Art – Page 23 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Studio Clean Up

Posted on November 30, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

I clean my studio once a year — whether it needs it or not. Of course, it always needs it.

Usually, I reserve this charming activity for the week after Christmas, but this year, in anticipation of filming with That’s Clever next Tuesday, I have been slowly cleaning up, bit by bit. Tonight, after coming in from a Christmas party after work, I did a bit of final vacuuming and counter-washing, and, Voila! As Ellie says, "Mama, there is room to dance in here!" (Usually, you are taking your life into your hands trying to walk from the door to the main table I work at)

Look at that! you can see the top of the table. More importantly, you can walk from the door to the table!

Normally, there are about 500 rubber stamps all piled up on either side of the sink, with a half dozen stencils thrown in for good measure. I had to put away heavy metal working tools, books, bottles of dye and all sorts of strange things to get to clean counter space here.

Wow! I even forced myself to clean out the fabric shelves that you can see on the far right (of course, i have four big cubbies in my walk in closet full of fabric, so don’t feel too sorry for me).

Best of all, this paper was crammed in between the top of my shelves (you’ll see them in a minute) and the ceiling, forever falling on top of me at inopportune moments, and generally looking messy and taking up lots of space. I simply can’t believe that all that paper rolled up so neatly into these two small baskets! I know I’ll be a lot more likely to use it now, too.

The paper was in a horrible mess all over the top of the shelves at the back of the picture. Now, two bins neatly hold all of my precious metal clay supplies. The best part about all this order is that there is room for all of the kids to come and do their homework in my studio again. Room for everyone to find a comfortable spot. As excited as I am about doing the TV show taping, I’m almost as excited about having reclaimed my space!

The Reason Oh Jan Progress Is Slow

Posted on November 15, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

I believe I have finally discovered the reason my progress in knitting the Oh Jan dress has been so slow. You see, most of the time the kittens (urged on by Ollie who gleefully enjoys their antics) are doing things like this:

But sometimes, they resort, I suppose out of sheer boredom since the have only four children, two dogs, and unlimited amounts of yarn not in use to amuse themselves with, to this:

I believe they have been secretly pulling out the Oh Jan dress while I sleep and frogging back a few inches, just to insure I don’t make any great progress. They probably secretly laugh about it behind my back and wonder how long it will take me to figure it out. But I am finally onto their kitten tricks and there will be no more liver snacks for them until they leave Oh Jan alone and let me finish it up!

In other news, I have just finished making arrangements with the HGTV show That’s Clever to film a segment for their show in early December. I’m really excited about doing it! I’m going to be making a fabric portrait collage. The idea first occurred to me while I was doing a Gustav Klimt inspired fabric page for a swap at Habilments. I had a picture of Ollie in my arms that strongly resembled one of my favorite Klimt paintings, The Three Ages of Women.

I used some Kaffe Fasset Roman Glass Collection fabrics, which have always felt Klimt inspired to me as the background, and ended up with a little fabric collage portrait. I forgot to scan them when they were finished, but I have a picture of one in progress.

The project I’m doing for That’s Clever is completely different, but still lots of fun, and I’m very excited about it. I hope you all will tune in for the show when it airs!

The scarf, the cat, & the dog

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

Ellie really liked the swatch for the scarf i had started — just the way it was, with all the different stitches. And, several of you emailed me with ideas for stitches that would show off the handpainted yarn. So it turns out that I’m knitting Ellie’s "Short Attention Span Scarf" with lots of different stitches. I did some rows of eyelet, thinking we might run some velvet ribbon through it, and then added on some different stitches from my stitch dictionary, sort of at random, including reverse triangle and moss blanket stitch. This is a really great exercise at learning color versus texture in knitting — the highly textured stitch like moss blanket really aren’t worth the effort in the handpainted yarn, while the simple stitches, especially just plain old stockinette, show it off to perfection. Ellie is delighted with the work in progress (as is Hermione, see picture below) and I hope to finish it quickly as the weather is definitely turning cold here.

I have been working here and there on some fabric collage pieces, and although this is still a work in progress, I thought I would share it so that my artsistahs wouldn’t be able to accuse me of slacking off. This piece is going to be a page in the fabric book of divas that I am working on. Here are the front and back in progress.

The image on the backside is an egg illustration I printed on transparency and stitched over the dictionary definition of diva. The words around it are "child," maiden," "woman," and "crone." The top edge still needs finishing.

Finally, we have a lost dog. She was found by another woman, on the far side of our neighborhood. She is staying with us temporarily and is a sweet, sweet mixed breed, lots of lab. Obviously someone’s well cared for pet, she likes being indoors and loves cats. We are hoping to find her owner, so if you are local in Birmingham and reading this, please pass it on to anyone you know of who might help return her to her home.

Isn’t she adorable? We’re halfway in love already.

Home again, home again

Posted on October 28, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

I got home from my trip last night, with many thanks to all of you who left wooly and arty comments here and linked me to your photos and blogs. It has been truly wonderful to read through everything and pour over all of your photos and stories. When the kids get home from their Halloween candy-buying trip with daddy, we will draw a name and package up the yarn to send to one of you — I wish I had enough to send a skein to everyone who took the time to brighten my week (and hopefully yours too).

In the meantime, I am dyeing up some yarn for my swap partner from Wooly Wonders. I have some lovely merino and it is in the pot right now with some colors that have been lovingly mixed in hopes that she will really enjoy this yarn!

When I got home, the first thing I saw was a package the husband had left out for me. I’m not sure how he knew it was the special package I was waiting for, but it was from Carla, who was very very nice and sent me this beautiful piece. I saw it on her blog and shamelessly asked if I could have it for my office. It’s going to be a very treasured piece of art in my life, both because it is perfect for what I do and also because Carla is one of the nicest people I know — she is incredibly encouraging to new artists and one of the warmest, friendliest people I know. Her Collage Cats yahoogroup is one of the best places for mixed media artists to hang out online.

How cool is that?

A little bit of this….and a little bit of that.

Posted on October 21, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

I was excited to finally get a little bit of studio time this morning while my angel baby played with a friend. The weather here is gorgeous, so I couldn’t stay in for long, but I worked on my altered cabinet card for Lou McCulloch’s box of altered women and I also made some art for a trade with the uber-wonderful Carla Naron (if you don’t read her blog, you should). This was the first cabinet card I had done in a long time, but the other altered dames inside of the cool wooden box Lou decorated for this round robin were an invitation to whimsy.

On the back it reads "Eunice got stuck looking after all their important ideas. It wasn’t really fair, but then so much of what happened to them wasn’t."

I couldn’t spend much more time indoors, it was so pretty. So I took some bamboo velour outdoors to dye. This was a combination of dip-dye and low water immersion with a loosely scrunched fabric through two different dye baths, and it seemed to take forever with three yards of it to do, but the weather was so nice it didn’t matter. I’m torn between using this to make play clothes for the kids and a sort of big, loose, blue fish style tunic for me.

the fabric is way prettier than the photo which looks sort of washed out. I poured soda ash solution over the fabric almost immediately during the orchid dye bath, to get the dye to stretch out and give a nice halo effect over the lavender-blue beneath it.

Finally I have to show you my little angel baby who is so in love with his patchy panel pants from Dancing Bears that he refused to take them off. Just flat out refused. He really loves them.

Fabric Book

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

I was lucky enough to be a part of Beth Bricker’s Black & White Fabric Collage Book, after missing out on her first book (what was I thinking?) The book arrived last night. It is really amazing.

These fabric books seem like a logical progression from the little fat books we all did last year. Beth’s book was slightly larger at 6×6" — I thought it was the perfect size and would really like to do more work on fabric. It was hard to get pictures, but I’m going to share the ones that came out with you.

This is my page, which y’all saw in progress in an earlier post. The angel image is from the wonderful ladies at Artchix, one of my favorite places to buy art bits.

This is Jood’s page. Isn’t it awesome? How did she ever think of that? I love the rubber stamp sheet music with the fabric overlays.

On the left is the back (signature portion) of Jood’s page. On the right is Beth’s wonderful page. Beth does vintage collage work that is just exquisite. She was nice enough to gift me with one of her most beautiful pieces earlier this year, and it is the piece I chose to hang in the most prominent spot in my office — I don’t ever get tired of looking at it.

Kara’s back was as incredible as her front, plus, I really love the idea of "happy everything." If Kara doesn’t hurry up and do her own blog, I’m going to have to make one for her. We met when she agreed to be a last minute replacement in the Random Words fat book I hosted, and her work was stunning.

I got to see Karen’s pages in progress when I was in Atlanta for our felting workshop. The finished pages are gorgeous and her pink flowers were the perfect touch.

Seeing art like this is enough to make me want to quit my day job and do nothing but make art. Each of these gals is an amazing inspiration and the finished book is a gem. Thanks Beth!

Columbus Day

Posted on October 9, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

Columbus Day is a BIG holiday in my house. We like Columbus as much as the next guy, but I have to confess, it’s a little bit more personal. Our anniversary falls on the long weekend (we’re both government employees, so we both get the Monday holiday) and it’s fun to always have a three day weekend to celebrate!

This year, we aren’t doing a lot of celebrating, having already broken the bank with our anniversary gift to each other, our sweet Maine Coon Cat Harry. Harry and his sister Hermione had a little trip to the vet for shots this morning, so they are happilly snoozing away. They took up most of the morning. The rest of the day was spent shuffling the four littles from school to tutoring to art, etc etc etc. So it’s been your average day, although I do have a huge pot of Osso Bucco in the oven, and it smells tantalizing!

I did have time for a little bit of knitting/art/dyeing today. First off, I don’t think I have shown y’all the wide rib scarf I’m working on in Rowan’s Big Wool. The colors are delicious — brown and darker brown, and although I was afraid the yarn might be a bit too scratchy for a scarf, it is actually fabulous and two of the kids are fighting over it already. It’s a wide rib — 4×4 with a garter stitch border, so it has been easy enough for rush hour knitting in the car but the result is quite beautiful.

I’ve also been dyeing some silk. I have a hobbit on my hands for Halloween, but he eschews the store bought costume I thought I was so clever to purchase in advance. Needless to say, I will be making a cape and hoping I can put something together.

Although it doesn’t look like much at this point, once it is all wrapped on a pole and steamed, it will be quite lovely. Parts of the colors remind me of the purpley-green-browns at the heart of an artichoke.

I’ve also been dyeing yarn today. I wanted something that had red, white, and blue colors, without exactly mimicing the colors in the flag, to do felted purses for some friends with loved ones in Iraq who need something special for Veteran’s Day. I think this yarn should work perfectly.

And finally, I devoted a little bit of time to painting some children’s clothing for my E-Store. I wanted to do some little elves and fairies. Once they’re dry, I’m going to go back on the ones sized for children beyond the age of constant self-endangerment and add a little bit of beadwork.

So, that’s my day. The husband (now of 18 years) is off picking up our girly-girl from art classes, which means I need to go pop into the kitchen and make salad (arugula with shaved parmesan and my homemade mustard-vinagrette) and brussel sprouts (we roast them and they are absolutely to die for).