Another Quilt-Inspired Plate

If it weren't so darn time-consuming, I'd probably quilt. But it is, so I will just translate into glass.


Size: 8" X 8"
Materials: Bullseye Glass in French Vanilla Curious and petal pink, deep red and orange opaque on a transparent sheet.
Kiln: Paragon
Technique: Slumped

Sheep in Pasture

Here are the pendants mentioned in the previous blog.

Combining Fused Glass with Soldered Silver

After weekends at Judith Conway's Vitrum Studio for fused glass classes, I'm now at The Art League for silver jewelry with Tina Chisena for the next two months. I hope to execute the designs in the photos below, but for this weekend, I'd like to do pendants to take to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival next weekend. The pendants - intended for wool lovers, spinners, weavers and knitters - are made of glass with silver foil inclusion in the image of a sheep's silhouette. The prototype will be worn by the Fluff and Nonsense group participating in the MSWF's Sheep-to-Shawl competition on Sunday, May 3.

Rough designs...

With more detail...

The glass fairy cometh

Laurence Pocztar of lainezinzin has always been my sole inspiration in fiber spinning. Having gotten into glass arts, I didn't expect to ever find my glass fairy, since -- looking at all the books that has come out in the US and Japan, and surfing on the web -- I didn't find any that really blew me away (Corina Tettinger of Passing the Flame came very close) until I saw the freeform glass beads of Sarah Hornik of Tel Aviv.

Sarah has come out with two ebooks: Sarah's 12 Favorite Color Schemes and Think Pink. I just love the colors and the asymetry of her glass beads. They look so sumptuous that gazing at them simply brings such delight!

What I did last weekend

Learned Venetian glass beadmaking from Marilyn Nugent at the Glen Echo Park Art Glass Studio.

My First Fused Glass Project

Size: 8" X 8"
Materials: Bullseye Glass in white opaque and assorted opaque and transparent sheets, topped with rod bits
Kiln: Paragon
Technique: Slumped
Inspiration: Log Cabin Quilt

Finding a new direction

Today I attended a class in kiln-formed glass. Wow! One more class tomorrow. Yay!

It was held at Vitrum Studios from 10am to 4pm. Not knowing I would take this class a few days back, I signed up for a book signing and reception at the Alliance Française with Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb (Fear and Trembling) which was scheduled at 3pm. After the class, I took a chance and drove to the Alliance just the same.

I arrived two hours late and the event was over. The author was having a tête-à-tête with the organizers and about ready to leave, but when she saw me at the door of the salon with my stack of her books, she motioned me to come over and she went back to sit behind a table and signed my books. "Et votre prénom?" she asked politely. When she finished she said, "Merci d'être venue, Thérèse."

Amélie Nothomb was so sweet. It's almost incongruous with her reputation as an eccentric and her penchant for black ensembles. Yes, today, she was wearing her trademark Mad Hatter's hat and dark red lipstick, just like in this photo.

Babes in Mali

Sidiki Ouattara, who is the director of the government agency on handicrafts in Mali and my contact for the project Charkhas for Africa, just sent this photo. He writes that the women are from Nonsombougou and that they are beneficiaries of our spinning wheel project. Mr. Ouattara reports that he will be going to Nonsombougou next week to deliver the third Babe spinning wheel.

Lace Reader

If you like novels and you spin and knit, you should be reading -- or listening to -- this book by Brunonia Barry.

Embroidery by Takashi Iwasaki

The artist is a Canadian of Japanese descent. More of his works here. He is featured in the current issue of Selvedge. Amazing work. And it sort of updates Constance Howard's medium of choice by throwing in images reminiscent of Alexander Calder's sculptures and mobiles while using Iwasaki's own palette of colors. Wow!

Delightful Handspun

This sweater was spun and knit by a Japanese blogger, musktenjin0715.

It looks like an Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern, but this one was designed by Naganasu of Witch's Knitting Room. Using top-down knitting, Naganasu employed short rows to have a deeper neckline in front. See comparison in this photo.


The pattern is written in Japanese AND English (Yay!) The patterns are in two versions: Short Row and Simple

By the way, Musktenjin's buttons were handmade.

Darn It!

I ordered this book (ISBN-10: 4894446561 ) from amazon.co.jp thinking that it was a how-to craft book.

And I thought that it would be a nice companion piece to this book (ISBN-10: 4579111273) on darning (read review by fluffbuff here):

I was a bit disappointed to learn upon receiving my order that the book is only a guide to cool shops in Japan. However, through the book I discovered this online shop called tarco which is a great source of crafting inspiration.

See samples here:

Six meters of warp later...

Here's over five yards of fabric.


Selvedge view:

And the weft goes on...

Still working on the initial six meters of warp that came with the loom already installed. The weft is yarn handspun by Florence of Le Mouchon.

LIttle Miss Saori

There she is comfortably settled in the living room straight from Loop of the Loom. It took about 45 minutes to set her up.

Up close. Started with leftover Noro Silk Garden yarn and added corriedale roving bits. The last rows are made of handspun from a Tintagel Farm roving.

The piece was woven with no instructions other than watching the Springwater Fiber Workshop's Sheep-to-Shawl team at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last month.

Nearly done

This was started day after MSWF four weeks ago. It could have been finished in a couple of days, but then there was a week in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a long weekend of camping in Harrisonburg, Va. I spent the whole day Sunday doing the remaining 50 percent of the shawl and I have a sore back today.

Yarn used was Peace Fleece's Moscow Magic Pink, a tweedy DK sport weight spun with 30 percent mohair and 70 percent wool. The 7-foot triangle used up an entire skein of 350 yards length (4 oz.). It looks very plain so I'm adding inlay, echoeing the colors of the tweed bits.

The inlay work, using Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride worsted in Limeade, Aztec Turquoise and Regal Purple. I'm also adding Lotus Pink and Fushia.

The fringe.

During and After MSWF

Photo taken at Carol Leigh's Hillcreek Fiber Studio booth at the festival.


At home the following day.


Up close.

Florence has arrived!

My friend, Florence, who's a Gotland sheep farmer from Liège, Belgium, arrived this afternoon from Brussels. Tomorrow, Friday, we attend Bob Padula's Wool Science seminar at Howard County, Maryland.

Majacraft Magic Weekend

The Majacraft spinning camp was held last weekend in the North Island of New Zealand and I received a message last Monday on Ravelry from kiwijoy with her account of it. Here goes:

Hi Therese,

I’m sure you want to know how the camp went!! Good weather and lots of fun. I was very good and didn’t buy anything. Tracy White with Inspire Fibres, Michelle Aplin with the Finn wool and Kim Priest with alpaca fibre and some books. Tracy’s beautiful colours were especially tempting.

Have you tried spinning with the Stylus yet? I really struggle with it and feel very dumb. I can see how fast it can be.

Glynnis and I thought our block printing was a disaster as the mixture wasn’t stamping well when Glynnis hit on the idea to put another piece of thin foam on top of the dye mixture and it worked well then. We had plastic meat trays with a piece of thin foam, then some dye which was thickened, etc. and another piece of foam on top. Because Glynnis and I were getting our mixture ready, we missed most of the flax class. I think the man was from the Netherlands and they made a grasshopper and a small basket. Not really my thing.

Pat Old held a very rushed class showing three novelty yarns. Both she and Glynnis have the new book, “Intertwined”, so getting inspired there. The first yarn was a single of a fine fibre like merino, half-breed, corriedale, etc. plyed with a yarn that has been made up of lengths of fancy commercial yarn tied together that have been run through the wheel to put more twist in. You might then choose to overdye the whole skein. She called this “Thrum yarn”.

The second yarn was called “Mainland Jazz" which is a tuft yarn but using eight-inch lengths of fancy commercial yarns as the tufts. The main fibre was shrink-treated merino top (used because the commercial yarns are mostly non-shrinking).

The third yarn was “Yarn Soup” which is fibre carded with lengths of different yarns approximately the same length as the staple length. Predraft and spin thick yarn wrapping it as you spin it softly with another yarn. Another step after that would be to felt it and overdye it.

Pat Old did a dyeing class which I didn’t do as I had seen her demonstrate at her home in January and didn’t feel like winding the huge skein - about 25 metres wound on a warping board or similar. I just wandered around taking photos and finding out what colours people were choosing.

You divided your skein in six equal parts and chose three dye colours. You measured out three colours into separate jars and mixed with water and vinegar and detergent. Each section of skein was put into a plastic bag. You then poured first colour into first bag, second colour into third bag and third colour into fifth bag (missing a bag each time). You gently pressed on each bag until no white is showing and squeeze out air and securely tie each bag. For the three remaining bags, you put in a mixture of the three colours in each bag pouring each colour carefully in a different part of the bag. (Am I clear as mud here ?) You then put your six bags in a big plastic bag, sealed it off and then steamed over boiling water. Some of the colour schemes were fantastic.

The other class was with Cilla Kuzamaner in needle felting. I was amazed at how quickly the wool stuck. We made beads by winding fibre around a kebab stick and then going for it with a very lethal felting needle, and then Cilla showed us how to make a little man. Cilla comes to our night spinning group and some of her creations are out of this world.

Glynnis gave out a challenge of spinning carded fibre mixed with shredded paper. Most people didn’t think much of this!! I never got round to trying mine.

Andrew Poad put on a presentation showing Creative web sites - Ravelry being one of them. There was this guy there called David and I recognised him straight away as David from Ravelry so that was a huge laugh. Pat Old is koruspinna and Andrew Poad is Andypandy. I haven’t persuaded anyone to join Ravelry yet. They all say they’re not that into computers. It is a time waster, I must say. David and Pat were commenting how nasty some people get on the forums and they didn’t like that.

There was a lady from NSW in Australia who had come especially for the weekend but I think the rest of us were North Islanders.

Well, must get back to cooking the dinner.

Joy

I have got to go to Loop of the Loom

Linda Hurt teaches Saori at Springwater in Alexandria, VA, but it just started without me. :(

Happily, I found out that Loop of the Loom, a Saori studio in Englewood, NJ, occasionally holds classes in Manhattan. They offer 2-hour classes, with the option to take two consecutive classes for a 4-hour session.

Here is the website of Loop of the Loom . Look at all the colors and textures in its photo album.

In June I'm taking John Marshall's class on Clothing Designs of the World - Creating Your Own Fashions Based on Ethnic Traditions at Springwater. It would be awesome to combine Saori weaving with making clothes! It sure would be nice to take a Saori class this summer.

Saori loom at work here by clicking on "Tips".