There's a great new blog I found out about via Craftzine blog- it's Inspiration Boards. Lori has interviewed a couple interesting women, and I look forward to reading more about what keeps all these clever people movin'. It made me think more critically about where I find inspiration. 

On the web there are a myriad of rich and lovely blogs and shops- almost too many, I can't keep up with them all- and I find daily renewal and energy by reading what people are up to. But in real life, things aren't quite so easy, or obvious or something. The constraints of my budget, my time, my reality don't allow me to do as much as I would like, or whip out all the projects I have been thinking about. It often feels like "two steps forward three steps back" as far as getting projects done, and I sometimes feel frustrated that I don't have a bottomless bank account, free childcare, a perfect space and a clear mind.

Rather than allow all that "stuff" to make me crazy, I have realized that I think the real trick is working with what you have and making something lovely. At our local used bookshop, I recently found "In Her Hands" a book of postcards that are images of craftswomen working around the world. I was flipping through, casually admiring the colors, the crafts(wo)manship, the cultures. One image made me stop and stare: it's a Turkish woman spinning yarn in an alley, using both her hands and a foot.

Look at how much yarn she has spun! Look at that wheel! Something tells me that she's not worried about Scotch tension or ratios. For some reason, this resonated so powerfully with me and really made me think about my crafting supplies, my needs and wants. For example, as everyone around me knows due to my incessant talking about it, I would LOVE a drum carder to process wool. But the antique hand cards that Laura is loaning me work just fine, and I really do have everything I need to make yarn from wool. I think that for me sometimes looking for new supplies and gadgets  is a way to procrastinate that scary step of making something new. So I am trying to be mindful of my relative wealth and capacity, I really do have everything I need to get to work and make something!

On that note, here's another unexpected inspiration. I took the boys to the "Dollar Tree," where there are lots of things for a dollar or less. I told Julian he could get a treat after he waited patiently while I was shopping for a dress shirt for Michael, and I found this for myself:

 

It's this funny little craft kit for kids to make a merry-go-round. It's constructed of cardboard and craft foam with little rub-on decals and Julian and I had a fine time putting it together. I don't know why but it pleases me so much to see it sitting on my dining room table. I know it's plastic-y and strange, but it spins and the propeller really moves when you blow on it. I must have a thing for things that spin these days because I just picked this up on one of the last good yard sale days of the season:

 

It's a Christmas pyramid that spins when you light the candles that fit into the little metal cups. This one came in the box and it originally cost $4.99 at Big Lots, (check out this one to see what the real German ones look like) but the "specialness" of this $2.00 yard sale find is still very much present and I look forward to using it this Christmas season. 

So, I have a start for my own inspiration board, and I am going to put one together soon. I would love to hear if others have a similar way of displaying or remembering visual "treats" and prompts. 

One more thing. If I did have an inspiration board on my wall right now, this poem would certainly be on it, it's a favorite of mine and I love it when I forget about it just so I can discover it again.

JUST NOW
 

In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe
simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then
by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

 

Our baseball bag collaboration turned out to be one of the winning projects in Craft’s stitch and pitch contest! We just got a great prize package of the first 4 issues of Craft magazine, a cute tee shirt, a pair of knitting needles, a knitting novel, and an old school fanny pack that I want to wear, but Katie and Strider won’t allow it. (How handy it would be to have my hands free to hold a toddler, shop, pick out library books, and not worry about having to hold my wallet! I can think of many times it would be useful, however I defer to my fashion advisors.) Hurray, its fun to win stuff! Thanks Craft!

In other news, Duo Fiberworks has a photo credit in the Nov/Dec issue of Organic Gardening Magazine! Our sis Abby, who writes and blogs for OG wrote an article about black walnuts in which she mentions collecting walnuts with me to dye with. They used my photo of a stack of naturally dyed felt to accompany the article. Thanks Ab, Christa and Gavin!

I recently got word that this piece was not accepted in The Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens OH Beyond Basketry 2008 show. I really don’t have much experience showing my work at a regional/ national level, so I was not surprised. However, I really feel passionate about this art work and hope that I will find a venue that does too!

"pour me out-fill me up"  8"x6"x6":wool felt, ,muslin, embroidery floss

Detail of pitcher. These pieces are hand stitched with seed stitches through 2 layers of muslin and an interior of wool felt. The felt and the stitches give them a rigidity that is suprising. I'm planning to post my artist's statement regarding these pieces and my "bottles". I could really use some feedback/constructive criticism!

Need a needle book? Or know someone who does? I developed this when coming up with stuff for a bazaar. It is a simple design that showcases my naturally dyed wool felt. Even better you can turn one out in under 10 minutes.

Materials: wool felt, embroidery floss, 2 buttons

Tools: rotary cutter, self healing mat, pinking rotary cutter (optional), scissors, needle, beeswax

   1. Cut out a 2 ½” x 6 ½” rectangle of felt. I like to use my rotary cutter with a pinking blade on the two short ends.

(The pink lines are illustrating where the folds in step 2 go. You dont need to draw them on your felt...)

2. Fold it in accordion folds as follows; the first fold at 2 ½”, the next at 3 3/8”, the last at 5 1/8”. The goal is a lopsided “W”. Sometimes you have to play around to get the folds to work out right. The longer cover flap should be long enough to wrap around the edge of the inside fold, and overlap half of the other, shorter cover flap.

3. If this thing is a “W”, pinch the lower folds together and stitch them together with a blanket stitch. This is now the spine of your book.

4. About 1/8” from the fold, trim off the solitary, higher fold of the “W” to create two distinct pages for your needles.

5. Select two buttons for the closure. Cut felt circles slightly larger than the buttons.

6. Place a felt circle on the middle of the shorter cover on the edge where the spine stitching is. Put a button on top, and stitch the button to the cover.

 

7. Line up the second felt circle and button on the longer cover parallel to the first button, and stitch it in place. Leave the thread intact after tying the knot on the inside. Bring the needle between the button and felt on the outside of the book, and trim the floss to 3” or so. Tie a knot near the loose end of the floss and wind it around the buttons in a figure “8” to close the book.

8. Put some needles in you needle book!

9. Now do what I did; turn your workspace into a factory and work obsessively, trying to see how many needlebooks you can crank out in an hour...(optional)

 

This is my first tutorial- for a pinecone gnome ornament. It's a simple project and can easily be completed in an afternoon or evening. See my previous post for how the gnomes came to be. Here's a photo of the first gnome I completed-

 

 Here are the supplies you will need to gather to make one gnome:

-A pine cone- the pine cones I collected are about 2.5 inches tall and are from Virginia Pine trees

-A 1 inch wooden bead or ball with a hole drilled in one end

-A 3x4 inch scrap of wool felt

-A bit of wool roving or mohair fleece

-One cotton pipe cleaner- I buy these in the tobacco section, they are shorter and thinner than regular pipecleaners

-Tacky glue- I use Aileene's

-Embroidery floss that matches the felt

You will also need good sharp scissors, clippers or junky scissors, a needle, and colored pencils in an eye color and a mouth color.

Let's get rolling- My son Julian was assisting as photographer. He did great for a 6 year old, but that's why I am working on different gnomes- we required multiple takes!

1. To start, bake the pinecones at 300 degrees for about 30 minutes. It will make your house smell like a Christmas tree.

2. Carefully trim the pine cone stem to be as smooth and flat as possible. Use clippers of junky scissors. You will be glad in the next step if you get these nice and flat- sandpaper might also help here.

3. Glue the wood bead to the top of the pinecone. I like to use plenty of glue. This can be fiddly. I like to find the nicest grain pattern on the bead and make that be the front of the gnome. I figured out that it works very well to use a pan with beans or sand to hold up the pine cones while the glue dries. See the pan in the left of the photo.

 

4. Wait for the beads to dry- I wonder if the fast-dry Aileene's really would be faster here. There are other things to do while it's drying, but I always start fooling with them too soon and knock the heads off in a swearing fit, so learn from my impatience and let them dry a good long time. Here is my gnome army gathering, hatless and armless.

 

5. While the glue dries, cut out the hat and sleeves. The sleeves are little scraps of felt, about 1 inch square, and the hat pattern is a triangle- two sides are 2.5 inches, they make a right angle- and the long side is about 3.25 inches. Blanket stitch the hat seam along the 2.5 inch side, and make a loop for hanging at the top.

6. Cut the pipe cleaner into thirds, about 2 inches long. I tea dyed these to age them, but you can skip this, it didn't change the color much. Glue the sleeves around each piece of pipe cleaner, leaving about .25 inch sticking out on one end. That's the hand. Bend the other end of pipecleaner back on itself.

 

7. When the head is totally dry, you can assemble the gnome. Put a modest amount of glue inside the hat.

 

8. Glue the hat to the head. I like to pull it down almost to the pine cone in the back, and have it angled on the sides. It's so cool the way felt will stretch a bit to conform to the shape of the head. I like the hat to fit snugly.

 

9. Now onto the arms. Put glue on the folded over part of the arm-

 

10. Stick the arm way into the pinecone at where the shoulder might be. I like to stick it kind of towards the front, not exactly on either side. Ack- this photo is a bit blurry- sorry!

 

11. Draw on a face. I use sharp colored pencils and make small, upright ovals that are pretty wide set and make a small smile that leaves room at the bottom of the face for the beard.

 

12. Make a light "smile" of glue for the beard. This photo shows less glue than I usually use, it was starting to dry and get clear.

 

13. Pull out a little bit of wool for the beard.

 

14. Snip one end of the wool to make it straight.

 

15. Glue the beard to the face. This is fiddly too, I gently pressed the wool to the face. It's hard to not get glue all over your fingers! You can press the wool down and away from the mouth and cheeks. I like to twist the end of the beard a bit, and you can trim it shorter if you like.

 

16. That's it! I have some vintage glass ornaments that mine will be holding, but a little basket would be cute, or he could be collecting firewood, knitting, holding a walking stick, skiing- I have too many ideas, I need to make more!

I would love to see any gnomes that you make- please add them to our new flickr group. Also please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.  

I have been preparing for a bazaar. Not an ironic, cool one that they have in places like San Francisco or Austin, but a sincere, honest-to-goodness bazaar that will probably have women selling little bags of "snowman poop" and the like. I am actually excited about it, and Laura and a few friends and I are sharing the table fee and plan on selling things to raise some Christmas spending money. Laura has designed a snowman tree ornament that is covered in mica flakes and is really very cute. She is upping the cuteness ante and I was up for the challenge this weekend. I have been obsessed with making all sorts of gnomes for this holiday season and am enamored with the vintage pinecone ones- My always-thrifting mom found some just like the ones Hillary at Wee Wonderfuls posted about a while ago, and that style was my is inspiration. Here's the shot that was on her blog post-

 

I think they are really sweet, but honestly find the faces a bit creepy. But then, I am a clown-hater and there are similarities there. In my research, I found other pinecone people. I like these carolers- not the clown, of course:

And these skiing girls- what is cuter?!! 

 

 But- have to stay focused, and the first thing I wanted to come up with was a good gnome. Yesterday it was a lovely fall day, cool and sunny, so our whole family took a walk in our woods and I gathered pinecones from the Virginia Pines in an only slightly-obsessed manner. (I cut 175 - you really to have to cut them off- they are prickly!) The woods are great this time of year. I am ashamed to say that I don't think I entered the woods for the whole month of July, but this time of year, I could spend all day out there, puttering around. Here I am gathering fern fronds for another project. Julian is lopping some branches for walking sticks.

 

All told, we also gathered maple twigs, pine branches, bones from a small dead animal, tulip poplar and beech leaves to press, dried moss, quartz geode pieces, cedar wood pieces and acorns. It's fun to fill my crafting larder with things from right outside, I would like to be mindful of other gifts the woods and meadow may have for crafting. Kentucky is having a severe drought this year, and it has affected the acorn crop- there were not nearly as many as we usually see. Not to worry, we left plenty for the squirrels, and I mostly collect caps only. Here are the pinecones-

 

As a precaution, I baked them at 300 degrees for 30 minutes to kill any beasties living inside, and then came up with this-

 

I really like him. I like how he has some of the Waldorf doll aesthetic too. Any thoughts or ideas to make him over the top, heartbreakingly cute?? Here's a side view.

 

And here's the back-

 

Julian thinks he needs a backpack, which I actually think is a great idea. I have plans to make a girl gnome with braids. I made 20 for the bazaar and was thinking about listing some on etsy. For now though, I think I will post my first tutorial to show how to make him- coming soon, maybe tonight depending on the fates and Avery's sleeping schedule!.