I was reading Kathy Loomis’s blog post about yarns and her disappointment with a well known brand that she has used for years. The disappointment was the change in texture.  I think there are a lot of products that have changed and  we accept it as inevitable.  Last night I took the last stitch in a wool scarf I crocheted for myself. I used a vintage Stanley Berroco Quelinda. The first end was one skein white, then 2 skeins variegated, white, variegated then one skein white. when I got to the end…there was exactly the same length little tail left over that was on the starting end and each section was exactly the same without counting rows. What you see in the pix is the scarf exactly as it came off the skeins ( not blocked yet ) since I’m not good at counting rows while I watch Downtown Abbey on Hulu.  I don’t think there is any yarn made today other than handspuns that would be this exact. It is a sign of the times with imported goods and is a reason I use vintage fibers when I find something as lush as these. Another good thing with this yarn…I found it in a thrift shop for 50 cents a skein. I always check for any insects when buying wool so I don’t bring critters into my wool stash or oriental rugs but the older wools are mothproofed and just as good as when they first were sold.  Check out what others are doing this week Off The Wall Friday

 

I was in Houston most of this month without all my tools and supplies to work on these cards for Arts In The Cards. When we started home we went along the cost to Port Arthur and Lake Sabine to see a new area.  The beach was still pretty messed up and oil balls were still washing up with each wave.  Not a pretty beach but there is a lot of renewal going on. The area was good to see if you like oil rigs and refineries, not much else there.

I picked up shells and vegetation washed up at low tide as well as safety glasses probably from an oil rig…and this great alligator skull. Anyone who knows me would fully expect me to appropriate the skull for my flower garden.  I used the vegetation to stage some still life photos on the concrete at the RV resort.  Gator Boy with his glasses is a photo on his own.

I used 4 of the compositions in photoshop and varied the opacity of the layers as well as the color.  This was intended to be printed on cloth when I got home, with other cool things going on later. That wasn’t to be. My Epson bit the dust with my laptop, so I got one good phototransfer from my husband’s computer. As Mr. Murphy would have it, the transfer was not any good when I went to put it on cloth. Then the Epson bit the dust on his computer. So we got the extra printer and it bit the dust!!

Off to the store for a new printer but I forgot to buy transfer sheets. I did not want to make another trip into town and by this time I was thoroughly disgusted. I found a pack of window decal sheets so into the new printer one sheet went. I put this transparent print onto card stock that I Gator Boy printed on it.

The glossy finish made it impossible to do anything else to this card but finish the edge with stamping ink. Each card has a real vintage shisha mirror, not the plastic kind,  glued on to represent the sea glass I didn’t find but would have liked to.  These are very un-Janice cards but I hope you like them…they were an awful lot of trouble so I couldn’t sell them for less than $1000 each, lol.

This is the second piece in my series. Elizabeth asked a ‘what if’ question of how the wall and vines would look at different times of day. Because of her question, I pulled back the covers on my fabric shelves and started looking. 

The background was a really ugly overdyed failure. Or so I thought. It was simply waiting for the right project to shine.  It made a perfect twilight background when the wall glows with the red light of the setting sun.  The ugly duckling is turning into a swan.

Of course there is a lot of work to do yet but I’m excited about both of these pieces. 

While I was in Houston at Festival I purchased a sit down 16 inch mid arm. I’ll be blogging about it in a couple of weeks. I know it is going to make short work out of quilting these pieces. Stay tuned! check out other great working artists at
http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

 The quilting and thread painting have started on this first quilt of my new series. This is what gives life to an art quilt.  Yep, I said it..that Q word.  It isn’t a quilt until it’s quilted and this one will be very dense. I’m very pleased with how this turned out and with how helpful Elizabeth was in the class. I’m looking forward to taking more at Quilt University. I have linked this post to Off The Wall Friday where you can see what other quilt artists have on their design walls this week.

Copyright 2012  Janice Paine-Dawes