Christmas Projects 2013

This year's handmade Christmas gifts included a variety of gifts from the kitchen as usual, including: preserves,curds, jellies, and dessert toppings. New recipes this year included crabapple pie jelly [pictured below] made from apples my friend and I picked this fall at her mother-in-law's house, and raspberry curd, which tastes like very creamy raspberry jam and is excellent spread onto white cake instead of icing. 

My cats were very happy with this years' batch of special toys, all stuffed with raw sheep's wool and my own blend of catnip. Their favorite is their giant carrot kicker toy, which at just over a foot long is big enough for even my biggest cat (who tops the scales around 16 lbs) to hold and kick. I made it out of part of a felted merino wool sweater for durability and softness.

My sister hit the jackpot this year (in my opinion). I made her a whole set of winter-themed throw pillows out of wool-blend felt. These I sewed entirely by hand- not because I wanted to show off, but because my ancient Viking sewing machine gave up the ghost a couple of months ago.

My personal favorite is this snowman pillow. He has coal eyes and buttons, "branch" arms made of layers of wool felt with embroidered "bark", and a wool felt "carrot" nose that sticks straight out. I also knitted him his own little scarf out of lovely wool and mohair yarn. He's about 24" tall- so are all of the other pillows in the set, except the ornament.

My mom's favorite is this pine tree pillow. She really likes the embroidered and appliqued wool felt pine cones:

Here's a detail of a cone:

Along with those two is this adorable candy-cane. I made the stripes using jumbo pink rick-rack and regular-sized red rick-rack.

The stocking pillow has lace trim and little silver bells on the cuff. The letters were appliqued on.

Last but not least is the fun little ornament pillow with fuzzy trim:

My niece also got a pillow, but this one is out of deliciously soft cotton flannel and is made to match the bedding in her dorm room. I appliqued a silhouette of her dog on it so they can be together in their dreams...

My friend and neighbor special-ordered a soccer-playing pug doll for her son. I made the dog a uniform just like her son's, and gave the pug a drawstring backpack to hold his little bouncy soccer ball. As a surprise I also made a goal out of heavy wire and fabric netting.

For the boy's mother I made a tiny felt version of her little dog. She's needle-felted over a wire armature and has adjustable wool-wrapped legs. I'm very happy with the way it turned out, it looks just like her!

And for the little model herself, I made a fancy new coat!

For one of my hard-working friends at the cat shelter I made a catnip Tardis for her cats at home:

And another hard-working friend at the shelter- who I made the little Harry Potter for last year (see Christmas Presents 2013) was given his friends Ron and Hermione and his beloved owl, Hedwig.

There were a couple of other things, like mittens out of felted wool sweaters, but of course I forgot to take pictures before those were wrapped and sent off!

Blocks

I've had a very productive couple of weeks in my studio. My main project at the moment is working on what had been an elaborate frame for a bureau mirror that I got (sans bureau and mirror) at a barn sale several years ago. I started a painting where the mirror had been, but I reached the point where I knew that it wasn't finished, but I didn't know what else to do with it so I decided to let it rest for a while and work on something else.

That something else was a set of stacking/nesting wood baby blocks that I bought at a garage sale, also several years ago. When I bought them they all were pretty much the same; each block had the same decal of an inane farm scene on five sides, the only difference between them was that every block was smaller than the other and that the decal was scaled to fit the size of the block. I thought this was a sad waste of potential and set about to remedy the situation almost immediately. I sanded off the decals, cleaned off the dust, primed, and painted each block a different pastel color; colors that were just slightly muted whenever possible.

Then I nested them back up and put them away for the better part of a year.

I had several ideas of what to do with them: elephant to mouse, hyacinth macaw to bee parrot, blue whale to krill, ect. (all of these ideas I might use still of I find other block sets), but the idea that stuck was to make the set of blocks that I would have wanted as a child; one that Charles Addams and Edward Gorey would have approved of. So I thought about all the animals that most people are afraid of- the real stuff of nightmares- and set about making them as creepy/cute as possible.

There's a delicate balance between creepy and cute; I didn't want to make the subjects so cutesy that they weren't recognizable, but I did want them to be so cutesy that it was funny (at least to me). For inspiration I turned to some children's books from the 1930's.

For consistency I wrote the names of the animals as well as a big capital version of the first letter of the name in the same grey on the tops of all of the blocks. After drawing all of the animal characters, it was just a question of painting them.

The animals I chose from large blocks to small are:

Giant Squid

Vulture

Wolf

Crow

Bat

Rat 

Toad

Asp

Spider

Wasp

Chasing Butterflies, Part II

Because I was unhappy with the first set of butterflies, I went back to the drawing board and made a second set using the same techniques (making the pattern, tracing the pattern onto BFK Rives, cutting, coloring, adding iridescent medium, felting the wings into the wool bodies, and adding wire antennae). The second set has smaller bodies, thinner wire antennae, and slightly larger wings with a different pattern on them. This time I only used the iridescent medium on the white spots on the wings instead of the whole wing. I think it looks better because it makes the white pop when under glass and you can see the detail on the wings much better.

Here is a view of the top of the butterfly:

Here is the bottom of the butterfly:

After the butterflies were finished I mounted them to the birch branch:

Here is a close-up of the butterflies on the branch: 

Along with the butterflies, I added one emerging from a cocoon: 

...And a caterpillar made of felted wool and glass beads that were the same colors as the butterflies' wings:

To finish the piece I covered the bottom plate with moss and added a piece of birch bark, on which I mounted one of the butterflies:

The finished piece is under a large glass bell jar. Hopefully I'll be able to convince my photographer brother to take a picture of the piece under glass, because my pictures don't do it justice:

 So this is the first piece in my "Vegan Taxidermy" series, I call this "Life Cycle of the Blue-Eyed Butterfly: Hyacintho Oculus Papilio."

Chasing Butterflies, part I

While flipping through a magazine I came upon an article that featured the set of a period picture set in Victorian England. I can't remember what movie it was or even what magazine, but what caught my eye was in the background of one of the pictures, sitting on a side table was a bell jar filled with amazing blue butterflies. I really wanted my own bell jar of butterflies, but since I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of having a bunch of dead animals under glass, I decided to make a batch of hand-made butterflies to mount.

Using stiff paper for wings was a pretty obvious choice, so armed with some scraps of BFK Reeve paper and a couple of books on butterfly identification, I drew some templates for the wings. I figured out the patters for the front and backs of the wings that I wanted, and drew the designs in colored pencil.

I wanted the bodies to be dimensional, so I decided to make them out of needle-felted wool.  I started by making a little cylinder of the wool with leaving a bit of un-felted wool at one end.

I then folded the loose roving over the wings and felted the wings into the roving.

When the bodies were done I added wire for the legs and antennae. To finish the butterflies I applied a liquid plastic to the ends of the antennae.

I liked them overall, but they weren't quite right so I made a second batch. I'll show you those in part II!

Early Spring Projects

I've been wrestling with the end of winter/early spring "blehs" a bit lately, so I took a break from making new patterns and animals for my Etsy shop (some of which will be featured in another blog post soon!) to make some stuff just for the fun of it.

The first project is a little fox doll. One of my good friends gave me a burnt orange felted sweater, so how could I resist making a little doll out of one of the sleeves? I felted white roving on the end of her tail and black roving on the end of her long nose, then sewed on stacked buttons for her eyes. After she was finished, I made a cute patterned cotton shirt with working buttons and a lace collar for her. 

To finish her outfit I made a heavy cotton jumper with a soft satin ribbon waist and shoulder straps. This also comes off by slipping over her head. She measures about 12 inches tall and I'm quite happy with the way she turned out!

Also:

Earlier this week I found a great deal on a blu-ray player and I wanted to have it sit under my TV. This hadn't been an issue in the past, because my TV has a build-in DVD player, but it stopped working (it's honestly not a very good TV, but it works!). My TV is not very large so I figured I could make my own stand for it with a minimum of trouble. I just happened to have a piece of plywood that was the perfect size (how cool is that?) for the top, so all I had to do was dig around my collection of "cool wooden objects" to find something for the legs of the stand. I lucked out once again by finding four tassel forms!

For my first step I attached the legs to the top:

Here's a detail of the tassel form legs:

Then after choosing my palette, I painted the top and legs:

Here are the legs and bottom:

And: TA-DA! Here it is at work in my studio:

The Magical Island

 January was an exceptionally difficult month month for me, mostly due to losing an aunt and our kitten within less than a week of each other, but because of a fluke of excellent timing I was able to get away at the end of the month. And what a getaway it was! I was lucky enough to be able to go with my mom to Ireland to visit my brother and his family.

I think that Ireland is always a wonderful place to visit; the people are friendly, the temperate climate is a welcome getaway from the harsh highs and lows that we endure in Michigan, and it's always great to see my family there. This time was especially nice, though. To be able to reconnect with some old friends and make new ones, to visit places that both familiar and unfamiliar, and to just leave my grief and worries at home and be in a totally different place for a while was just what I needed!

The day after our arrival my mom and I visited the Rudolf Steiner- inspired daycare that my sister-in-law co-runs. Even when the space is full of small children it is surprisingly quiet and peaceful. While we were there we helped make St. Bridget's crosses for the children to take home.

One day we took a drive up the coast of Connemara, which neither my mom nor I had been before. It was a beautiful, clear day and we had a really wonderful time. I was surprised at how rocky the countryside was. I've been to the Burren several times, but the rocks here were very different; giant, sharp-looking boulders rather than the worn, soft-looking Burren stones. We took a walk on the beach during one of our rest stops and I had a great time gazing at the seaweed-filled tide pools. 

The oldest church that is still in use in the British Isles is located in Tuamgraney, a town very close to where my brother lives. The cemetery in the churchyard is filled with history.

Sometimes I find back yards more interesting than front ones. This was taken on one of our daily walks around the town.

Unlike Michigan, Ireland is dotted with flowers even in winter. This was an exceptionally large heather on the edge of someone's garden. I'm sure their yard is a showplace in the summer! Hopefully I'll be able to see the whole garden in full bloom sometime soon...

Bonnie Lassie Mouser

If you regularly read my blog you will remember that last summer I adopted a new kitten who I named Bonnie Lassie Mouser (otherwise known as Bitty Kitty). As a professional pet-sitter, a lifetime animal lover, and a regular volunteer at a no-kill cat shelter (which is where Bonnie came from) I have known many, many cats, and I can honestly say that Bonnie was one of the most special cats that I have had the pleasure of knowing. 

Unfortunately, last week I found out that she had an undiagnosed fatal illness (she was tested before I adopted her, but apparently something was wrong with that test and it was a false negative). Looking back on it she had been showing signs of illness for a couple of weeks, but I just thought that she had a less fatal illness of some kind. This morning she let me know that she was ready to move onto the Next Step of death, and I had my wonderful veterinarian help Bonnie pass over. 

Here she is at the shelter at around 7 weeks old; an irresistible scamp.  

Within two weeks of moving in with us, she quickly became an essential part of our household, especially my studio.

She had an amazing appetite for life, and catnip.

And she was a great help when it came to photographing products for my Etsy store.

By the time she was eight months old she had started growing to an impressively sized cat.

 She was happy to be my constant companion, and I felt blessed to have shared her short life with her.

She will always have a very, very special place in my heart. Rest in Peace, my dear, dear friend.

? April 2012- 21 January, 2013