Tis the season?....

As is the case for most of you, I'm guessing, Christmas is creeping up on me. And some of the things that are included in the holidays really give 'creeping' a literal meaning! I heard Bob Dylan singing "The Little Drummer Boy" on the radio before I could cover my ears quickly enough. Don't get me wrong; I love Bob Dylan, but "The Little Drummer Boy?" Really, Bob? It just shouldn't be.

My enthusiastic and non-Grinchy neighbors already have the lights on their houses all lit up.

Some of you might remember that last year, Gus climbed our tree and knocked it over, so we had to tie it to the stair banister. He climbed it more than once. I can't even imagine what Booker will do to a tree, or any holiday decor. So it won't go up until the last minute.

I am particularly drawn to the photo above that I have been playing with. I took it in Maine. It is of a pile of ropes and net and lobster traps and an upside-down boat, all set off by a pile of Christmas lights. I don't know what the lights were doing there, but I kind of like the idea of just taking a mess of lights out and tossing them in the yard, then plugging them in. I think it might make a spectacular statement. After all, if Bob Dylan can sing "The Little Drummer Boy," anything is permissible... Perhaps I will make this photo my holiday card. Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

Dealing with UFO's

In the knitting world, UFO's are 'unfinished objects,' and some of us have many UFO's floating around the house in various states of un-doneness. I have been trying to get some of these done. I finished the first of four grandchildren sweaters. I figure I need to knit sweaters for them now, while they are young, before they reach the age of dreading the Christmas sweater. This one is done in angora. All the ruffly edges are actually crocheted, so this knit up pretty quickly!

It is to have one button at the top neck. I have several big tins of buttons from various grandmothers, and from my mother-in-law. I may wait until the kids come and will let them choose their own buttons from the tins. These button tins have been a source of joy to my oldest grand-daughter, especially. When she was younger, they were her favorite thing to play with, and she would scoop them from the tins into bowls, stirring them into 'button soup.' There are buttons from a number of eras in the soup, some even of bakelite. Some are truly vintage treasures, and some are just recycled shirt buttons, as my mother-in-law never turned a shirt into rags without first saving the buttons.


On the other hand, I can see the kids parents' horror if they chose some of these buttons from the past. Some of the most shiny and appealing could turn a sweet sweater into gaudy and appalling! So maybe I could pick out a special pile for each to choose from.


... Or maybe I'll just make my own choice and sew it on, then tell them the button came from the Grandmas' button soup tin.


I also finished the Project Linus blanket, and will take it out to the gallery (which is a drop-off location) this afternoon. It is 36"x 36", and of a washable acrylic, which is what they request.

For the beauty of the earth...

...for the glory of the skies...


...for the love which from our birth over and around us lies;


...For the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night, hill and vale, and tree and flower,

...For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind's delight,

Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise!

Happy thanksgiving, today and every day.

(Words from the hymn For the Beauty of the Earth  by Folliot S. Pierpoint
Images from my camera at various times and places, except for the old photo, which is of my mother's family.)

Portrait...

The Blue Pig Gallery is doing a portrait exhibit in January and February. Gallery artists were given a local personality to paint. The person I was paired with is deceased, or I would have gone and taken my own photos to paint from. However, his wife gave me an old photo to work from which is her favorite image of him. It is from WWII, and is a pretty dark photo. I figure that painting a person's widow's favorite picture is quite difficult, at best. So I have just decided to paint it loosely; make it look like a 'painting,' rather than a painted copy of a photograph, and to not allow myself to stress over it. It is not a commission, so there is not that added pressure to please someone who will be having to put out money for it. Anyway, I did an underpainting in about an hour, then put in about another hour today, and I think I'm about ready to let it dry and see if it's 'done enough.' It's not large or small, at 12"x 16". I do think it captures the fun-loving expression his wife loves about the photo, at least.

"January"

18"x18". Wool weft on cotton warp, sett at about 8-9 epi. The inspiration photo can be seen here. (As always, you can click on the image to see it larger.)

Illustration Friday: Music

The IF topic today is music. Music has a big role in my family. My father is a musician, he can play the piano and just about any other instrument he might want to play. Most of his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren have inherited his love of music. We sing. We love to sing! One of my greatest joys is to sing with my grandchildren or to have them sing to me.

The tapestry, "Prairie Polka," is one of my Heritage Series tapestries. It was inspired by these two small contact photos of my dad with his parents (my grandparents) when he was young . They lived in Kansas, thus the wheat fields and distant grain elevator in the tapestry. This is the smallest of the Heritage tapestries, at about 36"x36" square. It is still in my collection. In fact, it hangs in my studio.




Technically, this was a challenge for me to weave. It was woven sideways, so I could do a lot of eccentric weft work in the prairie. That was a lot of fun! The sky then, which was to be a gradation, had to be hatched, instead of the color blended gradation I could have done if it was woven bottom to top. There was also, then, the long vertical line of the bottom border, which I had to use a join on, as a long slit would have caused problems. And then the line work in the wheat bundle in the border was also going up the warp, so was woven in the 'weft-wrapping' technique I frequently use, but which is also a slow technique. All of those technical issues had to be decided before I began weaving, as I was making the choice whether to weave it bottom to top or from side to side. I prefer to always weave bottom to top, unless there is a very good reason not to. In this case there were very good reasons to weave it either way, but I chose to do it 'the hard way' so I could do the prairie in eccentric wefts, in shapes that would be vertical when the tapestry is hung. Weaving it sideways also made the accordion easier to weave. (I know a lot of this is complex technical gibberish to many of you, so just pretend it's not here.) I learned a LOT from weaving this tapestry. It's good for me to remember it all today.

(Also, to continue the music topic, Booker's official AKC name is now "Booker T Sings the Blues." I thought it should have been "Booker T's Mama Sings the Blues"!)

A beautiful backside...

Isn't this cool? I may just frame it, and forget what's on the other side! This is the back of my "January" tapestry, which I just flipped over to trim all these ends and sew slits, so I can block and mount it. But I like the Rya-looking back so much, I hate to destroy it by trimming all those pretty ends down! It has that all-over fur look because of the many, many little pieces of yarn I had to use to create all those many, many tiny shapes! I don't think I've ever done a piece with such a pretty backside! (So, was this NOT the beautiful backside you were hoping for? Perhaps you are on the wrong blog!)

I am keeping this up high to work on, hopefully out of Booker's reach, though it is getting harder to find such places as he is getting so much bigger. We had a bad day yesterday. He ate one of my favorite handknit socks. I have not yet forgiven him.

ps. As my reward for not killing Booker yesterday, I am treating myself to Norah Jones' new album from iTunes today! Not a big enough reward, but it's a start.