July is Racing By in Craft Land

Hello out there in craft land. I’ve been busier than a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.

And my limited satellite bandwidth makes it hard to blog at all. I’m hoping to switch to something better but the company I am changing to has a 2 month wait for installing the service. Talk about a bad infrastructure out here.

Anyway, my newest project is a crocheted necklace made of flowers with 5 petals.  So far the colors are red, gray, cream and maybe I’ll add light purple.

In pottery I had a burst of creativity and made a bunch of things including little dish shapes for a rain chain, a dragon for my marionette show, a puffy box for storing paint brushes, a twisty vase for knitting needles, 2 marionette heads, 2 fairy doors and some doll faces and shoes. Holy cow I’m going to need to slow down and finish some things. I wanted to go yesterday but I coughed all night. Then I wanted to go today and woke up with a nasty migraine. Part of the slowdown is I have to give the studio staff a chance to fire everything.  There are many students now and piles of stuff to fire.

Also, I am doing embroidery on a denim apron. That is slow going because it makes my hands hurt. I need to start using a thimble (work smart not hard).  I just get lazy about it.

I also got some red bandanna fabric so I could sew an official country blouse, now that I live in the country. I haven’t decided on the pattern though. We shall see.

Now off I go to make all the things. Peace out. 

All the discs for the Rain Chain have been glazed and fired. I just need to assemble it.

Ceramic Rain Chain

Today I started a new project I've wanted to do for awhile. It's called a rain chain and I learned about them on Pinterest. I'm making little dishes out of my white paper clay. Then they will be sorted by size and linked together with beads and chains to make a rain chain that goes from my eves to the ground. Considering the wind out here I think I'll sink it into a bucket of cement in the ground. I've never made anything like this before. I'm excited.

I'll take them to pottery class tomorrow and make some more.

Getting Ready For the Pow-wow

I am dealing with a mountain of unfinished projects. Ever since I joined Burning House Art Gallery, I'm making pots faster than I can keep up. Right now everything is trimmed and in drying mode. That's only because I didn't throw any new pots yesterday.  I did make a plaque with a roadrunner carved into it and some ankh beads yesterday. I put a handle on the pitcher and trimmed another bottle. By the time I cleaned up the mess from that, it was time to go home. How can 4 hours  pass so quickly?

I didn't even knit at the knitting meeting. I worked on origami.  I wanted to send cards today so I wrote my two cards, made 3 origami cranes and then it was time to grab dinner before pottery. I had so many errands to run yesterday that by the time I got to the knitting thing, I was too tired to knit.

I got some odd balls of yarn at the thrift store to use in my Abandoned Art give-away stick weavings. It's the perfect use for small bits of yarn.

All the photos I took yesterday are still on my camera somewhere. I think I left it in the back of the car, but my boyfriend needed to drive that car to work today, so I'm pretty sure my camera went with him.

From here on out I'm dropping everything except the projects I need to finish for the Pow-wow in Lucerne Valley, CA on Sat. Oct. 4 and Sun. Oct 5, 2014. I can resume the other projects after the Pow-wow. If you are a local it will be at Pioneer Park this time. If you are not local, it's not a huge event. I personally wouldn't drive 300 miles to be there, unless your family is dancing there or something. Even worse there is a similar event in Apply Valley/Victorville area the same weekend. I wish they'd coordinate and have similar events on different weekends.

The medicine pouch necklaces I'm knitting for the Pow-wow.

Using circular needles to knit pouches.

The pitcher I put a handle onto last night.

Autumn I Know You Are Out There Somewhere

Weaver at an SCA event.

Since Google search punishes duplicate content (even if you are just quoting yourself) I'll  just link you up to my crafty shenanigans today. My latest crafty blog post is here.

I am definitely feeling autumn in the air today. It is gusty outside. The chickens are hiding in their  penthouse to stay out of the wind. After Fletcher leaves for work I'll shut the gate so nothing will blow out into the street. One day after a wind event there was a bra just hanging in the tumbleweeds.

I'm happy to be getting back into both pottery and weaving, all in the same week. It just worked out that way.

Hand Built Pottery I Made Yesterday

I got to work on some pottery at a friend's house yesterday. They do have a kiln if they ever get a chance to figure out how to use it.

Hand Built Pottery

I spent an awesome day today hand building pottery.  Yesterday at Agincourt I got to do some illumination and I was enjoying the little ceramic containers on the tables.  They are for water, brushes, pens, and paper weights to keep our lovely papers from blowing away in the wind.  Someone was selling pottery for cheap to raise money for the thrown weapons group. So I bought a cool vase.  All that made me crave to be making pots again. So I sat down today and made some pinch pots and coil pots with my very own hands. My friends acquired a kiln but they haven't used it yet. Hopefully they'll catch the pottery bug too and make some pots and we can fire them all. I loved having my hands in clay again. I'll post photos of them tomorrow.  For now you can see the illumination I was working on yesterday. I only did the painting on it. It was pre-printed on the card stock.

San Marcos Area Art Potluck

Arrowheads knapped by Chris of Paleoarts

Last Saturday we drove down to San Marcos, CA to visit an open house held by my friend's art co-op.  In their group they have some potters, glassblowers, woodworkers and a flute maker. Chris makes primitive style tools like stone axes, arrowheads, atlatls, spears, and bone needles.  Him and his girlfriend Carrie did atlatl demos throughout the afternoon, and let people give it a try. Then we all had an amazing potluck. Then there was a fantastic raffle and a silent auction.

See the photos below.

Chris shows guests how to use an atlatl and dart

Bone needles made by Chris

Two glassblowers work on a project.

Teen tries out throwing pottery on a wheel.

Boomerangs and Atlats made by Chris from Paleoarts

Thoughts on Art and Artists

I've spent the better part of two hours working on a cross stitch design of a dragon while watching a TV program on the influence of Paris in the world of art. Fascinating show. Sure makes me glad that I took art history in college. It was useful to see how painting, composing, writing,  poetry, theater, and dance were all linked together through the various art movements including modernism, fauvism, cubism, impressionism, and dada. And it was great to see the comradeship between all these artists that hung out together in French cafes and rented studios within blocks of each other and lived in poverty but with great passion.  I feel like I'd be a better artist if I had a network of real life artists to hang out with in cafes and talk into the wee hours about the fine points of art.

Sometimes Etsy makes me sad when there seem to be hardly any artists in the chatrooms.  There are a lot of suppliers and vintage sellers and people that do assembly line style crafts. I get pretty excited when I meet actual artists that paint or draw or sculpt or forge or throw pottery. In fact I joined Etsy because I thought it was a place for artists to sell art.  And it is, but we are outnumbered by everyone else.