Juggling v the Green Man

I was up to my eyeballs working on my juggling club project.  I got all the dowels sawed and was working on cutting the tennis balls in half when my boyfriend comes over to my work area. He asked me if I could paint him a green man banner for his archery booth from the logo I designed for his website. And the event is Saturday.

I explained to him how important is was to me to make some forward progress on the juggling clubs. And I finally had some momentum going. He said I didn't have to drop everything. But dropping everything is the only way I'm going to have time to paint a 2' x 2' canvas banner, let it all dry, heat set it and hem it in time for the event.

So he offered to keep working on the juggling clubs if I'd get started on the banner.  So that's what I did.  I was back in my comfort zone and he was back in his. I didn't finish the painting before it got dark though so I'll have to paint all day tomorrow.

Library Day

It's morning in S. California and we are having a heatwave. So I'm thinking today might be a good day to return library books and  make use of their air conditioning. I'll find one of my more portable crafts to take. I've been hankering to do some cross-stitch.  I should work on one I already have going though. Or I could do crewel work on some kitchen towels. Sadly, the market is really depressed. I can't compete with stitchers that sell their hand-embroidered towels for $6. each. That's not even minimum wage.Before I found that out I bought about 12 towels to embroider. I think I listed one or two and then got discouraged.

My boyfriend is off to the archery store this morning to get more feathers or something. You can see his latest arrow creations here: Greenman Archery.

Another Drum and The Green Man

Today I was watching a show about the Wigmen in Papua New Guinea and the drums they play reminded me of a gourd I bought with a long neck that I wanted to turn into a drum. So I found it in my gourd bin and cut off the top and the bottom. The bottom was so thick, I broke two saw blades cutting it apart. Then I cleaned it out.
Then I noticed there was a bowl shape leftover from the bottom. I thought it would make a great green man sculpture so I started sketching out my idea and one thing lead to another and I spent the rest of the day cutting out leaf shapes from the gourd scraps and working on the greenman. So much for the drum! Okay so focus isn't my strong suit. My hand is pretty tired from all the sawing and drill cleaning so typing is a little difficult. We bought a special drill bit for cleaning out gourds. Saves a lot of time but my hand gets so tired holding up the drill. It's dark now so I'll try to get some photos of both the drum and the mask tomorrow.

Embroidery, Greenman, Tiki, Gourd Art

Right off the bat this morning I crocheted a snood. A snood is a type of hair net. All I have left to do is add the drawstring.

Then today I washed a whole bunch of little jewelry gourds. I plan to do a tutorial soon on how to turn a jewelry gourd into something.

I noticed my friend Jon has some great new woodcarved items in his shop here: Gosling If you collect tikis or greenman art check it out. He's also been making walking sticks.

I did some freehand embroidery tonight too. It's organic and there is no pattern or preconceived notion of what it will turn out to be like. Right now it is turquoise embroidery floss.

Greenman

The green beads I bought work perfectly for the Greenman project. Only now I remember I needed brown for the branches too. In fact I needed the brown more than I needed the green. Wish that hadn't slipped my mind last night.

For a while my Greenman was looking pretty effeminate. But now that I've added the beard it's starting to look like a man. I was a little worried there.

I'm supposed to be making spaghetti with Italian sausage so I better get going.

Greenman Bead Embroidery

I've been digging apart every box and bin in every room of the house looking for more green beads for my greenman bead project. And I know I have more squirreled away somewhere. I know I have a tan fishing tackle box of beads that I tripped over in the hallway for months and now I can't find it to save my life. The good news is I can start consolidating my old beads and new beads into some semblance of order. This is the first monochromatic piece I've worked on and it's a challenge to focus on tones instead of color. But it's coming along nicely.