Sunday Morning

Connecticut is having a weird winter this year. First there was the autumn snow storm that knocked out the power to homes that had been in the dark for over a week following tropical storm Irene. Then the weather warmed up and it felt like spring. I can't remember ever driving around in the middle of January with the window open. OK, it was just after I'd worked out at the gym. Yesterday winter returned and gave us something like eight inches of snow. This morning the sun is out, the sky is clear and that snow looks marvelous. I'm hoping that the proper winter weather will clear my head. I've been feeling really scattered. My etsy shop hasn't gotten much of my attention even though I have plenty of new hats that I could list. I got derailed by computer and camera trouble but those issues have been fixed. If I'm honest with myself, what I really need to do is a clutter purge and cleaning of the whole house. How can I think straight in this environment? Why is it so much easier to make messes than to clean them up? But no, I just muddled along amid the wreckage. I found a bunch of hat patterns at the Goodwill, 4 for a dollar. I've always just drafted my own pattern but I thought maybe I could learn something from them. What I've learned so far is that they suck. I knew they'd need to be adapted to use with the felted sweaters if only because I don't have unlimited yardage to cut big pieces. Beyond that, the seams are too wide and they just don't work that well. The only one I really liked was a vintage 40's pattern for the glengarry cap. Oh, well. I still have some kids hats to try. If nothing else, they'll give me standard sizing. On a happier note, I'm finishing a custom order for a mossy mushroom hat. The basic structure is done so it's on to the fum part, adding mushrooms, berries and vines.

Greetings From The Laptop

Happy New Year! 2011 ended with the demise of my old mac so now I'm using a pc laptop. What a pain trying to figure out how to edit photos on this thing! I still can't figure out how to do the simplest thing - crop the image. Anyhow, this is my new winter hat and mitts, and a funky glengarry cap from a vintage pattern. Two ends of the spectrum here - I just winged the hat. It started when I was playing around piecing together the white scraps from cutting out a bunch of mushroom stems. I let the rest evolve from other bits and a piece of zipper that was lying around. It doesn't really have a front or back, I wear it both ways. I made the matching mitts because I needed them. I can't stand gloves and mittens are just too clumsy, especially if they're made from sweater felt. They're more like oven mitts. The glengarry cap is straight from the pattern. I'm loving these two fabrics together. The teal plaid was a scarf and the green striped trim was a fabric remnant. There's still fabric left so I'll use them together again.

Felted Sweater Bubbles

Yay! It worked! I was a little worried that I had spaced the bubbles too close together. Since I had already felted a piece of this sweater successfully I thought the only problem would be if there wasn't enough felted wool between the bubbles to make it stable. It took just as long to remove the buttons as it did to elastic them in. I'm thinking of using it for the brim of a hat. I'll back it with another layer of felt and needle felt them together to make it stiffer. Other projects are moving ahead but my plan is to make gingerbread cookies today. It's a dreary day here and I'm hoping the scent of gingerbread will make up for the lack of sun.

Buttons Buttons and More Buttons

I'm finished with my pre Christmas craft shows and have started on a bunch of new things I wanted to try. This technique is one I've done before but never on this scale. It's a way of felting texture into the knit fabric. I'm tying buttons into the wool before felting using the little elastics that are made for corn rowing hair. After felting I'll remove the buttons. Where the button stretched the fabric tight there will be an unfelted bubble. This is most of the front of an extra large man's sweater so it's going to take me a while. I'm curious about how many buttons I'll end up with in there but not curious enough to sit and count them! The small tumbled stones sold for flower arranging work well too. The bigger ones can be too heavy and end up ripping the material. I've got this idea to do some needle felting between the bubbles to add color. I love to layer techniques like that. The other thing I've been ruminating on for quite a while was how to make round felted cords from sweater wool. I'm tired of crocheting hat ties and the felted cord looks a lot nicer. Woolyfabulous, whose work I love, has a tutorial for sale in her shop, http://www.etsy.com/shop/woollyfabulous?ref=ss_profile. I have a strange attraction to reinventing the wheel so I set out to figure it out for myself. My friends were into wet felting so I had a pretty good idea of what might work and it did. But out of respect for Woollyfabulous, I'm not going to post the details. I'm sure her instructions are great so unless you're into reverse engineering like me, save yourself the effort and buy them!

Doodling is a Gateway to Illustration.

This image from the Philbrook Mueum of Art has been making the rounds on Facebook. I think I'm going to print it out and put it on my son's door. I'm beginning to think we'll have another serious artist in the family. The way that art is taught in a Waldorf school rubbed him the wrong way because he already knew what he liked before he got there. I'm not saying it was bad but it was a their way or the highway situation. I was worried that it had turned him off of art permanently. But over the last year or so he's gotten back into it. He has developed the self discipline to set goals for himself and keep working toward them. Our high school offers business courses and he's taking marketing, for which he'll get college credits if he passes the college level final exam. Their current assignment is to develop an advertising campaign. The girls are doing "mens" products like condoms and the boys are doing "feminine products". His is for Tampax and features a young woman swimming in the ocean. The tagline is "Don't be shark bait when you menstruate." His teacher loved it. I think he should submit it to the company.

Painting in Progress

There's still a good bit of work to be done here but I'm taking a break. I have a craft show tomorrow and I want to finish up some things for it. I let myself get too tired Wed. Well, there was a lot that I couldn't have avoided and after working so hard on making it to the gym regularly, I wasn't going to give that up. I hit the wall on Thursday and just had to take a nap to get through. Today I feel like a new person.

The Thirteenth Head

Are you superstitious? What are the little things you do every day to avert the evil eye without even thinking about it? I'll admit to throwing a pinch of salt over my shoulder when I spill it and always putting the sugar in my coffee before the milk. I once read a post from an artist who always put a penny on the ground in front of her booth to bring good sales. Recently, I bought a dozen styrofoam wig stands to use in my booth. I already had the one that I painted and glued to a pedestal. That's the one used to get pictures for my etsy shop and the plan is to cover and paint the new ones once things slow down in the new year. Loading up for the first show with all these great new hat displays I realized that I now had thirteen of them total and that bothered me but I shrugged it off. My booth looked great. The wig stands brought the designs to life. Unfortunately, it felt like we were having this fair in a ghost town. If tumble weeds had started rolling down the rows it wouldn't have surprised me. Shift ahead two weeks later to my next show in a town that, thanks to our autumn nor'easter, had been without power for over a week. I was not particularly optimistic getting ready for it but I woke up feeling happy that morning. I had accepted that it would work out however it pleased and I was just not going to worry about it. As I was unloading my stuff, the fancy head on the stand unbalanced, hitting the pavement and the pedestal broke in half. I chucked it back in the car and thought," Oh well, that takes care of the thirteen heads problem." This show rocked! I couldn't believe it. Small venue, on a Sunday, first year show right after the storm and sales were great even though attendance was not that heavy. So what do you think? Was the universe giving me a helpful shove when I dropped the thirteenth head? I'm not taking chances. From here on it's twelve or fourteen and up, but never again will I have thirteen heads in my booth.