Art – Page 19 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Socks & Plastic Tubing

Posted on March 26, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Socks. At long last, socks for my darling Ellie.

Doesn’t she have pretty ballerina feet?

The final word on Colinette’s Jitterbug sock yarn is that it is not as lofty as the Blue Face Leicester yarn I love so much, but the colors are so fantastic that they more than compensate. The yarn is beautiful and Ellie says they feel very soft. This is my favorite sock yarn to date and best of all, the yarn really does all the work. I just used my basic sock pattern.

Now I have a question for y’all. What do you think I’m going to do with this? All of the Judge’s friends with dirty minds are precluded from responding to this question. It’s not like that.

Pictures….

Posted on March 25, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

As promised, I have pictures.

No sock pictures yet, but soon. Just a bit of Kitchener stitch and they will be done.

In the meantime, I have handpainted Bamboo ribbon yarn for the last two days.

This is destined to become a little sweater for Miss Ellie. There will also be four skeins of it available in the Elliebelly store on Midday Faire this Tuesday at noon. It is the softest yarn I have knit with in a long time. I never really thought I was much for ribbon yarns. I am in the process of rethinking this — in a big way.

I’ve also had some time in the studio. This is a little bit of a graphics fool around.

And this little piece, called Ella in Red, is from my journal.

I am off to play with bad cats, finish up the pot roast, and Kitchener stitch the socks. I will be back with more photos later.

Weekend Wrap Up

Posted on March 18, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I wanted to share a couple of quick things before the work week starts back up.

First off, I finally finished a painting I’ve been working on for several weeks. I have to qualify this by saying that I’m not a painter and don’t have any pretensions of ever being one, but I’m doing this to just try and stretch my personal boundaries a bit. It’s nice to just relax and enjoy something without feeling any pressure to perform.

The words on her crown read, "There was a legend in the city."

Second, cat pictures. This time, our bobtailed cat Dragon. Forgive me for linking you — I told the whole story when I listed the yarn at Midday Faire. Although the yarn she has become enamoured with is for sale (well, a little bit of it is. It’s mostly for her. Not like I had a choice.) it can’t be purchased until Tuesday at noon, so go enjoy the story without the risk of engaging in impulse buying.

Third, bad dog. Our stray dog, Trouble, manage to escape this afternoon. The judge is usually fleet of foot, but he was enjoying an afternoon siesta. By the time he caught up with her, she was behind our house in the alley, and apparently she put up a fight. He was the loser. You can’t quite tell, but his pants were ripped for about 12 inches down the leg. Trouble was treated to hot dogs.

Finally, a couple more harbingers of spring. It’s beautiful here. My lavender is getting ready to bloom. It’s Grosso — the kind where the bloom looks like a little bee at the top.

And our cherry tree is about to be in full bloom.

I hope it’s beautiful where you are, too!

Music, Not Movies

Posted on March 17, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

This week’s prompt for Wednesday Stamper was movies. I really love films. I had every intention of staying on topic. And we’ve had a Quentin Tarantino Fest in my house all week, watching Kill Bill 1 and Kill Bill 2. It seemed like a rich source of inspiration.

But, like so many things in life, it wasn’t. I was stuck on the image of Uma Thurman on a yellow motorcycle. Stuck on one of my all time favorite lines in a movie as Uma looks at her arch-nemesis, the one-eyed Elle Driver, played by Daryl Hannah, poses with her sword and intones "bitch, you don’t have a future." I really enjoy the layers upon layers of commentary and parody in these movies, despite, or maybe because of, all the violence. Just like I like layers upon layers in my art.

But I never did make Movie Art. Instead, it turned out as Music Art. For some reason, I ended up with Stevie Nicks’s song, On The Edge of Seventeen, stuck in my head all week. And, while I was fooling around in my studio, it suddenly came together in art. Strange, because I’m generally not inspired to make art by music. But it was wonderful because my daughter, who is thankfully nowhere near seventeen, was with me and we bounced ideas around together and played with the piece until it felt just right. On the edge of seventeen. It makes me think of all the potential in people at this stage in their life. Will she make the right choices? Will there be a happy ending? Maybe I was thinking about the movies after all.

Playing With Photoshop

Posted on March 16, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

My friends Karen and Joanne are the Photoshop Goddesses. They do the most amazing things. I’m not nearly as comfortable with it as they are, but I do like to play, and I’ve learned a lot from them. I played with some of my old collages to try and make business cards and magnets, and I’m so happy with the results I thought I would share them. For the most part, I literally layered pieces of art one on top of the other and moved them around until I liked the effect.

This is my new business card.

And this is a sort of fun, oversized postcard to send out with orders.

This is going on my magnets. I love magnets. I used to have hundreds of them on my refrigerator, but then I got a refrigerator that has a door that they won’t stick to. I still miss my magnets and try to send them out in most of my orders.

I have an early morning soccer "game" with Ollie and some friends and a birthday party later in the day, but for most of the weekend, I plan on hanging out with the kids and making art. This was a really fun warm up.

Spring is here!

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Spring has come. I walked out the front door and found this beautiful critter waiting for me.

"Spring is here", Ellie told me. "He’s a messenger." "It won’t be cold anymore." "Wasn’t it nice of him to come tell us?" "The goddess sent him."

It makes me wish I was eight years old again!

Early this morning, I finished my piece for Chris’s Artistree scroll. I’m incredibly sad that this round robin is almost over. It has been really fun. For Chris’s journal, we each created a sort of fabric plaque for her huge scroll, depicting our ancestory. I chose my maternal grandmother, the daughter of an immigrant Russian tailor, because I think my love of art and nature started with her.

We went out a few minutes ago and found more proof of spring

We even have sunbathing kittens.

Now I’m off to celebrate. The wonderful Tuesday sent me an incredible box full of Trade Joe’s goodness. I’m a transplanted Californian living in the deep south, and the absence of Trader Joe’s here is still something I can’t get accustomed to, even after almost twenty years. So Tuesday’s box was pretty darn welcome. Lots of chocolate and Asian flavored food. I’m off to savor the chocolate truffles and then I’m going to put some of the amazing soap in my bathroom.

We also received our annual package of homemade Hammantaschen from my Mom — the traditional cookie for the Jewish holiday of Purim. Five minutes after we opened the package, there were this many left.

Shortly after the photo was taken, the remainder had disappeared.

Heading Into The Storm

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

We’re heading into thunderstorms. Schools are closing at 11:00 (I’m not sure why we bothered opening) and there is lots of hubub and consternation.

The alarm has not made it to my house, however. Apparently, as long as the four year old has his morning coffee, all is right in the world.

Yes, that is his Peace Fleece vest, still being worn for the third day in a row (with very authentic pieces of straw poking out of it, because he attends a Waldorf pre-school, and, well, that’s the kind of stuff we play in there). The large blue blob is my Clapotis.

I have to stop here and say, do not, friends, be tempted to knit a Clapotis from Debbie Bliss’s Alpaca Silk yarn. Yes, it is stunningly beautiful. It’s very soft and warm, too. Ollie is quite taken with it, and believes it is a cape I have knit for him. But, do you see the solid portions, down near where Hermione’s paw is placed on the "cape?" Solid, where there should be a row of rundown stitches? The reason not to knit a Clapotis from this yarn is that it does not run and each stitch has to be picked out by hand. I can’t even begin to tell you how tiresome this is.

Would I do it again? Yes. This is one of my favorite things I have ever knit and as soon as I get all the ends woven in (still more downside, this yarn comes in small skein-type things that fall apart and tangle while you’re knitting, and because they are small and the yarn doesn’t spit-splice nicely, I have the ends from about 12 balls of yarn to weave in) I’m going to wear it every day, but y’all, unless you have some weird type of obsessive-compulsive disorder that makes you enjoy picking out hundreds of stitches, save yourself! Pick a different yarn.

In studio news, I promise I haven’t been holding out on y’all art-wise. First off, I’m working on Chris’s absolutely beautiful round robin piece, which she calls an Artistree.

We’re each journaling about our ancestors on it. It is one of the coolest projects I have worked on in what has to be the most out of the box art journal round robin ever! Here is a close up of some of the panels.

I also have a collage-painting that I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. It has been through some obsessive background changes this week, but I still don’t quite have it where I want it before finishing the angel.

Not art, but new in my studio and something I am in love with is my new set of Elfa drawers.

It holds all of my shipping and wrapping supplies, and is a huge boon for a small home based business like mine. I managed to score this and a frame for hanging files that I’m using for my collage papers during a January sale on this cool stuff, which I will fill my home with if I ever win the lottery.

You can see that unlike the brief period of time before and after I filmed my segment for HGTV’s That’s Clever (I’m expecting to get an episode number in early June and I will let y’all know when you can tune it to watch me ~~make a total idiot out of myself~~ on TV) when my studio was very clean, it has reverted to it’s usual sense of ~~disorder and disaster~~ creative mess. I turned my desk around to make a little bit of extra room, and rediscovered two wonderful things on it:

My doodah and registration packet for Art & Soul East in Virginia this May. I cannot, cannot wait to go and see all my Art-Sistahs and take classes and immerse myself in art. I have to alter the doodah first, though, and I have no clues at the moment.

Also, waiting for a free moment, I have the knitting DVDs that Stephanie McPhee raved about a while back. I am a visual learner, and reading knitting directions does absolutely nothing for me. I thought these DVDs might help with some finishing techniques and generally be of interest to my family, but can you believe they would rather watch stuff like this?

Actually, I confess that I too love Curious George, especially this scene where he goes artist on the stuffy, rich lady’s penthouse walls. As the Man in the Yellow Hat says, "Praise Science."