We are never too old to learn something new.

There is still the possibility to be surprised from the surgery, I discovered when all the damage to the joint did not show up in the X-ray.  Once the surgeon got into the knee, he discovered the Tibia to have been pitted with cysts.  He was able to drain and fill the cysts with new material.  He needed to find a suitable and stable place to anchor the pin/screw that holds the bottom of the new knee in place, and so used a longer-than-normal pin for that part of the procedure.

Is this TMI?

Deja Vu

On my way to becoming a Bionic Woman, I am off to get another joint replaced next week.  I will not bore you with the details of all this, but will be back when it is possible to resume a studio life.  Meanwhile: be well, kiss all the little babies you see, and stitch boldly and joyfully.  Always joyfully.

Julie's Birthday: Ethan's Felted Flowers

This is another post that could not be put up until after the event, but I share the details with you because I am so proud of my eight-year old grandson.  Grandmothers can be silly ladies, sometimes, but I think his work is quite noteworthy.

Ethan has not done any felting for a long time, and I was surprised when he said he would like to make his mom a felted picture for her birthday.  He planned this piece out on the ride home from school on a Friday afternoon.  The colors were first.  He knew he wanted a purple background, and then the color of the vase. After going through the color wheel with its complementary colors and a few just for "pop," he decided on yellow.  By the time we'd had our snack and cleaned up the dishes, he had an image in his head of the piece he would make.

First afternoon's work:  ground cloth and vase with greenery.

After I cut him a purple-dyed piece of scrim for the base (he immediately asked for a 6" x 6" size, which will match his other two pieces), he went to the purple bin of roving and chose the deep, royal shade and began to draw the wool into long, thin streamers and laying it across the wispy fabric.  I cut him a piece of netting to use as a top for holding the batt together as he machine-felted.  He worked slowly, meticulously, and gave great attention to making the base even and flat.  He was so competent with the machine that I was able to work between himself and Bethy, who was picking her favorite beads from jars and bowls of them spread on the embroidery table nearby.

At each step, he asked for me to check his work before going on to the next.  He understood that we were building back-to-front, from background to vase then the leaves followed by flowers, so with that order in mind, the little guy worked very precisely.  Julie came to pick them up just as he was beginning to think of the flowers, so everything lay exactly as he left it, to be continued Monday afternoon when he has completed his homework.

Second afternoon's work:  flowers.

Together we sketched several ideas, and he developed three flower ideas from them.  Then, to the metallic thread case for the colors, and he was off.  I showed him a new stitch, the detached chain ("Lazy Daisy"), and he tried this on the blue flower, again on the orange.  On the red, he changed to straight stitch petals.  After one more assessment, the vase needed a touch more yellow roving, and he passed the finished piece to me.  Well, I thought, almost finished.  One more step.

Third afternoon's work:  wet felting.

To really finish a piece of needle-felted cloth, my personal opinion is that it should be wet-felted.  This neatens and tightens up the edges, which can go wild and wooly in a heartbeat with the embellisher, and it smoothes the surface and softens the punched look of the roving.  To that end, we worked in the kitchen and I showed him how to do this.  The folks at HeartFelt Silks Fiber Art Tools on Etsy make a palm washboard that is perfect for this kind of finishing.  I found it after I despaired of ever being able to wet-felt again when my hands began to change and draw up, and it is a wonderful tool.  Ethan and the beautifully-crafted wooden board are a perfect pair for this work.

When we had shocked the little square in hot and cold water, felted it some more, washed it and then did it all over again, it was time for the ten minutes in  the dryer that is the "finishing touch" for the surface.  Just a few more steps, now . . .

Creating the card was a lot of fun for him.  He worked at the drafting table with  jars of colored pencils to create a birthday card that was "still under construction."  Bulldozers and trucks are busily pushing and dropping the "Happy Birthday" letters in place.  He even included a note as to why the card was in the construction phase-- the workmen were out to lunch!

Such happy times in the studio with his booming little voice making announcements of his progress and asking occasional questions!  Why are he and Bethy growing up so fast?

Julie's Birthday: Bethy's Beads and Sparklies!

From my friend Cynthia's post about Driftwood and Glass Beads here, Bethy was inspired to start a little project making sun catchers.  In fact, when I showed her the post, her face lit up and she became immediately excited.  With her mom's birthday coming up the first week of February, this sparkly project seemed perfectly right to brighten the January brown and rainy grey around us.  And there was the snow . . .

First afternoon:  Getting started.

I drilled holes in a piece of driftwood (from a large basket of small, interesting pieces I found in Etsy seller DriftwoodAmour's shop) while she finished her homework on Thursday,  After that she was on to the bead selection process.  While I normally use small seed beads (sizes 11˚ and 15˚)  and their equally small cousins (Rocailles, 3mm bugles, pearls and anything else small and interesting) in my embroidery, I have accumulated some larger ones along the way just because they are beautiful.  I showed Bethy where to find the jars and bottles holding those larger faceted crystals and drops and twisted bugles, and she arranged them in little crescent-shaped "bone china" dishes and bowls so she could make a better selection.  We even found a pink Owl bead that delighted her, because her mom is fond of owls.  That left only the lovely "job" of stringing the beads together.  We have four weeks.  We can do this!

Second afternoon:  The Sun Catcher is taking shape.

By Friday, she was really into the swing of it.  Unfortunately, playing with the beads became almost as interesting as selecting them for the seven dangling strands.  But by the time Julie came to pick them up that afternoon, Bethy was working on the sixth strand.  She is so serious as she works, but in a happy way.  When I sit beside her, she is talking to the beads, singing to them, asking them questions and telling them little stories.  How wonderful to be nine years old ("I'm almost ten, you know," she will sometimes say)!

Third afternoon:  Beginning the Birthday Card.

On the following Monday, she finished stringing the main body of the glittery Sun Catcher.   Happy Feet!

Fourth afternoon:  The hanger.

It was not until Thursday that she added the beads to the looped hanger, which might have been her favorite part of the process.  The beads are glass leaves and differently-sized seed beads that wind around the handle like a colorful vine.

The next step was to start the birthday card for her mom, which she will finish in the weeks leading up to the event.  Cards are a huge, very thoughtful endeavor on her part, and they sometimes take hours and hours to finish-- real little gems (forgive my punning!).  They always have a little story, and are so sweetly illustrated.

What a privilege it is to be part of her life!

The Color Books

Once upon a time, I kept color books.  Not Coloring Books, but books arranged by color content.  These books are small, landscape formats (about 5" x 7") that I used for saving clips of work, paint chips, and notes on associations of colors.  Pinned or stapled to the pages are little stitched samples of an idea or color combination.

One of the things I discovered with working in these books is that no matter how well thought out a painted color might be, it is only paint on paper.  Despite careful thread choices, the only choices I really have are what is in my thread box, what the manufacturer has made available.  Eventually I began dyeing my own fabric and thread, and though I might design with color families in mind, I don't strive frustratingly to match anything I've painted or inked in or set so immovably in my design plan.

After coming to these dismaying conclusions, I began working less and less in the books, and since they are mostly stuffed beyond disturbing with new material, they remain as they are, an experiment.  When I went through them last evening with an eye to working with a particular color scheme, I  stopped and photographed some of the little sampling bits there.  Doodles.  Questions answered-- I still don't have a name for these little pieces.

One of my favorites is in the red book, a compilation of scraps from clothes-making over the years.  Mother used to sew, to create her own clothes.  She was a marvelous seamstress as well as designer, but she had no career opportunity other than housewife.  She taught her daughters to sew, and the lessons (mostly) stuck.  We were certainly well-dressed children!  And I was lucky enough to fall heir to her fabric scraps when she would do a clean-out.  This little compilation has an apple cut from scraps of one of the last blouses she made for herself, little ruffled pants for Bethy, a blouse for me . . .

Another is from the Violet Book, an exercise on the theme of "portals:"

Layers of fabric and stitch have a textural appeal for me that has been a subject of exploration for years.  When I discovered scrim, however, my stitching life took a marvelous new turn.

And so forth.  Studio Journals, Sketchbooks or even notebooks are such useful things to construct-- to say nothing of the fun of working quite freely without the pressure of preparing work for others to see.  They stimulate exploration of an idea in its initial form, and years later those ideas can be a way of seeing something very differently, of starting off in another direction altogether.  My personally favorite part of the studio is the wall of bookcases with the shelves of studio journals!  Of course, the other books and magazines are interesting, too.  My first stop when starting a new work, though, is always the studio journal cases.

Birthday Garden

For my sister, who has a marvelous green thumb, an on-the-wall garden to see her through the winter until her spring bulbs begin pushing up.  Layers of fabric and stitch in a wide assortment of weights . . .  modeled on a garden not far from us that is laid out in orderly rows and beds of color.

Happy Birthday, Baby Sister!