Page 140 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Wednesday Stamper

Posted on January 20, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

One of my new year’s thoughts was to use my collection of rubber stamps more in my art. For a while, I looked down on them as not-art, or even as too much like a coloring book. But I seem to have come full circle and am incorporating them into a lot of art lately. Then, I stumbled upon the Wednesday Stamper, a site that encourage artists to use rubber stamps and post their work.

This weeks theme is time. My piece is an ATC with a tiny picture of my Mother-in-law as a wee time traveler.

I need to update my list of ATCs for the swap, and will do that tomorrow morning to include Time Traveler, the ATC below, and a few others I have made this week.

One last thing (and it’s about yarn). I’ve been playing with mixtures of celadon and turquoise all week and was delighted to come up with this sweet little yarn. I know it isn’t modest to say this, but aren’t the colors beautiful? It just makes you want to go forth and knit something!

Bits & Pieces

Posted on January 18, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

This is sure to be a fairly disjointed entry as my littlest one has a nasty bug that involved Mommy watching his every labored breath and listening to his feverish hallucinations until 4 am this morning. Two and a half hours of sleep was followed by a full day at work. You might think that this would turn me into a ~~walking zombie~~ sleepier than usual version of myself, but I managed to survive the day, which included a hurried lunch hour visit to the pediatrician (who turned out to be sick with the flu herself, so we saw her partner) and several meetings.

I survived, but I’m not claiming to have survived with any particular grace. Dinner in my house tonight is chocolate croissants from our neighborhood bakery and if anyone really insists on food, I’ll round them out with cheese omelettes. Then it’s going to be straight to bed for everyone around 8:00 in hopes that we can get a good night’s sleep.

The cats were disturbed that I abandoned my usual early morning post in the kitchen — they love leftovers from breakfast. Hermione even tried to blog for me, but all she succeeded in doing was buggering up my internet connection.

I had planned on showing off my finished silk scarf, the one knit in a feather and fan pattern from my own handpainted silk, but photography hasn’t really made my list today. I do have this picture of Ellie modeling the scarf right after I cast off, and promise to snap one that shows the lace pattern in better detail when the plague leaves my house. The petulant look is because I gently reminded her it was mine, not hers.

Right before Christmas, my friend Sally and I had lunch and decided to ask our husbands for painting lessons for Christmas. The Judge can actually follow directions when I give him a roadmap, so I ended up with a gift certificate in my stocking. We took our first class with Jennifer last night and had a blast. It was very low key — a good thing for me because I don’t paint. Sally claimed she had never painted, but I think she was a total ringer. Her trees were fantastic! We were supposed to paint trees — I sort of didn’t, but I pretended it was on purpose. And it was very liberating to slap pretty colors on canvas. Did I mention that it was lots of fun and there was wine?

I am off to shamelessly serve my small fry chocolate for dinner.

The end of the day…

Posted on January 15, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

All is well in my house.

There is large black cat snuggled in at my feet while I type. A happy dog, having successfully jumped up on the dining room table in one elegant, silent leap and snatched a tidy bit of meatloaf, is roaming up and down the stairs on her nightly mission to defend us from any invaders. Babies — even teenaged children are referred to as babies in our house — are laughing with their father upstairs (hopefully they are reading children’s books rather than watching The Simpsons or worse).

And my evil migraine is gone! This means we had a successful trip to Atlanta (involving a visit with an educational consultant for one of the aforementioned babies — if you are reading my blog because you have a child with the DiGeorge Anomally, at some point I’m going to talk about nonverbal learning disorder, which seems to accompany DiGeorge, and some of the coping strategies we’ve learned in 14 years of struggling with this) and I got in some knitting time!

My Clapotis now looks like this.

I’m a little bit sorry I didn’t use a handpainted yarn, but the texture of this silk alpaca blend is luxurious and now that I’ve started into the straight rows and am dropping stitches, I am completely enamoured with the simple brilliance of the pattern.

I also started swatching for the vest my youngest child has been ~~badgering me to knit~~ asking for. It is the basic Peace Fleece vest pattern and I’m hoping to finish it relatively quickly because he is a persistent little guy.

We spent the afternoon with his best friend, whose mom, the sadly blogless Jennifer, brought over some wonderful collages she is doing using a picture of her grandmother holding her absolutely beautiful daughter. After seeing her transfers, I had to go back and work on a few more ATCs for the informal ATC swap (info in the column at left) and finished this one, using one of the cool watch pieces I got from a wonderful guy in London last year. I have added several new artists to the ATC swap today and hope to add more of my own ATCs tomorrow, because I’m enjoying the swapping, which brings new ATCs in the mail every day. If you are thinking about joining us, but haven’t yet, please join us!

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Posted on January 14, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

This is just a quick note, because we are on the way to Atlanta today. We have more new additions to the informal ATC swap, and I am (hopefully) adding links as quickly as I get them. Forgive me if I make any mistakes — I’m down a couple of brain cells because I’ve had a migraine for that last few days that I can’t quite beat. I’ll try to make any more additions/corrections as soon as we get back from Atlanta.

Inspired by Paper Whimsy images and my sudden desire to scrap collage backgrounds for ATCs I have this one to show y’all now and a few more to add to my trade list when we get back.

I’m struggling between giving into the migraine and trying to tough it out and knit the Clapotis, which I can pretty much manage with my eyes shut, on the drive to Atlanta. I hate the idea of doing nothing during that perfect 3 hour stretch of knitting time. I’ve just finished the increase sections and would love to make headway on the straight sections today. We’ll see.

Wednesday Stamper

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have been wanting to participate in Belinda’s Wednesday Stamper challenge for a while now. For Wednesday Stamper, you make a piece of art, using the theme suggested on the site for that week, and incorporating at least one rubber stamp. I love rubber stamps and one of my art resolutions for the year is to go back to using them more, so this is going to be a great weekly challenge for me to participate in. This week’s theme is faux postage and I made an ATC for it, using some of the earliest rubber stamps I purchased.

More Artist’s Trading Cards

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s been a regular frenzy of artist’s trading cards in my studio for the past week or so. I hadn’t made any in almost a year before this, so it has been almost like trying something new. The informal ATC swap is ongoing. You can find the link to all the artist’s who are swapping in the left column — anyone who would like to join us is welcome. The details are in earlier posts about the swap or you can email me for information.

I have also been working on a page for the book being put together for Vicki of b-muse (my favorite place to buy embossing powders). Vicki had a sudden illness over the holidays and a fatbook to help her through her recovery is in the works. This is my page.

Confessions of a Fallen Yarn Snob

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I’ve fallen from grace.

In most aspects of my life, I’m pretty down to earth. I buy union. My nightgown is ten years old. I even cut my kids hair instead of taking them out for salon cuts most of the time.

But, yarn. Yarn is different. I am a bona fide, certified yarn snob. My all time favorite? Probably the skein of Alchemy Silk my Mom got for me last year. I have an absolute fetish for Colinette. My stash includes significant amounts of Cashmere, Alpaca, and organics. I like handspun and handpainted yarns and I feel no guilt about indulging myself shamelessly.

So, why did I get a lion brand catalogue in the mail? I put it in the "toss" pile without giving it a second glance. Yes, I did have a brief flirtation several years ago with homespun after my friend Stephanie made me an incredible scarf for the holidays. And yes, I have done some knitting needle cases by felting Landscape. But really, a whole catalogue? Wasn’t I too good for that?

Um, the mighty have fallen. On a whim, I picked up the catalogue on my way out the door this morning. Oh my, oh my, oh my! It’s lovely. Who knew Lion had that organic yarn? And the felted birds are now on my "must make" list. Multicolored tea cozies? Gotta do one for The Judge for Valentines Day. There is some seriously cool stuff in this catalogue.

Although I haven’t officially announced, I have been considering a (mostly) knit from your stash year in 2007. Yes, there was the purple multi-cascade I picked up in my LYS yesterday and some Colinette I bought on E-bay, but really, that was it and I was going on the wagon. But, this caught my eye.

It’s called Ruffles. The base yarn is a cashmere blend and the ruffles are a sort of funky yarn that you knit into the top of. Simply irresistable. The yarn is now in the mail and on its way to me!

I actually have some undyed cashmere in my stash. But I purchased the Lion Brand cashmere blend anyhow. I was worried that the color might be off or something. And one skein of the cashmere blend was under $7. Sort of like being on a yarn diet, instead of a total fast. (This reminds me a little bit of the year that the Judge, upon being asked what he was giving up for Lent, said he was cutting back on coffee. He explained that because he was Episcopalian, all he had to do was cut back. But, I digress.)

I’m waiting on Ruffles now. At least I have been consistent in my recent desire to knit scarves. There was a bad incident with the Clapotis last night when I realized the bad dog (see post below) had done a bit more damage that I thought, but it only took me two hours to pick up stitches and get everything back on the needles and hopefully, with all the markers in the right places. I only have a couple of inches left before the silk feather and fan scarf is complete. So c’mon ruffles, hurry up and get here! I’m a fallen woman and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it!