorways. I would love to own a Digard scarf but it isn't going to fit in my budget and I enjoy crocheting laceweight wool so I'm starting on my own version. I expect that my colorway will be a bit closer to Kaffee's. I'm going to try to harmonize the colors with smaller joining motifs and a border as Sophie does. I'm using a single strand of Persian needlepoint wool and a #7 steel hook. Persian wool comes in so many subtle colors and if you want to, you can felt it. When I get a decent sample done I'll post pictures.

The Dr. At The Jubilee Concert

I love Annie Lennox but I just couldn't resist making this. I can't be the only one who immediately thought this!