Doll Two almost here

 Here's the next Izzy doll in progress. Boots and suit done, tomorrow face and fancy hat. The sweater is my handspun merino. Very cosy.

It's always a surprise how this unpromising little array turns into a doll with personality, small but mighty.

Music returns

 I dropped off from playing  music recently, but now the recorder society chapter I was active in for many years, but also dropped off from, largely because night time, a bit far, coming home tired in the dark, is going online in September. So I'm going to rejoin.

Not entirely sure how this will work, but I think participants play duets with the conductor, don't hear nor see anyone else. Not sure who the conductor sees and hears. Maybe he can mute and unmute. 

Anyway the music email has arrived, half a dozen pieces, and I downloaded and printed and instantly learned two things.

One is that I am definitely ready to get back in. The other is that I definitely need a new black cartridge. Evidently the get out the vote push used this one up. Meanwhile, I'll squint. 

After I get back from picking up my Tiny Email Book Group selection Where the Crawdads Sing, from the library, I'm going to start in with my new music.

Morley, of La Girandole, meaning sunflower, is a big favorite. I don't know all the composers, and a couple are nearer baroque in period, not my preference, but what's a century between friends?

If you can read music, doesn't this make you want to play?  Or sing.

Good, I'm here, where's my friends, then?

 One new doll completed. Already agitating for friends because he might get lonely.

Okay, okay, I'm on it.

Artist tools: ballpeen hammer, heavy rolling pin.

 Remember those flowers neighbors were giving me and I was saving in the freezer?  They were in play this morning.

This episode was triggered this morning by a leaf suddenly falling off my staghorn fern, a rescue years ago from an owner who wasn't up to it.

So the gardener in me said too bad, and the artist said whoa, a candidate for hammering.

And proceeded to find a piece of fabric to hammer the color from the leaf and other petals and leaves into it .

I came up with a lovely piece of linen which I shibori dyed years ago with black walnut dye from nearby trees.

Set the leaf in place and proceeded. You can cover the leaves and petals with another cloth and hammer through the lot. In fact if you have some nice cotton lawn, you can get the color going on the base fabric and the top one at once.

I added local red rose petals, daffodil heads, lily petals and my favorite Japanese maple leaves. All the plant material is from a radius of about fifty yards of here. A local habitation as Will might have said, but in a different context.

The rolling pin helps secure the plants down by squashing out some liquid. Then the hammer transfers color and shapes. I love hammering, you can work off a lot of irritation that way.

The skills required are minimal if you can refrain from hitting the hammer on the thumb in your excitement. It's better for older kids for that reason, too.

And it's lovely. This piece needs to dry and be pressed before I decide what its function, if any, will be. The fastness of the dye depends on the flowers and leaves you use. So this is not really a washable item, more of an artwork. And the colors that emerge are sometimes surprisingly different from the visible color of the petals.

So, a casual glance at the upstairs plants, and I'm suddenly in a frenzy of searching and hammering. My neighbor is renovating his kitchen, unlikely to be disturbed.

I've made many artworks involving the ballpeen hammer, just the right weight for me, from flowers to metal beating ( peening, its original purpose) to handmade paper thumping.

The foliage I used has now given up most of its pigment, but is back in the freezer for future papermaking, since its fibers are intact.

And the board I was hammering on picked up some design and a few new dents

I had intended to get on knitting my new doll, after using yarn I'd spun and plied for the boots

 what can I say, I'm a hapless prawn of fate.

Diagonal scarf is now a Moebius item

 Just finished the diagonal scarf, and when I knitted the ends together, turned one over to create a Moebius shape. I like the interest of the Moebius shape.

 I did what would have been a three-needle bindoff if both ends had been live stitches. Since one was a cast-on edge I picked up live and cast-on stitches, one of each, knitted them together, then cast off one by one. 

It hasn't been steamed yet, too impatient to show you, but it will be.

Hm. What next, what next..

One thing done, another underway and a third one just an idea

 So the jacket is finished, and I really like it. Once the weather cools off, it's going to be my go to.

All the seams are clean finished in different ways depending on location.

And here's me solemnly posing

Then falling down laughing at the whole idea. The weird thing in my throat is nothing more sinister than a trick of reflection.

The diagonal scarf, don't worry, I won't push yet another pic at you, is underway, and the next thing on the horizon is fabric dyeing and papermaking.

Half the chest freezer is for the raw materials, in fact the reason I bought it

Half is for food. Admittedly, to the untrained observer, it's hard to tell which is which. 

Seems like a fair distribution.  And I was reminded about my dyeing and papermaking plans by my neighbor's disaster recounted in Here

I need to do the papermaking before the weather gets cold, because it's outdoor work on account of the gallons of water involved.

Which reminds me, as I searched for the right word there, of a dear artist friend with whom I showed in a group, wonderful pastel painter.

 We hadn't had a group meeting for a while and she asked me if she'd missed anything. I said, no, I think we're in abeyance right now. Whereupon she said indignantly, "Nobody told me they were traveling!"

Audiobook needed

 I was reading Bel Canto in book form, knitting now and then. But my allergic eyes, blurry and puffy, it's August, gave out on reading and I found a well performed audiobook.  That's better.

I can knit more easily at the moment than read. So you can start to see the diagonal triangles appear. This is obsessive knitting!

Both book and scarf are progressing now.

Diagonal scarf part two

 See how it works?

This is easier to observe than my starting pic, which I just had to put up yesterday, happy with it, couldn't wait.

One day I'll be a grown-up. The Joy of Short Rowing.

New project, not a doll, not a jacket

 The jacket is finished, seams pressed a treat, don't have a good pic yet.

But I felt freed up to do something different.

This is all about short rowing. I've made this in different sizes and yarns, as presents, but this is for me. If you've knitted socks you're likely to have done short rowing. It's one of those patterns that you can't stop. Just one more row.. but my aching digits explained I'd better.

Tomorrow more short rowing. This makes an interesting scarf, very puzzling to nonknitters.  And in fact, like so much in knitting, easy when you know how. And it's sculptural. It's very useful if you're making knitted art wall hangings. Or just a scarf.

As you work, it becomes straight until the wedge is completed, then you shortrow in the opposite direction. You'll see. It's especially good to use a variegated yarn, too, shows the stitch pattern well.

Yarn for exciting dolls, and other yarns

 I just received a nice helping of yarn with my library book drive-by, from the knitting group stash. Quite a bit of it is my own handspun which I donated, and other yarn I'd passed on.

 Some of this stuff has its own frequent flyer miles. It's all great for Izzy dollmaking.

My stash. All spun by me or upcycled, hence the small amounts.

 On a different topic, my art exhibiting life may have ended, there being no opportunities in the foreseeable future, all the buildings closed, the organizations struggling to survive.

 So it may be that I move on. I do have some as yet unseen framed pieces to exhibit if the planets ever get in the right configuration again, but I'm reconciled to looking at my next phase.

 I had a wonderful run, plenty of rewards and awards, nothing to sigh about. And it's possible I've said all I need to in fine art, the framed work you see exhibited and juried, all that. I've taught hundreds of adults drawing and printmaking to open those doors for them.

My exhibiting life lasted nearly forty years, so I'm okay with it. I'll still make art, always have, but with different purposes in mind.

Not the first time I've reinvented my art life. This is separate from my professional life in which I did all sorts of interesting work, always did art anyway at the same time.

I wrote when Handsome Son was very young, sold loads of stories, serious nonfiction, verse, humor essays. Three, blessedly unpublished, novels wherein I learned the short form was my thing. 

After seven years, enough sales to pay son's medical bills,close to a million words, and many writing workshops taught to adults, a jointly written book on learning disabilities, my work used in graduate special teacher ed textbooks, I decided I had said everything I could in word form, and turned to seriously working in art. 

So now this may be another exciting crossroads.  Life's about forward movement. Also a banquet. And my plate's been heaped over and over. Now thinking about the next course. I don't do things just because I always have. So I'm open to enjoying whatever I can next. And to blogging about it.

 

Ready for our first video knitting group

 We met in person at the library for a long time, then moved to just posting on Ravelry and now we're all set for our first video meeting.

 Since it's being hosted through a county library system, no idea who's hosting or who we'll see. But the site is loaded, you might say loaded for bear, but not in front of Fred perhaps. 

And we'll see if my system refrains from freezing this time. It's like a tired toddler when a meeting goes on too long.