Page 119 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

A Quick Note About Knitting

Posted on December 8, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It a far from usual weekend in my house. I’ve spent most of the week in the theater with my daughter, in the final dress rehearsals before the Nutcracker ballet. She is having a wonderful time dancing in the party scene and I’m spending a lot of time curling hair, applying make up, and finding lost ballet shoes. On the plus side, all that time sitting in the theater is giving me lots of time to knit. I’ve been working on a felted bowl, which looked like this when it was done.

I threw it in the wash tonight and felted it. I’m sorry I lost the pretty colors that were so distinct in the knit fabric, but it’s very pretty and the shape is wonderful. I’ve got it stuffed with some of the big air bubbles that come in packages from amazon.com, hoping to dry it in shape if that cats will stop trying to get in it.

Here is a close up view of the felted fabric. It will need a good shaving, but the Manos del Uruguay yarn felted up very nicely.

In other wool news, I got a lovely package from my partner, Jan Knit, in the hand-dyed sock yarn swap. She sent me all of this cool stuff.

The roving is a silk merino and it is so soft! I sat on the floor and petted in after opening the package and could have sat there for the rest of the day with it. Everything is lovely, and I can’t wait to sit and sip tea while knitting with my lovely new yarn!

The other wool news in my house is this:

These incredible wool slippers were felted by Wool Creations and they are simply incredible. The three dimensional designs in the wet felted slippers are beautiful roses for Ellie and Legolas (from Lord of the Rings), complete with his bow and arrow, for Ollie. There were a huge hit as a Chanukkah present. I wasn’t sure the kids would like them as much as I do, but they are a huge hit.

It’s now two in the morning and I’ve got to go to sleep before another busy day of getting pin curls into Ellie’s stick straight here. Tomorrow’s knitting will be a tea cozy and more work on Ollie’s vest. Wish me luck!

A Holiday Gift

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I am pretty sure I purchased my favorite present this morning.

It is this:

12/4/2007 6:58:00 AM (PT)
Your Heifer International donation has been completed successfully. Your donation number is: XXXXX502 in support of The Most Important Gift Catalog in The World.

Your
generous gift will provide a family with the precious gift of
self-reliance, and we are grateful to you for helping to end hunger and
poverty in a beautiful, practical way.
Email: info@heifer.org Phone: (800) 422-0474

Contribution Information:

joyce vance
Payment Method: CREDIT

The following summarizes your order:

Name	Description	Quantity	Price	Total
Knitting Basket	A Gift to Warm the Heart Knitting Basket: Gift of Knitting Basket	1	$500.00	$500.00

Total: $500.00
******************************

I’m pretty excited about it. My children helped me wind, dye, and name yarn. My friends and customers bought not only yarn, but tickets for a chance to win yarn. Other friends donated advertising banners and auction items (there will be one last item, starting this Thursday, with a fantastic compilation of knitter’s supplies, but we were close enough to the $500 goal that I decided to go ahead and do the donation today). Lots of contributions went into this donation.

The knitter’s basket is a contribution of two sheep and two alpaca. This is how the heifer.org site describes it:

Your gift of a Knitting
Basket represents two llamas and two sheep â four animals famous for
their warm, income-producing wool. From shearing to spinning, weaving
and finally to selling woolen goods at market, the gift of a Knitting
Basket will help struggling families earn extra income to break free from the grip of poverty and hopelessness. Over time, as that gift
multiplies and more animals are passed on to help others in need,
entire communities will be warmed by the precious wool of a Knitting
Basket.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who offered their support and was a part of this donation. I’m honored to be a part of this community.

Hotel Knitting

Posted on December 2, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Hotel knitting is a wonderous thing. No interruptions. Lots of time. It’s amazing the progress a girl can make.

I finished the back of Ollie’s vest and started on the front.

I modified the Meathead Hat pattern and made it for my niece for Christmas.

And fortunately, I had half a skein leftover, because Theresa Belville e-mailed me with a new hat pattern she had just written, to see if I had any yarn instock that would be right for making up kits (more on that later).

I got all the way to the point where I had to switch to double pointed needles in the hotel room, and then brought it home to finish. Sadly, my youngest has the much discussed "big Vance head" and the hat, which I knit in the toddler size is not large enough for him.

Ellie does not have the big head, and was able to model the finished hat, although I’m afraid it’s fated for a smaller head.

But there will be kits! I’m incredibly honored to collaborate with Theresa, and we’ll be listing them at the opening of our new online congo, Collage on Monday December 3 at noon. Collage includes not only Theresa and myself, but lots of wonderful artists and artisans, so make sure you take a look. Some of my favorite items at the grand opening are pictured below. Click on the thumbnails to see the actual items listings.

If you haven’t finished holiday shopping yet and want to buy handmade, Collage has a great variety of unique, handcrafted items to choose from.

I’ve also been restocking the Elliebelly website today. There are lots of new playsilks, including new sets of elemental silks.
If you aren’t familiar with playsilks but are looking for children’s gifts and stocking stuffers, take a minute to look — they are one of my own children’s favorite all time toys.

There are also lots of sale items throughout the site, including original artwork, nuno felted scarves,journals, and stitch markers for your knitting. And, of course, there is yarn. Lots of yarn, with more coming this week — cashmere, silk, blue faced leicester, bamboo, merino, mohair, cotton, and alpaca. Lots of yarn for gift giving, or for yourself, if you need a little break from holiday overload. I hope you’ll stop by Collage and Elliebelly and see what’s going on.

This week I’ve got a little bit more hotel knitting time coming my way, and am hoping to finish up Ollie’s vest, as well as the Tillie Thomas baby cap I’m knitting, and which despite the pattern’s claim that it takes only one skein is clearly going to require me to go back and buy a second one. I hope you can find a little breath of peace before the onslaught of the holidays too and indulge your passion, whether it is knitting, art, or some other endeavor.

Finishing What I started

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Today is the last scheduled day for my yarn listings (click HERE to see them) to raise funds for a donation to Heifer.Org. For those of you seeing this for the first time, Heifer is a charitable organization that helps hungry people by providing them with the tools necessary to become self-sufficient. Heifer lets donors pick an animal to donate and the obvious choice for a knitter seemed to be trying to donate a sheep.

The results from the first two weeks of "Give Back" listings have been so encouraging that I’ve set my sights a bit higher, and my goal is to donate Heifer’s Knitter’s Basket item — two sheep and two alapca. The idea of people raising their own wool for goods to sell so they can take care of themselves, while raising generations of animals to help other become self-sufficient too is very appealing to me. And that goal is reachable. Please come and take a look at the last Give Back yarn listings and help me reach my goal! Here are some of the items that are available.

And, even a little bit of roving for spinners and felter.

Please come by and bid generously for this wonderful cause! I’m looking forward to reporting back next week with the total amount we raise and the donation we’re able to make. I’ll also have one last auction due to the kindness of Katie, who won one of the earlier lotteries and decided to make a donation of her own. Katie has sent some wool care products and I’ll be putting together some yarn, stitch markers, and Katies’s items together for one last Give Back item. Make sure you check back in this weekend, for this one last, wonderful item. I really thank all of you for helping me give back — something that we can all do to help make other people’s lives better.

Dear Family:

Posted on November 27, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Dear Family:

Every year at this time, you send me requests for information about what the kids want for the holidays. Usually I send you a rather pedestrian list of books and video games. The truth is, our children are a sort of predictable bunch in this regard.

But Ollie is, well, different. He has a special request this year. Perhaps it is a side effect of having a mom who is constantly packing things up in boxes and shipping them off to exciting places. What Ollie really wants is a nice box, big enough for him to comfortably fit inside of and play. Until then, he is trying to make do.

Love,

Joyce

Art Catch-Up

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I’m still behind the eight ball, technology-wise, with a scanner hooked up to a computer that won’t talk to the internet. So, I’m playing catch-up tonight, showing you all my art from the week, after burning the scans to a disc and bringing them to my laptop. (I think I need a knight in shining armor to come fix the computer).

First off, I had Susie LaFond’s beautiful house shaped pocketful round robin book to work in this week. Just deciding which page to work on was a challenge, because Susie did a crackle finish on her house-shaped pages, and they were very intriguing.

I finally did this for the front of my page.

I incorporated my favorite diamond shaped stamp in this piece, making it my piece for this week’s Wednesday Stamper challenge, as well. The collage of the girl sits inside the pocket. Here is the entire collage.

While I was working on this collage I heard that they had finally found the bodies of the Russian Tsarovich and one of his sisters, perhaps Anastasia, and the words popped into my head, forcing me to rumage through my current cut up book (one that had its binding chewed beyond recognition by bad-doggie) until I found them.

With the collage out, the pocket looks like this.

And here is the back of the page. Susie’s crackle finish was absolutely wonderful to work on top of!

I also worked on the envelope rr’s this week, both the regular one and the valentines one. A certain artist who will remain unnamed but who knows who she is, is incredibly prolific and it is not uncommon for three envelopes to show up in one day. I absolutely love the freedom of working on this format in an unaffected, spontaneous fashion. I’m really a background person — I like to work my backgrounds to death, so it’s a challenge for me to look at this as an exercise in composition without thinking about things like the overall background development.

Here are some of my favorites from this week.

This is Vicki’s envelope. It arrived with the man, who I viewed as some sort of renaissance cleric or government official looking pointedly away from the woman in her crown. The beautiful briar rose, which seemed to carry out the theme from that period was there as well, along with an all over background patterning in white with some red stamps of row houses.

I really wanted to create a connection between the two people on the envelope. After trying out lots of different possibilities, I settled on the three eggs and the butterfly. I’ll leave it to you to decide what it conveys and what the relationship between them is, but I was really happy with the outcome.

Vicki’s valentines envelope, on the other hand, was an exercise in frivolity. I loved it and my addition is the five pink circles, made from micro-beads, which I hope will hold up on the envelope’s travels.

The last picture I have for you is Jood’s very whimsical envelope. I have a hard time breaking away from my vintage ways, and didn’t go very far afield here, but I like how my little Paper Whimsy image works and how the stripes I made from cut up text play against the diamonds on the right hand side of the envelope.

That’s all of my art for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. My studio is an absolute disaster and I’m going to have to start contemplating a clean up as soon as Ellie’s Nutcracker performances are over. It’s so bad I think I would almost do better to bulldoze it and start over!

Harry eats yarn, we raise some money for charity, and all is good in our world

Posted on November 24, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

That very hairy leg you see belongs to my 17 year old, who has been helping to skein yarn for our effort to raise money for Heifer. While daydreaming about what ever it is that 17 year olds daydream about, he was attacked by Harry, the Maine Coon cat, who really loves the entire yarn dyeing process.

If you haven’t seen it yet, please take a minute to visit our fundraising effort. I’m hoping to raise $500 and donate a "Knitter’s Basket" — two sheep and an alpaca that can ultimately help an entire village become self-sufficient through breeding and raising wool and making products for sale. Pretty cool idea for knitters, no? If you want to participate but can’t afford a lot, consider buying a raffle ticket or two ($2) and getting a chance to win some great yarn, including silk/cashmere, while helping others. There will be more yarn starting on Thursday, as well.

Meanwhile, here are more photos of Harry messing with the yarn (click to enlarge).

I got a wonderful note in the mail from my friend Judy about the fundraiser. She wrote that one year, her daughter decided to host a big extended family Thanksgiving and do all the cooking. She told her mom that when people asked what they could bring, she was to suggest they make a contribution to Heifer, instead. Judy said the idea was a huge hit, they raised enough money to purchase several animals, and several of the family members still contribute to Heifer, as does my family, at the holidays. Judy also enclosed a very generous check for me to put towards our donation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have a friend like Judy, invariably a big supporter in all things I do, and I love her dearly.

Also in the mail, I got a cool bag from Crankypants that I ordered for a friend. Really, I wanted it for me, but it is going to a friend. Amy knew that, and she tucked in a smaller bag for me to keep for myself. How cool is that? Perfect for carrying around the tea cozies I’m knitting for a few friends for Christmas.

Thank you Amy!

The bag, however, forced me to raise a troubling subject. I have so much holiday knitting to do that I’ve been afraid to even make a list. There is no way I can do it all. Really. I’m totally screwed. Next year, I’m starting in January. But for now, I’m going to try and pare down to just a few things and hope that the combination of a little business travel and ballet rehearsals will give me lots of time. I have this.

The Be Sweet yarn is all going for tea cozies for friends
The white is some incredibly soft Blue Sky organic cotton, destined to be a baby bolero
The pretty multicolored skein on the far right has a mate in back and is going to be felted bowls
The darker multicolor in the back is some of my own yarn, destined to be hats (I have two more balls of it)
The two small balls are for Blythe, Ellie’s new doll obsession
The pale pink is some beaded Tillie Thomas yarn I got on sale along with her baby hat pattern

I’m also knitting a vest for Ollie — he’s been begging for one out of the same yarn I used for my Clapotis. It’s a very soft Debbie Bliss aran silk/alpaca blend, and I’m terrified I’m going to run out.

The color is the color of his eyes and he is going to look incredibly handsome in it…if I can find more yarn. What was I thinking? I’ve emailed the store it came from and may have to go stalk people with it on Ravelry.

I’m also dyeing some yarn. First up, some silk/merino yarn for a Clapotis.

This is for one of my customers on approval. I don’t really like doing custom dyeing, because I don’t want anyone to ever end up with yarn they don’t LOVE. But, I get so many requests for Clapotis yarn (I dye mine on the same core yarn used for the Lorna’s Laces Lion and Lamb yarn that the pattern is written for) that I’ve developed a list for interested people. They get to tell me the colors they want, I dye a yarn in my interpretation of the colorway and they get to choose whether they want it, or not. The idea is that if they don’t want it, it goes into the store. However I’ve never had any luck getting it into the store, so I’ve started dyeing it in batches big enough for two Clapotis, in hopes there will actually be some in stock that y’all can buy. (If you’re interested in getting on the list, drop me an email.) I’ve also been dyeing lots of roving this weekend. Here’s the first bit, some Blue Faced Leicester.

I’m off for the rest of the day. We have leaves to rake, a movie to see (should it be Enchanted or Beowulf?), and a pie to bake. All year long, through the extreme drought down here, we nursed along our seven year old Meyer Lemon tree. It has only had fruit the last two years and we were determined. Last night, with help from Harry, we had the most wonderful lemon meringue pie.

But it disappeared in no time and I’m longing for another slice. Fortunately, I have just enough lemons on the tree for a second pie. I love it when a plan comes together!