This Bodes Well.

I got the book yesterday - it's awesome! So today I - of course - spent much of the day beginning the learning of the techniques.

One really cool thing about the book is that the author shows you how to make almost all the tools you need, and it's super on the cheap. It's nice that you don't even have to invest a lot of money in specialty tools. I, however, was too impatient to do all that first (I will, soon - I want to give myself the best chance of success by having proper tools - but just not today) so I immediately started work on my first face, since that's what I was most dying to try. One of the main tools used in this method is - ta da! - knitting needles, and I had plenty of those (to spare) so I had the main tool I needed anyway.

I am amazed at how wonderfully well a knitting needle works for clay sculpting. And really cool - I had one of those sets of interchangeable needles, with the tips in sizes from like 3 to 13, and then cables. Well, it was an early knitting career purchase, and the only set I could afford, so it mostly really sucks. The cables are horribly stiff and won't stay screwed into the tips. I hate it but never really wanted to just get rid of it. Well, those knitting needle tips work extraordinarily well for this because they're already short and easy to handle.

Well, after 5 or 6 hours (with a break for pancakes and sausage), I ended up with something I'm fairly well pleased with.




Yes, it needs some smoothing, and the head's misshapen, his eyes are crooked, I wrecked his chin and forgot to fix it, but ... I'm pretty happy with this for a first-ever attempt. This tells me that with time, patience, and practice, I can do exactly what I plan - get really good at this and make awesome sculptures! I'm pleased.

He wasn't supposed to be a chubby guy, but that happened because I misjudged the initial set-up of the face, and got some proportions wrong, like the chin and jaw area being way too huge. So - voila, chubby guy. :o)

And it's amazing fun! This was an absolute blast. Okay, there were a few times when it got frustrating, but I just reminded myself - this is supposed to be FUN, dammit! - no, really, I reminded myself that I'm brand new at this and learning, so of course there's going to be a learning curve, of course it's going to take awhile to get comfortable with the techniques. But I learned so much just doing this ... every main part of the face I had to do over multiple times, and each time I learned what doesn't work, and eventually began learning what does. I'm sure the next one will go even easier, and soon the quality will improve.

Next phase - on to the body parts! I suppose I'll keep Harry (as he's told me he's named - okay, he really began to develop a personality when he got eyes, what can I say) and just add a body to him, to practice that bit as well. There is probably going to be a whole village of strange, misshapen clay people living in the Imaginarium as I build 'practice people'.

Too awesome. :o)

I've Been Busy!

A very good kind of busy, though - lots of stuff going on!

First, (drumroll please) ... I finished the sweater back! Yeah, that's astounding enough, but what's more amazing is, the gauge is dead on. I almost fell over.

Here's a picture a day or two before I officially finished it. It doesn't show the pattern really well, but you'll get the gist.


I've started on the first front piece, and have some delusional hope I might actually get to wear it this spring. And that it might fit.

I'm almost done with the Valentine's themed table mat.


The only thing that still needs done is the backing folded over and sewn to make the binding. There's a specific trick to miter the corners and I can't remember how to do it, and don't know exactly where my quilting basics book is, where the technique is explained. I'll find it, or look it up online. It's a pretty standard technique.

I've also made four blocks of the scrap quilt.


I'm really happy with how these are turning out. One of them has a kind of screwy color combination, but I made up my mind when I started this that I wasn't going to fuss with matching colors in the blocks. For one thing, it's a scrap quilt - that isn't necessary. That's one of the points of making a scrap quilt, not have to fuss with a lot of planning. It's supposed to be relaxing and laid back. I also know that even if I throw together a few ugly combinations, when the whole quilt is put together, it won't really be noticeable.

One of the reasons there isn't a lot of color variety here is that so far I don't have a lot of fabrics to work with. I started with just my stash, which was oddly sparse and monochrome. I know I had several huge boxes of fabric scraps when we moved, already trimmed into 5" squares in anticipation of just this type of quilt, but they're MIA at the moment. Maybe permanently, as I've been through pretty much everything here since we moved, and I've never seen them.

Then I went and bought a bunch of fat quarters (pieces of fabric that are 18" by ... I forget, but they're basically a quarter yard of fabric pre-cut) for the quilt, but in an effort to not go on a huge spending spree, I only bought some of what I'd need ... so, the color selection is still somewhat limited so far. The next time I go fabric shopping I'll pick up the rest, and make sure I mix in some more varied colors, then things should start popping.

Last but not least, I made a bead tonight.


It sounds like a big deal - I made A BEAD! But I actually planned this bead specifically for a necklace I've wanted to make for a couple months, so that's why it's getting the solo treatment. I like the way it turned out. Hopefully this weekend I'll be putting the piece together, and will have a finished picture. (with no reference, it's hard to tell, but it's not that huge - it's about 1" across; I just made it really close-up so you could see the detail).

I'm beyond ecstatic about clay now. It's so freaking fun!! I ordered a book I can't wait to get (it should be here tomorrow!) - it's how to make clay figures, from a woman who is flaming stellar at it. Well, don't take my word for it - her name is Katherine Dewey, and you can see her work here.

It might take years to get as good as that, but I have no doubt I could do it, if I put my mind to it and practice a lot. And that's what I want to do. I enjoy all the rest of this stuff, but this idea I have for clay - I'm just kind of consumed by it. I have a very specific first project planned, but I think I'll keep it a secret so you can be surprised when I post a picture of it (which may be a year from now, but ... baby steps. I am just learning).

This is all heading in the direction of opening the Etsy shop later this year. I know exactly what I want to sell. But I have some steps to get through before I'm ready for that. First, learn and practice and get good. Second, make some inventory. Then the shop.

I'm pretty psyched. This is probably the best mood I've been in for many, many years. All this making of stuff going on! All this creativity in the air! I've even forgotten to get S.A.D. this year, that's how amazing this is.

Well, That Sucks

I was just checking it this morning to see how it set up, and this happened. I put very little pressure or stress on it to cause this, which tells me it would have never survived as a piece of jewelry anyway.

I'm not sure why this happened. I tried checking online, but couldn't really find much. It may be that pieces as thin as those petals are just too fragile to stand alone. I have read that very thin pieces remain fragile after baking, unless they're supported by some type of internal framework. I suppose if you were attaching them to something else that would support them, it would also get around that problem.

I'll have to experiment some more. But it's kind of a bummer, because I was interested in making jewelry pieces with very thin parts like that - I had another idea in the works for a steampunk butterfly. I can still do these types of things, will just have to either make the thin parts thicker (which takes away from the delicacy I was going for), or attach them to some type of background.

Oh well. Back to the drawing board. My next experiment is trying out an enameling technique, and a few other holiday ideas.

More Creativity and Homeowner Adventures

Today was cool. First, I bought a couple of the best tools I've ever owned.


I'm working on this quilted table mat thing for Valentine's Day, and decided to do stipple quilting in part of it. I absolutely adore stipple quilting, it's one of my favorite things about quilts ... but it takes some skill and practice to do. It involves quilting random squiggly patterns over an area, moving the quilt around free-hand. (You can see it a little bit in the pink-fabric parts of the mat in the picture). To do that you have to lower (or cover) the feed dogs so they are not guiding the material, and you can't use a regular presser foot, which creates too much drag on the fabric for the 'free' part of 'free motion.'

I tried doing it with no presser foot at all - it's possible, but very tricky. So today I went down to the sewing shop where I got my machine to see if they had a darning foot in stock. And they did, and it wasn't even expensive! A darning foot is ideal for free-motion quilting because it has a spring and bounces up and down with the needle, giving you tension when you need it (as the stitch is being made), then lifting up to allow you to freely move the quilt - all in the space of split seconds as you sew. It makes free-motion quilting so much easier. I still need some practice to make it prettier, but it's going pretty darn well for just learning.

The second, cheaper, and more surprising thing was the gloves. I'd heard of these, but always thought it was silly. Well, for the record, it is not. These gloves have little tiny rubber grippy dots all over the palms to help grip the fabric, making it far, far easier to move around. It's astoundingly easier, let me tell you. The difference was amazing.

Meanwhile, I am in the process of setting up a dedicated 'clay station,' and this is another wonderful thing.



I'm using my dad's desk which was already up in the Imaginarium. I happened to have a very large piece of relatively heavy glass sitting up there; I'm not sure where it came from, but I think - oh yes, I remember - it was a large cross-stitch picture I'd done for someone one time that I ended up getting back, and when I rented the dumpster awhile back I threw away the cross-stitch picture (long story, but it needed it, trust me) but salvaging the glass, thinking 'that might come in handy for something.' Well, it did - it makes a perfect work surface for clay. I've got a temporary piece of flannel under it to protect the desk, but it's working out pretty well, as it gives me a soft surface to lay things on to the side.

This is working out so great! I have it off my main work table, so I can sew without worrying about dragging fabric through clay projects in process. This is a perfect size for working with the clay, as I don't need a huge amount of room. It's just all around a great set-up. I can use the drawers for supplies. Just awesome.

So to celebrate, I made this.



I think it's going to be come a necklace, although I haven't worked out the details yet. I'm discovering that apparently my creation method of choice is "by the seat of my pants" - I don't know exactly what I'm going to make when I sit down to make something, I just start experimenting.

So I did a little quilting today, did a little clay, and in a few minutes it's band practice. All in all a pretty awesome day.

In the 'homeowner angst' department, I am pretty sure the reason the dining room is so cold is because there's enough of a gap at the edge of the front door for a nice icy breeze to actually blow through ... enough to create a large wedge of frost on the latch plate.





I went to Home Despot today and picked up some weatherstripping, but unfortunately it can't be installed until it's over 40 degrees. Well, that's no damned help now, but eventually I'll get it fixed. Fortunately the stuff only cost about $5, so no great waste if I happen to get a new door before I get it installed (unlikely, but possible). We could always use it on the door into the garage, which I haven't checked, but probably has the same problem.

Slowly, we'll seal up the little leaks around here and get this place warmed up. Most of the house is fine, there's just this dining room and kitchen that get so cold - the dining room because of the door and the fact that there's only crawl space under it, and the kitchen because of the garage door and the fact that what's under it is the unheated workshop. There are things to do about all of that, just ... haven't gotten around to it yet.

Off to feed the Poo and then band practice.

Adventures Of Homeownership, Chapter 23; and Creativity Ensues!

So Greg was away on a winter camping trip with his son and Boy Scouts this weekend, and on Saturday night I was downstairs watching a movie. During a commercial I went to the loo, and on my way there stepped in something wet. Thinking Tyler had peed on the floor again (becoming a habit with him, unfortunately), I turned on some lights to clean it up - and discovered it wasn't Tyler's mess. The main water line had a leak - before the shut-off valve. About 2" above the point where the pipe comes into the house through the basement floor, in fact.

Lovely. It wasn't a gushing leak, it was a drip, but a very steady drip - like one drip every second. Though there is some type of linoleum flooring directly around this pipe, only a few inches away a section of carpet starts and it had puddled and run and soaked the carpet.

Fortunately, it was pretty easily fixed. It was covered under the home warranty which came with the house when we bought it, and which we decided to renew last year (and will probably again this year, as it's turning out to be pretty darned useful).

The worst part about the water leak was that since it was before the shut-off valve, I had to have the city come out and shut the water off at the street, on a Sunday, in about 18 degree whether - they weren't terribly happy - and they couldn't find it. They scurried around out there for more than half an hour with their metal detector, digging up chunks of my treelawn. As one of the water guys put it himself, it looks like we've had an invasion of groundhogs.

Nice of him to find the humor in it, but when the snow melts, this is going to be a mess. Well, it's already kind of a mess, but ... .

Anyway, that's a concern for another time ... when there's a thaw, like in 6 months from now.

But because things going smoothly and easily isn't part of the Homeowner's Manifesto, last night our stove quit working. Just ... quit. Nothing would heat up, digital display will only come on when a burner is turned on (though the burner won't work). Very weird.

Fortunately, that's covered under the homeowner's warranty, too, so ... another service call put in last night, we'll see what happens with that. I kind of hope it isn't fixable, because I hate that stove, and the warranty includes replacement of the appliance if it isn't fixable. I can go back to the awesome ceran top stove like I had at the old house, and left (because I was just sick of moving and it was too much trouble). I'm sure I'll have to pay something myself if I upgrade, they probably only pay an amount that would purchase a model like the one we killed, which is probably about $400 or $500 - and a ceran top model undoubtedly costs several hundred more. I haven't priced them since I bought the last one in 1994.

Anyway - every time some inconvenience or work drama surfaces anymore, I distract myself (and cheer myself up) by thinking of all the things I'm making right now. Creativity has definitely moved in and set up housekeeping. For a quick something as a mini fix, I'm making a quilted table mat for the dining room. During the holidays I had a Christmas placemat on the table with a little arrangement of candles, but when we took down the holiday decorations, the table seemed so bare. I thought I'd make something to lay on the table, then put some candles on, and since Valentine's Day is the next holiday, it's themed that way. More on that when it's done in a few days.

I'm still slogging away on the sweater, and it's coming along. Gauge is still on track! Amazing. And I'm nearing the end of the back piece. Probably won't be done by spring, when it would have been useful, though. But we'll see.

I'm also working on a scrap quilt, which kind of came about by accident.

I've been wanting to make a mariner's compass quilt for a long time, and I saw one in a magazine I mostly fell in love with - it's called Spice Island, and the fabrics are all batiks in shades named things like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, etc. - looking appropriately spicy, as you'd expect. Here's a picture of it.


I love the colors of that quilt, but the one thing I don't care for is all the individual blocks with mariner's compasses in them. What I'd really like is a quilt with a big giant mariner's compass in the center, then other decorative things around the outside. I believe those are called medallion quilts.

But I can't find a pattern for one like that anywhere. Every one I can find always contains a bunch of smaller compasses. I've seen one or two that had a compass in the center, but they were quite small usually. I think there's a logical reason for that ... mariner's compasses are a challenging version of quilt-making, and the larger they are, the harder they are to make, so I think it's much easier to make them the size in this quilt.

But I get stubborn when I get an idea, and the only way I've been able to figure out I could make the one I envision is to learn how to draft compass patterns myself, so I can make it any size I want. To do that, I need some good instructions, and people seem to be sort of secretive about this art ... I haven't been able to find any free instructions online, although there are a couple of books that apparently have good directions. My local library doesn't carry them, so I'm thinking about trying interlibrary loan. I very well may end up buying the book(s) but I'd like to check them out first and make sure it's what I want.

Meanwhile, I also love the fabrics this quilt is made out of, but they are batiks, which are expensive. I can't imagine being able to afford all the suggested fabrics for this quilt any time soon, so I had another idea. I could use muslin (which I've taken to buying by the bolt at Joanne's when it's on sale or I have a coupon, and which I think is a wonderful thing), and then hand dying the muslin in the yardages and approximate shades for this quilt - not using the batik method probably, as it's complex and I don't know how to do it, but maybe using some natural dying techniques which give nice subtle colors. Of course, I don't know how to do that either, but I have a feeling that will be easier and quicker to learn than batik, an art form unto itself. (though I may need to try that some day ... ).

See why I can't get anything done? Everything mushrooms. I go from wanting to simply make a quilt I saw in a magazine, to re-drafting the pattern and re-designing the quilt and hand-dying all the fabric for it before I can start on it.

Anyway - I desperately was in the mood to make a quilt, and knew it'd be awhile before I could start on the mariner's compass, so I started a scrap quilt instead. That's the one I'm working on now.

I've cleaned up the Imaginarium a lot lately, it's really coming along. I'll have to get some pictures posted soon. So my next step is to finish fixing up the 'clay station,' an area I made just for working on clay, so I can go back to working with that. Sometime this summer I want to start an Etsy shop, but ... need some stuff made and ready to sell first.

And I have a jacket/dress thing in process, and a whole slew of mending, and Greg's pirate shirt to re-make (made him one for Christmas, but it was too short, so I'm going to take it apart and remake it longer), embroidery to do on the pirate shirt, clay to play with, and oh, I don't know, half a dozen or so other projects.

I figured out the reason I've been going slowly nuts for awhile now is I wasn't making anything. I am much happier now. :o)

Feeling Creative!

I'm disappointed to note that 2010 was the first year since 2006 that I had no finished projects for the year, to add to my link in the sidebar. No wonder I've been getting more and more neurotic - I'm not creating nearly enough!

Actually, I could have thrown a few things on there last minute, but I didn't bother. I did make a skirt awhile back, but I was disappointed in how it turned out and haven't worn it yet. And may never.

And I made Greg a pirate shirt for Christmas, but although it turned out fine, I'm going to re-make it. I had to make this twice when I made it for me, too, as the first one was a mile too big, and way too short - so I made a second one a size smaller, and lengthened it. But I'd forgotten that when I made his, so it's too short.

Oh, and I did make the funky snowmen. And a few pieces of jewelry. I guess I did a little bit this year - but, like, all in November and December.

I was working feverishly on knitting a couple of baby blankets all last year, but embarrassingly didn't get either one of them done, so those don't count. I was also working on a sweater that I eventually scrapped, then started over with a different pattern - still working on that.

I haven't made any socks in a long time, though I'd like to.

And because I don't have enough unfinished projects, today I started cutting up fabric for a scrap quilt.

Well, here's the deal. I spent much of the day cleaning and re-organizing the Imaginarium. And wow, what a difference! I'm actually hopeful about that space again. It had gotten trashed in the last - oh, I don't know, year or so. I had it cleaned up once, but then it started going downhill and I just wasn't keeping up with it. I'd hit a weird vicious circle - I wasn't making anything so I didn't take the time to clean it up, but I wasn't making anything in part because the Imaginarium was trashed.

But I got far more done today than I expected to, including cleaning off the counters and re-organizing the cabinets, so then I was in the mood to make something. I'd been wanting to make a quilt for the bedroom for awhile, and I had some fabric scraps laying out from the skirt project, so I just started cutting them up into 5" squares (I have a book of instructions for a bunch of scrap quilts, all using 5" squares), then I dug into the stash and cut up some more fabric, so ... apparently I've started this project as well.

Well, I'm not letting this year go by without accomplishing some things. I don't make 'new year's resolutions' per se, but I'm damned sure going to find a way to make more time for creating things this year.

What's on the current plate? The knitted sweater, the scrap quilt, some more clay items to begin an inventory so I can eventually open an Etsy shop, and more jewelry. And more clothes. And some socks. And probably some new garb for both me and Greg (now that I've taken to making him garb because I think he ought to have something nice to wear once in awhile).

Yep. Definitely gotta find more creative time. Definitely.