Mandalas

Some new paintings.

New mandalas
It's been a while since I posted paintings, so here are two new ones and a few shots from my work area.

Finish #2

And I learned my camera had a setting to take a negative picture.

Drawing inks

Fountain pen inks

Finish #1

Something bad happened here, and this
bottle turned to gel.

An in-progress shot of that first one.

Getting a little closer. These normally take about three
watercolor sessions after the ink has dried.

Lace works

I've been working on a new concept, inspired some diagrams of needlelace found in antique books. It appeared that various elements are used to fill a square, and the squares are arranged in pretty patterns. You know how much I love squares, patterns, and symmetry,

The diagrams look along the lines of this:

My first drawing was done in pen and ink, making a mandala of sorts. I used some blocks from the diagrams and invented some of my own.

The next experimental step was to add some color and a few more elements that deviated from a strict grid. I started by painting a grid of squares and triangles in different colors, then I drew some design lines on top. The background square were done in Turner Acryl Gouache, so they have a matte finish, but unlike regular gouache, I can paint more on top of them without rewetting and disturbing the base layer.

I used darker iridescent colors to fill in some of the design areas. 

And more:

The last step (and the scariest, since there is no going back once started) was to paint on fine black lines everywhere. I think it came out pretty cool looking, although it is tough to capture the colors and the pearlescence in a photo. I have no idea how to finish it. It's on 12 x 16" canvas, and the design goes all the way out to the edge, so I think I'll have to mount it onto a box frame... so I can hang it on the wall space I don't have. :-P

Let the experiments continue!

Fit for a King

Every parent at some time has gotten the 7pm comment, "Oh yeah, Mom - I need to bring a X for my Y class tomorrow," where X represents some random baked good and Y represents some school subject where caloric extra credit is encouraged or a holiday party is scheduled. My challenge: King Cake to accompany my son's presentation in his Spanish class.

As I perused recipes online, I inquired of him why they were celebrating Mardi Gras in January (it's March 4th this year.)  It was convenient he had prepared the presentation already that explained Spanish speaking countries celebrated Día de los reyes magos by eating rosca de reyes on January 6th. I had no idea but am always looking for a good excuse to eat cake! This is actually more of a bread, traditionally in an oval shape and decorated with raisins and other dried fruit.

rosca de reyes

The recipes turned out to be similar enough to my familiar yeasted braided Christmas bread (Tassajara Bread Book) that my Mum had taught me to make when I was hardly big enough to knead dough. She and I both still make it most Christmases. I just made it one layer tall, oval, and added a glaze. His class gets the colorful one in the back.  It's a day late, but I don't think it will dampen their little sugar-craving appetites.

Due to envisioned liability scenarios, we opted to leave out the little baby-shaped trinket that is traditionally baked in the cake. Also for want of owning an appropriate bakeable plastic baby.  I do now, however, have the strong urge to dig up a copy and reread Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major. If you've read it, you know why.

So I learned a bit of history and tradition, I learned that starting at 7pm is way too late to begin baking yeasted breads, and I learned that blue sugar crystals + pink sugar crystals do not remotely look like purple sugar crystals. But I'll be ready with purple for next January 6th.

Tiny Sweater

Last fall my FIL sent me his entire cotton crop. He had one plant.  He joked whether it was enough to knit him a sweater.

So, for Christmas, I have spun and knit this for him. You probably can't see the tiny saddle shoulders, but I used the EPS (Elizabeth's Percentage System - knitters will have heard of that, maybe.)

Back to your regularly scheduled programming. And back to my regularly scheduled, regularly sized knitting. This tiny stuff is pretty fussy, but it came out darn cute.

Happy Fountain Pen Day

My posts seem to alternate between ink and wool. It seems I can't make up my mind which medium to focus on during my fluffing off times. Fortunately, I've not been forced to specialize.  Today being officially "Fountain Pen Day," makes it the easy choice of topic.

Got ink?

Here are some interesting factoids about fountain pens from the Pen Heaven blog. I don't have anything that comes close to the million dollar pen they mention - most of mine are in that cheap yet functional category. The exception being the unassuming green Sheaffer (5th from left) which someone told me was actually worth about $200! It would be terribly easy to pick out and order new pens every month, but I've limited my indulgences to joining a monthly ink club at Goulet Pens. I'm sorely tempted each week by their newsletters with all the sexy pen photos, and the Jet Pens emails too. November's samples are due to arrive any day and I haven't even used up a single one of October's five Ink Drop samples. (They're good for multiple pen fillings.) I guess that means I'd better get writing with a pen rather than a keyboard.

And for those of you who are stitching, rather than writing today, I point you over to my complimentary pen nib cross stitch design. Just remember to keep the ink away from the linen!!!

Click to get the full size pdf.

Cheers,
Tracy

That 70's Yarn

Ramblings about my bin rummaging yesterday:
I mentioned recently that we had a yarn shop in the house when I was little. I remember when it came to an end and having the 20% off everything sale, then 30%, and so on until Mum gave up and packed away what was left into boxes in the garage.  I didn't really pay attention to where everything went and what all there was, but as time went on the pickings got leaner. There weren't many good colors to begin with in our pile- the smart sale shoppers saw to that.

Good quality 100% Norwegian wool never goes out of style, but let's just say that colors do. I first overcame this obstacle by purchasing a few kilos of white and black yarn in the same brand. It wasn't hard to use a ball or two of a weird color if I diluted it enough. One of my favorite sweaters to this day is a black cardigan with hot-pink, grey, and white zigzags on the yoke. But that's no way to kill off a whole kilo (twenty 50g balls!) of a less-than-favorite color. I became a big fan of RIT dye, and still have several sweaters knit from overdyed wool.

Today's lucky winners

I thought I'd seen the last of the new old-stock many years ago, but I visited my Mum last summer as she was preparing to move to a new house. Lo and behold, a few more bags (kitchen-garbage-sized, not ziplocks) of the poor stuff materialized, and came home with me. I'm proud to have had the good sense to let the 4 other bags go to Goodwill rather than fool myself that I might use them someday.  We're talking stuff that is nearly as old as I am in exciting shades the likes of bubblegum, neon red, pumpkin, and taupe. There is some lime green has actually come back into style and some navy that apparently missed prior raidings. And not so much in the sport or dk weight that I'd want to use for a sweater-much of this is in the 8 stitches to the inch department. Good for mittens, and I'm anxious to try doubling it for a heavier, less-than-lifetime commitment sweater attempt.

The puppet mittens I made last winter- note the uvula on the palm side :-)

But there is still only so much bubblegum pink that I'm going to use in my lifetime, so I've turned back to the dye-pot. This time with some better quality stuff, although I had a few kinks this first time using it.

I made swift work of it.

First it gets skeined out; dyeing in ball format gives terrible unevenness. (You may think that is a nice red, but the photo hides just how much it makes your teeth hurt.)

Maroon, it's what's for dinner.

This is the dedicated dye pot. It has seen more color than the inside of a skittles bag.

Oh, don't these look lovely drying in the sunshine!

I was looking for a kettle-dyed look, but was surprised at the variation in how the dye took. I suspect the first wooly bits to hit the water hogged all of the dye molecules despite all my stirring, which wasn't much actually because I didn't want to felt the wool. I was quite surprised at how blue the bubblegum color turned - where did that come from?

I would will totally knit with this!

I pronounce the experiment a success, although I never explained why I was revisiting the wool bins in the first place. I just got the Zombie knitting book, and was trying to find some dk scraps that would be the right colors.  Let me just state that I am the queen of mis-matched stash. I have bags of leftovers from 30+ years of knitting, bags of yarn that was bought on discount because it was lovely even if I didn't have a project planned, bags of handspun that I am afraid to use for fear of running out mid-project, bags of extra balls that I tossed in to my order from Knitpicks so I would reach the free shipping threshold... but not an ounce of decaying-flesh green dk to be found.  I wonder if that color would have been popular in the 70's?

Another Kaleidoscope

Finished up this mandala painting that I started last weekend. This one is India ink and watercolor pencil.

Unpack - Repack

It's been a busy summer, with lots of travel, and I find knitting the perfect travelling craft. I'm getting ready to head off Wednesday to a cross stitch show in St. Charles and realized I needed to pack up my travel knitting.  More importantly, I needed to unpack these two finished items and the related remaining yarn.

First up, Kindle cover made from some of that unlabeled yarn I scored at Craft Warehouse this summer. Rainbow yarn knit with both ends at once in  2 x 2 stripes created a cool but simple pattern. I found a nifty neoprene Kindle sock at the dollar store for (wait for it) one dollar.  It was ugly and plain, but it performs its job of providing nice cushion to the device, and you can't see it at all now that I sewed it in.

And in the finally finished category, the Drunken Rainbow Scarf. Named as such because the silly yarn would reverse color sequence arbitrarily and because of a peculiar defect that had two balls wound together in parallel, creating a giant tangly mess. This yarn was also from the Craft Warehouse booty. It's a nice scarf, but a bit bright for me, so it may become someone's Christmas present.

Now, the only thing remaining is to decide what to pack for this upcoming trip!

Let's E'lope

With the UPS man's visit this afternoon, I am officially the "Envelope Queen" and I've finally unearthed the scanner from beneath a mound of linen and silk, salvaged electronics, artwork, knitting, and other things not properly put away.

Over 2000 of the little buggers in an assortment of these lovely colors. The dark ones look particularly cool if you write the address in silver or white gel pen. If you ever want a specific color other than what is shown, just mention it and I'm happy to sub it out.

Because I want to be able to make stuff like this for my Etsy shop. Mandala cards.

and these...

As you can guess by my envelope investment, I'm hoping to do a bit more in the Etsy shop. Wish me luck, or tell me what you'd like to see there.