Last weekend

In addition to making my bird last weekend, I made this wool scarf/boa. It was a kit that was sent to me as a gift from Jenny. It's the Wensleydale Curls Scarf and it's from the Threshing Barn.

I know why this was in my ufo pile. It was not complex to make, nor did it take a lot of time (Saturday evening). When I first opened it, a few years ago, I looked at the luscious roving and locks and thought felting, or perhaps as additions to silk paper, or embroidery, or couching--there were so many possibilities in the amazing bag of fibers I couldn't settle to just one. And then I finally realized that if I made the scarf, I could enjoy it now and still take it apart and use the pieces at a later date if that was what I wanted.

The base of the scarf is a braid of strands of roving. Then the wool locks are looped onto the braid (like you'd loop a fringe). An added benefit was that there was enough lanolin left in the wool that my hands were nice and soft by the end of the evening!

It's addictive to wear--kind of like worry beads. I find myself constantly petting it and running my hands through it. We've more winter left here and the colors go great with my purple coat.

While I was replete with fibery goodness this weekend, I didn't do any embroidery. I did a couple of pages in my journal. They're up on Flickr.

Cooper's flock

When blogging around I always check out what Annie has to say at ModeKnit and at the bottom of this post, she mentions (and provides a pattern for) Cooper's Flock. Cooper was only here on earth for a short time and his mom has a blog, luc ends, where she talks about life, grief, healing, and knitting. Lucinda has a project going to knit baby birds for the hospital where Cooper was. More on this here. She's hoping that every baby having heart surgery can have their own birdie.

So I decided to knit a bird and made one up yesterday. Lucinda prefers the birds be knit in Blue Sky Cotton yarn because she believes the cotton will have fewer allergy problems than wool and she knows their dyeing processes and trusts it. My birdie, above, was knit in wool I had on hand. I hadn't read that part of the posting until today. I also didn't print a photo of the finished bird and once I saw it today I realized my tail goes a different direction, but mostly it's pretty close.

I've ordered some of the Blue Sky Cotton from KPixie. The bird was fun to knit and I plan to make some more.

What's Up!

Not much at all. I think I have spring fever. Friday was glorious--warm and sunny. I took full advantage of it at lunchtime (I went out without a coat!). Now, this is Chicago and I know it can't last (chilly rain today and tomorrow).

I'm feeling a bit scattered. I'm still tired in the evenings from the tag ends of the cold. I'm beginning to feel a bit more energized but at the same time less focused--sounds like Spring fever to me. In the U.S. the time changes (move clocks ahead one hour) tonight.

I pulled out a couple of crewel projects to work on last weekend. I haven't been, really, though. I did some on this one last Sunday night, although it doesn't look like much. Friends who visited the Bayeux Tapestry in person were very thoughtful and bought this kit for me. I swapped out the floss it came with for crewel wool, which is more appropriate to the original.

The stitching is almost all done in the Bayeux stitch which is a laid couching stitch. It seems strange to me to use it in some of the really small areas and now that I've completed one bird in the upper border, I may rethink doing this. It certainly is interesting and is keeping my attention. The level of detail is amazing.

The second crewel project is from the estate of a friend, Rita. A while back I looked it over and sorted out the wools and colors but needed more experience before stitching. I may be there now--I've done some crewel correspondence courses since then.

This project was obviously a class she took. Knowing Rita I can smile to notice that of the two pieces using the same colors in the package, she skipped the smaller practice piece and began right in on the more complex main piece. I shall follow her footsteps.

Here are the handwritten instructions. I think I now know what all the stitches are now.

What I have worked on some this past week is a nonstitching project. A bunch of influences and intentions have come together. Last year I took the Studio Journals class with Sharon B. It was a really inspiring class and I worked in my journal off and on until it all got put away for the holidays.

Around the same time as I was taking this class, I came across a blog journal-along that was called Soul Journaling organized by Caspiana. Some of her exercises intrigued me (and some irritated me). I bookmarked the site.

For several years now I've been gathering a small stash of work related items--a book tossed out here, a calendar there. Brochures with images. At one point I had a tall, narrow spiral bound book that I thought to perhaps use for an altered book with the collection. But the shape was awkward. (I think it will be repurposed to a book of landscape sketches to take advantage of its shape. That is, if I can still find it.) [I also have a collection of odds and ends from the seemingly endless reconstruction process we underwent a couple of years back--washers, bits of carpet torn up, wires, screws, I forget what all I gathered--for an embroidery piece about the event. That's still percolating.]

The uniting factor for my current journaling interests and file of images and documents was a stack of academic-year calendars that were being given out to all. Students got them last September. They're full of all sorts of information about policies, living here, studying here, and a student e-mail list. I took the book for that list--it's a handy thing to have and I wondered why the usual bound list had never appeared. So I pulled that list out of the spiral bound calendar and thought, hmmmm...

It has nice paper pages, some cool photos, plastic covers with nifty word clouds. I had my journal. So right now I'm kinda following along with the Soul Journaling plan. I've never done an art journal and the kind of layering she encourages is new to me and interesting.

You have loads of time to stop and think while things are drying. Here's one of my gessoed page spreads, with some pages from an academic journal (pulled from the trash) torn up and glued on. Then more gesso on top--so this page has already gotten three separate drying sessions (gesso, glue, gesso)! One aspect I'm most interested in is the concept of writing my thoughts on a page like this and then gessoing over them and adding more layers on top.

It's going to be an interesting journey but I don't think I'll write much about it here since it's not embroidery (although I have been thinking about the possibilities of adding stitching to some of the pages...I can't get away from it). I plan to post images and comments about it on my Flickr page here. I've put more pictures there and plan to add at least weekly.

New Giveaway

Let's try this instead. This is a leaflet for a small band sampler designed by Shepherd's Bush for Kreinik. I mailed in to request it from Kreinik. It's a typically pretty Shepherd's Bush design, with some lovely bands. Leave a comment by 9am central U.S. time on Monday, March 16 and I'll send it off to you. When you leave a comment please make sure your e-mail address is accessible, either as a return address of in the body of the comment. I cannot send you the chart if I cannot contact you. Thanks!

Spring!?!

I walked out this morning to less than frigid air and the sound of birds twittering in the cloudy early morning. As the day went on it became quite bright and sunny.

I still have the tail end of my cold and decided that going to water aerobics class tonight might not be wise. So I took a walk at lunchtime.

I used to walk fairly regularly but our whole area was under major construction for the last few years and it was impossible to get anywhere without detours, debris and fences. Add winter snow and ice and I just stopped venturing out on foot.

Much of the construction has cleared up now and while there's still snow in pockets, most of that is gone, too, so I took a walk around the block. Not a long distance, but enough.

The sun was bright, the half moon high in the eastern sky just barely visible. A cardinal was pipping in a tree as I passed. I could see a section of the dorm's inner and outer wall in a cutaway display at the construction trailer site. A few crows look like they're nesting in the old dorm I passed (it's being/been refurbished and will still be used, along with the new addition).

For many many years, my building was the "tower" on the south edge of campus. At six stories we were the tallest thing around. Not anymore. There is a lot of growth on our side of campus and more to come. A huge dorm is going up behind us, see the sketch above. We're the little corner sticking into the image at right-hand side.

Right now the side facing us is this huge black behemoth (I think the black is some sort of weather barrier on the construction but, it's been that way seemingly forever--big, black and looming.)

As I took my walk today, I could see that the western side of the dorm is nearly completed and looks much like the picture. The sandstone-looking siding will blend in nicely with the older dorm it's adjacent to. The whole area is still a massive construction site. I really wonder if it will be done in time for next September's school opening, but it was nice to see that progress is being made.

Finally, it's done!

This cold is really dragging on and keeping me down! World Embroideries and Stitches of Life both have it too. Anyway, I did finally receive the frame for the Perfect Forest and I put it together this weekend. Not much else got done. A couple of weeks ago I was home several days and got some stitching done, in spite of the cold. Last week I worked most of the week and by the time I gave in, I was whacked and didn't do much at all at home.

I did stitch a bit on the Plumeria Scissors Fob. Actually, I stitched about three hours each on Saturday and Sunday mornings, early when I had good sun and peace and quiet. Doesn't look like six hours of work has been added, does it?

I completed all of the flower petals, two leaves, began the other three leaves and the background and did some back stitching on the lower petals. Now that I'm done with the very pale colors, it's a bit easier to see, but it's still a quiet-weekend-morning-only project.

Bit by bit, as I'm in the basement doing laundry on weekends, I am pawing through the projects and booklets I've purchased over the years and WIPS. (And PIGs (projects in grocery bags). I have some of those, too. Thanks, World Embroideries, for that acronym!) It's slow going. My tastes haven't changed much so I still really like all of the projects I have on hand. What has changed, a bit, is my sense of reality--will I really ever actually do this? The answer is "no" much more often than it used to be.

Right now, especially with the cold, I don't have enough gumption to do any designing. It's nice to have kits that require little brain-power on hand. I did play around a little with my December Take It Further final page design and with the Puzzle Pieces project from Gatherings. More lazy thinking than putting anything in action. But they're percolating.

February giveaway winner...

Eva!

This time I used a random number generator to pick the winner (Random.com). Much easier than my previous method of writing out each commenter's name and cutting little strips and finding someone to draw one.

Sorry for the delay in the announcement. I still have the endless cold. (Which is why I turned to the random number site--less contact with other people so less chance of sharing this with them!)

I've gathered up more things for giveaways and plan to do two a month for a while.