Page 114 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Finished…With A Little Help From A Friend

Posted on March 11, 2008 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s Done! This is the Cahaba River Jacket.

Sometimes, unfinished business turns into an albatross around one’s neck. I reached that point with this sweater, after the knitting was complete. I knit the sweater from the yarn the pattern was written for, a slubby thick and thin cotton boucle, Iron Cotton from Ironstone Yarns. It resulted in a really beautiful, loose-weave fabric, that pretty much demanded the lining that the pattern called for.

I learned to sew from my grandmother at an early age, but I rarely sew clothing. I’m far more likely to be jamming wood veneers or old book pages beneath the needle of my much love Bernina, for a mixed-media art project. Every time I thought about cutting out the free form, patternless lining, and somehow getting it neatly sewn in, I found other really important things to do. You know, stuff like cleaning out the refrigerator or folding laundry. Finally, I realized I had that dreaded disease, lining-anxiety.

The lovely Donna, proprietress of In The Making, my favorite local yarn store, and creator of the pattern, is one busy chick. I have no idea how she does all the things she does, but I finally caught her in a weak moment, and she agreed to do the lining for me.

It came out perfectly!

And many thanks to Shanna, who scored this beautiful fabric for me and sent it from Japan!

Following my policy of being able to cast on at least one new project for every one "I" complete, I turned to my new manos silk/merino yarn and the Anthropologie Shrug pattern. This dreadful photo doesn’t reflect the beauty of this yarn — it is the same colorway I used for a felted bowl last fall, only to suffer horrible disappointment when the colors merged too much in felting. In the back of my mind I always knew I would use this colorway again, so when I saw it in the silk blend, it was only a matter of finding the right pattern. I’m double stranding the worsted weight to hit gauge, and looking forward to this straightforward, quick (famous last words) knit.

I suppose the moral of the story is, it’s never so bad that you can’t ask a friend for a little bit of help. Ellie is absolutely in love with the outcome, and this sweater is one of those knits that makes you understand the potential in knitting. It’s a fabulous pattern, and the result is far more beautiful than anything you could ever purchase. As much as I dislike being unable to finish something on my own, I’m incredibly happy that it’s finished — and was worn to school this morning!

Posted on March 9, 2008 by Joyce Makes Art

Karen Owen is not just one of my dearest friends, she is also one of my favorite artists. I am always in awe of the beautiful work she creates. So it was a special challenge to receive her book first in the colors round robin. Her colors were a beautiful range of browns and greens and the book was so wonderful — sort of like stepping into the notes of a bird watcher who had isolated herself in a deep forest to observe.

I had a lot of fun working in her book and trying to step into her shoes a little bit. The background is a stamp we bought together, while I was in Georgia, and she took me to her favorite stamp store. It was fun using it on the page. Lots of fun went into this, including the key on the lower right page, which is made from some Paper Whimsy Grungeboard — my first experiment with it and the coffee stained tag, which my five year old thought was no end of fun to make.

I hope you like it Karen!

Just In Time!

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Joyce Makes Art

I finished Ollie’s blue vest just in time. Just in time, because we woke up to snow! Just a dusting of it, but enough to be thoroughly satisfying. I never got tired of the snow when I went to school in Maine, and one of the few things I don’t like about Alabama is the lack of snow. So twice in one winter, even if it’s just a wee bit, is a wonderful thing!

This is the perfect warm winter vest, knit from a double stranded aran weight Debbie Bliss silk/alpaca yarn. Double stranding was a mistake, as the twist on this yarn is so loose and it is so prone to tangle that there are a number of places where I missed a strand, and it’s really not a pretty vest at all. But oh so warm and soft!

This is one of those items I started, then put aside, and picked back up months later. I need to remember that is always a mistake when knitting for children — it’s a little bit shorter than I intended, but Ollie seems to be really happy with it, which is all that matters to me.

The Death Of The Kushu Kushu Scarf

Posted on March 5, 2008 by Joyce Makes Art

Do you realize what that is?

Yes, I’m aware my bathroom is embarrassingly dirty and I should not, under any circumstances, be showing it off.

But that is my freaking Kushu Kushu scarf, previously one of the joys of my life, now a tangled shard of its former self.

I woke up. I went for the shower. It took me a moment — what was it? The realization dawned upon me. The scarf, which I had carelessly left lying out in the dining room. The skein of metal yarn, nowhere to be found. The skein of merino had apparently come along for the ride and at some point become detached from the scarf. Was this before or after it was hopelessly tangled? The evidence gave up no such secrets, but I was intent on finding a culprit.

Ollie claimed total innocence and quite frankly, this is not his style. Plus, he worships knitting and would never harm it. Personally, I suspected one of the Judge’s dogs, but they were nowhere to be found.

There was this

She seemed a little bit too obvious though — sort of like the red herring suspect on every episode of Perry Mason I’ve ever seen. And you have to applaud her good taste in snoozing with the Manos Silk (currently in search of a shrug pattern, so feel free to chime in if you have a suggestion).

Hmmmm…..he could have been faking it, but look at how sweet Harry is. Plus, his style would have been to carry it upstairs and proudly drop it in my lap before insisting I feed him for the second or third time that morning.

I’m guessing that this is my culprit. He was sound asleep when I walked it, but jerked upright with that deer-in-the-freaking-headlights-guilty look on his face when I asked if he knew anything about the Kushu Kushu scarf. Guilty.

So, no Kushu Kushu, at least not until I manage to get back over to Atlanta and replace my yarn. I’m sad — a few rows on this scarf here and there has been one of my guilty pleasures. And reading the Japanese patterns seems very intuitive to me, particularly this simple one. Good by my lovely Kushu Kushu. I’m going to miss you.

I turned instead to the two works in progress that seem to have priority status at the moment.

This is the front of Ollie’s vest, and although I’m somewhat less than overjoyed with the fact that by double stranding the Debbie Bliss silk/merino I insured that several stitches along the way would have that mashy, not-quite right look, Ollie loves this and I’m going to finish it up so he will get to wear it before the hot, full sun of Alabama summer takes over — probably sometime in Mid-April, so I need to finish this up over the weekend.

The Shibui socks are close to done! I’ve got about a sock and a half now and I love them. I’m actually fantasizing about finding the perfect pair of shoes for my socks. I love how knitting adds new dimensions to my world.

Beth’s Pock-et-ful

Posted on March 2, 2008 by Joyce Makes Art

Beth Bricker is one of my favorite artists. Her work is always very beautiful and evocative. So it was a real treat when her book for the pock-et-ful round robin showed up in my mailbox! She has made wonderful canvas pages, with grommets so she can bind them all with ribbon when they return home.

I had this most unlike me vision of what I wanted to do — something simple and clean, sort of like sketching, but in collage form. I have no idea if that will make sense to anyone other than me, and in many ways, the piece I did doesn’t comport with that vision, but it was spontaneous and fun. I enjoyed working in this book so much!

I started by sewing an old piece of ledger paper to the canvas, and then painting the outline of a tree on it. The leaves are tiny little scraps of fabric that I cut into leaves and glued on, with a fabric glue. On the side is a muslin banner that reads, "many different things grow there, but the best of these of love," which I think as I look at it now, must have been a subconscious play on the passage in Corinthians that is often read at weddings, as I’ve been thinking about a friend’s upcoming wedding all week. It’s really very simple. Very little background work, which is unusual for me. I wanted the tree to grow out of a nest of grass, so I painted some silk and ran stitches across its length so I could gather it. After gluing the silk to the canvas, I trimmed bits away to make its shape vaguely nest-like.

The back is simple as well.

I really love how it came out. I used a little Moon Shadow Mist Spray on the back, to antique the page a bit more. I used fabric paint on the pocket to get the words and vintage buttons below. The pocket is filled very simply with a tiny vintage cabinet card (Beth does wonderful things with cabinet cards), an old flash card with the word friend on it, and some of my hand-dyed silk ribbon. I’m hoping the ribbon will come in handy when she binds the book.

Now I’m off to make Babaghanoush for international pot luck dinner night at my oldest child’s school. The Judge is off napping. It’s one of those wonderful, early spring days, where a nap outdoors sounds just perfect, so I’m hoping the ghanoush goes together easily!

In need of yarn?

Posted on February 28, 2008 by Joyce Makes Art

Find yourself in need of a little yarn this week? *snicker* i’m having this little yarn stocking party, Thursday at noon, eastern time and I just might be able to help you out a little bit.

http://www.hyenacart.com/elliebelly

I went sort of gaga this week — I couldn’t stop dyeing. It’s a sort of something for everyone kind of week.

For starters, not yarn, but I have playsilks. If you don’t Waldorf or Montessori school your kids, you may not know what these are — big 35" squares of hand-dyed Habotai silk. Wonderful for play. But as this time of year, I always try to stock some for Easter basket liners. Nix on anymore of that nasty shredded plastic, um, grass.

I have several colorways in Blue Faced Leicester, including some from the Paintbrush series. And, for all the one-skein wonder devotees, I
have several one skein listings this week as well.

If you want to make baby blankets, mittens, scarves, or pants or a
skirt for a child, I’ve dyed some superwash worsted weight Merino. It’s incredibly soft!

For eco-friendly knitters, there is some organic Merino yarn this week.

And, for the sock knitters among you (c’mon, if you’re aren’t
already one, you know you want to be), two great colorways on Blue Faced Leicester luxury sock yarn.

These pictures are just a sample of all the fun I’ve had dyeing in the last couple of weeks. You can come by and look at the previews anytime — the yarn will all be available for purchase at noon on Thursday, here.

The Colors RR

Posted on February 26, 2008 by Joyce Makes Art

Last fall, when Catherine Moore did a weekend retreat of classes for The Altered Workshop, we decided we wanted to do a colors round robin in the new year. I haven’t had a chance to post the scans of my book yet, but it’s a dreary, sore-throat kind of morning here, so I’m going to take advantage of the down time to show my book to you.

I started with a small, slender volume: a travel guide to London, written in French, and long since discarded by its original owner. The pages are so thin that I found I had to glue several together to get a good substrate to make art on. My "colors" are robin’s egg blue and vintage paper.

This is the front cover.

And the interior of the front cover, which is very simple, here:

I did only one spread, called Introduction Generale. I wanted to make sure there were plenty of pages for the other artists.

Finally, the sign in. I wanted to do something really different, so I created a niche in the back of the book and left in empty, so that each of the artists could contribute something to it and then sign their names around the edge of the page.

That’s pretty much it. The Fragments Book, in robin’s egg blue and vintage paper. I’ll try to link you to everyone else’s blogs as the book makes its way from artist to artist, so that you can see everyone else’s work in it, too.