Duo Fiberworks

Another gardening aside

2012-05-25T12:51:19Z

So, chard. I think I know why it's so popular as a vegetable in the garden. It's photogenic.

It's early to mature into a luxurient mass of green and is unbothered by slugs and whatever 4-legged creature that is neatly eating the tops off my beans and cukes. My raised beds are street-side and the chard has been a real conversation starter with the mailman and many neighbors walking by. It is really putting on a show right now.

I mostly love chard for it's rainbow possibilities. Here are the same plants as above but after harvesting. I tried to plant them in rainbow order, but it was hard to tell the difference between the orange and red when they were babies. Also I didn't have many yellow plants.

The only bad thing is, (and it's a pretty bad thing), there are only a few at our house that really love chard.

I think part of the problem is that I am so taken with the way the chard looks that I harvest the leaves when they are flabby and overgrown. That's what the chickens have here. I am going to try some new recipes with some of the more tender, new leaves soon. Meanwhile, do you have any favorite chard recipes?

I'll be right back

2012-05-24T11:34:41Z

The book, garden, children, kitchen and studio have crowded out this space from my life for the past couple weeks, and I've really missed posting here. I have a few good projects to share soon, including an update on the crochet situation. But for now, here are some quick updates:

:: Country Living Magazine rounded up blogers from each of the 50 states and gathered great places to eat, shop, or visit this summer. We were happy to represent Kentucky, and it was easy to think of our favorite coffee shop in Berea.

:: I just have to share one of the few gardening successes I've had this year. This is softneck garlic that I planted last fall and it's beautiful. In my tiny garden, I never need a wheelbarrow for harvesting, usually just tucking the few peas or tomatoes in my upturned t-shirt bottom, so it was doubly rewarding to harvest such a "large" crop of garlic.

:: Laura and I made birthday gifts for each other. One of my gifts for her is not finished and is languishing on my worktable, but I did have fair success designing and hand-sewing a large organizer wallet. She made me a pretty linen shift and a hand-stitched t-shirt. More on all that soon.

:: Things are a bit of a mess in the studio as the final deadline for all the knitted samples for the slipper book has been moved up because all of the finished samples are going to Japan to be photographed. It is all very exciting and I can't believe that I'm almost done knitting slippers. Did I really design and knit 26 pairs of slippers in the last 6 months? Four more to go and then on to more writing, math and editing. But for now, the sofa bed is covered with yarn, beads, and a tangle of embroidery floss. There's no room for Rascal in his favorite napping spot.

:: My inspiration board is depressingly bare, after I removed all the pretty images and swatches to send to Japan. All that remains are a few notes, receipts and swatches that didn't quite work.

And I have to say that I am really looking forwarward to taking everything off this board and starting fresh and new, for a new, as-yet-undecided project.

box project-continued

2012-05-22T20:13:19Z

Continuing the box saga from yesterday…I'm still not happy with the stitched drawing:

It just isn't right...I'll stop talking about it now. I'm going to have the model go it alone, I don't think it needs the drawings. Anyway, the boxes came with really cool old labels on them...I cut the words apart to get the letters I needed, tea dyed white paper to match the label color, and glued it all back together to make a label for the box in its new guise:The boxes were put together with little finish nails, I was glad to have such adorable help with the deconstruction:

Making so many detailed cuts was daunting until I got a fantastic new toy tool birthday gift:I’ve wanted a scroll saw for ages and can’t wait to be done with my box project so I can mess around with it! It didn’t take long to get the walls and roofs of my model cut out. Strider helped me by using our cute, tiniest nail gun to get it all together. I finished all the window and door edges with paper "trim", and then waxed the whole thing with beeswax and flaxseed oil. Turns out silver rub-n-buff is perfect for mimicking a galvanized metal roof, I love that stuff. It was super fun to find *just* the right spot in our little mossy glade to photograph the finished piece:

I spent this morning hurriedly finishing the window trim and waxing the walls, and got it turned in to the exhibit with hours to spare, phew, deadline met.

box project

2012-05-22T01:04:00Z

Our arts council is putting on a unique invitational show. They’ve given out plywood boxes made decades ago to store sheet music-discovered during the renovation of a local church:When I got my boxes, I was just finishing drawings for the house we are going to build, so a little model of the house seemed an obvious project. I figured a model needs drawings to go with it, and I’ve been wanting to mess around with embroidered drawings…so first I set to work transferring my floor plan to fabric:I worked the stitching in split stitch, using my round quilting hoop so I could work on an entire floor at once. Major frustration ensued when I washed the finished stitching to remove stray pencil marks, and…it shrunk. It was a wrinkly, puckered mess, oh and the whole project due in a week! To salvage my “drawing” (after ignoring the problem for days) I stretched it on wooden canvas stretcher bars. It is still a bit funky, but mostly ok.
Tomorrow I’ll share the finished "drawing" and show what I’m doing with the boxes.

May Color 3

2012-05-19T14:15:40Z

a seasonal spectrum every saturday

sumac leaf stem, mystery leaf, clover blossom, immature wild grapes, vetch blossom

May Color 2

2012-05-12T11:00:22Z

a seasonal spectrum every saturday

redbud pod, shingle oak leaf, daisy blossom, shumard oak leaf, clover blossom

Alabama hats

2012-05-07T22:09:36Z

As soon as I saw the cover of Natalie Chanin’s new Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, I knew I’d be making one of those hats on the cover.

These are a perfect little project to try different embellishment methods.

I ended up using the child sized pattern, the adult sized hat seemed impossibly large. Both of these hats are made from thrifted tee shirts. The stencil is June’s Garden. I’ve given the brown hat to Katie and the blue hat is for a friend…next one’s for me!

May Color 1

2012-05-05T14:15:34Z

a seasonal spectrum every saturday

maple leaf stems, inner pine bark, immature pine needles, ?, fleabane blossoms

Unexplainable crocheting

2012-05-03T13:06:25Z

Things are careening off track a bit over here in the fiber department. I have a book deadline in 6 days. I have several skeins of new yarn to knit up into cozy slippers. My to-do list covers 2 pages.

But yesterday morning I saw this dress pop up on Pinterest.

And I was possessed with an unshakable desire to make something like it.

Last night I brushed up on my long-latent crocheting skills.

(Isn't the cover of that book a hoot?!)

And here is where I'm at this morning:

It's fast (so fast)! It's square and regular! It's cool and summery! I think I'm in love. I'm almost out of yarn, so I will be forced to return to my knitting and book work, at least for today. But stay tuned. I think there's more crochet in my future.

Making a baby spoon

2012-04-30T11:18:27Z

A friend is expecting a baby and her shower was this weekend. I brought a sweet and tiny mug and bowl from my favorite local potter, Teresa Cole.

But they were missing something. So I skipped out on knitting for the afternoon and worked with wood. It was SO much fun. I miss it. I didn't think my project would turn out because I am out of practice, so I didn't take photos of the early steps of roughing out the shape with my baby axe (that is seriously what it is called and it is so adorable, but super-powerful and useful that it might be my favorite tool of all time.) But when I got to this point,

I figured I was in the clear and began documenting the process a bit.

Carving out the bowl was tricky with such a tiny spoon.

I left the extra wood on the end as a "handle" and it made it much easier to work with.

I wish I was skilled enough that I could just clean everything up with the knife and leave the carving marks, I really like the way that looks. But alas, I am still a beginner, and sandpaper is good for removing little places where the grain doesn't meet up perfectly on the curves.

I used olive oil for oiling this time and the poplar was so dry, I added several coats.

All done!

A fine way to spend the afternoon, I think! I'm hoping to do it again soon.