Gardening – Page 3 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Adventures In Dyeing

Posted on April 29, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Can you believe that these two skeins of yarn

started life in the same dye bath? I’ve been doing some experiments with overdyeing, and this was part of a controlled experiment I did yesterday. After the first dye bath, these yarns were identical. You would never think that to look at them now!

I just went outside to photograph the yarn. It is so incredibly beautiful in my yard right now! We stayed outside until the sun went down (and the children’s feet were the deep red of Alabama clay) last night enjoying it. All of my English roses are blooming and the Japanese Iris just came out yesterday.

All in all, it was too beautiful to spend much, if any, time indoors. What little time I’ve spent in the studio this weekend has been devoted to my vintage fabric book pages. I’m being plagued with sewing machine *issues* but am getting as much done as possible before my beloved, but much abused, machine comes home to me. The nice ladies at the store look at me in horror and say things like, "cardboard? you were sewing on cardboard?" "Yes," I tell them. I was attaching a transparency to it and the funniest thing happened." I think I am their most trying customer.

But despite that small glitch, my pages are well on the way to being finished.

This is just a little tease. I’m not giving away everything, since Chris is going to compile the books and have them back to us by Mother’s Day.

Mistakes & Happy Endings

Posted on April 7, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I was dreaming about showing y’all my new market bag this weekend. Or at least showing a close to finished version. It’s what I’m doing with the rubber tubing from the earlier post — my plan is to turn the tubing into handles and have a really sturdy felted bag to use at our farmers market, which starts up in a few weeks.

You know what I did? About 5" into rounds of 150 stitches, I realized that I twisted the stitches when I did the join. Arggghhhh. How did I knit for that long without figuring it out? Well, I had stored my circulars in a really pretty silk needle case, and it required me to bend them around themselves to fit. When I took the needle out to knit with, it was pretty kinked up. I thought I was being extra-careful because of all the twisting. I wasn’t. I discovered it while knitting during the conversation after a dinner party last night.

After thrashing myself for being so lazy, I straightened out the cable (easily done by setting it in a bowl of very hot water for about thirty seconds and then smoothing it) and cast back on. All you get to see is this:

Hopefully there will be more progress soon, but this has the feel of one of those black hole knitting projects already.

In far more exciting news, my friend Ramona came home from spring break in Paris and brought me this:

It came from the Anny Blatt store. And most amazingly of all, Anny Blatt was there when she bought the yarn and she met her! She bought the yarn thinking it would make up into a wonderful little tank for summer, and I think that is just the right project. Isn’t it lovely to have friends who are knitters who go to Paris?

More jewelry news too. In the second class, I completed this bracelet, which goes with the earrings I made and showed you earlier in the week. As a completely self-taught beader (I only went that direction because of some felting projects that required beading and then one thing led to another), this class opened a lot of horizons and I can’t wait to incorporate some of what I learned back into collage work, and specifically, into a couple of artist’s fat books I’m in the middle of working on!

There are two other things I want to show y’all. One is really odd, and one is really beautiful.

This is the odd thing:

I asked the 16 year old boy to cut up carrots to go with the roast, and this is what he left for me. It is strangely sculptural. I would like to think it is his teenage attempt at communicating to me that he sees beauty and value in art. Do you think it’s an over-reading? After living with teenagers, I sometimes find myself grasping at straws.

The beautiful thing is this — I am managing to grow lilacs in the deep south.

Lilacs don’t grow in the deep south. But I baby these two, just outside my front door, and this is the fourth year they have bloomed for me. The scent is incredible. I’m starting to notice that I grow all the same things in my garden that my Grandmother and Mother loved best. I grow roses and iris and gardenias. I manage a small strawberry patch. We have three peach trees, which is a feat in a small urban yard. My Mom loves lilacs. I can’t even count the number of times she talked about how she remembered them from her childhood in the east and how much she regretted that they wouldn’t grown in California. So I grow them, for my Mom, even though she is still in California, and can only see them in pictures.

Spring Knitting Weather

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

She who must be obeyed (that would be my eight-year old), has absconded with my long awaited Handmaiden silk ribbon yarn. "Make me a mini-skirt" she commanded airily as she left the room. Because I live to serve, as soon as I can do the math to recalculate Colinette’s Giotto Mini-Skirt pattern, I will be casting on. It will look better on her, than it would have looked on me, in any event. It is really pretty yarn that isn’t available on their website, but that I was lucky enough to get my hands on. Pictures forthcoming.

Ellie only got her grubby little hands on the Handmaiden, because I had pulled out all of my spring yarn and was eyeing where to start. I haven’t knitted with a ribbon yarn before, so I decided to warm up with a little tank made out of Colinette’s Giotto in the Paintbox colorway (an ebay purchase that I was ecstatic about). It is essentially just row after row in moss stitch — very good meeting knitting. Not particularly mind boggling although the needle is a bit prone to slice through the ribbon, so I think I’m going to have to beware. Knitting with this yarn gives me a chance just to see how beautiful it is It really could pass for silk and the colors are mah-velous.

I’m also swatching for new socks, hopefully for myself this time. I have misplaced the ball band, but I have emailed the store where I purchased it, in hopes they can identify it for us.

Isn’t that beautiful? This is my last pair of self-patterned socks for a while, as I received the new Interweave sock book I posted about last week and can’t wait to start in on those patterns. This yarn, however, has been on top of the stash box in my bedroom for months, calling my name. It got too loud to ignore.

Here are some tidbits from my early morning. On the other end of the leash is my neighbor George, being walked by his dog and my cat.

Harry & Hermione love Little Miss Ellie, and they come running to see her when it is time for their walks. They also take great delight in stalking her….and attacking. The kittens have now befriended all of the neighborhood dogs and go running to see their friends Pierre and AJ too.

Can you see how beautiful it is getting here? Everything is coming out. My roses are blooming.

The dogwoods are out and my lavender is in full bloom.

I grow an obscure tall garden iris called Eleanor’s Pride, that I planted when Ellie was born. It was a Dykes award winner in the 1961 and is subtle and lovely.

And we even have early blooms on our Meyer Lemon tree.

It is truly spring, and if we can manage to survive the pollen, it’s going to be a wonderful one. I’m off for one last day of work this week, and then a mad weekend of children’s birthday parties, visits from out of town friends, and yarn dyeing. I’m going to rave at length about my Mama Bear skein winder, which arrived on Wednesday and proved incredibly easy to assemble and use. I wound up a test skein of my British Blue Face Leicester and dyed it. Two new loves in one week — this skein winder and this yarn are going to be making my weekend really enjoyable. The pink yarn is the first bath of a yarn I’m working on — Meagan, take note. And the undyed skein is some bulky merino I’m playing with. I have been wanting to add a bulky sweater yarn to my line up and I think this one is going to be it. It is incredibly soft, evenly spun, and the first few test skeins are looking great.

I just love spring and all it holds in store!

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.

A Little Yarn & Some Birds

Posted on February 4, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

We had an amazing experience this morning! Ellie came running from her bedroom to ask me if it was dangerous for birds to eat the poison berries in the backyard. She said there were some robins in the holly tree that grows up to the second floor of our house outside her bedroom and she was worried about them. She insisted that I go with her to look even though I reassured her that the berries were good food for the birds. It was astonishing! There were upwards of 200 robins in our backyard, spread out among all the trees.

It was hard to get a close up picture out of doors because they would fly off in a sudden burst whenever we went out, but they were beautiful and lots of fun to observe through the windows.

I have never seen anything like it before! I’m hoping it was a mission to stake out nest space and that we will be blessed with lots of little baby birds this spring.

The afternoon wasn’t quite as much fun since a few unexpected things came up at work this week, which left me with a lot of work to do today — something I try to avoid on weekends. I did manage to dye some yarn while working and came up with this:

and with this:

Several skeins of each yarn will be on sale at Midday Faire on Tuesday at noon. Although they don’t go on sale until then, you can see them now here and here along with a few other things.

A Happy New Year

Posted on January 2, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It feels good to be off to a happy new year. The joy of being off of work for a couple of weeks and having time to play with kids, cook, knit, and make art is really wonderful.

The informal Artist’s Trading Cards swap got off to a great start despite short notice — I only dreamed it up a couple of days in advance. It’s going to continue on for the next little bit to give more artists the chance to play. The list of participating artists is now the first list on the left-hand column of this blog. If you are interested in joining, scroll down through the next few posts for the details and then email the link for your ATCs to Joyce at Elliebelly dot com.

I finally got in a bit of post-holiday knitting time, and used it to add onto the silk feather and fan scarf, which I’m absolutely entranced with. I seem to be doing a lot of knitting for myself right now and this scarf is surely going no where else but around my neck.

I also got the chance to return my studio to normal (as opposed to the cleanliness and order that came with my ~~unbelievable willingness to look foolish for HGTV viewers all over America~~ TV debut in early December.) For those of you who were concerned by the order, it is there no more.

Is there a name for artists afflicted with ADHD? Or is it ok to simply think of myself as a versatile multi-tasker? I’m working on two different shrines, as well as this piece which I have starting painting the background layers on….

and this piece, which is going to be a fabric portrait collage of my baby.

The "make a wish" fragment fits Ollie perfectly, but I had it in the studio because I used it to make a wand for my friend Joanne. It took me a while to figure out how to felt the handle of the wand. I ended up pre-felting some roving while still in sliver form, and then wet felting it, using a felting needle to tack it a little bit, before adding the curly mohair in via needle felting. I hope she’s going to like it!

For my swan song before I go back to work tomorrow, I’m dyeing some silk/merino yarn tonight. It looks like it would be perfect for a Clapotis, which just happens to be on my short list of new knitting projects (I’m the only knitter in the world who still hasn’t made one), although I had plans to use some pretty Debbie Bliss teal blue alpaca-silk yarn. Decisions, decisions.

A Random Day

Posted on September 30, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

In an effort to live up to the ultimate criticism my 16 year old likes to level against me, "oh Mom, you are SO random," I’m going to offer up some moments from my day.

We’ve had a bit of rain in the past few weeks and it is amazing how it has perked up my late summer garden. The Zinnias are extravagant and are blooming all over.

The cherry tomato plant Ellie’s Godmother gave her is covered in little tomatoes (having been carefully watered by Mom every day, all summer long) and I’m crossing my fingers they will turn red before the cold hits. I’m not your basic fried green tomatoes kind of southern girl, but I do have my eye on a recipe involving fresh Mozzarella Cheese and little tomatoes.

And look at this! My Gardenia bush is blooming! I love Gardenias. Their sweet fragrance reminds me of my Grandmother and I love bringing them inside to grace the dining room table. No clue why they’re blooming in September, though.

Here is one of the many reasons I grow lots of parsley — it insures plenty of Swallowtail Butterflies in my garden.

Since evil husband was off watching football this afternoon, I let Ellie pick whatever she wanted for dinner, and she chose applesauce from one of our favorite cookbooks, Fanny At Chez Panisse. She and Ollie and I peeled the apples, and then gave them a liberal sprinkle of Cinammon before cooking them. The result was an extravagantly delicious if unusual dinner. We rounded it out with a Tisane of Lemon Verbena, Pineapple Sage, Peach Tree leaves, and Lavender. It was yummy. I’m still sipping it as I type.

Finally, a kitty picture. This is Hermione, who although she seemed to be the shyer of the two kittens on arrival is absolutely intrepid. We’ve made toys from some tree branches and yarn and the kittens have been having a wonderful time.

It’s back to the studio for me. I have two dresses I’m in the middle of painting, a journal in progress, a sort of funky collage with thick gessoed edges, and a little fabric page. I remind myself of the 16 year old’s favorite joke — Q. how many kids with ADHD does it take to screw in a light bulb? A. Let’s go ride bikes. Honestly, that is me in the studio. Actually, that’s me in every day life. I’m off.