Yoga poses with a purpose
27 Wednesday Feb 2019
Posted in Chit Chat
Tag Archives: crafts
2019
10 Sunday Feb 2019
Posted in Chit Chat
You don’t know it, but I’ve actually started writing you a number of times, planned photoshoots of what I was up to but then abandoned it all mid-project because I felt it was just more of the usual stuff and so not very exciting? Does it have to be exciting? After all, it’s what we do most of the time, more of the same, and we still keep at it. Ok, and I had a chronic headache most of December and January.
There was a failed ink project, in the sense that I got a nice chocolate brown ink, but from a berry that was traditionally used to make sap green. I didn’t pick the berries myself, so I can’t really say what went wrong, and the experiment was never concluded = blog post unfinished.
I finally made myself read a pattern for turning heels and worked through it, so I’ve been knitting socks and lost my distaste for that. Now I’m on a mission to find the perfect nylon-free fiber blend which does not grow holes in 2 days and can also be machine washed, but like most of the things I think of, no guarantee it will get further than the drawing board. I will try to report on my findings and link to other people who are working on tuff socks projects.
His and hers – with my poorly selfinvented heel on the latter
I’m doing my best to become/stay organised, I’m re”programming” my workbook, collecting all my various notes and we’ll see how many weeks that system lasts… 😉 I’ve tried just putting everything in my bullet journal, summing up undones once in a while, I’ve tried having one notebook for each topic which works REALLY badly because I can never find that specific book when I have an idea on something. I’ve also on multiple occasions decided to make ta-da! lists to show myself I’m not completely inactive, but I usually get bored within a week and then forget.
We’re having a green winter again, but it feels pretty miserable all the same, 95% humidity, wind and just above 0 makes me want to not go outdoors ever again, it just goes right to the bones in a way frost never does. So I rotate by the fireplace trying to will myself into the studio, but even a mad dash through the stables is enough to make me shiver again, in fact, the very thought of it is! But uniting the two buildings would be a massive investment and require a permit.
There’s already another hour of daylight in the afternoon it seems, so very soon it will all be forgotten and perhaps I’ll have more to show you?
Lake pigments continued
03 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Garden, Painting, Pigment, Plant Dyeing, Show-and-tell
Tags
closetohome, colour, crafts, DIY, mordant, nature, plants, primitivepaints, scruffyartsupplies
SURVEY at the bottom of this post, please cast your vote! If you are using Firefox on a desktoip computer, you may not see the polls if you have tracking protection enabled under security settings. Click the shield icon in front of the URL and choose disable protection for this site. (if you wish obviously)
Now that I have a small first collection of pigments to play with before new plants can be tested next summer (I do have some old dried things I can try too), there are multiple ways to use them. They need some kind of binder, although I suppose you could just soak them in water. Alcohol? But even watercolours have binders added to add intensity to the colour as well as make it stick to your paper.
Plant pigment
27 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Painting, Pigment, Plant Dyeing, Show-and-tell
Tags
close to home, colour, crafts, DIY, garden, mordant, nature, plants, primitivepaints, scruffyartsupplies, summer
Five years ago I did a brief test of concentrated plant dye baths to see what they were like as watercolours. I didn’t add anything to it as I recall and I’m not sure where my sample is now!
Paraphernalia
20 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Painting, Show-and-tell
Tags
Didn’t get ready today to show you a full version of my pigment experiment as planned, as I’ve had other things to attend to. So I thought I’d show you my latest finding, a book press which I thought could help me get water out of new paper sheets, rather than stacking cinderblocks on the floor. One way of tackling multiple projects could be doing so as efficiently as possible!
More on local art supplies
13 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Garden, Plant Dyeing, Show-and-tell
Tags
close to home, colour, country life, crafts, DIY, dyeing, mordant, nature, plants
During an investigation into using dry pigments and beeswax for painting rather than oilpaints, which I’m not enjoying, I’d been reading about making lake pigments and thought it would be fun to give it a try. These are pigments from plants as opposed to rock/earth/metal based colours, and since I already had some remedies as well as dried plant materials for dyeing wool, it wasn’t too much trouble to give it a try.
Monk
06 Friday Jul 2018
Posted in Show-and-tell, Weaving, Yarn and Fiber
Tags
clothing, colourways, cotton, crafts, handwoven, inspiration, weaving drafts, yarn
It’s taken me a long time to write this post, simply because the project never seemed to be quite done. It still isn’t – but now it’s on hold until I make it round to that end of the circle.
Summer briefing
02 Monday Jul 2018
Posted in Chit Chat, Farm Life, Garden, Shop, Show-and-tell
Tags
blogging, country life, crafts, creativity, exercise, fatigue, garden, gardening, health, intention, life, summer, weather, weight loss
While I’m cooking up that promised weaving post, I’m going to drag you through a bit of a general status update of life at the cottage.
Last week, last post
27 Wednesday Dec 2017
Posted in Chit Chat, Knitting, Painting, Thoughts, Yarn and Fiber
It’s a bone-cold, lazy (ie exhausted) indoorsy type of week with no social duties whatsoever, yay. I’m knitting a hat from an old handspun skein for no particular reason, G is finally updating my webserver and in return I’m rebuilding the website for his gun club.
It’s always fun to see how a handspun or handdyed yarn knits up, sometimes they need crochet or weaving to show off, other times they really seem to be their prettiest as a skein. I had some which were too small for the pattern, but if I like the fit, they may become headbands for my delicate ears.
I began writing a typical “status of the year” report, slept on it and decided I really couldn’t be bothered and had no profound learning experiences to impart.
September…
25 Monday Sep 2017
I’m a bit dead in the water at the moment, nothing brilliant emerging upstairs, no flow happening if I try to do stuff anyway. Finally got my spray paint a while ago to finish those frames, but had lost all steam in the meantime when it came to showing the result.
This morning it occurred to me that perhaps this is a unique opportunity to dig into all those project ideas (well one or two of them) that I just make a note of but never begin because time.
