Have you seen National Geographic's article on the camera obscura photography of Abelardo Morell? They posted directions on their site and so I taped some black plastic bags over my window and punched a small hole through them - what do you know? - my neighbor's home is reflected onto the opposite wall! This is very addictive. I've been contemplating making some quilted shades for our south-facing windows to keep the Summer heat out. Imagine if I make one for the bathroom window, and I include a 1cm wide grommet in the center. The trees outside will be reflected onto the shower wall! And the back bedroom! Our garden will be reflected against the closet doors!
Are you curious? Go see Morell's photos!
I took that medium-sized metal pitcher for frothing milk that used to sit on the espresso machine and I filled it with chunks of beeswax and set it in a simmering pan of water. While the wax melted I cut some wicks and stuck them in the bottom of some votives, a small pot and a cookie cutter on a piece of foil. I poured the wax in and steadied the wicks with toothpicks. Fifteen minutes, 6 candles! I need to read about candle-making. Any suggestions?
The April issue of The World of Interiors has a wonderful article by Ruth Guilding on Irene Feesey. Antony Crolla's photographs show the artist's needlepoint, embroidery, paper mache bowls and lovely handmade cards. I love that songbird cushion behind her in the photo. I think it would make a great ipad cover.
Well it didn't take 20 innings of the Cardinals' game, only 3 or 4 tries to get the chair sorted out. I ended up sewing my denim strips together into one long strip. This chair needs a cushion. I may cut up another pair of old jeans and weave a cushion top.
I'm about to finish another Audrey cardigan in Scottish Tweed. Next, I'll cast on Uhura in SWTC's Terra. I'd like to knit Audrey in some kind of cottony blend for Summer. What Summer yarns do you like in 24s/4" gauge?
"The batter is in the shadows and the pitcher is in the sun." I'm listening to Game 3 of the 1968 World Series while weaving a new chair seat. At last weekend's Alabama Chanin workshop, Butch Anthony gave a little demonstration on weaving ties into a chair seat. We have no ties, but these strips of old blue jeans are working fine. If there isn't a game on the radio near you while weaving or weeding or mopping, I highly recommend listening to a 'vintage' game here.
I have fallen off the blogging wagon into a prickly sewing patch - can't even remember my flickr password. Saturday I walked down to the Edible Schoolyard for the Alabama Chanin Workshop. You've probably seen the books - Alabama Stitch Book and Alabama Studio Style - but have you clicked through the couture photos on their site? I began a little pieced tank top in reverse applique for the young Miss Lear.
These books and patterns change the way you think of applique. You begin using the word as a verb. I am annoyed when people use 'impact' as a verb. It sounds rough and careless to run around impacting things with bulletpoints. But now 'applique' is sounding just as reckless. If you're not going to wear that, I'd like to applique it...applique over that stuff...I should just applique that thing.
Embroidery is also sounding slightly destructive. It appears like propaganda overnight - clean laundry is not just mended but a-mended with a vine and a little house. All the market bags are open targets. I am armed with milliners, sharps and betweens and I find clean and simple tedious.
Ryan McElhinney's Gold Toy lamp (another from Remake It Home) would be a great yard sale project.
Anneke Jakobs's Chiquita Chandelier is just one of the dozens of amazing ideas in Remake It Home - The Essential Guide to Resourceful Living. There are chapters and chapters of inspiration.
I love this series in the NYTimes about peoples' homes. Can you see the basket turned lampshade in the photo? the Jaws/Moby Dick/Jonah's leviathan portrait above the mantle? Mostly I love his cardigan against the bright turquoise wall.
All this talk of ebook screens and digital content makes me think of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age and William Blakes' graphic novels if he printed them today. Would Thoureau have a blog? (One of his friends wrote that he would have starved in Walden if his mother and sister hadn't brought food out for him every few days! Where did I read that?) I love steampunk - that spot where handmade/DIY and hacked technology meet because of the need for customization, for the love of an inexpensive solution, or all that and a desire to knit with electrical cord and conductive thread and fashion ceramic squash blossom gramophones.
I had one of those nifty vinegar bottles and couldn't bear to toss it in the recycling which lead to finding this terrarium book at the library. I like the idea of creating a terrarium in the middle of a larger planter - like a geodome in the jungle or the Climatron in Shaw's Garden. I should go buy a six of Orangina and a few more of these vinegar bottles and then macrame plant hangers from red hemp, fill them with carbon and potting soil and grow little planets in the kitchen window.
On second thought, I could forget the soil and plants and go right for glycerin and sparkles and do some funky snow globes.
On the left is a Vanessa Bell painting adapted for needlepoint in Melinda Coss's Bloomsbury Needlepoint and on the right is a rug designed by Duncan Grant. I think both would make wonderful hooked rugs - even a single panel of Grant's rug would be a wonderful runner. Ann Wiseman's book has lots of wonderful advice on hooked rugs including a section on inspiration: "adapt from the masters, beg from the innocent, borrow from the past, steal shadows". I especially love the designs inspired by enlarged coin rubbings and old playing cards.
For my daily calendar/project planner, I want to be able to send notes to my future self. The usual lessons learned/best practices lists hide in drawers and are never delivered in time to save Christmas or prevent a back-to-school mishap. I want a telegram with specific warnings or shopping lists to arrive two weeks before a holiday or deadline. I'm making a stack of telegram forms in my planner that can be written out and then filed in the correct week of the following year. I also need weekly reminders. These Arctic Rose nectarines were heaven. The pluots were so-so. Why didn't I buy eight more? I sampled them. I knew they were wonderful. On Thursday, buy way more nectarines than you think you need!
Sometimes when I am collecting my books from around the house I realize how well suited they are for each other. This week I will be known as Mustard-Maker.
We have been talking about the history of keeping time and wondering if Summer lasts longer without a calendar. Our "sequence of nows" can be counted so many ways. I began with a draft for a daily planner but I am drawn to a weekly bead bracelet, like prayer beads, on which you keep track of all the "nows", or mornings you can read in bed, market days, afternoons when supper is early, evenings in the studio.
What a nice way to capture a favorite week - and then walking to work, you reach into your pocket and begin counting the beads of "now": this was the morning we walked in the rain, this was the market beneath the tracks, this was the lunch chosen off the grill, this was the washing machine in the alley, this was the snow cone that saved our lives, this was the bridge we decided to cross. Next week I will be known as Vacation Bracelet-Maker.
The sails on this model ship at the Edo-Tokyo Museum would make a great quilt. They remind me of this Dolce & Gabbana bag I saw all over Tokyo and momi paper. I saw some women wearing cardigans that looked like momi paper. I still have this image of a waterproof nylon momi bag with some origami folds. My drawstring backpack made from a pair of jeans worked really well, but I had to wear it beneath my rain jacket. The next version is going to be pieced from scraps with more thought given to interior pockets.
