Six swans flying

More words, glorious words

2011-07-08T05:57:00.005-07:00

When Hannah was 21 months old, I made a list of words that she was saying. Something triggered the memory and today I went back and looked at it --and thought I'd do the same for Sarah.

All done!, all gone, Amy (mi-mi), baa (sheep), baby, ball, banana, beep (microwave), Ben, belly, birdie, boobies, bottle, Bri, bye-bye, cake (Happy!), cat (Meow!), cookie (tootie), cry, Daddy, dirty, Dog (woof, woof), down, duck (quack), eye, Granddad (Gan-dad), Grandma (Gaa-ma), go, Hannah, hat, hello (he-woo: said into a phone), hi!, hot, huh? (means—what?), juice, Julia (says Daddy-a), Kelly (Ke-wee), kiss (tiss), knee, mama, mine!, mommie (means "I want it!"), more (mo), night night (nigh nigh--means sleep and bed), no!, nose, one (counts: one, two, three), open, outside, owie (means band-aid and hurt), pee, please (pease), pocket, poopie (means underwear as well as bottom), shoe, shoes, swing (means slide and park), teeth, toast, that, three, two, uh oh, up, wow, yay!, yeah.
She also has lots of phrases that are all run together:
There you go (der-you-go), Here we are (ear-we-are--she says this when we arrive some where she recognizes), All done, all gone, I want it (uhwan-tit), There it is (der-it-is), There he/she is (when she sees someone she recognizes), I want to swing (uwan-ta-wing), I want juice (uwan-juuuuu).

More new words as of 8-1-2011: Duckie, knee, Sarah, why?, Happy Birthday (sounds like Happy Doo-day!).

A visit from the Grinch

2010-12-09T09:40:00.008-07:00

So, this morning as I was pulling out of the driveway to take Hannah to school, I noticed a hole in the ground where before lived a sweet little dwarf pine tree.

Here's the hole, and here's one of the remaining trees that the missing tree looks like. It appears that the Grinch visited us in the middle of the night.

Here's the trail of dirt left as the tree was yanked from the ground and pulled through my garden and into the street.

The strange noises that invaded my dreams last night, but didn't wake me up, now make sense.

Somewhere, there is someone using our little pine tree as their Christmas tree. It is hard to imagine the joy that they'll get out of this--it makes me sad for them. They must be pretty desperate people to commit a crime to decorate their house for the holidays--what a lot to risk for something that they'll most likely discard, rather than plant (even though they ripped it out by the roots).
I'm also thinking that this was premeditated. They had to have scouted out the neighborhood, selected the tree they wanted, and then arrived with a truck, a chain and a shovel.
I'm actually thankful that I didn't wake up enough to really comprehend what was going on. We might have run outside in our pajamas to try to stop it. At the very least we would have lost sleep and been cold, and it is possible that we could have been hurt.

So what started out as a sad moment, disappointed in the poor choices of a fellow human(as Hannah put it, "They made a really bad choice, didn't they mama?"), got me thinking about what I'm thankful for. I found myself humming the Welcome Christmas song from the end of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas . . . welcome, welcome fahoo ramus, welcome, welcome dahoo damus, Christmas Day is in our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp. . .

I'm thankful for my sweet husband who took this in stride. I'm thankful for my daughters who bring me so much joy every day. We've been having fun making gingerbread men and decorating our house for Christmas.

Hannah has been going through her toys and selecting gifts for her cousins--things she thinks they'll really love. She wrapped this gift very lovingly for Sarah.

Sarah delights in the lights and loves to show me all the things that she finds.
I'm thankful for the roof over our heads, the food on our table, the jobs that sustain us, the loving family that surrounds us. I hope that the little tree does provide some peace and joy for a family who must not have much.

Winter weaving

2010-11-14T06:48:00.004-07:00

Someone said something at SOAR that rang true for me (actually I imagine lots of things were said at SOAR that rang true for me, this one I happened to hear). Denny said that her common response to the remark "Oh, I just don't have the time to do that," while she's spinning or knitting in public is, "We all have the same amount of time."

It's so true. It is just how we use it. I do like sleeping, but sometimes, getting something done feels so good.

Amid the toys and the wonderful chaos of work and children that is my life, I made some time this weekend to warp my loom and start weaving some scarves. This is a delicate 2-ply wool handpainted yarn that I won as a door prize in 1996, I think. I've been using it here and there, and this weekend I used a big chunk of it!

Hannah helped me wind the warp onto the loom. Sarah wanted to help and sat on my lap as I wove.

Hair!

2010-09-12T18:07:00.004-07:00

So when Hannah was nearly two years old, I finally cut her hair. It was after she pushed it out of her eyes in frustration exclaiming, "hair!" I didn't wait quite so long to cut Sarah's hair.

Zap

2010-05-01T08:27:00.004-07:00

Hannah is sitting here next to me, watching a movie while I do a bit of work online. She just told me that her feet are feeling zappy--and then she held them up to her ears to see if she could hear the zapping. I think that they fell asleep, and the zapping is the tingling sensation. I never wondered before if you could hear it. Made me laugh.

Also, this week I kept finding little pieces of toilet paper by the toilet. I kept picking them up and throwing them away. Then Hannah saw me doing it and she was distraught. Apparently, she's been leaving these little bits of paper for the mice (no, we don't have any--neither pets nor infestations). I don't know what she thought the mice were doing with the paper.

Spring Snow

2010-04-23T13:23:00.003-07:00

Our beautiful spring shower turned into a beautiful spring snow. Hannah (home from school today because a cold) and I put on our coats and boots and stomped around in it for a second when we went to pick up the mail and I took some photos.

Sarah's getting big--she'll be 7 months old in two days.

What Joy Is This?

2010-01-04T06:55:00.001-07:00

Life is good. My babies are growing up so quickly. The New Year has started. I had time to spin and knit while off from work the week between Christmas and New Years--and (more importantly) the energy to do it!

Here's Hannah on Christmas morning.

Here's Sarah--smiley girl--happily cooing while Hannah and I made gingerbread men on Christmas Eve.

In our very urban neighborhood as we arrived home from Christmas Eve services late at night, we saw two red foxes paused on an embankment covered with snow--it was pure magic.

Welcome Sarah Helen Moore

2009-10-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking I'm going to have time to write this post--and here it is a week after Sarah was born and it is still sitting in the draft folder. Sorry for the delay--but you know--new baby=no sleep and choices like, should I eat or shower today? Today I chose eating instead of showering. It was a good decision.

So! Sarah! She's beautiful. She was born at 8:55 am on Friday September 25th via C-section. I had to have a C-section because of multiple previous surgeries--the doctors feared I'd have a lot of scar tissue that would cause problems. When they got in there they discovered that it was fine, in fact there was very minimal scaring. They did joke about installing a zipper, though.

I'd like to avoid any more surgeries if I can--this one was eventful because the spinal didn't take properly and when they started to cut me open, I could feel it--it was very strange. It wasn't like the last time, where I could feel my body moving, but really couldn't feel any sensations below my chest. This time, while it wasn't painful, I could feel instruments moving against my skin, my skin relaxing as it fell open, and things being moved around inside. It was very, very uncomfortable. They decided that they had to put me under completely. I was very sad because it meant that I couldn't see Sarah right away--but there was nothing to be done about it. I was tensing my abdominal muscles and it was making it hard for the surgeon to do her work. They said it went very smoothly once they put me under.

Sarah weighed 8 lbs, 6 oz at birth, measured 20 1/2 inches long and has a 14-inch head. She has a head of dark hair (that her sister Hannah can't stop touching), and blue eyes that will most likely change to hazel like Hannah's when she's a bit older. She has a powerful cry--at times I worry about our ear drums. Fortunately, she doesn't cry much.

We have had an issue with weight loss this week--sadly hers, not mine. She's lost 16% of her birth weight (she got as low as 7 lbs, and is now back up to 7lbs, 3 oz) and that is cause for concern. She looks healthy--so one theory is that she gained superficial weight right before the surgery because they loaded me up with fluids (3 bags full). But we still need to work on getting her body weight up. My milk is slow coming in--so I'm working closely with a lactation nurse at the hospital (she's absolutely wonderful) who is helping me increase my milk supply and also we're supplementing with formula until I'm producing enough milk to feed Sarah adequately. It is hard work--this mommy business!

I've decided not to attend SOAR this year because of the risk of traveling with a very small baby during such a bad flu season. I'm very sorry and will very much miss seeing everyone. I'll look forward to hearing the stories and seeing photos.

I'll post more photos and stories soon.

This is it!

2009-09-25T03:48:00.003-07:00

We're headed to the hospital today for a C-section at 7:30 am. Can't wait to set eyes on our little baby Sarah!
Here's a photo of me and Hannah in the girl's newly redecorated room. The Raggedy Ann Curtains are from my childhood--my mom made them for the room my sister and I shared in Ann Arbor, Michigan when we lived in married student housing while my parents went to school at the University of Michigan. We're standing right next to where the built in desk used to be. It was a good decision to remove the desk--there is a lot more room in the room and more flexibility for arranging all the furniture.

I finished the blanket for Lindsay--but haven't taken photos of it. I'll do that and get them posted.
Okay--gotta go! I'll let you know how it all goes.

Nose, roof, and deconstruction, oh my!

2009-09-05T06:44:00.005-07:00

Hannah's nose is all better (here she is a few days after the accident, and here she is two weeks later)--in fact we found out later it didn't actually break--only because her nose hasn't fully matured yet--so there really aren't bones to break. I'm still having dreams about Hannah getting hurt, though. Last night I dreamed that we were hanging pictures and a really big framed painting fell down and grazed her nose. I thank our lucky stars that this is our biggest trauma since she was born (that was traumatic).

We have a new roof since the July 21st hailstorm. My garden is still a pale shade of what it was before the storm, but it will be fine next year and I'll actually be able to bend down and do work in it--which I'm not able to do right now.

And now we're deconstructing Hannah's room--well, Kelly is, that is. Here he is taking out the built in desk that was taking up too much room and not allowing for enough flexibility in the room.

We're getting the room ready for Hannah's sister--due September 27th. Here's her pudgy, little face. I'm looking forward to meeting her.
That's what's going on with us right now. I'm working on finishing the blanket for my sister's baby--it is nearly done and I haven't been able to do much beading this summer because the pregnancy has been difficult and I've had to spend a lot more time than I like lying down. I suppose that's to be expected when you're forty(!) and having a baby! Anyway--there will be plenty of time for beading later and I'm so looking forward to welcoming little Sarah to our family.

Hannah's broken nose

2009-08-04T11:47:00.003-07:00

We had an exciting night last night—and not the kind you want. Hannah and I did our normal nighttime routine, pjs, brush teeth, and read two books in bed with me and we both fell asleep. Kelly usually comes up a little bit later and takes Hannah back to her bed. At about 10 pm, Hannah who was asleep in the middle of the bed next to me, suddenly turned and pitched off the bed face first in an acrobatic move we can only imagine. She landed face first on the hardwood floor. I can’t remember how I got by her side, but I woke up pretty quickly and even saw her feet going over the side of the bed. Kelly came rushing upstairs to see what the commotion was, almost falling himself in his hurry and stocking feet. I lifted Hannah off the floor—she was crying instantly-- and I saw that both her lips were bleeding, right after that her nose started bleeding.

Kelly took her to the bathroom while I went to get ice. By the time I got back upstairs, it was clear that her nose was probably broken (it was swollen to twice its normal size and an odd shape). Kelly called the doctor, I tried to get ice on her nose (we were never successful with the ice or icepacks, though eventually we were able to put a wet wash cloth on her nose)—and held her while we waited for the on-call service at the doctor’s office to call us back. It seemed like an eternity, but it was only ten minutes, and they told us to take her to the ER.

Hannah did a good job of calming down (our brave little girl) as much as possible (as did I and Kelly—we both had our moments of needing to pull it together). She cried the whole time, but was not hysterical.

At the ER, the thing that she did not like the most was when they tried to take her pulse and oxygen with the little thing that goes on your finger. She did like the bracelet they put on her arm for identification (and didn’t want to take it off when we got home). After that, she did a good job of letting them look at her lips and throat and nose, and in her eyes to make sure she didn’t have concussion. We had the option for a CAT scan, but they said it would only be if we wanted to do cosmetic surgery in the future and wouldn’t change her care for the night—and it would expose her to a lot of radiation—so we opted out of the CAT scan.

They gave her Tylenol with codeine and Motrin to help her sleep and reduce the swelling. We got home a little after midnight. On the drive home, she was a bit loopy from the medication and talking and talking about all the strange things she was seeing driving home at midnight. She slept well. Both Kelly and I got up several times to check on her and I had nightmares all night about Hannah getting injured.

She woke up cheerful and ready to tell everyone the story of the adventure from the night before. She helped me get the blood out of her pjs with hydrogen peroxide this morning. The swelling has gone down but, I expect she’ll have two black eyes soon. We’ll see how her nose heals—the doctor at the ER said that we’d have to wait for the swelling to go down to determine if it was broken (he thought it would be three days or so). Little kids don’t have a lot of cartilage in their noses, so with luck, it’ll be fine.

We'll revise our bed time routine--even though I think this was a freak accident as she's never fallen out of bed before and mostly sleeps in one spot all night long--I don't want to take the chance of it happening again.

Shredded garden

2009-07-21T06:31:00.003-07:00

Last night we had an intense hail storm. So, here are the before photos of my garden shot on July 10th.

And here are photos from 6:30 am this morning--several hours after the 11 pm storm last night.

I'm sure some of the garden will bounce back--but there is a lot that won't be back this season. I held Hannah during the storm--it was so intense and I worried that the hail was going to break our windows, it was blasting our house so hard. The power was out for two hours, but everything else seems to be okay--no big branches in the yard or power lines down as far as I can tell. After it was over she told me that she never wanted it to hail like that again. We have leaves plastered to the second story window, and the trees are stripped of their leaves. I have a feeling it is not going to be so nice and cool in our house for the rest of the summer. I'm sad to see my garden so decimated, but I know that it will bounce back eventually.

I'm still here--really

2009-06-22T06:19:00.006-07:00

I didn't mean to disappear on you like that--sorry! This spring just got so busy--too busy to post updates. Thanks to nearly daily rain for what seems like months--my garden is glorious--the iris are just finishing up and the lilies are starting in (none are blooming yet, but they promise to, soon). Daily rain--that's just not a phrase we utter much in Colorado--and certainly not with the words months. I guess it is further evidence of global warming--disturbing as that is--it sure has been nice.

For those of you who participated in my brother's auction to raise money for his film, Id and Emma--thank you! The editing is going well--here is a trailer.

Hannah turned four--can you believe it? I can't. On her birthday, I went into her room to wake her up and she was still groggy, but said, "Momma! I've got a surprise for you!" And I said, "Oh! What is it?" And she stuck her feet out from under her covers and said, "Look, my foots is bigger!"

Art auction

2009-03-09T10:08:00.009-07:00

My brother Ben and his friend D.W. Alexander are working on raising money for their next film production, Id and Emma, which they will begin shooting in April. They have asked artists that they know to donate artwork for the auction and we’ve listed them on ebay (see the links below).

They are also donating 20% of the money raised from the auction for the Colorado Sickle Cell Foundation to honor a friend who is fighting the disease.

In this photo, D.W. is filming from the tower at East High School in Denver, Colorado, which will be a location in Id and Emma.

Please take a look at these items for auction, bid on ones you like, and forward this link to your friends and family. We really appreciate your support!

Updated 04-14-09--thanks everyone! So far, Ben and D.W. have earned $220.00 as well as $60 for the Colorado Sickle Cell Foundation.

These paintings are still available and have been relisted on eBay:

El Pueblo by Patricia Barr Clarke.

Rainbow Shell #8 by Tanya L. Hayes.

The Reading Room by Benjamin Sherif Clarke

Figure Study by Benjamin Sherif Clarke

Not Just One or the Other by Laura Brady

Stirling Castle by Noell Custer

Books by Mark A. Clarke, Barbara Dobson, and Sandra Silberstein

One copy of the 5th edition of
Reader's Choice

Choice Readings

Books by Mark A. Clarke

A Place to Stand

Common Ground, Contested Territory

Too big, too small...what about just right?

2009-01-26T06:50:00.006-07:00

I decided to full the hat--it is still a bit big, but wearable. Here it is before and after fulling.

I also started one for Hannah. The first one I cast on, I over compensated and made it too small, so I had to frog it and start over. The second one fits her pretty well--though it doesn't cover her ears completely. I'd show you a photo on her, but I'm not quick enough to photograph it before she whips it off her head. She does say she likes it and will wear it when it is cold out . . . we'll see. We got some lovely snow last night, so we'll have an opportunity this morning to try out our new hats in cold weather.

This is what I get for feeling so clever

2009-01-19T07:30:00.007-07:00

As a reward for finally finishing my dad's sweater, I'm making myself a hat. I chose this one. I read on Ravelry that some versions were coming out a little bigger than expected--so I followed the gauge for a smaller hat. I do have a head that measures on the larger side of things. Yep, 22 1/2 inches--this is usually the last size on hat charts for women.

I spun one singles from this lovely Bluefaced Leicester from Dragonfibers on etsy and the other singles from Bonkers Handmade Originals Tencel/Merino that I bought at the Estes Park Wool Market this summer.

I was feeling clever because I had not only figured out how to do entrelac, but I was also knitting backwards to make it go faster. All weekend I was wishing that someone who knew a thing or two about knitting would stop by and notice that I was knitting backwards. But sadly, no one noticed. And even when I pointed it out, they didn't seem too impressed.
And, since I was knitting from singles, I had devised a portable lazy kate to hold a single bobbin. This is apparently too much cleverness for one person.

So this is what I get for feeling so clever.

Options at this point:
1. Start over.
2. Keep going and finish, then full it until it is the right size.
3. Make it into a bag.

Project completed!

2009-01-13T06:46:00.003-07:00

Yes, it is true. This is a photo of my dad wearing his sweater, started in November of 1996, completed this weekend and delivered to my dad on Sunday. He and my mom are taking turns reading books to Hannah, doted-upon-grandchild-that-she-is.

Dad asked to have me holding the knitting needles in the photo--I've already cast-on a hat for myself as a "you-did-it!" reward.

I was worried that the sweater was going to be too large, but it turned out to be the kind of sweater that looked good on several people of different body types who tried it on and it fits my dad perfectly. He said he's never going to take it off now that he has it. We're a bit prone to exaggeration in my family--but I like that he liked it so much to say something like that. I wonder if I could, like, fit the word like into that sentence one more time. Like, that would be really funny.

Seaming the 10- (ahem 12-) year cardigan

2009-01-08T07:34:00.003-07:00

I'm nearly done seaming my Dad's sweater. I really shouldn't be talking about it until it is blocked and on his back as every time it seems like I'm close to finishing I discover things--like that the back was 2-inches longer than the fronts, or that I had run out of yarn (fortunately, remedied when I frogged the back!). I guess there are reasons why it is a 12-year sweater.

More ornaments

2009-01-04T08:00:00.006-07:00

First off--Happy New Year everyone!
I'm still in an ornament making frenzy. My Aunt Lise gave us the cutest Christmas tree wall hanging a few years ago with a little pocket for each day of December until Christmas--to count off the days. It came with candy--one candy in each pocket, one piece of candy for each day until Christmas. That's a lot of candy for a baby (or anyone for that matter)--so this year I placed a small ornament in each pocket and Hannah and I had great fun counting the days and putting an ornament on the tree each day.

But I had an idea--and for next year I'm making 25 ornaments (well, now I have 30+), each with a photo of our family and friends on a star shaped ornament (I used a toy cookie cutter)--and we'll decorate the tree with their wonderful faces.

This idea meant that I needed to buy more polymer clay.

Hannah made ornaments, too. They are portraits--the yellow one is Hannah, the green one is of me.

Make your own gift bags

2008-12-22T08:17:00.013-07:00

My 3 1/2 year old daughter often comes home from day care with lots of paintings--they are great and I love each one--but they are starting to pile up. I had an idea for a way to use them so that we could share them with family and friends. We're making them into gift bags this holiday season!

The bonus is that this is an easy project to do with small children--just make sure they are safe with the scissors and not eating the glue. When I was making these with Hannah, I did the folding and she did the gluing.

Materials:
Paper to recycle (the larger the paper, the larger the gift bags--so 11x17 inches and up is nice if it is available)
Glue stick
Scissors
Paper craft rope

Rim

Start by creating the top edge of the bag along the long side of the paper. Fold in 1/2 inch and glue closed.

Next turn paper so that the rim is on the left edge and start folding the sides--the first side will be about 4 inches wide, then the face of the bag (about 6 inches wide), then another 4-inch wide side, followed by a 6-inch wide back.

If your paper has a lot of paint on it, it might tear when it is being folded--simply glue a patch to the inside of the bag with a piece of extra paper.

Last fold 1/2 inch overlap flap and cut off the excess paper. Save the excess paper for glueing in the paper rope handles later.

Glue the paper flap around the corner of the first side that you folded. Now you have a rectangular tube.

Bottom of the bag
Create the bottom of the bag, by cutting along the folds of the bag on the bottom about two inches in.

Fold in the flaps, then apply glue to the two long flaps and fold them in and secure the flaps.

Trace around the bottom of the bag on a piece of the extra paper and cut it to size. Apply glue to the underside and place it inside the bag on the bottom.

Handles
Make a paper flap to hold down the handles with the excess paper. Cut 2 3 x6 inch strips and fold in the two edges as pictured and glue down the folded edges. Apply glue to the back.

Cut two 6-inch pieces of paper rope and bend to a rounded, handle shape.

Glue to the insides of the bag with the paper flap, pressing firmly around the paper rope so that it stays in place.

Allow to dry, then fill your bag with goodies to give to your friends.

Making things

2008-12-15T07:43:00.007-07:00

This is the time of year that I really, really get an urge to make things. The thing is that I have this urge constantly throughout the year--it is just intensified when the snow begins to fall.

This weekend I gave into those urges and had fun with Hannah as well. We played with polymer clay and made ornaments for our very tiny Christmas tree. It is so easy and fun, I thought I'd share the how-to part with you.

Roll out shapes of polymer clay (we used Sculpey) for your ornaments. We used a little rolling pin (one of Hannah's) to make them flat--but they also sell special rolling pins for polymer clay.

I had some metal bails that I stuck into the clay to make pendant--but poking a hole works, too.

I cut out photographs and stuck them on the ornaments and baked them (it worked!) following the directions on the polymer clay package in the oven for 15 minutes at 275 degrees F.
After they had cooled, I painted them with Sculpey Glaze and let them dry. I applied 2 coats to the front and one to the back.

After the ornaments dried, I strung a piece of ribbon through the hole and then added a little wire hook made with my wire working tools and hung the ornaments on our little tree.

waves I'm still here

2008-11-12T06:06:00.004-07:00

Betcha thought I fell off the face of the earth. Sorry about that. Two things going on. First is that I just didn't have time to post. Second is that, well, I just don't have witty, pithy, clever, fun things to post about. I mean, sure, interesting things are going on in my life, but I imagine they are just interesting to me--why would you want to read about them? Like the chair that got attacked by the squirrel on the back porch, I did finally replace the seat. Very exciting for me, probably not so exciting for you. And it only took me four months to replace it.

I finished Hannah's Autumn sweater--only to realize that it didn't fit well (see how far down the neckline goes? And it was falling off her shoulders), so I've ripped it out (well, just the collar and button band) and am reworking it (oh, and I had to spin more yarn for it). I have about an inch of beading left to do on the Godiva piece, but no, I haven't finished it yet. And my Dad's sweater? Yep, I'm still working on it.

In my work life I have accomplished a lot--went to press with Felt in mid-July, then Fall 2008 Spin-Off at the beginning of August, then edited a book project August-September while getting as far ahead on the Winter 2008 Spin-Off as I could and getting ready for SOAR. At the beginning of October I helped host SOAR in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, then came back to go to press with the Winter issue two weeks later, and now I'm trying to get caught up with everything and get the Spring 2009 issue underway.

I did take a little time off (a long weekend) and went to visit a friend who just had her third baby and got lots of snugly baby time. We drove through Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada to get there--gorgeous scenery. Hannah was a real trooper and traveled so well that it was a fun trip. She was telling Granddad all about the snow we saw--snow on the mountains, snow in the sky, snow on the roads. She kept asking if it was winter time.

But for me, the biggest news is that I'm so happy as a result of the elections, that I'm actually skipping around--walking on air. I haven't felt this happy about the results of an election since Jimmy Carter was elected, and I was in the third or fourth grade when that happened.

Bye-bye July

2008-08-02T05:11:00.004-07:00

Okay--so I totally missed July--in terms of blogging, that is. Sorry about that. It was a good month--just very full. Not a lot of time left to sit down and ponder it all.
Events in July:
Two races.
Two birthdays.
Two beaded pieces.

(I finished Hannah in Helen's Hands and picked up Lady Godiva again after setting it aside for several months to work on HiH.) I tried to get Lady Godiva done for an exhibit, but didn't succeed. I shipped them two pieces that were already completed, though.

One exhibit.
Two magazines (well, technically--the second one doesn't go to press until Wednesday, but the bulk of the work was done in July).
Two days in the mountains.
Many trips to the playground, the zoo, the swingset in the back yard, making mudpies, reading books.
One new school for Hannah.
Two Books--The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan and Austenland by Shannon Hale--both really good.
I worked on yarn--yarn that ended up being too thin or to thick--and finally was just right. Whew!

Here's my favorite chair to sit on the back porch with a little fiber to pat while watching the sun come up.

Something inexplicable happened to it yesterday while I was working at home. In the early morning I took a photo of yarn on the table next to it and it was fine--and this is what it looked that evening. I think an animal attacked it. At first I thought a cat fight happened in it (quite a few neighborhood cats like to roam through our yard)--but there was no extra cat hair around it (no more than usual)--and it wasn't moved from it's normal spot. Maybe a rabid squirrel decided it had had quite enough of canvas? I don't know. I'm off to the fabric store to buy canvas to replace the seat.

Gardening, Spinning, Beading, and Estes

2008-06-25T05:49:00.001-07:00

A little bit about my garden:

Same bed in the back yard--2006,2007 and 2008. This bed is a challenge because it is in a very shady spot in the back yard. Ground covers work best in it.

2008 Iris--in the bed in the back yard and on the north side of the house.

I'm a flower gardener (ie--I don't grow a vegetable garden)--We moved into this house 3 years ago (literally a day before Hannah was born--not on purpose, mind you--anyway--that's another long story). So the first summer we were here we didn't work on the yard at all, in fact it wasn't until later in the summer that we discovered that we had a huge thistle plantation on the side of the house that we hadn't noticed at all. They went to seed. We're still digging up thistles on that side of the house--though they are under control now.
I'm working on putting in drought tolerant plants (this is Colorado, after all) that bloom at different times of the summer so that there is always something blooming. The great thing about my garden this year is that it is pretty much taking care of itself. I can't tell you how much I adore Iris. And my Iris this year were spectacular. Now the lilies are getting ready to bloom. Last year the first blossom opened on my birthday--we'll see if that happens again!

Hannah's sweater
I'm working on Hannah's sweater with the hope of finishing it this Autumn. I had spun up more yarn, but it is too thin . I tried knitting it up and it would distort the sweater eventually--not right away--but by the time I made enough squares the top half of the sweater would be shorter, way shorter. So I purchased more BFL dyed top from Chameleon Colorworks (though they didn't have the same colorway (!)--originally I had purchased Autumn, but now they stock October--it has less acid green in it and more pink. I think that I'll be able to make it work. I still have some of the original Autumn left so I can transition to the new colorway.

Here are two bumps of October over the portion of the sweater that is knitted with Autumn. Next to it all the bumps I have--the one on top is a silk/Merino blend in the Autumn colorway--which I wasn't planning on using for this project because it is a different fiber content.
Then the bump on the right is the Autumn, the bumps in the center and on the left are October. The ball of yarn in the top left hand corner is the too thin yarn that I'll have to use for something else.
Beading

I'm nearly done with Hannah in Helen's Hands. I think it will happen this week. It is headed to a good home. I've enjoyed the time I've spent with it. It is hard for me to put into words what it means--I guess that's why it is visual. This photo that my sister took captures the essence of amazing strength in people who appear fragile, the powerful connection between generations, the cycles of life.

Estes Park Wool Market
Hannah and I went together--she was great.

I love the mountain setting combined with sheep, llamas, alpacas, goats, rabbits, and mountains of fiber! We had a great time.

I've been tagged

2008-05-22T05:46:00.004-07:00

Clearly--this is intended to get me to post. It has been a while. Sorry! Things have been happening--just at too fast a pace for me to post about them.

Progress is being made on Hannah in Helen's Hands as I'm now calling the piece (what do you think of the title, Mary?) I've actually made more progress since this photo was taken over a week ago and think that I might be able to finish it this holiday weekend while camping in the mountains with six other family members. We'll see!

Spring has sprung full force--my tulips are almost all done, the iris are blooming! It seems so early for Iris--but maybe that is because I'm in shock that it is May at all, and not only that--but the end of May.

I did a bunch of silk spinning in April--to work on the Printed Silk Cardigan from the Spring 2008 issue of Knits by Connie Chang. It is still in progress. And I'm still working on my Dad's cardigan (which I also plan on working on while tootling around in the mountains this weekend).

I attended the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival May 2-5--very fun, of course. I came home with wool. Wool, wonderful wool! But haven't had a chance to spin much. I'm planning on taking my spinning wheel and fiber with me camping this weekend.

Okay--the meme tag. I've never done one of these before. Diane tagged me. Of course, hers is entirely captivating--what with her past history studying Old German and Old Norse--who knew?

1. What was I doing ten years ago?
Ten years ago was 1998--I had been working at Interweave Press as an Editorial Assistant for nearly 9 months. I lived in a small apartment in Fort Collins, Colorado just 1/2 block north of the Public Library and around the corner from Joe Coca's photo studio. I was recovering from the Fort Collins flood. I drove down to Denver nearly every weekend to spend time with my family and stay with my Grandma Helen. I went with her on her morning walks around City Park. I lived on a modest budget--$10 a week for groceries. It was that spring that I embarked on a bead embroidery project for Beadwork magazine that changed the course of my art work. Soon, I'd receive news that I was going to be an Aunt--also a life altering event.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Shower.
2. Get Hannah ready for Miss Tina's.
3. Take Hannah to Miss Tina's.
4. Arrive at Interweave and figure out how I'm going to attend two meetings that occur at the same time.
5. Work on author payments, comp copy notes, read 35 essays, edit the spinner's connection, figure out Felt photography, select items for handspun gallery.

3. Snacks I enjoy:
Mmmm. Snacks. I love shortbread, but I have to exercise extreme willpower to stay away from sugar in most forms--drat. It's for my own good. Really.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

This one really isn't fair. It is a trick question. First of all, I don't really want to be a billionaire. While it would be nice not to have to worry about money--I think it would come with a lot of additional stress. Stress that I can't even imagine (that's what I'm telling myself anyway). I would put the majority of the money in trust funds that would fund several charities that would truly help people in meaningful ways--alleviate hunger, sickness, right wrongs, provide education, fund artisans and writers who wouldn't otherwise have a chance to share their gifts. I would give each of my family members enough money so that they could pay off their mortgage and travel as they wished. I would make sure my nieces and nephews had enough socked away so that they could all go to college if they wished. I would pay off our mortgage and do a bit of remodeling (put in a hot tub, build Kelly the garage of his dreams). I would become a full time mom and a part time artist. I would travel occasionally. I might start an artist community like the one in Balboa Park in San Diego--but within walking distance of my house. Learn lampworking. Garden. Take my daughter and nieces and nephews swimming.

5. Places I have lived:

Boulder, Colorado.

Cairo, Egypt.

Rastanura, Saudi Arabia.

Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Denver, Colorado.

Mt. Vernon, Iowa.

San Jose, Costa Rica.

Boruca, Costa Rica.

Fort Collins, Colorado.

Loveland, Colorado.

Lakewood, Colorado.

5. People I want to know more about:

Mary and Jenny.

Yarn Harlot in Denver, again!

2008-04-09T06:09:00.001-07:00

I was way in the way back (#211 or some such). I could barely see Stephanie over the crowd, but it didn't matter--I had a great time. Hannah and Kelly came, too. I didn't get to participate in the line that formed hours before she arrived this time--we had too much to do and had to take our chances getting seats.

Can't tell it is Stephanie? Here--I've zoomed in.

Stephanie's talk was just perfect--she knows how to take universal truths (they don't have to be about knitting, but that they are makes them resonate with me even more) and frame them in a way that is both funny and poignant. She has great timing and an amazing wit. Her books are really good, too. I'm savoring this one. I've just read the jacket cover and the first page.
Sadly, Kelly didn't get to hear Stephanie talk because Hannah was too squirmy (sorry everyone around us). The Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch was prepared (mostly) for the crowd--but I liked it better last year in the Lodo location because we had a room to ourselves (remember how we stomped when she came in last year--that was great). This year there were lots of people in the store milling around who weren't there to listen to Stephanie. I wanted to shush them, but that would have been rich coming from the woman with the rambunctious toddler and the obnoxiously loud laugh.

Someone in my comments asked about the sweater Hannah was wearing. Here she is in it (this is a photo from last year--I think she likes this sweater so much, she's trying to eat it). Carol Rhoades made her this sweater before Hannah was born. This is what Carol says about the sweater:
I am glad Hannah can still wear the sweater. It was an easy one to knit. I mostly followed the pattern in Elsebeth Lavold’s Designer’s Choice Book Six: The Take Five Collection. It should still available at yarn stores or KFI. I also used Elsebeth’s Silky Wool yarn which is a wonderful yarn.

Stepping into a book

2008-03-29T06:55:00.003-07:00

Having read the Harry Potter series continuously since each book came out in a constant revolving cycle (such as finish the series, start over)--so many times that I've lost count, I've started to think about the little modifications I'd make to my personal possessions if I could do a little bit of magic. I'm very enamored with the concept of the undetectable extension charm that Hermione puts on her small beaded handbag. With the charm, her small purse is able to hold a cargo of supplies--a tent with its own undetectable extension charm on it, clothing, books, a large painting.
This concept could be applied to my crafting supplies in such a way that I could have everything at my fingertips and never have to sort through bins in the basement again. Or maybe a trunk like the one Mad-eye Moody has with the seven locks that are lined up--each time you insert the key into one of the lock and open the lid a different inside is revealed. I would apply this idea to a room--each room would contain different things--my knitting/spinning supplies, my beading supplies, my art making supplies... the list goes on and on.
And then there is the room of requirement. Wouldn't that be handy. It could be a play room one instant, and then later a reading room, or a large dining room to accommodate my whole family easily, and maybe it could contain the prefect's bathroom with that amazing pool size tub and seven faucets each with a different bubble bath. Hannah would love that. Gosh--with a room of requirement, you'd only need a small house.
And I'd love to learn all the household charms--like how to make the dishes wash themselves, and the laundry fold itself, and get the vegetables chopping and cooking. But I'd still do my knitting and spinning by hand.

Here's a bit of spinning--Tencel and Merino from Bonkers Handmade Originals, spun 2-ply on my Lendrum DT--for baby booties, I think.

I'm starting to feel better after the car accident--more myself. I'll start shopping for a new (old) car soon. The tulips that Hannah and I planted in the fall are starting to come up and in the back yard by the compost we have grape hyacinths that are blooming! Amazing. Of course, we'll get more snow this weekend (this is Colorado, after all)--but still--it is spring!

I call it my exciting morning

2008-03-16T14:12:00.005-07:00

Exciting in a not good way. I was headed to the second half of the Spin-Off photo shoot for the Summer issue Thursday morning. I had awoken at 4:30 am and edited three articles before I even showered. I was feeling productive and organized. My Dad came over to watch Hannah and then take her to Miss Tina's once she woke up. We had a good chat of shoes and ships and ceiling wax and cabbages and kings while I made my lunch and organized Hannah's things. I was on the road by 7:30 am--plenty of time to make it to the photo shoot by 9 am in Fort Collins.
Then, just 5 minutes from my house as I was headed north on Wadsworth, a truck came out of no where and was suddenly in my path. There was no time to stop, no room to stop, actually. I think I had time to put my foot on the break and try to stop, but that's it. I was in the right lane, the left lane was backed up and I guess someone in the left lane waved this guy across. The police officer called it the wave of death. We were fortunate that in this case it wasn't the cause of death, but I could see how it could be. I never even saw him in the south bound lane waiting to turn across traffic--there were too many cars blocking the view. I assume he didn't see me or he wouldn't have turned.
My car plowed into his truck between the wheels and Kelly estimates that the force of the crash moved both vehicles about 8 feet. The driver of the truck didn't seemed to be injured. He was polite and concerned about me. My little blue Subaru was smashed up so badly on the right side that the bumper (or where the bumper used to be) is nearly in contact with the right wheel. My injuries are from the airbag--but I'm glad it was there. My neck looks like I rode down a gravel path on it. Feels like it, too. The firefighters on the scene were concerned about where the airbag hit me--the angle (because of my short stature, I think)--so they wanted to err on the side of caution and have me checked out in the ER. I hurt enough to agree with them--so I had a little trip to the ER in an ambulance with a neck brace and on the back board. All the internal stuff checked out okay and I was released a few hours later. I called Kelly as soon as I found my phone and he got there as they were taking me away in the ambulance. He retrieved my things out of the car (including the wheel that I was taking to the photo shoot to loan to Stefanie) and my Harry Potter CDs. He went home to tell my Dad what was going on. Dad took Hannah to Miss Tina's and then joined us at the hospital, where we ran into the surgeon who had performed my appendectomy nearly 3 years ago. Small world. Needless to say, I didn't make it to the photo shoot. I took Friday off, too, and slept.
I'm feeling better. I felt well enough to dye with indigo this weekend. I did some beading, some spinning, some knitting.

Hannah was concerned when she first saw me. "You have an accident, mama? Dat's a bummer. You need a band aid? I go get my doctor's kit. You feel better?" She gave me numerous shots and took my temperature until she was satisfied that I was okay.

I'm thankful that Hannah wasn't with me, I'm thankful for seat belts, for having both hands on the wheel, for airbags. I'm thankful for police officers, EMT, and firefighters who were on the scene with in seconds. I'm thankful for professional and cheerful ER staff who were attentive and thorough. I'm thankful for Kelly who was by my side as quickly as he could be. I'm thankful for my family who called and came to see for themselves that I was okay. I'm thankful for friends expressed concern and who offered to help out. Nothing like an exciting day to help illustrate how lucky I am.

Mobiles and a book party

2008-03-07T07:18:00.003-07:00

I received a note from my friend Jan Carson asking me to help her spread the word about an event going on at her studio in Fort Collins, Colorado at the end of March. The press release is below. Jan and I shared an art studio at Colorado State University as we were each working on our MFA in Fibers. After graduation, Jan started an amazing business of handmade paper mobiles. I have one hanging over Hannah's changing table (a wedding gift from another friend who worked for Jan for a bit)--it delights us all. Here's a small image copied from Jan's website to give you an idea of what they look like.

ARTISTS GAIN VALUABLE CAREER ADVICE AT BOOK PARTY

FORT COLLINS GALLERY HOSTS AUTHOR

Fort Collins, Colorado, March 1, 2008—Author Alyson B. Stanfield, an internationally recognized art-marketing consultant, will kick off her nationwide studio tour and book signing for I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion in Fort Collins, Colorado, at Moon-Lily Art Studio & Gift Gallery, 4032 S. College Avenue, Suite 7, on Wednesday, March 26^th, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Ms. Stanfield has helped thousands of artists develop their careers through her online classes, publications, workshops, and free weekly Art Marketing Action newsletter—all available at ArtBizCoach.com. She used the self-promotion tools she describes in the book to launch her art-marketing consulting business and Web site in 2002. Prior to that, she counseled artists informally throughout her ten years as an art museum curator and educator in the Midwest.

I’d Rather Be in the Studio! teaches any artist—sculptor, painter, metalsmith, glass artist, fiber artist, or woodworker--how to take advantage of traditional self-promotion techniques, as well as how to expand their reach into Internet marketing. For each book sold at this event, Ms. Stanfield has pledged to give ten dollars to Fort Collin’s community arts organization, Arts Alive.

Moon-Lily Art Studio & Gift Gallery is owned by artist Jan R. Carson. Her wholesale production art studio, established in 1999, expanded in August 2007 to include a retail gallery of fine craft artwork by Ms. Carson and others. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. More information is available at http://www.moonlilymobiles.com

For more information on the author and the book, please visit http://www.idratherbeinthestudio.com/mediaroom

Tiny steps

2008-02-27T06:00:00.006-07:00

Here's a bit of beauty to start off the day. The amaryllis our wonderful neighbors gave us is blooming. Here it has two blossoms, but now it has six. It is in the living room by my spinning area. I love sitting here in the afternoon (on my lunch break on days when I work at home) in the sun, spinning and listening to the news on NPR. Right now, I'm spinning more for a second attempt on the scarf for Kelly. The good news is that the first attempt can become an-already-ready Christmas scarf for someone petite. Whoo hoo!

Beading is happening. Slowly, but surely. Hannah and I can play and spin, play and weave, play and cook, play and fold laundry, play and wash dishes, play and wrap presents, but playing and beading doesn't seem to work. She just wants to take little pinches of beads and spread them around the house--and she's not satisfied with just one little pinch--no. She wants to take pinches of beads for the duration of the time that I have my beads out. It just isn't working very well. I know it is just a phase. So for now, beading must occur while Hannah is asleep. I have had some long meetings at work where I was able to get in a couple consecutive hours of beading--so that has helped. But, I don't think I'm going to meet my March 1st deadline (sorry Mary!).

Debbie at work received this beautiful(!) Australian Merino handdyed fiber (100 g) about 10 years ago from an appreciative customer and finally decided that she wasn't going to learn how to spin it. So she let me spin it for her--oh--it was fun. Mmmm. Like butter. I spun a thick and thin yarn for texture.
Now I have to take it to work and give it to her. I've been delaying. ...

Valentine's Day Scarf

2008-02-21T07:24:00.004-07:00

I finished Kelly's scarf before Valentine's Day. It just took a weekend to weave. The weaving was really fun--I loved watching the colors transform from spun thread into woven cloth. The only problem is that it seems a little short--what do you think? I have enough fiber to spin more, so I may do that and try again.
I mis-measured. I was about 10 inches off. I had to go back and go through my motions again to see how I did it, but it is clear that I did it. At first I thought the yarn was so stretchy that it lost 10 inches when I pulled it off the warping board, but no--it was me.

Weighing in

2008-01-30T06:53:00.001-07:00

Kelly's dad rescued this gram scale from a building that was scheduled for demolition--apparently they were just going to leave things in the building when the razed it. Imagine!
Oh, what good use I can put it to! At first it didn't work, but I had plugged it into an extension cord and I've noticed in our old house that some appliances are happier if they are plugged into the wall directly--like my scanner for instance. It worked for the scale, too. We're working on rewiring the house (when I say we, I really mean Kelly and his dad)--so eventually we'll have more reliable electricity.
So, I weighed my bobbins and determined that the bobbin that I thought needed more singles, actually was heavier. Of course, it may not weigh the same as the empty bobbin that I used as the zero. But I did learn that I had divided up the fiber pretty evenly just eyeballing it.
I wrote the weight of the empty bobbin on it and am looking forward to emptying the rest of my bobbins so that I can weigh them. Oh, the simple joys!
And this scale will be so great when I'm making beading kits.

So here are the stats on the yarn I've spun for Kelly's scarf so far:

Started with 247.2 grams of Andretti fine wool from dudleyspinner.etsy.com.
Spun one small sample of 40 yards at the photo shoot (singles 38 wpi, plied 25 wpi, 6 tpi, 9.4 g).
Split the remaining fiber into 2 sections.

First section: 117.9 grams
First singles bobbin: 35.6 g (fiber only)
Second singles bobbin: 41.3 g (fiber only)
Fiber remaining to spin from first section: 41 g.

Second section: 119.9 g.

Spun on my Lendrum DT at 10:1 ratio.

Beading is happening, too--but at a slower rate because of another weekend of illness--this time a respiratory infection with a high fever. Fortunately (so far) Kelly and I didn't get it, but poor little Hannah was miserable and so none of us slept much. I find I can spin on little sleep, but not bead. I think it has to do with blurry eyes. Hannah's getting better--her cough still sounds bad--but she's happier and has slept three nights in a row which is pure heaven.

My dad's birthday is this Sunday--but despite making a lot of progress on his sweater, I don't think it will be done. I am getting close, though. I just have the Left front to finish and I have a third of it done. Knitting is something that I can do while snuggling a sick kiddo.
Of course, I have to sew the sweater together--we'll see how that goes!
I hope you all are staying healthy and warm.

Happy New Year--18 days into it!

2008-01-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year! I hope it has been a good start of the year for you. I was going to post a happy new year post earlier, but Hannah got the stomach flu, and then I did. Kelly, bless him, didn't get it, which was good because he was able to take care of his two limp-rag babies. We're better now, but it did take the stuffing out of us!

I've been doing a bit of spinning. It started at the photoshoot for the Spring issue--I needed to do some step out shots for an article on plying and so broke out some painted top that I bought from Dudley spinner on etsy. I've been spinning a little on it each morning as I wait for my chai to heat up and I listen to the news on NPR. What a nice way to start the day.

I think I may weave a scarf for Kelly with this yarn, though he has scoffed at the idea. He doesn't really wear woolens. But maybe a nice thin scarf to go with his new black coat would help win him over.

I think there is enough fiber to weave him a scarf and knit me a pair of socks.

I sold a bead embroidery kit on etsy and that gave me the funds to buy more fiber. I bought this lovely BFL roving, handpainted by Dragon Fibers on etsy (can you see the trend here?). It's dyed in a Frankenstein colorway. I can't wait to see how it spins up. But I'm sure it will be a while before I can get to it.

I've been making progress on my Dad's sweater--as Hannah winds down for the day, she wants to snuggle--so we sit together as I knit before I take her upstairs to read books and get ready for bed. It's a nice time. She has a circular needle and some yarn that she works on while I'm knitting--some day it will be real knitting.
In a meeting at work yesterday I finished the body to Hannah's sweater. Now I have to figure out how to add the arms. This is more yarn for Hannah's sweater (the orange yarn).
In another meeting at work I made progress on the second beaded scarf--the first one looks like a snowflake after I left it within Hannah's reach with the scissors.
And I've been working on a beaded piece--a commission for a friend. It is a very special piece--from the photograph my sister Julia took of my Grandma Helen holding Hannah shortly after Hannah was released from the hospital after she was born 6 weeks early due to my rupturing appendix. In the photo, Hannah is still on oxygen. Mary and I started talking about this piece before Grandma died in October. I needed some time before I was able to start it and Mary has been very understanding.

I love that I'm collaborating on this piece with my sister who is an amazing photographer. The time that I spend on it feels like time spent with all these people that I love.

Grandma Helen really didn't like that Hannah had to be on oxygen (which is very common in Colorado for premies because of our high altitude) and here she is shaking her finger and saying how she couldn't wait until Hannah was free of the tubes. When I see this photo I can almost hear her talking.

Winter wonderland

2007-12-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

It snowed on Christmas morning! All was peaceful, beautiful. We had a good holiday. Hannah was a delight as always. She's been busy with her toys--feeding her dolls, changing their diapers, putting them to bed. I've been knitting on my Dad's sweater--made very enjoyable by a Christmas gift--Knitwits interchangeable needles! It's amazing the progress I've made with these new needles. I guess I just needed a little bit of color to look at while I was knitting--didn't need to be in the yarn, in the needles will do!
I've also done a little bit of spinning on my Loop batts and plied the yarn this morning. I think I'll make some fingerless gloves for cold morning typing--but I'm not going to cast on until I've finished my Dad's sweater.

Happy Birthday, Grandma Helen!

2007-12-16T07:23:00.001-07:00

We celebrated Grandma Helen’s 95^th yesterday with a big meal at our house. I went through her old cook books and found recipes to make a meal—(and with a nod to my good friend Liz) this was the menu:

Beef Stroganoff from the Cowbelles cookbook (c. 1957)

Butter Layer Rolls (Grandma Helen’s recipe)

Wild Rice (given to us by Uncle Andy last Christmas)

Carrots Supreme (my great aunt Lucille Clarke’s recipe)

Green Beans (weight watchers recipe, c. 2007)

Salad

Julia made rum balls, tried to make Grandma's almond sugar cookies, but I sent her the wrong recipe (I found the right one later), and brought a gi-normous coconut cake.

It was all very good. We had 20 guests—so it maxed out all of our pots, pans, dishes, etc and was a great and chaotic time with several spilled glasses of water (one of wine), one bloody nose (16-month-old William who slipped and fell and hit his face square on the floor, but was up running around again soon), lots of laughter, and some tears.

Lessons learned

2007-12-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

My daughter Hannah has skills; skills that I like to encourage and support.
Like her Mommy and Daddy, she likes to make things and work on projects. She's been decorating book marks for everyone in our family. And she's great with scissors.

Maybe a little too great.

Here's a silk scarf I've been adding a picot edging to for a Christmas present.

I made the mistake of leaving my scissors and this project within her reach. We're both really lucky that she didn't get hurt. And it didn't take me too long to realize that.

Maybe I'll make it into a teeny scarf for Hannah to have when she's a little older. And when she has kids of her own, I'll tell her about the day that both mommy and baby cried when mommy learned the hard way to keep her beading projects out of the way.

Drawing Little Star

2007-12-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

Michelle Mach of Beading Daily asked me to write up instructions for this ornament, Little Star, for beading daily. She'll be posting it soon to the blog and as a free project.
In the project, I give permission to copy and use the pattern, but I thought some people might like to draw their own and might want to know how I did it.

The concept is very similar to drawing a heart that I posted about earlier this year.

Paper and pencils
I use archival quality paper because I have a lot on hand, and I like the way it stands up to all the abuse of poking it with needles, folding, stuffing it in my bead case, etc., when I bead, but any printer paper will work. I like to draw with high quality colored pencils like Prismacolor because they have more pigment and less wax than other brands, making it easier to draw--but that's just my preference--use what you have on hand.

Here are the colors I choose for the star, a drawing pencil, and an eraser on top of the paper.

I start by drawing an oval roughly the size of the ornament, then sketching out a star. I wanted my star to be a bit alive--like it has arms and legs and a head, and it is jumping around for joy.

I erased some lines and went over them again until I had a general shape that pleased me.

Then I darkened the lines with the pencil to create a nice outline.

With yellow, I started filling in the star using consistent hash lines and varying the strength of the mark (lighter near the center, darker near the outline).

I changed to a darker yellow and started working on the colors outside of the star.

I started layering orange and red.

Each time I changed colors, I overlap them--that creates layers of colors, adding depth and mixing the colors so that there are many more colors in the piece than the colors I originally chose for the ornament.

I worked on the center a little more--leaving an area in the center that is white.

By concentrating the intensity of value on the outline, I'm creating a sense of depth and form that will be important in the beaded piece. In addition to creating a contrast between light and dark, I'm also gradating from yellow to red using all the analogous colors (colors that are in the same hue family) in between.

Now my cartoon is ready to cut out and stitch to cloth for beading.

When you use colored pencils to draw the image, the color will transfer to your thread as you bead. It hasn't caused me any problems even when using transparent beads.

I'd love to see your stars--send me a jpeg at amyclarkemoore AT frii DOT com and let me know if it is okay to post it on my blog.

Beading in West Palm Beach Florida

2007-11-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

I started this post right after returning from Florida--but it sat on blogger unfinished for a while--so now the snow is melted (mostly--welcome to Colorado!) and weeks have passed since we were in Florida enjoying sunshine, ocean breezes, and beading at a really fantastic shop--Beads Gone Wild and the Crystal Creations Bead Institute!
If you're ever in West Palm Beach, Florida, you need to find this bead shop--they have everything, plus a great classroom space. Glenda, the owner, works really hard to bring in bead instructors from all over to teach at her institute. What a great group of students, too! We had fun sitting around a big oak table and beading and talking and sharing cake. It was so wonderful to have a few days devoted to beading and teaching.

In the evenings, Kelly, Hannah and I would do a bit of exploring. We found the beach right away. Hannah hasn't stopped talking about the waves. She didn't want to get in them--but she sure liked watching them. We made sand castles and watched the sea birds and crabs. It was a bit chilly for sea bathing, but we got our feet wet.

Here's a video of Hannah trying to catch a lizard.

And here's Hannah the day after we got home--bundled up for winter and helping me cut boughs from our trees for our Christmas decorations.

Spirals

2007-11-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

When Knitting Daily editor Sandi Wiseheart asked me to make a guest appearance on her blog on November 12th, I cheerfully agreed. Little did I know what I was getting myself into . . . I mean really, I participate in online chat groups, recently joined Ravelry.com (I'm sixswansflying), and I write an editor's letter in Spin-Off magazine four times a year. And many readers respond—okay, in reality, it is a very small fraction of the Spin-Off readership who respond to my editor’s page letters, but after each issue goes out I can expect a smattering of emails and snail mail letters—some with constructive criticism, some with stories to share sparked by something I said, some with ideas for future articles. I love it all.

So, back to the Knitting Daily post. It came out on November 12th, the week we were going to press. I wrote about a cardigan I’ve been knitting for my Dad since 1996 out of a lovely brown millspun yarn that he selected (but quite frankly, puts me to sleep). That’s more than a decade ago—I started it six months before I started working at Interweave Press—a lot has happened in the intervening years. I got quite a bit done that first holiday season that I started working on it, but soon lost momentum; that momentum would gather again each holiday season until his birthday in February. Pretty soon, a pattern emerged—I’d pull it out as the temperatures dropped, and tuck it away again once the crocuses appeared. Each year I made a little progress, each year I was determined that this would be the year I finished it. After a while, it occurred to me that had I spun the yarn for the sweater, I would have finished knitting it years ago. I even confessed my spinning snobbery to the massive group of knitters who read Knitting Daily daily. I was a little bit afraid to confess this. But this confession went over pretty smoothly.

What I didn’t expect was the instantaneous responses—comments came pouring in (Oh—Sandi did warn me, but did I believe her? Her posts might generate hundreds of responses, but she’s lovely, adorable Sandi--but I certainly didn’t think mine would.) So far I’ve received hundreds of notes from knitters (and spinners) with stories of their own about UFOs and WIPs, their spinning, their sheep, and punctuated through out—encouraging, urging letters (some gently and some not so gently) to finish my sweater for my Dad.

Before. He. Dies.

Having just lost my very dear Grandmother rather suddenly and unexpectedly, these admonitions from people I don’t know are hitting a very raw, tender spot. I forwarded the post to my Dad with the promise that this year is the year that I will finish the sweater. His response? Totally in line with the wonderful man who is my father—how could I have been guilt-ridden? He knows me. He understands me. He confessed, that as a word-man (he’s a professor of language, literacy, and culture), the story I wrote about the sweater probably means more to him than the sweater itself. Well, of course I believe him—but also, I think he’s being very generous with me. I think he’s demonstrating one of his most admirable qualities (and he has so many), he loves his children for who they are. As one of the knitters said—that sweater is a promise to my Dad—and by not finishing it, I’m not keeping it the promise. Well, that made me sit up straight and listen. But I think it was more the encouraging stories of projects that took years, but were eventually finished that really helped me see that finishing the sweater will be a wonderful and good thing.

But all this thought about process reiterated what I’ve known for a long time . . . that I am not a linear thinker. Sure, I knew I was creative (I was an art major, afterall), but this experience helped me see my creative process in a new light. I work on things a little at a time. I work in a continuously growing spiral. If all my projects were lined up in a room, I would work a few minutes on each one until they were all completed. And I do complete things. To the more linear thinkers (my wonderful husband for instance)—this way of working may not make sense—but it works for me. Some projects have deadlines and require more attention than others, but basically, this is the way I handle my life. I get up in the morning, on my way downstairs, I take a load of laundry to landing, while in the kitchen, I clean up the dishes while I wait for my morning tea to heat up, I add the dishtowels to the laundry on the landing, I need some thing from the pantry in the basement, so I take the laundry downstairs, start a load of laundry, pick up the item from the pantry, take it up stairs along with the clean load of laundry that was in the dryer. Back in the bedroom, I start folding the laundry. I do a little bit at a time and it all gets done. Part of this is because of my attention span—sometimes I walk into a room and I’ve forgotten why I’m there (I’ve always been like this—I can’t blame it on age)—but I start working on something else. Eventually, I make it around to the thing that I forgot about. This organic way of working is reiterated in my creative life and in my work life.

My creative life is dominated by spinning and beads—both resonate with the spiral. I bead photographs with a spiral that starts in the center and works out, I spin yarn—the ultimate spiral. It is a spiral that is connected to the most basic elements of life, the spiraling pattern of DNA, the gentle growth pattern of a fern, the curve of a snail’s shell. This spiral begins in the center, and grows slowly out and around, reaching out and touching things on all sides as it moves in a pattern that grows outward, and yet repeats itself, each time in a different iteration, each time the same and yet different. And then it is complete and a new spiral begins. And sometimes these spiraling lines overlap, connect and grow. The twist, the spiral is always in the yarn, sometimes asleep, but always ready for life.

A bit of weaving

2007-10-29T08:24:00.001-07:00

I did a bit of weaving this weekend--color samples for Liz's book. They'll end up being coasters after all is said and done.
I love the rigid heddle loom. I think this was Liz's plan in asking me to help out. She's such a rigid-heddle-loom pusher! I wove off the end of one warp with a bit of my handspun and made a little doll blanket for Hannah to use.
Hannah and I wove together a bit, too. I guess that's part of my plan!

So--I have completed 1 of the 26 warps I need to weave...and my deadline was November....I'll need to find out if that is the beginning of November or the end.
And there is the class that I'm teaching in Florida the weekend before Thanksgiving--that means bead kits to make. And the beading daily project I promised Michelle. And the portrait of Lady Godiva that I'm beading. And then the magazine goes to press November 14th. Hmmm. No wonder I'm having crazy dreams at night about moving to Nova Scotia and walking sheep for a living (yep on leashes!).

I did a bit of spinning to relax after I figured out how many things I promised to complete in November. That helped a lot.

And I received a batt in the mail from a friend! I'm going to admire it for a little bit before I spin it up.

Missing Grandma Helen

2007-10-10T05:29:00.001-07:00

Helen Katherine Bomer Clarke
Born December 15, 1912
Died October 6, 2007

Nearly 95 years old--what a good long life--I was lucky to have spent so much of my life in hers and yet it is hard to give her up.

This is the last photo I took of her--at the end of September.

My sister keeps saying, "Everyone will think we're crazy, but this was a real shock for us."

And it is true--Grandma had such a tenacity for life. Though she'd often say things like, "I sure hope I don't see another birthday!" when we'd say something about the party we were planning or "I think he forgot me, too" when a 95-year-old friend stated that God had forgotten her, her actions spoke louder than her words. She pulled through traumas that literally would have killed people half her age. And we noticed that she stopped talking about her desire to move on after her great-grandchildren arrived--boy, did she love them. She loved us all--but she really lit up when her great-grandchildren came to visit her.

We have weekly dinners on Monday nights--Monday night dinners (we're going to continue the tradition). When I lived up in Fort Collins and then Loveland, I used to come down on the weekends and stay with her. We'd go on morning walks around City Park. She had to cut back on her walking as she got older (when she got into her 90s)--she'd walk around the block, or go to the church and walk around the sanctuary so she could sit on the pews when she needed a rest.

She was fiercely independent and really never thought of herself as a little old lady, though she was the littlest and the oldest any of us knew. Once, walking up to church with my dad a few years ago, she saw that the sidewalk was crumbling in a spot and remarked to my dad, "Someone should fix that before some little old lady trips over it."

I only ever remember her with gray hair and hands knarled by time. She was 34 when she had my dad--two years after her husband Jack returned from WWII--and 36 when she had my Uncle Andy. She aged dramatically after Jack died when he was 49 in 1963. You can see it in the photos. My dad was 16, Andy was 14.

She wanted to do things on her terms, and she did. Even though some would have considered her a pioneer in women's rights in many ways, she would have loathed the association. She was scorned for wearing pants in the southern United States when she went to visit her husband when he was on leave from the war and was thrown out of a hotel for bringing him a bottle of scotch.

She graduated from Western State College in Gunnison with a degree in physical education in the 1930s.

She earned a scholarship that covered her tuition, and got a job that covered her room and board by working at the
Mary Lawrence Boarding House (now a bed and breakfast in Gunnison, Colorado). She wrote in her memories that, "What more could she need than that . . . NAIVE!" Her sister Thelly went to Western State at the same time, but only had a job that covered meals during the week, so on the weekends she didn't have meals--and Grandma would sneak into the kitchen at the Boarding House and make sandwiches to give to Thelly so she wouldn't starve on the weekends. Grandma also used to sneak out to meet with Jack.

This photo is taken in Pueblo, Colorado when Grandma was a little girl (on the left), with her Grandma Layton (who everyone says was rather harsh), and her sister Thelly. Grandma really liked the dog. This is on Grandma Layton's homestead where the family lived after they moved to Colorado from Missouri when Grandma was 5 years old. Her father, John Bomer, worked in the steel mills.

Grandma graduated from high school in 1929, when she was 17.

Helen and Jack were married in 1936 in Grand Junction.
Her house was always full of people--family and friends--and later when my dad and his brother were older, their friends. In fact, their friends often found refuge at Grandma's house--she was very welcoming.

Grandma and her friend Janie Seraphine are reflected in a mirror Jack and Marsh are carrying.

This photo was taken in 1943 before Jack went off to war.

Here she is in Mexico in 1945. The story is that Jack returned from playing Craps with $1,700, so they took the month off from running the Clarke Agency and went off to Mexico and traveled around until they ran out of money.

Here's Grandma with Uncle Andy--all the photos from 1949 have a smudge on them--I think there was something on the lens.

Jack, Mark, Helen and Andy in 1962.

This is my dad and grandma and their wiener dog--I think this photo was taken after Jack died.

I'm in this photo--it is of my mom (and me) and my dad at his college graduation from CU Boulder, 1969.

Grandma visited us in Egypt when my parents moved there to study at the American University in Cairo.

Grandma and Andy visiting us in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1975.

Grandma and me in 1989 at her 50th high school reunion.

Grandma Helen and Hannah in March 2007 in her kitchen, Monday Night Dinner.

I miss kissing her on the cheek and forehead. I miss the way she would gesture with her hands--throwing them up in the air and grinning when something delighted her, shaking a bony finger in your face if she disagreed or wanted to make a point. I miss her expressions--"Hot Dog!" (said to me and Kelly when we got engaged), "Gad about" (said to my sister who has lots of friends), "Are you going back to the dump?" (said to my brother after she saw his studio apartment for the first time)--he still laughs about it.
I miss how when I'd leave, she say, "Be a good girl" and how she'd laugh when I said, "You, too!".

Drawing your own heart

2007-09-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

Bernadina wrote me and asked me to give her some direction about drawing hearts to bead--I thought photos would work best--though maybe a video would be even better.

I'll work on that.

In the meantime, here are some photos of how I draw my hearts (for beaded pins). This process can be applied (of course) to anything you want to draw--doesn't have to be hearts. I just have a thing for hearts--I imagine it has something to do with my mom's birthday being on Valentine's day.
Paper: I draw on my thesis bond paper left over from my grad school days at CSU. It has a nice weight, a good tooth, and is archival. It also stands up to beading really well--I've sampled other archival papers and while they have the other qualities, they tend to crack along folds. You can still use them to bead or even just typing paper (it may not last for your great-great- grandchildren to enjoy is all).

Pencils: I like to use quality colored pencils--these are Prismacolor. They are available at most art supply stores and craft stores. They make a nice mark even when you don't apply a lot of pressure. I keep a pencil sharpener handy for a nice point.

The first heart--lop-sided for a little bit of asymmetrical visual interest--drawn with a darker value pencil. It's not perfect--but it will do--I know that it will evolve as I draw.

Then I go over the outline and refine and enhance it.

Change colors and begin the zig-zag line around the heart. I love making this kind of hatching line. I could fill pages just doing this. I love going to restaurants where they provide crayons and a paper-covered table.

I always have a little trouble keeping my lines even when I'm going around the left side of the heart. Oh well--that's just the way it is.

Now I just start layering colors.

See how undulating hearts are created by the layers of colors--just scribbles around the heart shape.

I keep darker values on the outside edges and lighter values on the inside to create a glow.

Every once in a while I emphasize the outline of the heart.

Notice that I'm starting to really overlap colors--that will really make the beading fun as the colors blend together creating new colors.

Here I added the complement to red, green for a little bit of visual interest.

I worked on the outline a bit--fixing the left side of the heart and emphasizing the outline. Now that I'm happy with my heart, I'll cut it out and stitch it to cloth--and it is ready to bead. The colored pencils will transfer to the thread as you're beading, but it doesn't show through the beads. If you don't like that, you can seal the drawing with a fixative or scan it in and print it on your printer. Just know that inkjet inks will run when they get wet--so don't cry too much over your inkjet-printed hearts.

Done!

2007-09-10T04:26:00.000-07:00

Friday September 7, 2007

I took Friday off of work and beaded all morning (except for the time between 9:15-10:30 when I got Hannah ready and took her to my parent's house for her day with Grandma Pat).

1:08 pm

2:47 pm

4:08 pm

4:38 pm--it's time to go pick up Hannah.

10:34 pm--Hannah and I had dinner with my mom and then Hannah fell asleep on the way home, around 7 pm--about an hour and half earlier than she usually does--though sad to miss our bedtime rituals--it was good to have more time to bead.

Saturday, September 8, 2007
7:50 am

8:29 am

11:13 am

12:51 pm--I took Hannah to the park and beaded for a while as she played in the sand. She took her nap when we got home and I was able to finish beading and frame the piece.

3:51 pm--beading is done!

Now it is time to frame

Stretching the silk noil on the interior frame using a staple gun.

Folding the fabric under at the corners and stapling.

Stitching the beaded piece to the silk noil stretched on the frame.

Very carefully cutting a hole in the fabric that is stretched on the interior frame, but not cutting the fabric of the piece stitched to the top of it.

Stuffing the piece with 100% New Zealand Merino wool to give it a 3-d effect.

All done--framed, now ready to pack for shipping.

Sunday Hannah and I went to Golden to walk along the river and play at the great playground by the river. Kelly's brother Kevin made it to the 4th round in Super Gas (out of 7 rounds of elimination) in the race in Earlville and moved up in their points for their ranking in the division.

Staying home to bead

2007-09-06T06:17:00.001-07:00

Well, here it is Thursday and I still have quite a bit of beading to do on Atropos. I've reached one corner--which is good--but will probably spend tonight finishing the second corner (a good 3-4 hours of beading) and then tomorrow I've taken off of work (originally to go to Iowa, now to finish beading the piece) and I'll finish up the last two corners, frame the piece, photograph it, and ship it with the other pieces to the exhibit.
Kelly, my wonderful and talented husband, made the inside frame for the piece last night (see the picture below). I'll stretch silk noil on the inside frame (as you would a canvas to paint, using staples and stretching the fabric tightly around the wood frame) and then trim the silk noil on the beaded piece, turn the edges under, center it on the stretched fabric and stitch it to the frame. Then I'll cut a hole in the stretched fabric on the back (taking care not to cut the fabric on the beaded piece) and stuff the back of the beading with Merino wool from New Zealand (only the best for these pieces). Then I'll staple the ready-made black frame that I purchased from Pictureframes.com and finish it with a paper backing, tape my business card to the back, attach a hanging device and it'll be ready to go. Yep, I'm going to be lucky if I get all this done on Friday. Yikes! I think Hannah and I'll do something fun on Saturday--maybe go to the Children's Museum or the pool to celebrate getting all this work done. Or maybe on Sunday, depending on how things go.

Mountain beading

2007-09-04T06:43:00.000-07:00

I've been making progress on Atropos--but I'm getting down to the wire. I've reached one side and nearly reached two more sides--but still have hours and hours of work ahead of me before I am able to frame, photograph and deliver this piece to my alma mater for an exhibit. The plan is to deliver it this weekend while in Iowa for a race. This means, driving all night Thursday with the racers (my husband, his brother, and his dad) in the big diesel truck pulling the 50 ft trailer containing the race car and our living quarters for the weekend. We'll arrive Friday morning--with luck the piece will be done (no chance of beading in the truck--makes me car sick)--and I'll simply take the truck (no trailer) on Friday after the racers are established at the track, back track to Mt. Vernon, Iowa from Earlville and drop off five pieces. Seems like a reasonable plan. Of course--this plan involves driving 13 hours with a toddler and then asking her to get back into the truck and drive some more. We'll see how that goes. I'm hoping that she'll be able to sleep while we're driving through the night. I could always ship them--but it seems so silly to ship them when we'll be driving right by Mt. Vernon on our way to the track. And maybe I'll be able to drop in and see some of my favorite folks while I'm on campus.
I love how portable my beading is (I guess I'd never get any done if it wasn't, though). I was able to work on the piece while watching Hannah play in the pinecones and dirt up in the mountains this weekend at a very quiet and peaceful location.
Hannah and I took a little hike (she fell asleep shortly after this--I guess there is nothing so soothing as being bobbed along on your mom's back). My sister comments that the back pack isn't very flattering--I have to agree--but I guess I never considered it a fashion accessory.

Am I going to make it?

2007-08-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

I have two weeks to finish this piece, get it framed and photographed and delivered to Iowa for this exhibit. What do you think? Any chance I'm going to make it?

This is the last in the series of the Three Fates (and no, I haven't made the middle one yet--waiting, still, for inspiration to strike. The first one is here.). This is "Atropos cut the thread of life." It is a photo of my Grandma Helen's hands--I asked her to pose for the photo at one of our Monday Night Dinners--so it has a lot of the familiar objects from those weekly family dinners in her kitchen--the blue and white checked table cloth, the maroon and cream china with the pastoral scene in the back ground, and Grandma wearing her favorite sweatshirt from Gig Harbor. Grandma Helen is 94 1/2 (She'll be 95 in December). She doesn't like the way her hands look--but I love them.
I've had a number of people ask me about the fabric I bead on--it is black silk noil that I buy from Denver Fabrics. I print my photo on archival paper, then cut it out to the exact shape I want to bead (in this case, a rectangle), and stitch it to the top of my fabric and then follow the photo as a guide. Someone recently commented that it was like paint-by-number, except with beads--and it is true, the cartoon does help in that way--but there are no numbers telling you what color to pick up--that's where the creativity comes in--you look at that color on the paper and decide what combination of beads is going to create the color effect you want when you step away from the piece.

Singing Hannah

2007-08-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

Well, my post was going to be about my new etsy shop, but then I saw a new icon on blogger--I can upload videos!--and I just happened to take this video of Hannah singing, "Ding, dong--the witch is dead!" this morning and all else went by the wayside.

Fobbie fun

2007-08-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

Here's the beaded fobbie I made for my friend Liz Mrofka--inventor of the fobbie as an example of what you could do with beads and a fobbie. A fobbie a clever little card with holes for ribbons that makes wrapping presents a breeze and lots of fun. I had a red one and decided to cover it with green paper--so here is the before and after. Same purple wrapping paper and green ribbon--I just photographed it in different rooms (this was all done on the fly--running out the door photography). I finished beading the poppy months ago, but never made it into a pin--so I finally finished it up this weekend. I forgot to take a photo of the pin by itself, though.

Speaking of running out the door--yesterday I was in such a hurry to make it to a meeting that required dropping Hannah off at day care at precisely 8 am--that I didn't realize that I had dressed, perhaps, a little too quickly.... my friend Ann leaned over, 3 hours into the 4 hour meeting, and said, "Amy--did you know that your blouse is on inside out?"

It kind of defined the day.

Dyeing in the backyard

2007-08-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

A friend from work needed help with a sweater that she wanted to overdye--what a great excuse to pull out the long-languishing dye stuff and dye some fabric. We spent the day (and part of the night) on the back porch figuring out the dyes (yikes it has been over 10 years since I did any serious dyeing!). Hannah took a 3-hour nap at a very convenient time. Thank you Hannah. Kelly watched her while she was awake so I didn't have to worry about boiling water, dyestuff, and toddlers.

While we were waiting for the dyes to set, I taught Erin how to do a bit of bead embroidery and I finished up the beaded pin for Liz the inventor of the fobbie. She wanted an example of what you could do with bead embroidery and her gift wrapping tool. I had a lot of fun with that!

Saturday I helped another friend, Liz, move--she and her husband bought the cutest cottage with a charming backyard and lots of porches perfect for spinning or beading. She set up the greatest weaving room with a view of her future goats. I was so charmed by the house that moving seemed like a breeze--also, she was really organized about the whole thing--so it was pretty easy.

So it was a fun weekend filled with friends and creativity. Yay.

Unicorn hair core

2007-07-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

I probably shouldn't try to edit while my head is so full of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--I was writing out a description of my spindle and had to resist the urge to insert "unicorn hair core".
Spindle: 1/4 ounce square Steve Paulsen spindle, 10 1/2 inches long. Sigh.

Birthday spinning

2007-06-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

I told Hannah last night that today would be my birthday and she sang to me . . . "Happy Birthday to Mom! Happy Birthday to Mom!" This was about as cute and endearing as when she was craddling her foot in her car seat the other day singing, "Happy Birthday to foot!" Also, my lilies waited until today to bloom. Did they know? It has been a great birthday. My dad emailed me and said, I remember this day 28 years ago when you were a squalling, red-faced infant. . . and I had to tell him that it was actually 38 years ago. He was joking, of course. But still it was funny.

I've been spinning all weekend and this week trying to meet a deadline and also spin a balanced yarn. Yep, I must confess it is a challenge for me. But today I skeined it and I think it is actually balanced! Amazing. Friends at work put on a nice party for my birthday with killer brownies (a hint of cinnamon and extra dark chocolate) , ice cream, and a tub of home made coleslaw to die for. Kelly, Hannah and I went out to eat at our favorite Indian food restaurant and Hannah asked the family who owns the place to tell her their names--which was really great because they've told us before, but we didn't quite catch them or remember and we were too embarrassed to ask again. I wrote them down this time.

Frogging

2007-06-21T05:12:00.001-07:00

Well, after a conversation with a friend at work, I began to doubt my sock. First she pointed out that my kitchener stitch was inside out.

And it was true.

I knew that, but I had been politely ignoring it.

But then she noted that the fabric of the sock was better suited to a sweater and a sock should be tighter so that you can't feel the stitches under your foot when you're wearing it.

That had been my secret complaint about the sock when I tried it on, but I had also been politely ignoring that problem as well.

Since most of the socks I've made in my life were nonfunctional (really), these are considerations that hadn't really occured to me before.

Most of the spinning and knitting I've done was done for expression and not functionality. In fact when I finished Sock for my fears, sock for my serenity, I realized that I could make a sweater.

So at any rate, frogging ocurred yesterday.

Today, reknitting begins.

Estes Park Wool Market and a 1/2 FO

2007-06-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to go to a fiber festival as just a shopper instead of being a worker-bee in a booth since we didn't have a booth at Estes this year. Well, it didn't quite live up to my fantasy--but I still had fun. I went with Hannah and Kelly's mom and aunt--they are fiber folks, too, so we do a lot of fibery excursions together. It was a gorgeous drive up highway 93 to Boulder and then through Lyons and up into the mountains on 36. Everything is so green, green, green (for Colorado--let me qualify). We arrived around 10:30 am and the market was very busy--throngs of people. Hannah did a good job of being patient for the sheepies while we poked around booths and made some purchases. Here she is in front of the Yaks--she was fascinated by them. It was so sunny she couldn't open her eyes--but see the sweet smile! I've been going to this show nearly every year since I was a student at Colorado State University in the Fibers department (yep--that's 15 years). Of course, when I was a student I didn't have two cents to rub together--so it was an exercise in frustration. I remember visiting the Interweave Press booth before I was an employee and browsing through the books trying to decide which one to save my money for. Little did I know what fate had in store for me! And even though I've always had strong maternal longings, I didn't ever imagine what it would be like going to the festival with a 2-year-old. We were all exhausted before long--the crowds, the sun, the two-year-old who wanted to rattle the bars of each alpaca enclosure. Actually, I think in normal circumstances, I would have had a lot more stamina, but I'm on the healing end of a resistant bacterial infection (mastitis--yep, a swift kick in the boobie from a 2-year-old who is throwing a fit on her changing table and threatening to fall off can cause internal bleeding and lead to an infection even if you're no longer nursing--who knew!). 5 trips to the doctor, 1 extremely painful ultrasound, 3 antibiotics, and 6 weeks later, I'm finally getting better, but I'm really fatigued. So that's why my fantasy of being just a shopper and the reality of going to the market didn't quite match up. I did find some knitting needles that I needed and bought some Bonkers fiber. I toyed with the idea of getting a fleece, but decided I better work with the ones I have before I buy more.

I finished the sock! Yay. This is the 1/2 FO since I still need to make the second sock. It is a bit big. Also, I've misplaced my notes and will probably have to reverse engineer the second sock. I'll probably find the notes after I've finished the second sock and can then discover all the differences between the two socks. That is, if I ever get to making the second sock. I'm nearly done spinning the yarn for the second sock. I've been working on it in meetings.

Also, I've been working on a beading challenge issued at work by the Beading Daily editor, Michelle Mach. We were each given a little box full of the same beads and asked to make something with it. I'm making a beaded frame for this picture of my maternal grandparents. The deadline is June 29th and I could finish it real soon if I leave it like it is, or I could get a little out of control and cover every square inch with beads--which is what I'm inclined to do, but probably isn't doable.

Last night my dad brought spaghetti sauce and salad dressing for dinner and asked me to examine the label. It took me a while, but I finally saw that my mom's artwork was the feature art on the label! How exciting! Spinelli's is the neighborhood grocery and they are coming out with a line of natural products that will be at Whole Foods soon. The sauces and salad dressing are very yummy! And of course the artwork is beautiful--a watercolor painting my mom did of their store front in 1996.
Here are the bottles (already consummed) sitting on the potting table that Kelly made for me by recycling one of the old kitchen cabinets and putting a new top on it. I love it so much!

I have a lot of iris to plant! They were saved from the dump--a neighbor tore out their weed infested flower beds and replaced them with new landscaping and all these iris were headed to the trash. One of my neighbors let me know about it and then I got permission from the neighbors who were redoing their landscape to harvest the iris.
Now I just need to find time to plant them! (Here's a better view of my potting table--complete with carrot door pulls!)

Compost surprise!

2007-06-07T06:10:00.001-07:00

I was wandering around my garden this morning as the sun was coming up admiring the little seedlings because that is my favorite thing about a garden--watching it grow and change. I noticed that the rose bush by the compost was blooming, so I went over to touch the petals and saw that my compost contained a surprise! I haven't turned it over in a while--though I've been adding yard clippings to it. An iris bulb was sprouting in the compost! It was the most gentle, delicate little iris leaves that I've seen, with roots clinging to a decaying leaf in the compost. What a will to live and grow.
What a perfect way to start the day. I transplanted it to my garden (still in my robe--my hair a rat's nest of tangles).

Happy Birthday Hannah!

2007-06-01T05:15:00.001-07:00

Two years old already!
I can't believe it. It's gone by so quickly.
The first three weeks seemed like an eternity because you were in the hospital, but after that--it has whizzed by. What a lot of fun we're having. And I'm so glad that you haven't learned how to climb on top of the fridge.

I did a little documenting--one photo for each one-month birthday--I saw this on someone's blog and had to make a version for you. This blog also inspired me to make you some doll clothes--I got three diapers made and that was it. Obviously the naptime knitter's baby takes longer naps.

Year one--June 1, 2005-May 1, 2006

Year 2: June 1, 2006-May 1, 2007

Maryland Sheep and Wool, Mother's Day and Cochineal

2007-05-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

May is just zooming by.

May 4-7: We went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival--it was wonderful, of course. Some day I'll go just as a normal fiber person and not have to work in the booth and then I'll get to see everything and even buy some stuff. Kelly and Hannah came along on this trip--it was great to have them there. Hannah does a great impression of a sheep. She really likes the sheepies, as she calls them.

So do I!

We visited my Aunt Debby and Uncle Jerzy who live in Delaware on Sunday night (and Monday morning before our flight). It was great to see them even briefly. My aunt is an amazing quilter and her house is so arty and serene. I love visiting. I visited them when I was 14--and Debby was pregnant with her daughter Gena who is now working on her graduate degree at Harvard. I guess that was a long time ago--it sure goes by quickly.

So when I got back from MDS&W we had a visiting artist from Cuzco, Peru in the office--Jenny

Callañaupa Huarhua. She did a cochineal workshop on a Thursday night after work.

May 9th: Wednesday night I stayed up until 11 pm spinning--this is really late for me. I'm often up at 4 or 5 and I really function better on a full night sleep--though I don't often get it.

May 11th: I didn't finish spinning my yarn that I wanted to dye at the Cochineal workshop. So I took my wheel to work and worked on it during meetings and then Andean plied it.

Well. Maybe that wasn't such a great decision. Let me tell you a bit about this yarn. It is the Shetland fleece that I received as a gift last spring from Carol Rhoades--I had washed locks in the sink and hand carded them and filled about half a bobbin before other things intervened and it sat on my bobbin for a year. Yikes. I had also taken a small portion of this fleece to try out the instructions in Spin to Knit for washing a fleece in the washing machine. I have to admit that I didn't think it would work. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be--though it isn't my prefered way to wash a fleece--it does have advantages for speed. I carded that fiber on the Patrick Green carder that I received for Christmas from Kelly. A wonderful gift. I had that batt just waiting to be spun up--so that's what I spun on Wednesday night. It was not as clean as the fiber I had scoured lock by lock in the sink. I spun the two batches of fiber on the same bobbin--that's why I chose to Andean ply them....can you see the slippery slope of bad decisions? So I wound off my Andean plied yarn onto my niddy noddy and was dismayed that it looked so bad. Well, Maggie Casey was in the basement at work shooting photos for her upcoming book (it's going to be great!). I went back and forth--do I take my terrible yarn downstairs? Will she laugh at me? Will she look at me in disbelief? There is an expectation that the editor of Spin-Off is an excellent spinner even though the reality is that the editor doesn't get as much time as she'd like to actually spin...do I shatter that image?

I read my horoscope. It was very helpful--the gist was to be brave, face fears. So I took my pathetic skein to the basement and confessed my sins to Maggie. Not only was she totally wonderful, gracious, and kind--all the things that Maggie alway is! But she was also delighted. I had arrived at just the right moment--she was about to spin a yarn just like mine to demonstrate how to repair a mistake and instead she was able to use my sad yarn to demonstrate that all is not lost.

So Ann Swanson photographed my yarn and Maggie diagnosed it as needing more twist in the ply. I found a swift and a ballwinder in the Knits office and wound my yarn into a ball, then fetched my wheel from the fourth floor (no elevator=good excercise) and added more twist to my yarn (a little too much, ah well). And then Ann shot the after shot and I was set. Profoundly thankful, I rushed off to the Cochineal workshop to dye my yarn.

Jenny speaks English really well--she's working on a project for the Centro de Textiles Traditionales del Cusco and is in the U.S. gathering information for a series of books the center wants to publish to preserve the traditional textiles of the Andes. She spent a week in Loveland learning about book publishing.

I brought fiber to dye as well. We stood around on Linda Ligon's amazing back porch watching pelicans (yep, pelicans) fly by against a backdrop of Colorado mountains and learned about Cochineal and how it is used in the Andes to dye yarns.
We also drank beers and ate peanuts.

I took my yarn and fiber home and rinsed it over the next couple of days (it needed a lot of rinsing). The fiber was a Merino top that I had purchased at the Recycled Lamb. It is pretty felted--not completely, but pretty darn close. The process used for dyeing with cochineal was better suited to yarn than fiber. I was able to card the fiber and spin it, but the fiber is getting torn up in the process--so it is a lot shorter fiber lengths. I may do something else with it.

The yarn turned out beautifully for all the trauma it went through.

And in the morning, I'm making waffles!

We had a mother's day celebration on May 13th. We made waffles, eggs, and bacon in the morning for my family who came over for brunch and then in the evening, Kelly's family came over for dinner and we had kabobs. The celebration included a trip to a local nursery for flowers--Hannah found some that had fallen from plants to play with.

Stephanie came to Denver!

2007-04-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Hannah is better and was better by Thursday, April 5th. I managed to get some work done the day that Stephanie came to town. Amazing, I know. But it has more to do with the relentless nature of deadlines than anything else. I did head back to Denver from Loveland at about 3 pm ( I was planning on participating in a conference call on the way down, but I couldn't connect to the conference call). I arrived at the Lodo Tattered Cover 4 pm, found a spot to park in the Union Station parking lot, bought an extra copy of the book (to send to a friend) and found the line upstairs. The Tattered Cover is the best book store. I've loved it ever since I was little--so just being in the store was enough to make me happy--but to find it filled with people I know and like--it was wonderful!

I was about 20th in line and had a great time talking to people in line. Right next to me in line was Cheryl from Colorado Springs who took my class in Convergence and is a friend of Amanda's from the Pikes Peak guild. I had a great time talking to Cindy Lair of Schacht and Connie Kephart--some how giant and poisonous insects became the topic that had us rolling on the ground.

I met a very enthusiastic young spinner who loves her fiber--Katie Russell.

Deb Robson was spinning, too!

I caught up with Kristi who was there with others from the Fort Collins knitting group. Her socks (on the cover of the Spring 07 Spin-Off) were also present. I got to spin! I had started some of the rolags from Designs by Diane at the photo shoot a couple weeks ago and I was dying to get back to it. All my free time has been consumed with getting ready for Bead Expo.

Eunny Jang and Katie Himmelberg were also there from Interweave. Since Eunny works from her home in Maryland, this was a chance for me to get to know her better. Though I felt kind of bad afterwards--I should have warned her how loudly I laugh before she sat next to me during Stephanie's talk. She was very gracious though and said that my laughter was infectious! My sister won't believe it. My family knows to sit far away from me in movies (not just the funny ones, either).

Sylvia from Posh and the Denver Stitchn'bitch had a great sign and was collecting hats for charity. I meant to make one and haven't done it yet. I'm bad. I also talked to Kat who I had met at a Red Scarf event last year--we figured out where we knew each other from. I wish we could do this every month--just hang out in the stacks at the Tattered Cover knitting and spinning and catching up.

All this happened even before Stephanie showed up. And then there was Stephanie! She totally deserved the standing ovation and feet stomping. Not just because she's so funny, not just because she captures the essence of knitters (and beyond), not just because she brings us together and helps us laugh at our quirkiness and how we must look from the outside--but because she's able to address serious things at the same time--important things. Such as women's business endeavours not being taken seriously with examples of the financial and career impact these attitudes have. She also addressed the ability of knitters to pool their resources to make a difference in the world--through their knitting (hats for charity, for example) and through their monetary donations--she has raised more than $300,000 for Doctors without Borders through Knitters without Borders.
We're so lucky that she uses her power to motivate and inspire for good. And gosh, I really don't know how she keeps the schedule she has. She arrived in Denver at 9 am--so that means she left Minneapolis at some very early hour. She had interviews all day, then the gig at the Tattered Cover where she was signing books until after 10 pm--and then a bunch of us took her out to eat afterwards--and didn't get her back to her hotel until after 1 am. I was shocked it was so late--I'm normally in bed by 9:30 or 10--especially now that Hannah is on the scene because you never know when you'll be up with the baby during the night. And morning comes early in our house. And I like sleep. I really do. To sleep perchance to dream. Say--I had a Stephanie dream last night--I dreamed that she was floating in the clouds and pretending to spin and simultaneously knit a gorgeous Orenburg shawl--but she wasn't really spinning--she had wound the shawl into a skein and was unchaining it to make it look like she was spinning it (don't ask how--it was a dream!)--and then when she was done it billowed into a huge parachute and she was floating over the city of Toronto (it was night time--so all was dark, except for city lights and the hint of the sun coming up) giving us (we were watching her on video) a tour of the city from the sky. We landed on the top floor of the Art Institute and she was showing us around.

I spun three rolags from Designs by Diane that I bought at SOAR during the whole event--and over the weekend plied them into a skein. It is some of the most gorgeous yarn I've ever made--can I say that? I want to make socks--I've started them.

Haircut

2007-04-05T04:56:00.000-07:00

Around Christmas, my mom urged me to cut Hannah's bangs. But I was insistent that I didn't want to because I wanted it to grow out so that we could tuck it behind her ears, and I was afraid of going near her face with scissors. Here is a before shot just a couple weeks before. While her hair is getting longer and could be tucked behind her ears, it doesn't stay. But the reason why I finallyI gave Hannah a haircut was because she woke up Sunday morning and was whining and pushing her hair out of her eyes, and then said exasperatedly, "Hair!". It seemed like it was time.
The haircut itself was very quick--I sat her on her little stool on the counter in the bathroom and gave her two toothbrushes (both hers) to play with--one for each hand. Then before she noticed I snipped, snipped and it was done. She said "iee bee!" when she saw little bits of hair falling around her (that means "spider!"). Kelly got it on video--but we didn't get any still shots of the process. The hardest part was getting it straight when she was moving around so much--but her hair is so straight, that it made it easier.

So here is the after shot. She also chose her clothes for the day. She saw this dress that Grandma Jane made for Bri and insisted on wearing it. It will probably actually fit her when she's four. She also wanted to wear the red rain boots that were my sister's when she was a baby. Those are 35+ year-old boots!

We're getting over a virus--well, Hannah is. I think she got it from Will--though it seems like a long incubation period. Will got sick on Tuesday last week and was throwing up for a week. It was scary. Until Tuesday night, I was thinking that we had dodged the bullet since Hannah didn't get sick right away. I took Hannah to the doctor yesterday as soon as I could get her in--she threw up at midnight but then went back to sleep. They said to take her off all dairy until she's recovered. In the morning she had diarrhea, but no fever. She seems to be better already. I'm hoping today it is all gone. No vomiting last night.

Provided that Hannah is better, I'm going to the Stephanie Pearl McPhee booksigning and talk tonight at the Lodo Tattered Cover! I hope that I can get there early enough to get tickets--they only have room for 200 people. I'm packing my knitting and spinning--maybe I'll actually have time to do some while I'm waiting in line! Oh joy!

Dreams about wrapping paper

2007-03-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

I have pretty vivid dreams every night. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they aren't. I'm reading Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing--a very fairytale-esque tale with tidbits of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, the Princess and the Frog, and Dracula--it offers a lot of material for dreams (so many gossamer dresses!)--and yet last night I had an anxiety dream about wrapping a birthday present for my niece (oh! I'm seeing a connection here--I gave Briahnna a copy of this book for her birthday!). The dream took place in a small gift shop with shelves and shelves of wrapping paper, beautiful, exotic wrapping paper and I couldn't find anything that would work. I'd reach for something thinking it was it, and then it would be different when I actually had it in my hand or it would be the wrong size. I was on the brink of tears, feeling like I wouldn't get it wrapped in time--I could hear the kids coming. And then it wasn't a shop anymore, but my sister-in-law's house (though it looked the same) and I was telling her that I'd replace whatever I used and feeling anxious about that.

Uh oh!

2007-03-16T06:15:00.000-07:00

There was a little bit of an accident yesterday and a certain 21-month-old asked for "beads!" and an unsuspecting grandfather thought that the case was one of Hannah's toys and let her have it. Of course, as soon as she opened it (she is clever!) Granddad knew it was Mama's toy, not Hannah's. So I have a little bit of bead-clean up to do.
The bead soup that my students use in classes just got a little bigger.
I'm still working on Anne's pin. I found a bit of the silk to cover my messy stitches on the back--so I'm stitching that on. I just need to add the pin back. I lost a beading needle for a little bit in the play area--but was so relieved when I found it again. I don't want Hannah to have any negative associations with beads (or any crafts for that matter!).

Spring has sprung

2007-03-14T05:16:00.000-07:00

After all the snow we got in December, I wasn't sure we'd see spring until June or July--but now the sun is out and tulips are bravely pushing through to greet the sun. I'm enjoying it as much as I can--since I know that (and all Coloradoans know this) we're totally going to get dumped on again--and most likely after all the buds and leaves are out. Springs tend to be in like a lamb and out like lion here. I'm resisting the urge to work in the garden because I know that those little shoots will need that compost protection for a little longer--or maybe until June. Seriously, we've had snow in June before.
Are you wondering what this next photo is? I'm making Anne's spindle pin into a pin. I couldn't resist adding a little colorful fiber from the mittens I've been making into it secretly (I guess it isn't so secret now that I've blogged about it! Oh well! It was feeling pretty secret last night). I usually add wool to my bead pieces to poof them out a little--I have a lot of wool on hand. Imagine that. The next photo is the piece nearly done--I need to add a piece of fabric to the back to cover up my messy stitches and then a pin back and I can ship it off to Anne who had the winning bid on an undesigned piece of her choice at SOAR 2006.

I'm doing some teaching this spring--maybe you're interested. I'm teaching "Make a Heart Pin" next week (Friday March 23rd) in Fort Collins, Colorado for the Fort Collins Chapter of the Embroiderer's Guild of America--contact me for details--they have a couple openings. Also, I'm teaching at Bead Expo in Oakland, California--and there are a couple spots left in the Spiral Heart Pin class--it is the same class as the one I'm teaching in Fort Collins.

Something happened to my photos in this post--so I reloaded them. And while I was doing that I added in this photo of blissed-out Lulu the cat enjoying the spring weather. You wouldn't know that she's about 14 years old by the way she runs around. Hannah says, "Lulu loud!" And it is so true. Lulu loves to talk, loudly--especially when the baby is sleeping.

Anne's Spindle Pin

2007-03-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

I finished Anne's spindle pin--and just have to make it into a pin to send to her. Here's the photo I started with--my Adam Mielke spindle in a pile of baby alpaca. It was a challenge to convey the soft clouds of fiber with glass beads--but fun to spend time with both spinning and beading on this project. I estimated that it would take 9.65 hours to make this piece and it ended up taking a little longer--11 hours and 5 minutes. I worked on it from January 14-February 11th. I have another small piece I need to do before I start on the next bigger piece--a continuation of the spinning fates. I'm in a bit of a pickle and I need to figure out how to manage the next few months. I need to make a number of new pieces for an exhibit at my alma mater in October--but aside from the time I spend sleeping (and I do love sleeping! I'd hate to give that up) I don't know when I'm going to make them. The day job is important--not only to help provide food and shelter for my family, but also because I love it. And beading while Hannah is awake is just not possible. So I go back to the sleep thing again. Well, I'll figure this out--but if any of you have ideas, please let me know!

Felt!

2007-03-02T06:25:00.000-07:00

I've been having fun with unspun roving lately! I've been working with Northern Lights space-dyed top from Louet. It is an unspecified wool that is 28 microns and is drafted into a narrow top and then stamped with color. When you predraft it for spinning or knitting the colors blend really nicely and look like they were handpainted. It is really easy to work with as unspun roving. I've been making samples to full. It turns out that I love making samples. I made eight swatches--four different needle sizes, two color ways, two samples for each needle size so that I could full one and keep one as the before sample.
So here you can see the two color ways worked up from left to right: US size 3, US size 6, US size 8 and US size 10 needles, with 2" ribbing, 2" stockinette, 2" garter, and 2" moss. The top samples are the fulled version. For the US size 3 version I split the top in half lengthwise before I pre-drafted the fiber.
And here are the mittens I knitted following the pattern in Ann Budd's "The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns" (and that it is!) for the next to smallest size. I haven't fulled them yet. I'm working on a pair in the lollipops colorway right now on US size 10 needles. It fits me! Same pattern, just bigger needles.

Words glorious words

2007-02-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

We have a lot of words. I collected them this weekend. Here they are:

again, Amos (Carol's cat), Amy (Ah-me), Andy, apple, baa (sheep), baby, ball, banana, bat, bath (bash), bathroom, bead, beep (microwave), belly, Ben, bib, birdie, bite, bless you, boobies, boot, bottle, boy, Brendon, Briahnna (Nanna), brush, bubbles, bus, buttons, ,bye-bye, cake, chai, choo choo (train or truck), clock (cluck cluck with her tongue), coat, cold, come on, cookie (tootie), cry, cute, daddy, dance, dirty, doggie, dolly, done, down, duck, ear, eat, eggs, Elmo, eye, fishie, foot, froggie, gentle, glasses, go,hair, hand, Hannah, happy (means birthday or cake), hat, head, heart, hee haw (donkey), Helen, hello (means phone), hi!, ho ho (santa), home, hoo hoo (owl), hop (grasshopper), hot, house, ice, itty bitty (means spider--ee bee), juice, Julia, kiss, kitty (also means to draw), knee, knitting, lady, lid, light, lion, loud,Lulu, mail, mama, man (means snowman and gingerbread man as well), medecine, mess, mine, mitten (mitt), mommie (means "I want it!"), money, moo-moo (cow), moon, more (mo), mouse, mouth, naughty, needle, neigh (horse), Nemo (emo), night night (nigh nigh--means sleep and blankets), no!, noise, nose, off, oh (cherrios), on, oops!, open, Oscar, out,owie, Pat, pee, people, piano, piece, pizza, plane, plate, play, please (pease), pocket, poopie, potty, pretty, puppy, purse, push, read, robe, rock, run, Shelly, shoe, shoes, sit, snow, spoon, stuck, Suzie, swing (means slide and park), tail, tea, teeth, that, three, tickle tickle, toast, toe, toes, too, towel, toys, trash, turtle, two, tylenol (ta-nol), uh oh, up (and uppie), walk, water, whale, what's that, what's this, wow, yay!, yeah, yes, zantac.

We can preorder the Harry Potter book 7!

2007-02-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

I seem to be blessed with good books lately! First I stumble across Juliet Marillier's books--and find that not only has she written one very long series of great books, but she has several books already published and she's working on more! Then I get news that I can pre-order Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--though I have to wait until July 21st to read it. Life is good. Hannah and I read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince the summer she was born. It arrived the day after she was due (but she was already 6 weeks old at that point!).
Also, I found this delightful blog and it contains pages of a beautiful baby dancing around with the most amazing hand-made toys. So last night after work, I hauled my sewing machine out of the basement. We're making toys today!
I've made some progress on Anne's pin--but obviously didn't get it done in a week as I had hoped! Oh well--that's the way it goes. Hannah caught a cold (she's better now), work is super busy (Spin-Off goes to press on Valentine's Day--how romantic!), and it keeps snowing all the time--making my commuting hours longer. It is beautiful, though, the winter landscape.
I better go--Hannah's unloading my framing drawer in my office, bringing me one frame at a time.

I wrote to Juliet Marillier and she wrote back!

2007-01-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

I mentioned earlier that I've been reading the books of Juliet Marillier and loving them. All of them. I still have a few left, I've been trying to savor them (the stack on the left contains the books I've read, the stack on the right the ones left to read--plus an extra one for my niece's 12th birthday). Juliet has written tomes in a short amount of time--they are published in Australia first, then the UK, and then the US. Then they are translated into different languages. I've read some fantasy--but most doesn't draw me in, except maybe Mists of Avalon. I think what I like about Juliet's books is that they are based simultaneously on history and fairytales. Some are more obvious fairytales than others, some are more concrete history than others, and then there is always a bit of magic mixed in. What I like about fairytales goes deeper than the happy ending, neatly resolved tale where evil gets its due and good persists. It is the journey of self-discovery, the battle of good/evil within, the magic of believing. Bruno Bettleheim says it so much better than I'll ever be able to.
Juliet ranks right up there with Jane Austen, JK Rowling, and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee in my book of authors who keep me coming back for more, spark my imagination, or make me laugh.
So I wrote to Juliet because I found her website and noticed the fan art part. I sent her The Six Swans to post--and she did! And she wrote back--a very personable, friendly note. She mentioned that she used to do counted-cross stitch--I just knew she had to have a textiles connection--with the way she writes about textiles.

Opening reception for Colorado's Small Stitches: Beads and Thread

2007-01-22T06:14:00.000-07:00

Friday night was the opening reception for Colorado's Small Stitches at the Tointon Gallery in Greeley, Colorado. I curated the exhibit--so it was really amazing to see it all come together. Here's a photo with almost all the artists who are in the exhibit. From left to right: Rob Watt, Dustin Wedekind, Connie Lehman, Stephen Beal, Lynn Jablonski, Amy Clarke Moore, Kevin Kissell, Jane Mathews, Carol Shinn, Carol Kruger, Sara Rockinger, Jill Powers, and Fran Meneley. Not pictured: Christine Ambrose, Melinda Barta, Ilze Aviks, Tom Lundberg, and Melissa Athey.
The opening was really fun because a group of people who I haven't seen in a long time since I moved to Loveland and then to Denver from Fort Collins, came to the opening. They have kids who were 5 and 7 and now are 15 and 17 and taller than me and looking like beautiful adults--how does that happen? Of course there is never enough time to talk to everyone at an opening. I did meet some friends of Robin Atkins who have known her for over 40 years and then it turns out that I grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same high school as their kids, but just a couple years before--it is a small world.

Finished Clotho's Thread

2007-01-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

Sunday night I finished Clotho's Thread with a wonderful feeling of completion. I started it in September and it took 49.5 hours. I've started Anne's spindle--see the design in the background. I was trying three different sizes and chose the middle one. It is fun to work on a small piece. It should take about 1o hours to complete--or about a week since I usually can only do about an hour of beading a day these days. Hannah is getting better about not needing to grab my beads every time I bring them out--so I've been able to do some beading while she's awake.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

I hope you're enjoying a good start to your New Year. My Christmas was one of the most peaceful and relaxing I can remember in a long time. Strangely enough, I think it was the massive amounts of snow that we got that helped contribute to that. Here's Hannah checking out the first snow on December 21. I had to give in to the snow and it was nice. I took a week off of work and it was great to have time to get things done and recharge for the New Year. I spent a lot of time playing with Hannah. I got a lot of crafting done watching snow. I spent time with my Grandma Barr who was visiting from Kansas (though her trip was shortened on both ends because of our 2 blizzards). She did leave us with a pile of gingerbread men and pecan tassies. Hannah asks for a "man" and plays and talks with him until she finishes eating him.
I worked on scanning in images of my Grandfather from the boards my Aunt and mom put together for his funeral in March and at the same time worked on Hannah's sweater. I'll think of these images every time I pick up her sweater--they are now intertwined. I spun the top promptly on returning from SOAR where I purchased it from Cameleon Colorworks--it is their autumn color way in Bluefaced Leicester--I love it! I was able to do the spinning in two evenings. It spun up like a dream. I promptly ordered more (which I haven't spun yet--but I'm looking forward to it). I started Hannah's sweater, domino squares on my domino needles and am designing it as I go.

I worked on Clotho's Thread (I'm almost done!). I helped Kelly shovel snow. I read books (I finished the second in Pamela Aidan's series about Fitzwilliam Darcy--the hero from Pride and Prejudice--very good once I got into it--and started Wolfskin by Juliet Mariller).

We got more snow--on December 29th--another 10 inches or so and then on January 4th we got another 10 or so inches! Today it snowed a bit, but only 1 or 2 inches--so it is manageable. I feel like I'm back in Iowa!

SOAR 2006

2006-11-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

I'm back from 11 days at SOAR and it is good to be home again with Hannah and Kelly. I had a really good time at SOAR this year--probably the best I've ever had. It was a blast hanging out with the SOAR staff--Anne, Ann, Vicki, and Nancy. We really had fun working hard together. It went really smoothly with only a couple snafus. Participants and mentors were really happy, the resort was fantastic, and the weather was pretty darn good for the beginning of November in the mountains. I was just so glad that it didn't snow that the rain from Wednesday through Friday was okay--and in the end we got sun again. We did get ice on Saturday morning--and I learned of one participant who really bit it--but she was recovering well later--though her computer is a little worse for the fall. Ice and steep inclines--and folks hauling spinning wheels are not a good mix. Fortunately the sun came out and the ice went away.
The hardest part for me was being away from my family. Last year Kelly and Hannah came and that was good--but then it was hard to do both my mommy job and my job job.
This was my tenth SOAR. I love the chance to connect with people with like passions, even though there is never enough time to really talk and being a bit sleep deprived really doesn't help my conversational skills. I found though, that motherhood was really good training for SOAR. I wasn't nearly as tired as I remember being in years past. It would be a really strange thing to go to SOAR as a participant. I've had some classes at other conferences, where I got to just be a student--and it is almost a surreal experience. This year felt like a family reunion in a lot of ways. And meeting new people was also a treat. I got to meet Stephanie Pearl-McPhee--for me this was akin to meeting J.K. Rowling or Jane Austen. Seriously. Meeting Jane Austen would be slightly more exciting (mostly because, well, you know, she's dead)--but I had to try to supress my star-struckedness and try to be normal. It didn't really work. Stephanie got a kick out of providing me with the word "spindle" when I was trying to describe the bowl with a center dowel that spins beads onto stringShe and I are exactly the same height. She told me that she was disappointed to learn this because she said that she thought I was short. If she looks slightly shorter than me in this photo it is only because we were standing on a slope.
I bought some great fiber at SOAR and have started spinning it up. I spun about a yard on my handspindle at the spin-in--the only chance I had--so I had to make up for all that time of watching people spin and not being able to join in when I got home.
This is 1/2 of the 4 oz of Bluefaced Leicester that I bought from Janel Laidman of Cameleon Colorworks. Boy, was it fun to spin. It is softer than I imagined BFL to be--and the colors are so gorgeous. It bled when I washed my yarn--so I rinsed it until the water ran clear. I started knitting a sweater for Hannah out of domino squares--I learned how at SOAR 2002 when Vivian Hoxbro taught domino knitting. Someone at SOAR had a little swift just like mine--except without the candlewax dripped all over it. I can't remember who it was. But we both found them in fleamarkets--mine was found by a friend. It's a wonderful little swift and works much better than my big one that was damaged in the Fort Collins flood.
The stitch marker I bought from French Hill, Diane Trussell and they were made by Carolyn Baldwin who comes to SOAR every year from the U.K. I have never used stitch markers much--but these are so fun that I want to use them. I think I'm going to have to get more fiber before I can finish the sweater I want to make for Hannah, though.

Daughter of the Forest

2006-10-10T05:23:00.000-07:00

I've always loved the Six Swans Fairytale--one of my first beaded pieces was a translation of one of my watercolor paintings into beads (Delicas--the first and probably last time--they are better suited for weaving than my style of bead embroidery). I even have the beginnings of a novel based on the fairytale that I work on in fits and starts, but haven't made much progress on in years. A little bit ago I came across Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters trilogy and her book, Daughter of the Forest. I was a little bit sad that the book I wanted to write had already been written. But now that I'm halfway through the book, I realize that there is no way I could write a book that is this captivating, believable, and steeped in history and folklore. Now I'm just glad that Juliet Marillier wrote it.

Napkin rings

2006-09-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

I forgot to take a photo of the finished napkin ring before I gave it to Katie for the Knit Scene photo shoot yesterday. doh! But here it is in progress. And the backside as well. Actually it is easier to see the pattern before I made it a ring. The double knitting helps keep the shape--so it really does function as a napkin ring--no starch needed! All my knitting these days is small--but I can see the potential in this little bit of knitting--wouldn't it make a great pair of socks or a hat? Even a sweater--but it is hard for me to imagine doing double-knitting on size 0 needles for a project that big. I'm still working on my Dad's sweater--started in 1996. Each year between Christmas and his birthday in February I make progress on it--a little bit of progress. Maybe this will be the year that I finish it. 10 years later! The problem is that it is millspun and brown. I thought it would be faster that way--(the millspun that is--I didn't consider how mind-numbing millspun brown would be)--but it has turned out to be much slower. And Dad has lost weight since I started--so we'll see if it is too roomy or not.

Catching up on projects

2006-09-14T05:47:00.000-07:00

Here is the spinning belly piece that I mentioned in yesterday's post that I started while I was recuperating. It is the first in a series based on the Three Fates Greek Myth of Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured it and Atropos cut it. So it is an image of my hugely pregnant belly (with Hannah) and my hands spinning. When I started this piece it mildly shocked my husband, mother, mother-in-law, and Kelly's aunt. I think they are okay with it now. But it just shows my belly, nothing else. I've also started a small piece of a poppy to fit inside a Fobbie--a cool invention made by my friend Liz Mrofka for wrapping packages.

Lulu is eyeing the yarn on the chairs. I was too lazy to wind the skeins into balls--I'm sure I'll be cursing my laziness later on when I decide to move the project elsewhere. This is the sampling stage of the Knit Scene staff project--the napkin rings. Actually, I think I'll be lucky if I get one done. And if that one is not my sampler, then I'll cooking with fire. Or oil. Or whatever the saying is.

I ordered my yarn for the project while paying close attention to the colors, but forgetting to look at the size of yarn (on the web sizes are easily over looked by folks like me who usually make their own yarn and aren't used to paying attention to sizes of millspun yarn--that's excuse, anyway). So the yarn arrived and it is gossamer weight--beautiful, lofty, and very fine. I proceeded with my plan--to make a double-knitted fabric with a leaf motif. So I'm doing charted double-knitting on size 0 needles. See why I'll be lucky to get more than one done by next week's photo shoot? Here are the front (orange/yellow) and the back (green) with the leaf motif starting to appear.
I'm also very excited about the new desk in my office. It is perfect for both work and play--filled with my photos, stamps, and special papers. On the window sill are the three pieces that I worked on--two reframed for the Hibberd/McGrath gallery in Breckenridge, Colorado and one completed Iris piece for Heidi. I need to put them in their frames and then send them off to their destinations--but for the moment it is nice to have them around.

Surgery=beading time!

2006-09-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Well, who knew? I really didn't expect that I'd be able to get much of anything done while I was recovering from surgery (a myomectomy to remove fibroids--benign tumors in my uterus that had grown a lot during my pregnancy)--but I did! I was able to finish up Heidi's Iris and start a new piece. I'll have to post photos of it later as I haven't shot any of it yet.
I thought I might get a lot of blogging done while I was recovering--but sitting at the computer made me nauseous. It was nice to have a break from my normal routines.
I also got to spend a lot of time with Hannah--now the house seems empty without her cheerful little chirpy voice filling it up. She's started singing. So cute! She's been singing the bottle song ever since the doctor said no more bottles (she's been weaned to cow's milk since July after we couldn't resolve the biting issue) at her 15 month appointment. So milk is delivered in a sippy cup now--she takes one sip and throws it away.
I was hoping to do some spinning, too, while I was recovering--but found it was too physical and too much for my abdominal muscles--I'll try again soon. I have a staff project for Knitscene to work on next--I've been working on ideas--but need to try them out on the needles.

Heidi's Iris is almost done

2006-08-04T05:55:00.000-07:00

The big exciting news here is that my sister had her baby! Little William (after our grandfather who died in March) his middle name is Austen after Jane Austen. Julia was born on Jane Austen's birthday, 195 years later. I'm kind of late reporting this to the blog. July 14th was the big day--I got to be there taking photos (from a discrete angle). Hannah was there, too--just not during the actual delivery--she waited with my dad and brother and Eric's brother's family while William was being born. Kelly was at the race track--but he got to meet William on Saturday.

I'm nearly done with Heidi's Iris--two meetings at work yesterday, back to back, each running over by 1/2 an hour and long to begin with helped a lot. I'm almost touching the edges on the three remaining sides. This is always an exciting time in my beadwork--I announce it excitedly to Kelly--who is always appreciative, but who doesn't share the excitement that I feel. And of course appearing to be close to the edges and actually reaching them and covering them with beads means hours more beading--but still--it is exciting. Really.

June in fast forward

2006-07-06T04:59:00.000-07:00

I'm really, really behind in posting to the blog. So, I will do my best to get caught up. All in one post. At the end of May I taught at the San Gabriel Bead Company in Arcadia, California (30 miles outside of L.A.). If you're ever in the vicinity (like west of the Rocky Mountains), make a detour to see the shop--it is huge and has every bead and bead related item available. Not only that--but Kelly Thompson who owns and runs the store really understands beaders. She has great class room space! I want to go out again to take classes. I had a good group of students and we had a lot of fun over the three days. Hannah and Kelly came with me and they managed to have a good time, too (despite Hannah getting really sick with the flu on Saturday night--thank goodness for Children's Hospital and their on-call nursing staff--they helped us get through it).

Then there was the Estes Park Wool Market in Estes Park, Colorado--good fun for the whole family. Hannah came up with me thanks (seriously--thank you!) to the help of my parents and Kelly's mom and aunt who watched her while I was working in the booth.
Here's a photo of my friend and colleague, Liz, teaching a kiddo how to spin on a CD spindle. With a hat and poncho like that she's destined to become a great crafter. Reminds me of the outfits I wore as kid--not to mention some of the things I made!

After that there was just enough time to finish Melinda's tiara in time for her June 30th wedding. I got it done about a week ahead of time so she was able to take it to her hairdresser's to practice the updo. Sadly for me her wedding was during Convergence, so I didn't get to go--but I'm sure it was beautiful and I look forward to hearing all about it when she gets back from her honeymoon! The tiara is actually two small combs wrapped with wire with beads. I celebrated my 37th birthday on Tuesday and then on Wednesday I went to Convergence! I was not looking forward to being away from Kelly and Hannah for five days and I had been working on saving up enough milk for Hannah since March--so I was a little stressed out about having enough milk before leaving and getting everything done that needed to get done before I left (wrapping up stuff at work, getting ready for SWA meetings at Convergence, and preparing for my two classes there). That said--I had a great time. It was a slower paced Convergence than years past--and I liked not being crowded everywhere--but it had ramifications for the Market. The exhibits that I saw were very nicely put together and the work was inspirational. I loved running into people I know in between events, at the market, and in coffee shops. The best part was participating in Lindsay Obermeyer's The Red Thread Project. Lindsay organized the making of over 700 hats that were connected together with a thick, knitted red cord and then arranged in a spiral in a park in Grand Rapids. We were invited to partipate (just had to sign a photo release) by putting on hats and dancing with the group. The idea is that people are all connected. The project raises awareness and money for cancer treatments. To see all of my photos from this event, click here. This is me and Vicki--I think that's Sunita's elbow in the photo--Liz is taking the photo.
Now I'm back home (it was so good to come home!) and working on my staff project for Interweave Crochet's Fall issue--I have to finish it by the 13th of July--our photo shoot. I sat out on the back porch in the early morning light yesterday for a bit and worked on it.
Oh! And my sister's baby is due any day now! Speaking of babies--Stephanie (aka Yarn Harlot) had a great post about breastfeeding and a campaign to make baby hats to give to new mothers to encourage a nutritious start to feeding. I'm going to make a hat or two! As a nursing mother, I just want to say "here, here!" (or is it "hear, hear!"?) to Stephanie and also fight off the temptation to call her up and ask for advice on how to deal with Hannah's new desire to use her new teeth on everything, including the precious source of her milk. I called the lactation specialist at the hospital where Hannah was born--so we'll see what they say when they return my call.

Guess who's one!

2006-06-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that it has been a year since Hannah was born! It has gone by so quickly. We had a fun birthday party on Sunday with lots of friends and family--my grandmother Barr came out from Kansas for a week and we got to get together with her a lot for dinner--though I forgot to take the generational photo that I wanted to take with Hannah, me, my mom and Grandma Barr. Darn it.
This is Hannah with Evan--who is already 7!

A survey of projects

2006-05-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

We're back from Maryland--well--we've been back for a while, actually. I've let my photos accumulate. I'm just now getting around to posting some. There are more here. It was great, of course. It was fun sharing the event with my husband and daughter--we even got out of the booth for a little bit to look at sheep! We had a quick trip to Delaware on Sunday night to visit my aunt and uncle, but had to head back home on Monday so that I could finish up Spin-Off and Kelly could go back to work. I wanted to stay longer. My aunt Debby fostered my love of textiles from an early age--she's a quilter and designer--everything she touches is beautiful.

I've had the spinning bug bad ever since I got back. I'm sure it had everything to do with the WooLee Winder I got at Maryland--it is fantastic! So I spun this, and Navajo-plied it after reading this and was moderately successful--it was a bit over twisted and my friend Amanda pointed out that I could have run it back through the wheel to take some of the extra twist out. But I didn't think of that--so I just blocked it and knitted cuffs as a sample for the socks that I eventually want to make. I bought the fiber at SOAR 2004--a big carded batt of wonderfully colorful wool. I'm also working on Melinda's tiara--she came over on Saturday and we had fun playing around with ideas. I did a quick survey of the projects I have going in the house right now. Active projects--not counting the UFOs. So in the living room is Melinda's tiara. In the family room, Heidi's iris. I've got the cuffs on the needles--in my back pack from work. The bobbins on my wheel contain the Romney that I've been spinning. Then we take a journey upstairs--and find this fabulous fleece! It arrived on my doorstep this evening--I found it at 8pm as my husband was heading out the door to go to a softball game. It's an early birthday gift from my friend Carol! It is so gorgeous! I love the way fresh fleece smells. I really do. Hannah agreed that it was wonderful. By 8:30 pm Hannah and I had laid it out on the upstairs landing and started washing locks. Just this week I was reading an article about the dangers of multi-tasking. But I'm having so much fun!
This weekend I'm packing for California--I'm headed to the San Gabriel Bead Shop in Arcadia (outside of L.A.) to teach a 3-day bead embroidery workshop. I'm excited!

Off to Maryland!

2006-05-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, I was busy working away on the final pieces of the Summer 2006 issue of Spin-Off (which goes to press today! yikes!) and I heard a little noise coming from Hannah's room--it was the sound of two little plump hands clapping. Happy little baby wakes up clapping! We're all going to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival tomorrow--so maybe that's why she was clapping--in anticipation of seeing all those sheep, llamas, alpacas, goats, and happy people.

I've made some progress on Heidi's Iris--I'm just about to reach the first edge of the piece! Very exciting. I'm about half way done.
Gotta go finish up a magazine and pack for Maryland!
See you,
Amy

Heidi's Iris

2006-04-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

I've started a new piece! Well, I actually started it on March 28th--and am just now getting around to blogging about it.
This is the piece I'm making for Heidi--the wonderful Heidi who redesigned my website. It took me a long time to get to this design--I knew I wanted to do something with polka dots because of Heidi's affinity for dots and Heidi had mentioned persimmons as a possibility. I couldn't find persimmons in Colorado though I looked and looked (I'm sure that it has more to do with my timing and forgetfulness than the availablity of persimmons in Colorado). So then I moved onto other ideas--polka dots on my pregnant belly (I've been working on this for a while!), polka dots on a comfy chair, holding fruit against my pregnant belly--but none of these were working for Heidi's piece.
So then when Heidi was visiting in March, we talked and looked at the designs. She mentioned flowers--poppies and iris--and I have lots of photos of those that I've taken from my garden and we looked through those photos. And then after she left, I found more polka dot fabric and took an iris from a beautiful arrangement my sister-in-law gave me, and came up with this design that Heidi liked!
So I was able to start beading (here is the beginning on Thursday March 30th)--and it has been going very quickly. I've learned some things, too.
For many years, I've been telling people that I can bead a square inch in 2 hours with my size 15 Japanese seed beads. Well, I actually started timing myself and the reality is that I can bead a square inch in 2 1/2 hours. While this may not seem like such a big difference--it means that a 5x6 piece that I thought would take about 60 hours (or about two months of beading since I do this in my spare time) will actually take 75 hours.
Here's the piece on 3-30-06 (40 minutes).
This isn't marathon beading, by the way, it is just beading as I normally do for relaxation and enjoyment in the evenings while I hang out with my husband and daughter and watch tv (preferrably something that I've seen a lot, like a lot, doesn't have subtitles, and isn't on a channel with commercials. This is so that I'm not too distracted while beading, but still pleasantly entertained. I really like listening to narrative while I work. Books on tape work really well if I'm on a deadline--then I don't get distracted by the visuals.
Here is the piece on April 2 after 3 hours, 55 minutes.
So far, I've put in an average of an hour a day--I've completed a circle that is 3 inches in diameter--so that means (using the trig math my husband so wonderfully remembers!)--that I've beaded 4.71 square inches in 17:55 hours.
Oh wait a second there! That's 3.82 hours per square inch. What is going on here? I'm sure it has something to do with my math.

Okay--I know that I've spent 17:55 hours on the piece and I know that it measures 3 inches across. So I divide that in 2 to get the radius= 1.5 inches--oops! I see what I did--I forgot to square the radius.
Here is the piece on April 5 after 7 hours, 25 minutes.
Phew--this makes more sense. So the radius squared is 2.25 x 3.14 (pi) = 7.065 inches and that is 2.5 hours per square inch--much better.

I'm glad to have these moments to use math--even though I can really freak myself out.
I forgot to take photos for a bit--so here is the piece this morning after 17 hours and 55 minutes.

The iris on the blue polka dots is a real challenge to bead because the dots are nearly the same color as the iris, except for places where the fabric has a shadow cast across it. It is a wonderful challenge that I'm really enjoying.

Lucie--the silamide sleuth!

2006-04-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

Here is Lucie--she took the workshop in Montreal that I've been talking about (look here and here). She brought in some quilting thread and wondered if it would work for beading. I tried it out and it worked well enough, but it was a bit more difficult to thread the needle and it tangled a bit more than the silamide that I've been using ever since a student introduced me to it in another beading class. Silamide is a 2-ply waxed nylon thread that is sold on cards or on spools and comes in a range of colors (though not as wide as nymo, I believe). I usually buy it from my friend Betcey at Beyond Beadery when I see her at bead shows or from her online store. I like it because it is fairly easy to thread into the size 10 sharps that I use to bead (though not as easy as nymo)--and also because it doesn't tangle as easily as nymo. Like nymo, I stretch it between my hands before I start beading (usually when I put the knot in the end).
You're probably wondering why Lucie is the silamide sleuth--it is because she had a hard time finding silamide in Canada--but was not detered. Even before she took the class she had been looking for the supplies for beading and came with ideas for where to find Japanese seed beads--size 11 and size 15 in Canada. So if you're looking for beading supplies in Canada, here is the scoop from Lucie (she gave me permission to post to the blog):

3-31-06
Hi Amy!
Just a quick update regarding Silamide thread suppliers in Canada. I further investigated the matter with Canada Beading Supply: the retail price of a spool (900 yards) is 14$CA, but you must add something around 10$CA for handling & shipping (plus the applicable taxes). I'll continue shopping for it and keep you posted.
I did however find the Clover Desk Needle Threader Lily had: it was not at Kava (on St-Hubert Street, as I wrongly understood) but at Quilte Classic in Pointe-Claire. La Maison de Calico, also in Pointe-Claire, carries it too. But Pointe-Claire might be a bit too far away (it's in the western part of Montreal) for those of the girls of the workshop who do not have a car.Now, with respect to Silamide thread, should I be looking for a specific gauge?! Thanks,Lucie

4-4-06
Hi Amy!
Me again with my Silamide anxieties ;-) Here's the latest update:That Bead Lady in Ontario, who does carry Miyuki 15, sometimes have Silamide thread on 900-yard spools, or they will special order it if needed. They sell it 10.99CA$. Their shipping rates are quite reasonable.
If anybody else finds any other good Canadian sources for both Silamide and Miyuki 15, I'll be glad to know. From what I learned on Internet, Size A is the regular (and maybe only?) size Silamide is available so there will be no confusion, I guess.Have a nice day, Amy!Lucie

Montreal Part II

2006-04-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here are more photos from my trip to Montreal March 16- 20, 2006. I was invited to teach at the Montreal Center for Contemporary Textiles by Louise Lemieux Berube (see part I here). There were 19 students in the 3-day workshop--Designing for Bead Embroidery--many of them already established artists working in fiber who were interested in adding beading to their quilting, felting, weaving, or embroidery.
I was very excited to see how they adapted the techniques for their own purposes.

Why my husband does most of the cooking....

2006-04-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

I'm working on Part II to my trip to Montreal--but in the meantime, here is a photo of what happened on the stove top this morning. It started off as a small sauce pan of milk and chai tea bags. This is what happens to milk if you leave it on low on the stove top for say, an hour or nearly two. It is solid mass! And it has beaderly beauty to it with all those little dots. (Notice that it is the same red sleeve as in my piece, Atalanta's Apple.)
Now I understand how knitting needles can be made out of milk!

Montreal! Part 1

2006-03-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Lucie, for encouraging me to post my trip to Montreal in parts. Here is the first part:

Montreal was wonderful! I taught a 3-day workshop at the Montreal Center for Contemporary Textiles March 17-19, 2006. The textile center was so inspiring--I wished I was taking classes. Here's a photo of Hannah and I on our way to class in the morning--we were bundled up because it was cold!
Kelly and Hannah came with me so that I could nurse Hannah. It wasn't quite the vacation we envisioned for Kelly (here is Kelly trying to nap in the dye room adjacent to the classroom while Hannah sleeps)--but we still got to get out and see a bit of the city after class in the evenings.
Louise Lemieux Berube invited me to teach at the Center after she saw my work at Convergence. She started the Center 15 years ago--and if you have a chance to study there--I say take it! It is an impressive facility.
They have an exhibit space right when you walk in the door--it also served as a lecture hall for the talk I gave on Thursday night about my work. The garments are part of an exhibit of the students of the center that will travel around Canada--Rosie Godbout (one of the students in my class) made the purple dress in the fore ground.
There is a computer room with a number of I-macs, a room filled with knitting machines, another one with sewing machines and heavy-duty irons, a huge room filled with looms (with a number of jacquard looms not to mention spinning wheels!), a dye room, another small room for two jacquard looms, and a lunch room. Almost all the rooms have huge windows for natural light and a lot of space. Our classroom space was in the room with the looms--we had two large tables for 19 students to sit around.
Most of the students spoke English really well, but there were a handful who didn't--but other students were great about translating as we needed since I don't speak French (yet--I'm going to learn!).
I really enjoyed teaching this class because the students were really ready to learn bead embroidery to apply to their own artwork--they had really great questions and we were able to get a lot done in three days because they worked diligently and creatively. Here they are choosing paint for one of the brainstorming exercises.

Fiber dreams

2006-03-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamed (my sister always groans when I begin a sentence like this) about werewolves--but they were kind of like bison and they lived in the grand canyon and they were not able to scale the walls of the canyon so they were isolated there. I was a kid in a family of witches (we were flying around a big house a little earlier and I had been trying to summon a laundry basket from upstairs without spilling everything--but it wasn't working) and my family was crammed into a small car driving past the grand canyon when we learned of the werewolves/bison--and then we saw people climbing out of the canyon and they were dressed in these amazingly soft handspun pants and shirts and scarves (apparently it was very cold in the canyon) that they had made from the werewolves fiber. At first I was scared by the thought of werewolves, but then I realized that they couldn't be too fierce if these people were able to gather their fiber. Then the dream diverged into a shopping mall expedition through a baby store for a bit. Then I was back at my parent's home and I heard something in the garage and found one of the werewolves (it didn't look anything like a Bison at this point--just a very hairy man) running around the garage (and up the walls, too). He was scared more than anything, so I tried to hide him from neighbors who came over because they thought they saw something in the garage. Oh, and I was wearing a wedding dress at this point and I was trying to get my veil to stay on.
I think I got the crammed-into-the-car image from looking at photos at my grandfather's service of our family of 5 plus 2 grandparents crammed into their VW bug for a trip to the mountains (I had told my husband these stories--but he was still amazed when he saw the photos--he kept asking if the Bug actually made it up the mountain with all of us in it--see the photo--my Dad is taking the photo and about to hop back in--it was in a time before car seats or even much of a seat belt campaign). And I was thinking about the movie King Kong yesterday because my husband bought the DVD--and I was thinking about the beauty and the beast theme. I think the wedding dress came from watching a snippet of Ella Enchanted while I was pumping yesterday.
Oh and take a look at the socks on me and my sister in the photo that is mostly cropped off next to the one with us in the VW--isn't that a nice 1970s fashion statement?

I really am working on the post about Montreal--it is long! Maybe I should post it in parts--what do you think?

Blog buttons

2006-03-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

Amanda got the SOAR blog up and running! You can visit the SOAR blog at http://www.soarblog.com/ or by clicking on the SOAR button in the lower left bar of this page.

As I've mentioned before, I very much like Stephanie's Yarn Harlot blog. It is at http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/ (and I added a button/link to it in the left bar of this site as well).

And ... my professional Bead Embroidery site has launched! You may visit it at http://www.amyclarkemoore.com/ or link to it from the button in the left column. Website designer, Heidi Leech, did a fabulous job with it. http://www.heidileech.com/

If you would like to link to this Sixflyingswans site, I've made a button that you can use on your blog. Here is the image to use and please link it to this page (http://www.sixswansflying.blogspot.com/). Please let me know if you are linking to me, and perhaps I can return the favor!
If you'd like to knit the onesie I made for Hannah, here is a pdf of the instructions,
http://www.interweave.com/spin/projects/onsie.pdf. I'll put this button on my side bar so that you can find it easily in the future, too.

Okay--just one more--Spin-Off magazine! www.interweave.com/spin/.

B.G. Barr

2006-03-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

I am back from my trip to Montreal--it was wonderful and I will tell you all about it later--with photos--I promise.

But right now, I'm not able to focus on the trip because when I returned home I learned that my grandfather died yesterday morning. For several years now he has been a shadow of the vibrant, funny, gentle man that I remember from my childhood and for the last year he has been suffering from multiple system atrophy. He would have good days and bad days. In October, Kelly, Hannah and I visited Grandma and Pop--here is Pop on a good day. He loved Hannah's sharp, blue eyes and I'm glad she got to meet him even though she won't remember. I loved listening to Pop's stories about his childhood when I was a kid--like the time he tried to dye his hair blonde, but it turned out green, and the time a buglar broke into their house and one of his brothers chased the thief, but kept stopping when the thief stopped because he was afraid of catching him, and the time he and his brothers pitched in to buy a car together, but they only way they could get it to start was if they parked it at the top of a steep hill and ran along side it until the engine started then jumped in. I know there are many more stories that I don't remember or haven't heard and I'm looking forward to getting together with my family this weekend in Kansas to spend some time remembering my grandfather.

Spinning Romney from New Zealand

2006-02-20T12:56:00.000-07:00

Like I said earlier, I've been inspired to spin by the Yarn Harlot's call to action. I've been taking a couple minutes a day to spin some of the Romney I bought in New Zealand in 2001. I have a huge bag of it. I don't have anything in mind for the yarn right now--I just want to spin some up. I think it is a little coarse for next to the skin wear--but it'd be great for an outer scarf or vest.
It's good to make yarn.

Clapping baby!

2006-02-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

Yay! Hannah learned to clap! Now she does it all the time. She especially likes clapping when Lulu the cat walks by.

So, not much on the craft front to report--except that we're going to press with Spin-Off a week from today and there is a lot to do and it is consumming all my free time. I did spin for about 5 minutes the other day in an effort to relax.

I have been living vicariously through the reports of the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics (www.yarnharlot.ca) and last night I dreamed that I met Stephanie--she was a guest speaker at SOAR and I was trying to find a room where she could give her talk--but instead I was finding rooms filled with Zambonis and realestate agents setting up their phone systems.

What to bead next

2006-02-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

I pulled these pieces that had been shipped back from the Iowa Artisan's Gallery in Iowa City--to show a friend who came over for lunch on Sunday. I left them out as a reminder that I need five pieces for an exhibit in Montreal in March, and another piece for an exhibit in Massachusetts that also begins in March. There are five pieces there--one of them hasn't been framed yet--Hannah and the Sunflower. So which one should I send to Massachusetts?

I have to start a new piece this weekend with the hope of finishing it by the Montreal exhibit and having it ready to exhibit (mounted, framed, photographed, etc.). Before Baby I'd need a solid month of dedicated beading to get a piece done. I've only done one piece since Hannah arrived--and that took me four months--eek! And October and November were dedicated to finishing it since I had a deadline.

My options: I can ask 13 moons to send another piece, I can borrow Dreamer of Dreams from my sister (again) for the exhibit, I can make a small piece. Also, I have ideas finally brewing for two pieces I've promised friends--I'd really like to fulfill those promises--but if I get started on those pieces, I may not finish them in time for the Montreal show (it is only a week long--so I could exhibit the work and give it to them afterwards--I'll see if they think that's a good idea or not).

Hannah has a cold--so I've only thought a lot about this dilemma, but not done anything about it yet.

Transitions

2006-01-31T06:44:00.000-07:00

Hannah was helping me last night with the scarf for the Red Project--due today. I've been knitting on it all weekend, but every time I measure I still have 10 inches to go--how is that possible?
Hannah had a lot of fun pulling the skein apart and holding onto the strand that I was knitting from.
Kelly (my dear husband--and I really mean that)--had to insist that the transition I made between the Brown Sheep wool yarn from my stash and the yarn I found to finish the scarf at the Recycled Lamb (Ogedifra Fashion Trend--51% wool, 49% acrylic) was obvious. He implied this with raised eyebrows and statements about the colors being different and didn't seem convinced by my argument that I had blended the colors for several rows by alternating the new yarn with the old yarn and that the new yarn had natural color transitions in it. I didn't point out to him that they have different fiber contents--so if it is washed vigoriously one side will shrink while the other will not--as it seemed he didn't need more fuel on his side of the discussion. I think it looks nice and none of the things happened that I was worried about--like the new yarn needing to be knit on different needles or bulging slightly where they joined--it actually is the same size scarf on either side of the transition. And it meant I didn't have to start again from scratch when I realized I wasn't going to have enough yarn to finish the project. Since he is also a perfectionist when it comes to things that matter (like the new garage door he installed a couple weeks ago), I think I'll let it go. After all, the scarf isn't for him and let's hope that the kid who gets it is just pleased with it and happy with the color transition and never washes it (I'll put washing instructions with it--don't worry).

Red Scarf Project

2006-01-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

That's Kirk Montgomery behind me--we're at Einstein Bagels right before the filming of a short, live segment on channel 9KUSA earlier today. I was the lucky person selected from Interweave because everyone else who could do it was at TNNA in San Diego, and I live in Denver. Fortunately, I was already planning on going, had asked my MIL and her sister to come with me, and had started a red scarf last week. Only problem was that I was running out of yarn--so today I had to run over to the Recycled Lamb where I tried to tell them about the project, but they didn't seem interested, but they were very helpful in finding a yarn that would work for finishing my scarf. So today was devoted to getting ready for the tv spot--reading the literature, curling my hair (hard to tell, isn't it), putting on make up, finding current copies of our magazines, and trying to make progress on the red scarf. The Red Scarf project is sponsored by the Orphan Foundation of America (http://www.orphan.org/) to create care packages for the 2,000 or so foster youth who are aging out of the program and attending college with a family network to support them. We need to make a lot of scarves. I think 500 have been created so far. They have to be handknitted in red or other unisex colors and 60 inches long. You can drop them off at any Einstein Bagel location before January 31, 2006--a week from today. I'm nearly done with mine. Maybe I'll make two!

The onesie works

2006-01-23T22:58:00.000-07:00

I finished the onesie in time for the photo shoot. Yay! Here is Hannah with Grandma Helen (my grandma--Hannah's Great-grandma) at Monday Night Dinner tonight.
I made Lemon Chicken casserole and salad and took it to Grandma's. Dad was in Santa Fe, so didn't come.