Interlude for small looms, and summerizing

Rain is back, days of it, possibly. And I may have had a hand in it.

I summerized. Winter bag to summer bag, which involves turning out the bag to find out all the interesting things I've been carrying around for months, editing, then filling up the summer bag. Oh look, a little hand mirror! A comb! Another comb! A shoehorn!

Left, winter bag, a public radio pledge drive tote which I painted, right, summer bag from the thriftie. This bag change usually causes storms. I didn't know how much power I had.

The Easter cactus is on the brink of busting out on time

Then Tuesday's Textiles and Tea rekindled my interest in small looms. I looked up the price of a pinloom and decided to settle for making one, once I find enough pins. Meanwhile I set to finding my trusty old pot holder loom. And my Crone Findlay to remind me how to proceed.

Everyone seems to have had one as a kid and will tell you at length, if you're not careful, all about making pot holders for their mom, using stretchy loops. I got mine late in life, but did make the statutorily required loop pot holders, to get caught up. Then I went on to various experiments in scarves and purses. 

One big advantage about the pinloom is that it creates a stable piece of fabric with four selvages, just lift it off the loom, no finishing required. Other forms have fringes or loops which need finishing. The potholder loom has loops you chain off, crochet move, to stabilize the edges so they don't fray.

Anyway yesterday's adventure was to see if I could figure out a way of creating a four-selvage edge on my little ph loom. Which I think I have. After several tries which didn't work.

I'm needleweaving the margins to fill the loops right up to the pegs. So far it's looking very much like the four selvage work I've done in other ways. The picture shows one edge done.  One more edge to do yet, then we'll know.  

This will leave an unworked place at each corner, which I'll weave across in contrasting color, when I make something out of the square, or several squares. C. do you recognize the yarn?

Misfits box arrives today, so I'll use part of it to create a pinloom, as shown in my Useful Book.  It's good when your raw materials come to your doorstep.

And I'm sure this has been an exciting post to read.. worth the price of admission.

Happy day, everyone, try making something even if it's only a mess.  Or a fuss.

Thinking, ink, thinking ink

 Yesterday I read 

Which I'd read years ago, forgotten the title, but it's just as gripping the second time. Thanks for reminding me of this one, Pam.

I'm always looking for new Kate Atkinson novels, but in their absence, her writing is great enough to reread anyway.

I'm very tired, probably the emotional fallout from dealing with the eye situation ss well as sudden hot weather. So I've decided not to bravely push on, but to yield and rest. I did make it to the PO yesterday to send off the socks for this month.

And yesterday I rubbed ink. Chinese ink stick, you rub it slowly, meditatively, on the block with water, in preparation for drawing or calligraphy.

Here I'm testing to see how black it is. Making ink is really part of the art, like warping the loom is part of the weaving. It takes time and quiet, and your mind is getting ready for the next stage.

In this case I made ink yesterday to use today. It was so good to be reunited with the block, which I haven't used for a long time.

I had even forgotten I had it, because I'd used the back of it as a block for printing on fabric, then another artist pointed out it was an artwork in itself.  

It ended up being exhibited, though not for sale, and came home to hang on the wall.

I only remembered it was my ink block when I emptied the studio, found the ink stick and started looking for the block, which was hanging on the wall right in front of me.

So it's back to its other function.

It's lovely to handle pens again, crowquill from long ago classes, and one of the calligraphy set Judy T.  gave me, also long ago.

While I was retrieving the ink block, I also came across this painting on a tote, same period as the fabric printing with the ink block, but this is freehand. I can press this one into service as a Sock Ministry project bag. 

I went through a bag painting period a while back, also taught it, nobody knows the stuff I've got into here and there.

Hot today, moving slowly, staying in and cool.

Maybe keeping cool is a good idea in every sense. Some good people are at work, the EU opening candidacy to Ukraine, the Jan 6 committee exposing crimes ready for indictments, maybe we can trust them all to do their jobs.

Happy day everyone!

Bags and books and featherweight things

I had to deliver two lots of artworks to two different places today, one early morning, one mid day, so this entailed getting out both artbags, one the ancient gray canvas one of student days, the other a more interesting one.

And it occurred to me that they were great canvases for painting on, as are my totebags for grocery shopping.  And that they might be candidates for transparencies.. so I took a pic or two, and here they 
are.  

Two sides of same bag, two moods!

Front and back of giant art bag.  The second one is a pocket, but it could be a bag in itself.  The only drawback to giant bags is that if you take advantage of the size, you can't lift them...

You know how easy this is, yes?  you take any old canvas totebag, tape it with masking tape to give yourself boundaries, then using liquid acrylics and a one inch cheapo sponge brush, you paint.  Then you peel off the tape. And you have a much more interesting bag than you had before.  You might also have something you could frame.

This could go in the art blog, but that's going to be a bit heavy with the shows and with the artist book capers, so I'm putting it in here.  And there's an invitation to create and teach a workshop, which I'm thinking about, and will get into over there, when I get there..

And I have two books to recommend, A Bird in the Hand, by Diana Henry, which doesn't sound very new and different, but it's great. She uses all the spices I learned to use from Ottolenghi in the service of chicken.  Really interesting stuff here. Worth a try.  

But, smugly, she doesn't have the one I invented I think, last Friday, chicken thighs, pounded thin, rolled up with sharp cheese and baby bellas sauteed with all kinds of interesting spices, spritzed with olive oil, showered with panko, and roasted at 400F.   Does this have a name? I probably only dimly remembered it from somewhere and thought I'd invented it, as you do.

On the food front, a neighbor stopped by to return a container, in which he had put two slices of banana bread, different recipes. Both wonderful, they became my afternoon tea. Nice chat on ingredients.

The goose feather resting on the chicken book is a find from today's marsh walk, probably a Canada goose. They're in nesting mode right now, so I was careful not to blunder through them.  They can get a bit short tempered if they think you're on their patch.

And the other book is one I really recommend, How to Read Water, by Tristan Gooley. This man is a wonderful teacher, brilliant and knowledgeable and capable of talking about his subject clearly and without reaching down. He has a great reading voice, too.  I heard his audio of The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs, and was very impressed.  He was on radio recently, and I got so engrossed in his anecdotes about water and how to study it that I'm now reading his book on it.  

So after doing the art deliveries and other errands, I took a walk along a nearby marshland, where there's plenty to see, and studied water patterns and little wavelets and how the shape of the banks and the breeze changed them, putting my newfound knowledge to work.  Anyway, do look at any of his writing, it's great.  

Today the birds were out in force, sunny, building time, and my favorite song of all, I heard the shout of the redwing blackbird.  It's not melodious, not a patch on some musical birds, but for me it's so redolent of Spring, and Shakespeare, and the smell of boxwood, and well, it's the real sign of spring here.  Other birds wander in early, but once the sound of the blackbird is heard, you know it's official.  Here it is, complete with rather fuzzy pic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA0FwcSb8ng

And that's a few of the things happening today around here.