Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Putting the Dyepot to Use


I had a lot of things planned for today, and dying wasn't one of them, but I just couldn't resist, in the end. I mixed up some peacock blue cushings dye, and threw in a bunch of Izzy's wool. I actually pulled it out a bit early to give it a bit of personality ( you know, dark here, light there). Then I threw in some of Sweet Pea's mohair that Deb W. gave me, right in to the partially exhausted pot, and tossed in some blue food coloring to fill it out a bit, and ended up getting a watercolor effect with blues and greens. I really like it.

Dog class starts tonight, so that will round out a full day. Then the final show of American Idol. I'm routing for Lambert, and Mark and Chris are for Gokey.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Out and About Today


I'm finally getting onto the swing of things, creating some new stuff. I've been working on not only my knitting and spinning, but have expanded into drawing and playing with watercolors. Sorry, still to embarrassed to post any pics yet. My main goal is to get more into mixed media. Don't five me wrong, I'll never give up my main stream stuff, but I'm trying to expand.

I ended up doing a fiber arts school program at the last minute today, which went very well, and me and the girls were talking about forming a local fiber arts co-op to sell some of our stuff, and go in together in advertising. Personally, I think this is great. We're all stay at home moms, and really trying hard to do what we love, but you can see from the frequency of my blogs, there is just not enough time in the day or energy in the body to do it all. We thought if we could join forces, we might stand a better shot at maintaining a good inventory. I guess we'll have to see where this goes.

One technique I really can't wait to try out is making cloth paper. The possibilities are endless. It looks like the basic recipe is to lay a piece of cloth on some wax paper ( shiny side up) and start putting on layers of tissue paper, ephemera, and whatever else, keeping it all together with diluted white glue. I am envisioning book covers, pillows, wall hangings, and wearable art. You can sew this stuff, paint it, stamp it, the full deal. If I can stop at the store for the glue and extra tissue paper, this will be tomorrow's art project.

Also, the real meat of summer begins for me tomorrow - the start of my dog training classes. Hopefully, we'll have another great group.