Page 131 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

More About MooTah, Wednesday Stamper, and TV Debut News

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Tonight I’m going to answer the emails I got about yesterday’s MooTah post. But first, I’m going to show you my piece for this week’s theme at Wednesday Stamper, which is doors.

It is a fabric and paper collage, using some of my hand-dyed fabric and ribbon, and some of my favorite images from Paper Whimsy, including the mysterious doorway. The stamp I used down at the bottom is part of a lot of vintage typeset I found at a little store in my neighborhood. Included with the alphabet stamps were five or six plates that look sort of like company logos that might have been used for letterhead or advertising. The part that reads "Star" is part of a stamp for Star Company.

Ok, on to MooTah. In answer to several questions (I was very complimented that y’all liked him enough to ask!):

(1) MooTah is made mostly from vintage Asian Fabrics that my friend Kara sent to me, although his arms are homespun fabric. His back is made from a fabric that says "Handwoven Silk, Made in Thailand" on the selvedge. It is the same fabric I used underneath the button eyes.

(2) MooTah’s eyes are made by sewing on little circles cut out of the Thai Silk, which wanted to immediately fray around the edges and resulted in that sort of cool, uneven look. I used a gold metallic thread and stitched not too careful circles around the eyes. Finally, the buttons themselves are some kind of old bone buttons I got as part of a vintage lot. I’ve never seen buttons with big holes like that before and I really like them.

(3) This is MooTah with his namesake, Squirt-MooTah

(4) Squirt is not interested in MooTah but Harry is very enamored with him.

MooTah continues to be a big hit around our house. I’m going to have to pull out the rest of the fabric Kara sent and see what I can put together for Ellie, who is insisting she wants a MooTah too.

I have one last bit of news. I heard from the producers of That’s Clever, that the segments I filmed for them will appear in episode HCLVR-415, which will air sometime in February or March. As much as I am really eager to see myself on TV, I’m not entirely sorry it is so far off, as I’m a little bit nervous about how goofy I’m going to look jumping around on the kids’ trampoline. You can use the episode number to look on the HGTV website as it gets closer to the air time to see the specific dates the episode is set for. My two segments are on fabric portrait collage and ATCs.

Mootah

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

My kids love Miyazaki movies. Actually, the Judge and I do too. He makes wonderful anime films that captivate the four year old and the sixteen year equally. That’s a pretty amazing concept for anyone who has teenagers.

One of Ollie’s favorites is The Cat Returns. Without ruining it for you, because you really need to see it, I’ll just tell you that one of the characters is an ENORMOUS cat named Mootah. Somehow, overtime, we have come to call our own huge sweet cat Squirt by the nickname Mootah, a very fitting name for him. And somewhere along the way, I decided Ollie needed a stuffed toy Mootah of his own. Please, please keep in mind that I am not a seamstress and that this is a knitting and collage art blog. Nonetheless, I’m going to show you a picture of my little Mootah, who I have had to pry out of Ollie’s sleeping hands for purposes of photography.

Isn’t he cute playing in my spice cabinet? What a guy.

One last thing before bedtime. Earlier this week, I promised a picture of the baby socks I’m knitting out of my Poppy sock yarn. These are small baby socks, so they are a quick knit and I’m enjoying the way the yarn stripes.

I wish socks for big people would knit up as quickly!

Yarn Everywhere!

Posted on May 29, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have yarn for sale, well, it feels like everywhere this week, even though it is really just two places.

In addition to Midday Faire, where yarn will be available Tuesday at noon, I’m the guest artist at Club Thread for the next two weeks, beginning this Wednesday. At Club Thread, I’m doing several collaborations with the very talented Tara of Urban Fibers, including peasant tops in Amy Butler Fabric with coordinating yarn, and, for next week, an incredibly wonderful knitting bag made by Tara and filled up with some of my favorite yarns, including the elusive Treasure colorway, and stitch markers.

Here are some of the colorways I dyed up for this week:

This is Treasure on Blue Faced Leicester

This is Lizard on Peace Fleece

And this is my new favorite colorway for sock yarn, on superwash Blue Faced Leicester. This is Poppy and I’m in the middle of doing a pair of baby socks out of it, which I have to photograph and show you later today because they are adorable. For now, here’s the yarn.

I hope everyone finds something to lust after.

I’m off to start thinking about Harry Potter knitting goodness. I’ve joined the Knitty Harry Potter Swap, and can’t wait to start coming up with some great ideas and items to send!

Today: The Finished Market Bag

Posted on May 27, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I procrastinated for almost a week after I finished knitting the Market Bag (based on the pattern in Alternknits, one of my favorite knitting books and one of the few you really need to get if you don’t have it). The reason was that I planned on following the instructions in the book for making handles out of plastic tubing, and I wasn’t quite sure it was going to work. I love how the bag turned out, and I was just the teensiest bit afraid of ruining it.

Last night, I decided it was time to go ahead and finish it — in the wee hours where no children were around to distract me.

The bag is knit mostly from Peace Fleece, which felts nicely, although I still need to shave off the fuzz. I changed the pattern to create a roll down top, so I would have a very sturdy fabric to attach the handles to. I’m going to use this bag at our weekly farmers market, and wanted to make sure it would hold up.

The handles are mad of plastic tubing, a brilliant idea from the book.

I took some twill tape and dyed it to match the lavender yarn, using Procion MX dyes. Then, I stamped on both sides of the tapes, so that it reads "knit & purl" across the handles. I made holes in the plastic tubing and sewed it to the double thickness of felt created by the rolled over edge. To cover the ends of the handles, I sewed on vintage mother of purl buttons.

Voila. I can’t wait to use it.

Preparing To Transfer

Posted on May 26, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I’m preparing to do some Poloroid Transfers this afternoon. To get ready, I did some photography and have used some of it with vintage images and writing from my collection, to make collages that i can use for the transfers.

This picture from the farmer’s market

became this

And a flower in my garden

became this

I can’t wait to work on the transfers later on today.

This week I’m doing something fun and special with some old friends. Some of my hand-dyed yarns and other items will be available for sale at Club Thread beginning on Wednesday for the next two weeks. I’m especially excited about doing some collaborative work with Tara from Urban Fibers. We have a few things in the works, including the most fantastic tote bag for knitters! I’m excited because I just received a large shipment of Blue Faced Leicester yarn, as well as more organic merino, so I will be busy with my dyepots for part of the holiday weeked, and am excited about some new colorways, like the Rose Garden, pictured below, as well as repeating some recent favorites like Treasure and Lizard. I’m hoping to have the www.elliebelly.com fully stocked by the end of the month. New items are starting to creep into the store in dribs and drabs, so please drop by for a look!

Knit ‘n Swatch

Posted on May 23, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have been totally felled by some kind of horrible illness that makes me sleep for about 15 hours a day. This morning, with the best of intentions, I crept out of bed, took the oldest boy to the bus stop, came home, and just never managed to get dressed. In almost 30 years in the working world, that’s only happened to me a handful of times. I made the obligatory trip to pick up Ellie and managed to read a book (Lyle, Lyle Crocodile) to Ollie when he crept into bed with me, but other than that, I’ve been completely worthless. I’m really much more of a go-to-work-and-whine-around-like-a-martyr kind of sick girl. This has me completely off my feed.

To make matters far worse, I’m going to torture you with poorly lit, late-night indoor pictures if you want to see current knitting, because I was asleep through all the day light hours, and only emerged to watch the Daily Show and Colbert with the Judge. Here is a bit of knitting before I go back to sleep.

First, Ellie’s Cahaba River Jacket. The body is done. I have sleeves left to do and then the collar and neck. This jacket has to be lined. I’m torn between ~~using one of the literally hundreds of fabrics in my stash that would look great~~ trying to find something that doesn’t look to awful down in my studio or splurging on some beautiful Liberty of London Fabric (all of my Liberty prints are blues and purples) to finish it.

Next up is the start of the first cuff in my Blue Moon Rock and Weave Socks. My wonderful friend Carolyn got the pattern for me, and I’ve know since almost the minute I saw it that i wanted to use my Colinette Jitterbug yarn in Popsicle for this sock. The cuff is knit in linen stich, working horizontally, and you pick up stitches to go on with the rest of the leg and move on down. It’s very interesting. I haven’t gotten very far because I keep trying to knit this one while drinking with friends. Lesson learned: Do not drink Sherri’s Margaritas and try to knit in linen stitch, because it will not work.

Finally, I have started swatching for Teddy’s first sweater. I think I had better knit him a pile before he goes off to school in New England. This one started with the yarn. He wanted an orange and green sweater — pretty complex for a 14 year old boy, and I saw no reason to not honor his request. At least in swatch, the yarn I dyed up for him seems to fit the bill.

Towards the bottom of the swatch, I played with it in linen stitch and
a wide rib, trying to decide how to border it. I think this will just
be a simple basic sweater, using Ann Budd’s sweater book to write the pattern. I also got this pattern from Knit and Tonic today, thinking ahead to his second sweater.

Tuesday Means New Yarn

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s Tuesday, which means I have new yarn for sale at Midday Faire. This week, I’m offering my widest variety of yarn ever, with everything from BFL sock yarn, to organic merino, to a merino-silk blend (enough for a Clapotis), to enough bulky merino for an adult size sweater. Although each of those links is to a specific item, there are a number of sock yarns and merinos, so if the item you are looking at is already sold, click here to see everything in the store.

Here are some pictures:

Please drop by and have a look! The main Elliebelly site is a little bit low on yarn right now because ~~I have a lot of girlfriends who are total yarn crack addicts~~ of my wonderful friends who have spread my name around via word of mouth. I am slowly restocking, and have lots of dyeing planned for the long weekend, so you can have a good instock selection to choose from all the time, not just on Tuesdays at noon.