Work Avoidance Behaviour

My pens are always getting lost on my desk at work, plus people who sign consent forms often walk off with them. So today I made a bunch of flowers for my desk.

... and just in case you thought I'd lost my marbles:

Inspired by Melody

A while back there were these very successful (in my estimation) dyed cloths that I did while in hospital. They have been lying around whispering to me, but I wasn't really listening.
Until a few days ago.
It began when Melody Johnson moved to Tennessee (the butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and on the other side of the world someone makes a quilt!) and posted pics of room layouts. I spied a quilt over a chair in one picture and asked her to let us have a better look. I regret not being able to supply a link to the post showing the quilt, but if you go here and scroll down to November 26, you will see it.
I had that picture in the back of my mind when I got out this fabric, but deliberately didn't go back and look at it as I wanted to try and make something with the same... um... i don't know what... feel, or mood, perhaps, but not just a copy. I started with the triangles and then cut strips and just moved everything around and around until the following emerged:
It's not completely finished, but my day job is cramping my time and by 5pm I am just too tired to do much. Will post a pic when done.

Meanwhile, I want to THANK Melody whose blog was the inspiration for me to start my own blog and from whom I have learnt SO much, just quietly reading away and trying her things out. Had to laugh the other day when I was reading: Melody, you say you have retired from teaching, but your blog is a series of one lesson after the other - I guess old habits die hard, huh? ;)

Klimt

I bought the mug in the middle one day because I was completely taken with the picture on it. It has inspired a quilt (still in progress so no pics yet). Sometime later I bought another and last Xmas my 14 yo daughter bought me the third. I only found out who the artist was when I brought home the second and said daughter commented "Oh yes, Klimt."
"What?" I said. "How do you know who painted this?" I had never even heard of Klimt.
Turns out she had learnt it at school...
I was a bit embarrassed: I didn't realise I was that uneducated... :( Klimt has done such stunning work and I have been missing out all this time...
Anyways, I remedied that very smartly, and I still LOVE the mugs. Can't bear to use them for drinking out of (they're fragile and WILL break) so I collect thread ends in them.

Cool Geometry

I found templates for this .. um... shape (it does have a long mathematical name) amongst the papers I've been sorting out, so I enlarged them on the photocopier and spent a happy evening in front of the TV, cutting, folding and glueing. It's now looking pretty good hanging in my office.

For Mother's Day last year, my daughters, who are chronically low on cash (I don't think that is such a bad thing when you're young, since it encourages you to be inventive) presented me with this:
... an origami model, made from numerous pieces of square paper, none of them cut and nothing glued, only folded and inserted into each other. I was so delighted!!

Fabric Storage Part 2

I think it just might work.......!
Yesterday I left you with a picture of a box. Cut off the high sides, so you get this:
Keep the sides you cut off to one side. Now take TWO lids and cut off one short side of each:
Then tape them together, open sides together. I use clear parcel tape, cheap, wide and sticks like crazy.
Close-up of taped sides. It is important to do this on the INSIDES of the box:
Now strengthen sides with the bits of cardboard you cut off the main box earlier. Tape these to the sides of the two lids:
Stack a few of these double-lid boxes on top of each other and tape together:

Insert the boxes you cut down to size earlier a n d .... voila!
The only issue is how they will stand up under the weight of the fabric when all the "drawers" are full. I made two stacks of 7 each last night. IF they seem to be holding up, I will cover the fronts of the drawers so they look more like this:
which, if you it out a bit, reveals this: (you don't see the back bit so I save the sticky-backed vinyl for the part that shows.)
If they wear out too quickly at least it has only cost me a R6 roll of tape.What I like is that each individual "drawer" might get messy, but that won't affect the whole. Later I might sort fabrics into colours. Much later.

And I had fun :)

How to store fabric (?)

I am forever in search of the Holy Grail of Perfect Fabric Storage.... as I am sure many others are too. I've seen wonderful systems: shelves, cupboards, glass-fronted drawers etc etc. and wished I could have them. But alas, I do NOT have:
a) carpentry skills
b) a handy significant other (who might have had these skills)
c) wads of spare cash to buy such a system.

I've also realised that shelves don't really work for me. I've bought numerous bookshelves, supposedly to "solve" this problem, but it all ends up being stuffed in, higgledy-piggledy because I yank it all out when I am searching for the right piece (and you know you have to audition fabrics next to each other to make VISUAL decisions, right? - which means you have to take ALL the eg. reds out and then when you find the right piece you want to get going immediately - who wants to pack fabrics away neatly first???)

I should be more organised. I should be more disciplined. Yadda yadda.

Are you bored yet? The other criterion I have for this Perfect Storage is that it needs to be cheap. And preferably something I can make myself. And if I can make it from a waste material which is plentiful and free, so much the better. (As I often tell my girls, "fortunately, we have more sense than money".) Actually there are plenty of things I have more of, than money... :(

And one of them is fabric! - which brings us back to..... (I have a hopeless amount of fabric, from 25-odd years of extreme hoarding. I have to steel myself and be strong when I give away used clothes to people who need them desperately, because of course they are made of... ? Yup. )
So I've been looking at the boxes our paper comes in, for a while, trying to work something out. These boxes are all over the university and are often thrown away. There MUST be a way I can use them.

No, sorry, this post is not about how I have solved the problem, for I haven't done that yet. But I am going to! It may not be spectacular or even good-looking, but as long as it works, so that I can actually trace a piece I am looking for, instead of this constant "I know I have a piece that is just right, but WHERE?"

I made one previous attempt, which just does not work at all.
. I cut off one side of the box and replaced it with transparent laminating waste. I was trying to "make" glass-fronted drawers. But this was a miserable failure. Not only because they aren't sturdy enough, but because the piece you want is *always* at the bottom! and if you only have a small piece of something you'll never find it in a whole box full.

So, back to the drawing board. I am very determined.

Yarn cat

Once upon a time, there was a cat.
Who was, in fact, a CD rack.
Made of wire and two well-placed marbles.

This cat belonged to a student, who rented a flat at the back of a batty middle-aged woman's house. Upon finishing her degree, the student gathered her belongings and left, leaving the cat with the batty woman (who was known, not only for her battiness, but also for her ... no, not her cattiness, but her battiness about cats) as she was sure the batty woman would take good care of her.
The batty middle-aged cat lady took the cat inside and stood her by the front door, where she greeted everyone as they came in, mostly by tripping them up as they walked past, since the cat was extremely transparent and often went unnoticed. When the batty cat lady's own toes were thus assailed one day, she uttered some unmentionable words and set about finding another use for the cat.
And so it came about that the cat was transformed from CD rack to yarn holder, with the help of some laminating waste cut into mega-bobbins and a small portion of the batty lady's considerable yarn collection.
And now the cat resides on a table, where it proudly bristles with pleasure whenever anyone looks at it. From time to time, it even changes colour, just like a chameleon.
But only if it feels so inclined.

Kitten cuteness

Please skip if you wonder why there are pets in a fibre art blog...

I - can't - HEAR - you !

It sure is exhausting getting these ribbons under control.

Cracks and peels

Just finished.
A small piece about 30cm x 30cm.
I live in an aging house, with an increasing number of cracks and paint peeling off the walls, both inside and out. Furthermore I can feel my body aging too - another metaphor... so yeah, that's what this is about...

Art journal covers and a magazine blather

(yes, those are my toes at the bottom...I hope they're clean!)

This is an idea I got from the Quilting Arts magazine that I subscribe to. For all the faults that popular artycrafty magazines tend to have (see below*) I find Quilting Arts quite useful as a springboard for ideas. This was an idea for book covers and the above photo is only a start.

I had scraps left over so that led to other one below which will have a lot more busy, fiddly bits on it, the above is more of a "clean-line" design.

*My critique of arty-crafty magazines:
PLEASE don't get me wrong; I don't want to put down these magazines. They are great for making a variety of fields accessible to a layperson (and being unschooled in art, I am one myself) and especially good for getting started in a new field.

We have two "popular" ones in South Africa ("popular" in the sense that you can find them at most supermarkets, as opposed to being a specialist magazine you have to go to a bookshop to find, or you have to order), Threads and Crafts and Craftwise.

Both of these magazines cater more to the craft side of the market than the art side. I am glad that we have them and don't want to criticise, but I find them limiting and frustrating in their limitations: I think the issue is they leave me wanting *more*. Quilting Arts has some of these limits too, although to a lesser extent, probably mostly because it's American and a lot of their products and ideas are newer to me than the South African ones.

I personally find these types of magazines have an over-emphasis on promotion of *products* that they can sell (because, of course, money makes the whole business go around) . Buy this ink and that stamp or thread and this gadget which will magically make you a "better" artist. Success is guaranteed because the product is so superior, it's idiot-proof. Making art is fraught with failure, so a product that virtually guarantees a lower failure rate... well, what sheep we are.

They also have a tendency to follow "fads" eg scrapbooking, beading (because that will get them greater readership and sell more copies). I guess the magazine would not exist otherwise. But it gets tiring.

Lastly they have a tendency to cater to people who need every step spelt out for them so they can duplicate a result exactly. A "paint-by-numbers" approach. Again this is great for a beginner, but beyond that... boring.

It sounds hugely insulting (and if you've read this far, you're most unlikely to fall in this category) but most people need to be told what to do every step of the way. Haven't you experienced this...? You think: "What if I tried it this way" and you make something and then people gasp and say "You're so CREATIVE - how did you know to do that?" - and the truth is you didn't *know* anything, you just tried something out - and that, I suppose, is creativity, but it seems to me, creativity is a mindset more than some terribly special "gift" that some people have and others don't. And most people are sheep; we are socialised that way. "Write your 'A' this way and not that way, a tree is brown and green and not pink and purple." We need mass education to teach masses of people to cope in our increasingly complicated world, but that mass education can be stifling of creativity. That is nothing new, but I am suprised at how many people never realise this fact, and never venture outside of what they learned in school. Perhaps they are just not driven to experiment, driven to make something out of nothing. Perhaps I don't understand, because I always want to look at something and think "how could I use that in a different way, or see it differently?" It makes me less "efficient" because I go off on a lot of tangets, but those tangents are just so interesting! :)

Haha, that turned into quite a rant. Whatever. I buy magazines, because they give me ideas; they stimulate me to think about things I would not otherwise have thought about. So 'Thank You' to magazine editors and writers everywhere - you may have to pay lip service to what will sell (we all have to eat!), but we all know there is so much more beyond that.

Camouflage Cat! :)

Hiding in plain sight.

("Now that you have the photo, can I please be left in peace to snooze ?")

(The fabric is a dress I bought from a Senegalese trader at our last National Arts Festival. It's loose and lovely to wear although I do get the odd impulse to cut it up, as the fabric is so gorgeous. )

Eric Maisel's Virtual Book Tour

For those interested in following this book tour, Eric Maisel is visiting various blogs, to speak about his book "Van Gogh Blues". Here is his schedule.

Quote of my day

"*You* must arbitrate the meaning in your life. That is your curse and that is also your blessing." - Eric Maisel

I'm listening to podcasts from his blog "Your Purpose-Centred Life: A Plan for Authentic Living" and very much enjoying them. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Big paper bowl

Following my other passion, that of creating art from recycled material, I recently made this large bowl out of 2-3 magazines. You roll the pages up tightly and make lots of straight "rolls" of paper and then join them end to end by sticking the smaller end of one inside the larger end of the next. Then bend them slightly and then coil and glue, coil and glue.

The jury is still out on whether it should be painted or not. Jessica votes No, she says, she likes that you can see what it's made of; I say Yes, because I think it could look really amazing if painted. The bowl is surprisingly strong. (I think I *will* paint it - it's mine, after all!)

A word of caution: Rolling all those pages is VERY hard on the hand muscles. I suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome, repaired in one hand but not in the other. After completing this bowl, BOTH my hands were numb, tingling and aching for days. I'm sad about that, because it was fun to sit and do and I'd love to make more and play with different shapes, but I do need to take care of my hands. If I lose the use of them, I'd be a wreck.

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel...

Design credit: subscribers to Quilting Arts magazine may have noticed a little card that falls out of the magazine, encouraging you to subscribe to FiberArts magazine. On that little card is a picture, and that picture just HAD to be tried out - sewing circles, then cutting them apart and rejoining them randomly.

A detail shot:

It's not finished, as I want to do more stitching on it and want to add a few beads in places.
Kind of planetary, isn't it...? Funny, that theme recurs often, even when I have no intentions of it doing so.

OMG - Amazing...!

I've just surfed past Gabrielle Swain's blog, handmaiden, where today she carries an interview with Eric Maisel, author of Van Gogh Blues.

I am utterly astounded. This resonates SO MUCH with how I feel that I am speechless! I am going to order this book right away. This I have to read.

Strips

I previouslt mentioned cutting strips. TONS of strips. I went through stashes of scraps, ironing them and cutting strips. Some were fabrics I didn't like, some were fabrics I cut to add some colour and variety/interest.

I tried to sort them by value, with some success, although in hindsight there are always some that stray to the wrong group and you don't catch them until you've already cut out the blocks.

Here they are from lightest to darkest and I am really not happy with them. So this project has stalled, while I try and figure out what it is that I don't like, and what it needs to make it right.

I'm not very good when I hit a snag. I tend to get very dis-spirited and self-critical, instead of realising that this is when I actually LEARN something. Must.Remember.That.

A lolcat without the bad spelling

I'm on your batting, remembering my past life (as a prawn!)

Festive Season - my version

Those who read my "festive season" entries will know that I don't really do the festive season. However I did have leave from work and so I had some time...

My girls, of course, do not let me off the Xmas thing entirely (the idea of abandoning the presents has never quite taken off) and then there was also this issue of Quilting Arts Gifts, with some very inspiring things to make... so this is what transpired:
Of course I do realise it's way too late for the so-called "festive season" but that's too bad. Those who have the Gifts issue of Quilting Arts Magazine will recognise it, but I gave it 7 sides instead of 3 or 4 or whatever the article said, and I made it round instead of with straight sides.
I had tremendous fun making this. I used iron-on interfacing as the base and cut fabric into scraps and ironed them to the base fabric, together with bit of lace, braid etc. I am a compulsive hoarder, so I used up lots of my little bits and completely justified my hoarding, which will now intensify even more! Then I free-motion machined all over it to hold everything down. I had a long string of beads left over from making the chandelier, which I decided to drape around it.

It's something about using up all the little bits that others throw away that keeps drawing me. I know you can't "make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", but that is not going to stop me trying! I'm learning what "bits" have potential and which don't, but I don't throw even a 5cm bit of thread away anymore. I have lots of little jars and bins everywhere to save them in. Gives me great pleasure. (I didn't ever claim to be sane, did I? If so, let me retract that immediately.)

So now I have this... um... Festive Season OBJECT. It is about half a metre tall. Jessica said it looks like a wedding dress (!) (I love that I always get straight talk from my daughters.) What do I do with it? Pack it away in a box until the 2008 festive season...? I guess so, what a pity. Oh well, next year I will either be pleasantly surprised and impressed, or I will wonder what on earth I was thinking, which will give me great amusement... :)

Sewing companion

Nothing is sacred anymore....

He sits and watches the needle go up and down, up and down, up and down. I had to stop when he tried to grab the thread - I am so afraid I will sew over his paw. But he really is small enough that he can lie in this space while I sew. And I guess the sewing bed is nice and warm to lie on.

Ahhhhhhh, it's the simple joys, isn't it? Whatever I'm feeling, this little mite can make it better, with his huge eyes gazing up and his little engine purring away...

Yup, I'm in love.

Blue vessel again

Some time back I promised some better pictures, and I have been making some effort in this regard. I'm still puzzled over the focus of my camera, which is supposed automatic but then comes out blurred. I wish the focus was manual like in the old days - I took much better pictures then!!

I'm pleased with how this came out. It is all made from bits of scraps from other projects sandwiched between two layers of vegetable netting, which I saved from something I bought. You can barely make out the netting in the detail picture below - but it is even hard to see in real life.

And it's been useful. I save bits of fabric in it, or spools of thread or the wrapped threads I went on a binge of making.

I emptied it recently and put it next to me on the couch to refill with thread scraps from what I was working on... and when I looked again:

*BOTH* kittens had snuggled up in it...! {smile} (I suppose it is a compliment.)

Visiting BlogRing neighbours

So I popped in to Caity's blog today and she mentioned that Diane had challenged us to visit our "neighbours". I went to Diane's post and... since I am furiously trying to avoid work today, I went to visit 3 "Random" neighbours:

I saw Heidi from Georgia (in the USA, I assume although could be Russia) and saw some gorgeous felted bowls. What is it about bowls that make their shapes so pleasing?

Then I went to Dagmar in Germany(?) who had the most exquisite Nature-inchies as well as some very beautiful photographs she had taken on a photography course, that made me wish I had taken them so I could use them in my art! Language is no barrier when you have pictures of fibre art :)

And lastly to Fiona of Australia who had taken a hautingly beautiful photograph of waterlillies in the mist on the water. I followed a link to her website to see her work, and wish I could see it in person.

More about my "Previous" and "Next" neighbours in another post, but now I had better do some work...

New Kitty Joy!

Following the loss of our much loved Bobby and Smudge, we decided we needed more kittiness in our lives. I hereby present {drumroll, please.....!}

MICKEY: currently known as Mickey the Mite, since he's as small as a mouse, almost. He will become Mighty Mickey once he grows up.

SNAPE: mostly known as Snoopy for now, since he's also still little

and MATTHEW, also known as Tiger, since that was his previous name and is the one he actually responds to. When he feels like it. He's fully grown and was the rascal who just bewitched us at the SPCA and MADE us take him home. As you can see he moved right in and made himself at home. A real Thomas O'Malley, except that he is still sleek and only has one battle scar, a nick on his one ear. He has been singing duets with the other Tiger who lives next door, as they eye each other very suspiciously.

I fear I am falling in love with Mickey. He is SOOOOO affectionate and purry. I say "fear" because I know the hurt will be greater if there is more kitty-loss in our future (we've had a bad run), but it's better to have loved and lost and all that...

New books {grin}

I went shopping at kalahari.net again...

I'll post some reviews when I've had a better look at the four books I received. Meanwhile, here are web links to whet your appetite (do I get commission?) The name of the book links to the website of the book, or if there isn't one, to some place where you can read about the book. The name of the author links to that person's blog, or their website.

1: The Uncommon Quilter by Jeanne Williamson
2: Living the Creative Life by Rice Freeman-Zachery
3: The Soul's Palette by Cathy Malchiodi
4: The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione

Teesha Moore's fantastic site

Take a look at this great site!