Museum Field Trip

Our whole group at work took a field trip this afternoon to the SJ Art Museum for a docent-led tour of the M.C. Escher and Op Art exhibits (and then we wandered through the very cool Il Lee: Ballpoint Abstractions and interesting Jess: To and From the Printed Page and spent some time on the couch watch the Listening Post). It was a great field trip -- I just love that museum and it was so much fun to all go together and get away from our desks for a while.

David Behar

S picked me up from work and we drove up to SF to see a talk by scultptor David Behar Perahia at the Academy of Art. He showed some of his really interesting, site-specific art, one of which we had seen in a museum on our trip.

Scenes from ZeroOne

I worked my second shift at the ZeroOne art exhibition tonight. Tuesday I was in the South Pavillion of the convention center and was a bit dissapointed, but today I was assigned to the Art Museum and there is great stuff going on there. Of course I was immediately reassigned to help out with the skate board piece over in the Tech's courtyard, but the artist packed up early so I went back to the museum. The highlight (of both shifts, but I was so tired Tuesday my brain didn't make the connection until it was too late), was that Spinnity and her husband were there!

I would definitely recommend checking out the exhibits at the art museum. I'm still hoping to swing by and see the stuff at the city hall if I can...

Book Purse, Try #1

Here's my first attempt at one of those fun book purses people keep making (and which I was so excited to see for sale at a Friends of the Libary store when I was checking out the sites earlier this week). Since we were expecting house guests very shortly I didn't drag out the sewing machine and do it properly, so this is more a prototype than anything else (its held together with double-sided peel-and-stick fabric tape so I don't think it'd actually hold anything). We picked up a couple more books at the library's book sale today to try later, but here's the first. The handle and fabric is from Michael's. It definitely needs some embellishments...

Arystocrafts Tutorial (with great photos!)
HGTV instructions
Great examples

Full Set

I forgot to blog that we finished the 4th chair and the table over the weekend (and touched up the first three chairs) Here's the full set:

Special thanks to Susan who inspired me and helped me to paint my dresser a couple of years ago.

Just in time for more house guests to arrive this evening!

I could use one of these

Wouldn't it be cool to have the knitting needles count stitches for you? Not that I've done a single knit or purl for months, but I think if these were actually sold somewhere they'd be very hard to resist.

Blobjects

I convinced Emy to take a quick detour after the movie and we checked out the current exhibit at the SJ Art Museum, Blobjects & Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design. I love looking at examples of great design, and there were definitely some very cool things included in this exhibit. If you're downtown it is definitely worth stopping in for! (And the director of the museum was at my table at the Commonweath Club dinner and was raving about the upcoming Caja de visiones/Box of Visions: Manuel Álvarez Bravo exhibit which is supposed to be fantastic. June 18, 2005 through September 11, 2005)

Craft Corner Deathmatch

Mom IMed me about this one when she saw it in the Times this morning. I'm definitely going to be tivo-ing it (hopefully it will be better than that last craft challenge show.)

Craft Corner Deathmatch

Do you dare to decoupage? Is pain part of your palette? Are you aesthetically aggressive? Then maybe, just maybe, you're tough enough to handle Craft Corner Deathmatch, every Wednesday night at 10 on the Style Network. It's Martha Stewart Living meets Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome when amateur crafters compete against each other, against the clock--and against the imposing Craft Lady of Steel. Armed with nothing more than hot-glue guns and a few basic materials, the contestants must swiftly assemble projects that are judged on beauty, creativity and utility. Host Jason Jones is the devious ringmaster, throwing twists into each challenge and riling up the bloodthirsty studio audience.

Can't you just see BobbiLynn vs. Emy? :)

Girl Power! Laurie Long

So there's a rather strange exhibit at the Art Museum currently featuring Bay Area artist Laurie Long (feb. 5, 2005 to jun. 5, 2005) When I first saw it advertised I immediately thought of making BobbiLynn go, since she's the ultimate Nancy Drew fan, but we never managed to coordinate going over her Spring Break. Luckily Julia remembered that I wanted to see it and, since she's much better at following through to actually doing instead of just coming up with the ideas (a weakness of mine), she made sure we actually met up and saw it today. Here's the description:

Girl Power! Laurie Long presents the work of Bay Area artist Laurie Long, whose enchanting art fuses together elements of humor, gender identity, and pop culture. Long's work investigates serious issues—regarding the construction of female identity, and the implications of female performance within societal codes—in a lighthearted and easily accessible manner. While her work has been displayed both nationally and internationally in major venues, never before have her series been assembled in a complete survey exhibition. This exhibition will feature work from a number of series including, Becoming Nancy Drew in which she physically transformed herself into the famous girl sleuth from children’s literature and placed herself in photographic tableaux based on engravings from the books; Dating Surveillance Project, where Long wore a coat rigged with a concealed miniature video camera and microphone to record her dates; and The Secret History of Goddess Sites, which documents places in Europe where female deities were worshipped.

It was also fun to stop by Inside Out: Selections from the Permanent Collection (nov. 20, 2004 to jul. 9, 2006) where we could visit the furniture-eating couch we all love so much.

They were setting up for Blobjects & Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design (mar. 6, 2005 to jul. 10, 2005) which looks like it will be quite interesting as well.

The Gates

Vicariously enjoying The Gates through Mom's photos:

Knitted Room

This is old, but someone just posted it to our company's internal knitting list (how cool is it that there's a knitting list in the company???) and since it reminded me so much of the beaded kitchen I love, I thought I'd share:
Strathaven folk knit themselves a room.

I haven't had any time to knit at all... but now I guess I'll need to start on a little iPod cover

FO: Winter Hat 1

Finished up a very simple winter hat on the trip (I figured a hat would be a good excuse to get to knit with circular needles on the plane). Its Patons Canadiana Worsted Weight Stonewash on 16" US #8 circulars. Emy pointed out that ribbed knitting doesn't roll, but I finally figured out that you're supposed to do a double roll to make the brim.

Now I get to start the cool new any-guage hat pattern that Emy gave me for my birthday!

LYS: Knitting Central

Mom and I checked out the new knitting store in Westport, Knitting Central. Very nice, and very busy. I resisted buying anything new since I have a huge yarn stash waiting at home and haven't been making much lately, but it was a lot of fun to go in and pet the yarn and show Mom some of the cool stuff.

WSJ SNB

Jerri, one of the women in our SNB group is in the Wall Street Journal! She writes:

Also, last week I promised I would send out the link to the Wall Street Journal article that I was mentioned in. I spoke about a bunch of different networking methods in the interview and the one they chose to mention was our Stitch N' Bitch group - here is the link - read and enjoy: http://www.careerjournal.com/jobhunting/networking/20041108-capell.html

The article is "Women Find Nontraditional Ways To Network for Advancement" by Perri Capell.

When it comes to business networking, executive women throughout the U.S. are throwing out their golf clubs and joining others like them to talk shop in online discussions, book clubs, nail salons, knitting groups, and other nontraditional venues.

Jerri Barrett says a "Stich 'n Bitch" knitting group near her San Jose, Calif., area home gives her a way to talk with other women and pursue her knitting hobby. Ms. Barrett, vice president of customer service for HighWired Technologies Inc., a San Francisco voice-messaging company, found the group on Meetup.com.

Five to 25 mostly professional women meet Sunday afternoons in a coffee shop, says Ms. Barrett, 43. "You share information on knitting, but you end up making relationships that go in all different directions," she says.

We're on p. 191!

According to Emy, who heard it from Ilona, our SnB group is featured on p. 191 of the new SnB book! (but I ordered mine from Amazon and it won't be here until next week or later!)

ooh! Maybe we should all get together and go see Debbie january 13th or 14th in SF??

Striped Scarf

Finally a finished project! I started this during the KTEH Auction since our crew was off every other hour and there was plenty of time to knit. But I should have done it on larger needles so it didn't take so long to finish!

Its yarn from Michael's that creates its own patterns (and which would probably be good for socks if I ever got up to sock-level) but I can't find the tag right now.

Next I think I'd like to made a hat like the one Emy found at Target with various extras from my yarn stash if I can figure out how.

Grouted Birdhouse

My fingernails may be black for a while, but I finished grouting my birdhouse tonight in our final mosaic class (though we may have convinced the teacher to run another session of it since we all had so much fun). I have to let it set for a few days and then seal it, but you can see how it turned out. This craft may be too messy to do at home (one day I'll have a garage or a basement or a backyard or something to make messes in!)

Tonight's class was held at Blossom Hill Crafts (since our teacher is an artist in residence there) and my friend Laura was there taking her pottery class so I got to chat with her about Tech stuff while waiting for the grout to dry. :)

California Arts Day

California Arts Day is a time for Californians to show how much they value the arts - and what a rich diversity we have to choose from. So participate!

Go to a play, shoot a video, compose a poem, dance, paint a picture, sing, attend a concert, beat a drum, read a book...to a kid. And join with other Americans across the nation in celebrating all of October as National Arts and Humanities Month.

Mosaic Class

Tonight was the second part of our three-part mosaics class through Los Gatos Parks & Rec. Amanda (shown here) and Chad from Glass Bead class were in this class as well.

This is the bird house I'm working on. Next week we'll grout our projects.

The same teacher (Cynthia) is doing a one day workshop on "Picassiette" where you get to break and reassemble a plate into a mosaic if any one is interested (I think its Satuday, October 24, 12:30-4:30)

Plastic Bag Bag

I saw this awesome plastic yarn totebag and, given my current fondness for recycled art, just had to give it a try. I opted for a smaller size object, and it didn't come out as neatly as I would have hoped, but it was fun to make (though the plastic bags are a bit rough on the fingers). Theirs is crocheted, but since I haven't mastered that, I just did a straight knit stitch and then sewed up the bottom and side. Its big enough to hold a cantelope (though I don't know why you'd want to put a cantelope in it, it was just the only thing I could find that would fit). On the plus side, I used up all my plastic bags that were sitting around waiting to be reused. Now if I could just think of something to do with all the newspapers that are waiting to be recycled...

There were a ton of great links for crafts like that here, including this one which is just amazing. I spent way too much time Saturday night following most of the links.

Plastic Army Men Bowl

In this month's Ready Made Magazine, they showed this fantastic bowl made from melted toy soldiers (also on Boing Boing) -- and of course we had to try to make them!

Note: it turns out to be A LOT harder than it looked. The best directions that we found are here, but we didn't have much luck with the oven or stovetop.

I'll spare you most of the details, but let's just say it involved a lot of broken glass... We clearly don't have the right formula yet, so I won't post directions until we get it right. But the keys seem to be the microwave and a good deal of ventilation...

We tried a number of different types of plastic toys...

And here's my civil war soldiers in the bowl and out (where it split into two pieces that I'll try to glue back together. The white on the bottom is two horses) and the wheels are from the cannons.

And no, I'm not sure what we were thinking... and yes, we will probably try again :)

Out & About and Cigar Box Crafts

After visiting the Los Gatos Art Museum to see the book art exhibit one last time, Amytha and I drove all over the place visiting craft stores, antiques stores (including one absolutely insane one that smelled like cats and just had the most overhelming amount of stuff). We were looking for muffin tins (among other things), but I didn't see any I loved.

We also stopped by a cigar store in Willow Glen and bought some (empty) cigar boxes, which are oh-so-trendy of course. Now I just have to decide what to make with them. I was thinking more shadow box/assemblage/shrine than purse, but the purses people make are awfully cool looking.

I really like the designs on them, so I don't think I want to paint over them...

And speaking of assemblage art, Mom just sent me the most amazing Tracy Hambley piece -- with a spoon theme!!! Thank you SO much! I LOVE it!!! And the coolest part was the story to go along with it -- that Mom had asked the artist if she had a web site and she said no, but had googled herself and found this crazy girl who had cited her as her favorite artist... and of course that was me!! I had written about her for the collage class I was taking last September!

Update: Amytha just sent a list of all the places we went today! No wonder we're worn out!

• only the best (Los Gatos craft/paper arts store)
  
• art museum
  
• michaels
  
• storables
  
• eriks deli
  
• closed bead store
  
• cigar store
  
• thrift store
  
• 4 antique shops
  
• mexican store
  
• comic store
  
• vintage toy store
  
• record shop
  
• middle eastern market
  
• beverlys
  

Shadow Boxes

Amytha has power tools!

So we made shadow boxes which we'll decorate later. It was tons of fun -- but I definitely need more practice. I couldn't even nail the sides without having to pull about half of my nails back out.

(and, yes, we still have all our fingers)

Knitting Needles

Janice was turbo charged and Ilona was interchangeable, but somehow I came out as bamboo. I think it was more wishful thinking on my part than how I really am.

Warm, cozy, and thoughtful, you take your time and
enjoy how things feel, smell, and taste. You
love the craft and beauty of traditional
things, and you value the comfort and
experience of knitting as much as the results.
But while you are reveling in your warm cozies,
don't get stuck. Warm is wonderful, but so is
the whole wide world!


What kind of knitting needles are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Last Bead Class

Tonight was the last of our glass beadmaking classes. Here's tonight's guest artist Judy showing us how to make really cool large hollow glass beads. Our teacher Tom says he'll be teaching glass beads, fused glass and stained glass in the fall, and I'm tempted to take another class with him there (and will post it when the catalog comes out in case any of you want to come along too!)

Craft Night!

That was so much fun! I love having people over (and I cleaned up A LOT and was quite pleased with myself -- you can even see my desk currently because I tried out the new organizing tips from this morning's workshop) and it was so much fun to watch Emy stamp and to see everyone get to try it (I was having so much fun talking to everyone I forgot to stamp anything).

Thank you to everyone who came (and to Amytha who brought scrumptious tiramisu). I love that I have such crafty friends! And one of my favorite things is getting to bring together different groups of my friends -- so I tonight I had 3 Tech friends, 2 fellow-library students (and one of their highschool friends), and 2 knitting group friends over! And the Tech friends didn't even know each other (though I've been talking about them to each other for months), and my two classmates didn't know each other (not that anyone knows anyone else in the program, but we're working on that)

Yay!

Here are some photos!

Amytha and Tina watch Emy demonstrate

The whole gang: Tina, Amytha, Ilona, Emy, me, BobbiLynn, Julia, Melissa and Kim (not pictured)

Melissa (who I've been meaning to get together with for almost a year!), her friend Kim, and Tina

Tina shows off her card and coordinating envelope (I think we've hooked her on stamping!!)

Julia, Amytha and Ilona hard at work!

and BobbiLynn (who loves to win!) won one of the door prizes! Melissa's friend Kim won the other

Next goal: Elvis crafting dress-up party!!! Stay tuned!

Plus, if anyone is interested but couldn't attend, I have a catalog and extra order forms if anyone wants to buy any stamps or supplies...

[And yes, we stayed and talked until after 11!]

Lisa's Crafty Too!

Lisa sent me this photo of her doing art projects (with Ted and Nancy Peach, who were visiting her). See, she's crafty too!

The famous story about us, of course, is that Lisa took me to a craft workshop at the Smithsonian when I was five and we apparently tried to make holiday ornaments out of double-sided sticky shiny paper stuff (which was a disaster) and also were supposed to marble paper in big vats where all the kids plopped the marbled paper right onto themselves.

But now I'd better go get ready for "craft night" here!

Glass Frogs

We had a fantastic guest instructor Shelley tonight in my glass bead class who made unbelievably cool glass frogs (unfortunately the photo is blurry) and -- appropriately enough after today's Tech lecture -- the other photo is her making a Saturn bead, complete with rings.

Knitting Group, 6/13

Attendance at knitting group today may have been low (only 5 of us), but there were three newbies (well, new to the group but very accomplished knitters), and everyone was working on some gorgeous things!

Janice (who brought in her utterly fabulous finished cardigan today) and I have decided to knit-along on the Arrowhead knit top, and Laura (who you may recognize from the baseball pictures because it turns out we were in a class together) is going to help me figure out the lace part of it next week (so I won't be too intimidated when I get to that part of the pattern)

Craft Night Invitation

To any of you who are local... Emy and I are planning a craft night and Stampin' Up! workshop (featuring Emy and all her cool Stampin Up stuff) on Tuesday, June 22nd at 7pm.

Come hang out, learn to make some fun stamped greeting cards, learn about stamping, share ideas, etc. If you have other friends that you like to craft with (stamp, scrapbook, doodle, shop at Michael's, dream up creative ideas with, etc.), feel free to bring them along!

Email me for details, directions, etc.

It'll be fun!!! You can see photos from the last two times I went to workshops at Emy's.

Presents at Knitting Group

A lovely woman from Binky Patrol came to knitting group today to talk about the organization and left us a HUGE box of old knitting needles and yarns they can't use in their projects (in case the people are allergic to wool). I took a few very cool old needles and a bag of yellow fluffy yarn to make another blanket or something with. I'll definitely try to make something for Binky Patrol one day -- after I make some squares for Project Linus of course. So much to knit!

First solo beads

Here are my first beads that I made at home yesterday. For those of you keeping score, there are only 11 because one is still stuck on the mandrel and is soaking in water. I read online that having one of those grip things you use to open jars helps to get them off the mandrel as well, so I may try to pick one of those up later today so I can reuse all the mandrels for my next batch! The second picture is my favorite of the bunch, where I tried to use both of the blues together.

Glass Beads

Tonight was my first glass beadmaking class with Tom Stanton at the Holy City Art Studio in Los Gatos (through the Los Gatos-Saratoga Community Education and Recreation Department).

Here are the first beads we made:

Mine is the smallest green one, all the way on the right

Here's Amanda working on her bead (she looks SO familiar for some reason... maybe that she looks like Becca Fishaut?)

Here are the materials I need to go find before next week's class. Apparently there's a great store in Santa Cruz ("Kiss My Glass") that sells a started kit with everything but the Mapp Gas, which I can get at Home Depot.

Big Hat

I finished my second hat this morning but overcompensated a bit on the size (the last one was too small) so its a bit floppy and big. It was very satisfying to finish though :)

Hmm... what should I make next??

Stampin' with Emy and BobbiLynn

BobbiLynn and I went over to Emy's for some more stampin' fun tonight. She showed us how to make three very nifty cards and gave us lots of other cool stamping tips. It always makes me want to get right out and make things! Sorry the photo didn't come out better... you can see my silly hat (not the three-blister hat, which died half way through, but my second try at that hat pattern).

Great turnout!

Lured by a promise of having a group photo taken to appear in the sequel to Stitch n' Bitch, we had a great turnout at knitting group today!

A three blister hat

I was so impressed with the hats that Emy's been making -- and they've been flying off her needles so I thought I'd give it a try. I bought the pattern this morning from Chicknits for the Bottoms Up Bucket Hat and thought I'd make a test one with some left over blue-and-green worsted weight yarn I never got around to using. So I started it during knitting group today and first I cast on so tight that I had to cut the whole thing off and start over. I'm now about 4 rows into the rim and have three huge blisters to show for it (not my first knitting blisters, but I'm definitely doing something wrong to get so many so quickly from one project). Of course now I'm determined to actually have it turn into something... but we'll see... this may have been overly ambitious of me to try...

SJ Merc Article about Knitting Group

Our knitting group was on the front page of the San Jose Mercury News today! A reporter and photographer came 2 weeks ago and talked to all of us. I'll have to go get the actual paper to see if any of the photos they took were included. My laptop cozy did get a mention :)

Only three of us showed up today though (probably since everyone else was out doing mother's day things)

Some quotes:

"The informal gathering is part of a national phenomenon that might be called, well, knitworking. Once perceived as the quaint hobby of grandmothers, the ancient craft has spun back into vogue with a huge boost from the Internet."

"They are putting up must-read knitting blogs and sending off knitting e-mail. And they are transforming the ancient art, using new materials such as ribbon, tofu-based yarn and even bamboo strands to create skullcaps, bikinis, and cell phone or laptop cozies."

"The new faces of knitting were gathered on a recent Sunday at Orchard Valley Coffee in Campbell. While soft pop music played overhead and laptops hummed, nearly a dozen women took out their needles and shared yarns."

`Not your grandmother's knitting'
NEW BREED POSTS BLOGS, BONDS AT STITCH SESSIONS
By K. Oanh Ha
Mercury News

Too hot to knit?

Ok, 90 degree weather isn't exactly conducive to knitting, and turn-out was down a bit at our knitting group meeting today, but it was still lots of fun (and they do serve nice cold icy drinks!) I ran into Emy over at The Yarn Hut and bought two more ribbon-yarns to make ladder scarfs with (and wore my new purple one that I finished on the airplane last weekend - pictured here). But it was too hard to work on them while talking to everyone, so after ripping it out three times and starting over, I went back to my other scarf (which sadly looks a bit too much like a dish towel...) We discussed working together on some blankets for Project Linus (each knitting some 9"x9" squares to sew together into blankets for those of us that a whole blanket is a bit much for still) A reporter and photographer from the Merc came to chat with us which was fun as well!

Scrap Scarf Day

It was scrap scarf day at knitting group, where everyone brought bits and pieces of leftover yarn and we dumped them in the middle of the table so they could find new homes. Only Anne and I actually made scrap scarfs, but lots of people took home new stuff to play with. Here's the start of my scrap scarf (its less scary in person). Anne picked out the yarns for me.

BobbiLynn knitting!

BobbiLynn taught herself to knit this week (she's SO crafty!!) and is working on a gorgeous baby blanket for an expecting-friend. She came along to knitting group this week and we oohed and aahed over what everyone was working on (especially Emy's scarf that feels like bunny-fur).

Silly Pillow

Finished the very silly pillow I've been working on. I fell in love with the yarn at the Saratoga yarn store, but couldn't figure out what to do with it. It goes from being fluffy to thin, so wasn't knitting up very evenly. I thought I'd try a bag, but it didn't turn out to be something I thought I would carry around. Its wonderfully soft though, so I turned it into a pillow and stuffed it full of soft, fluffy stuffing. I wish it had turned out a little bigger, but it was fun to work on, and I got lots of good practice on my circular needles.

Printing

In my art class today we made prints that will eventually go into the books-in-the-round we're working on. It was like the old linoleum prints we used to do in school, but with a material that was a whole lot easier to cut. This is my second try (in the first one, I forgot to make all the letters in reverse, oops). Its in black ink with some silver mixed in.

Scarf for Lisa

Finished and mailed a scarf to Lisa this morning -- but I'll wait to post photos until she receives it...

Zap 3534-48 and Squiggle 9289-921010H06 on my #15s, 14 stiches CO, rows of all K.

(photos added 3/10, now that Lisa received her scarf)

Fuzzy Scarf

I'm feeling a bit muppety myself in my new fuzzy scarf. Modena GGH wonderfully soft and fluffy cotton/rayon/nylon. 16 knit stiches on No. 15 needles, plus short tassels. Yarn from the fabulous Knitting Arts store in Saratoga.

Plus, I found a Doozer Knitting song!

Here are the lyrics:

It's neat and it's sweet.
It's a ding dong treat,
Knittin' socks for little feet
Just sittin' with your knittin' all day long.

You know knittin's friendly,
And knittin's fun.
Knittin's good for everyone,
And that is why we sing this knittin' song.

Well it's knit one purl two.
What's a Doozer gonna do,
With a gol-darn,
Ball of yarn?
It's stitch three drop four.
Pitch that knittin' out the door right now.

There's a green there's a red.
There's a knot in my thread.
A knitter needs his noggin read,
So don't come 'round and speak to me of yarn.

You can k-nit all day and k-nothin' fits.
'Cause only k-nitwits like to k-nit,
And k-nittin' k-needles just ain't worth a darn.

Well it's knit one pearl two.
What's a Doozer gonna do,
With a gol-darn,
Ball of yarn?
It's stitch three drop four.
Pitch that knittin' out the door right now.

Cards!

Check out these cool cards EMY (who I met in my knitting group, and who is an Elizabeth, not an Emily) showed me how to make tonight at her stamping demo (I of course couldn't resist ordering some of the stamps to play with). BobbiLynn, you're going to have to come meet her, or we're going to have to host a workshop to learn more cool tricks!

Cell Phone Cozy

I still need to get a bit of velco for the opening, but I just finished a little cellphone cozy (pattern adapted from Stich n' Bitch's technicolor techno-cozy pattern, p. 178, but simpler and with some adjustments to mask the fact that I switched stich patterns half-way though, so that whole part became the flap).

TLC Essentials 2968 Shaded Denim on US 9 plastic needles, 16 stiches CO.

Our knitting group met again today and Emy showed off her awesome big-bad-baby-blanket!

Scarf for Carrie

After a woman in my knitting group explained to me how fringe works (it turns out to be extremely easy), I came home and finished the scarf I was making for Carrie (which I'm blogging a week later to not ruin the surprise). Its dark green to match her blog and done in knit-2, purl-2 ribbing.

Hopefully she'll post a photo of herself wearing it so I can see her new glasses!

Fun fur

I'm now the proud owner of an extremely silly and impractical "fun fur" long thin blue scarf which I finished this morning.

Lion Brand Fun Fur Indigo (3299) on great big #11 needles (which makes it go really fast) All knit rows, 12 across (really thin)

Knitting Group, 2/15

I love my new knitting group! Everyone is so nice and working on such cool things!!

We'll be meeting every Sunday at 4pm at Orchard Valley Coffee in Campbell -- everyone's welcome!

Striped Scarf

Finished my grey and white striped scarf tonight during American Idol (one of the finalists goes to SJSU!).

I still need a lot more practice, but it was fun to work on (took almost two weeks). I lost the yarn labels so I'll have to go back to the store and figure out what yarn it was, but it was on my #8 needles.

I also got my Stich n' Bitch book from Amazon in the mail today (though i said the title out loud at The Tech last week and almost got in a world of trouble), so hopefully I'll learn some new tricks to make things come out better. I also stopped into Knitting Arts, the knitting store in Saratoga, which is amazing! (I just bought some bigger needles for the next project.)

People to Knit With!

Just got back from the first meeting of our new Stich n' Bitch group at Orchard Valley Coffee in Campbell. It was so much fun to have people to knit with!

Here's the group so far, working on two scarfs, two hats, and a baby blanket:

Laptop Case

I actually managed to finish a knitting project (its been years and years... in college I think I managed a scarf and three mittens). It's a little knit case for my laptop with a button flap. I used TLC Worsted Weight 5978 Country Club yarn on 8 US needles. Here's a photo (with my laptop snuggly inside).

Not exactly as I hoped it turned out, but I'm just excited to actually have completed something! Now I have to figure out what to make next so I can bring some work to tomorrow's knitting group!

Trying to knit...

Worked on my knitting some more...

and surfed a whole bunch of other people's knitting blogs...

even took a quiz (which I think came out quite accurately):

You're a young knitter, just starting out. Welcome
to the fold! Find yourself some nice soft yarn
and grab a latte- it takes a while to finish a
project but it's well worth it.


Are you a knitter?
brought to you by Quizilla

I even found a local group that's meeting at one of my favorite coffee shops on Sunday afternoon!

Friday fun, 1/23

Spent the afternoon at BobbiLynn's. Here's us doing our craft projects, watching Ellen, eating chocolate-chip/m&m cookies and dreaming up all sorts of other projects to start! Plus, I'm wearing a scarf which she crocheted for me!!! (Thank you so much for that and all the other wonderful holiday gifts!!!)

Flowers & Fruit

Some new collages I've been working on:

Magazine clippings and paint over digital photos.

Week 6

This week's assignment was to try to resurrect and save a past collage

Before
Made quickly from random pieces.

After
I may have overdone it, but I added lines, a new 3d leaf for a focal point, sponge painted the edges, tried to tone-down some of the brighter colors with light-colored tissue paper and a lot of glue, etc.

I also took a pretty awful painting (unfortunately forgot to get a before-photo of it) cut it up into squares and added it with some magazine images in the same general colors to make this one:

Week 5 Collage

This week's collage assignment with the preliminary sketches.

(click to enlarge)

and the actual collage

Week 4 Collages

This week's lesson was on the design principles of Harmony, Unity & Balance

Harmony

Magazine ads in similar muted colors

Unity

Repetition of patterned paper and newsprint

Balance

and my value sketch

of this collage

Week 3 Assignment

This week's assignment was to make exaggerated collages for the principles we talked about this week: Dominance | Gradation | Contrast | Repetition | Rhythm

	Dominance Newspaper clippings The colorful, large woman (the focal point) is supposed to be contrasting with the black and white city and clippings
	Gradation Magazine clippings and tissue paper Subtle tones of black and white and greys
	Contrast Crossword puzzles, magazine cover, construction paper Contrasts from black and white to bright colors, and from squares to the circle
	Repetition Magazine clippings (copied)
	Rhythm Magazine clippings, construction paper

Week 3 Artists

Rose Merle Bertus
"Mixed Emotions"
http://www.nationalcollage.com/18thjuryexbi/RoseMerleBertus.JPG

Color is the dominant element with a strong contrast between the painted orange and black pieces of paper (plus the purple and green thrown in)

Teresa Garner
"Stamps, Markers, Etc"
http://www.nationalcollage.com/603PCS03/DSCF0070.JPG
Lots of pattern and repetition using the stamps. Plus the tomato provides contrast (color, shape) and dominance to the center. The round tan buttons also contrast with the square stamps and green color.

BobbiLynn's First Page

BobbiLynn came over to continue working on our Altered Books. Here she is finishing her first -- and very impressive -- spread.

We also ate a number of Krispie Kreme donuts, and tried drive-through iced chai lattes. :)

Here's her page with the envelope closed:

... and here it is open:

Week 2 Assignment

Here are my collages for the Week 2 Assignment. We were supposed to explore each of the seven design elements discussed this week (line, shape, value, color, movement, size, pattern) by creating our own exaggerated collage to illustrate the element.

Line

Strips of construction paper, music paper (horizontal lines), and Asian characters (vertical lines). One stripe of textured paper, a tag with a curly string, and a butterfly sticker.

Shape

Cut-out green and gold paper triangles to match the shapes in the magazine image.

Value

Black and white magazine images with black and pink paper to draw out the contrast.

Color

Magazine image, tissue paper, found objects in different colors.

Movement

Cut out magazine images of leaves and strips of paper.

Size

Tiny cut-out dancers from newspaper ad on extremely-zoomed photo of waterdrops on leaf.

Pattern

Photo of tree texture, strips of pattern from magazine, people from scrapbook background page, etc.

Assignment One: Jumping In

The first assignment was to "jump in with both feet" and create a first collage -- just using items that are within arms reach of your work surface. This came entirely from Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the blues were from a number of different ads.

(I got carried away and did this fruit one too from an advertising section in the magazine about organic produce).

Week One: Artists I admire

One of my favorite collage artists is Southbury, CT-based Tracy Hambley. I couldn't find much of her work online, but there is one example from a show here. I've seen her work at the Westport, CT Outdoor Fine Art Festival, where she has won prizes for her mixed-media work. I like the three-dimensional quality of her pieces and how she uses the frame as such a strong element (I particularly love the use of the columns in this one, and how the top part is framed separately). All of the elements - the ribbon, the drawers, the cloud background... just jump out at you. I particularly like how tools like the rulers and compass (over the blue window so it looks like it is hanging the window frame) are used as structural elements.

The History of Art and Architecture (1992), Copyright Tracy Hambley Please do not duplicate or reproduce in any other format.

I'm really drawn to Claudine Hellmuth's work - particularly pieces like The Star Maker in those rich colors and the bright stars set off against the background. I like the subtle scientific elements at the top and in the paper along the bottom and the whimsy of having the stars coming out of his pipe. I like how the man's face and hands seem to be in the same color as the paper along the bottom so that both stand out against the blues. There is also nice repetition of the circular wheel in the right corner with the upper arch shape.

And of course, I've always been a fan of Matisse's cutouts like this or this or this one (which I have a print of above my couch). I love how he takes such simple elements and creates so much movement and presence with them.

Collage Course

I'm taking an online collage course at Eclectic Academy and will be posting my class assignments and things here.

The first assignment is mostly to introduce myself and to identify some collage artists that I admire. Later in the week I'll also try to "jump in with both feet" and create and post a collage of my own here.

So to start, this is me (on the left, along with my sister and soon-to-be-sister-in-law) I really haven't done much collage at all before, but it has always appealed to me. I'm off to go look for examples of artists I like and will post them here soon.

Next AB, In progress

Here are a few pages from the book I started yesterday with BobbiLynn. Its very much a work in progress - I just wanted to try out some of our different materials.

This is one of the original pages -- there are a few line drawings like this in the book, but mostly Chinese (?) characters.

Painted black with magazine image

Magaine image and colored paper with scallopped edges

Pastel crayons and stamps

Pastel crayons, stamps, and magazine image

Magazine image and pastel crayons

Karen's Shower Book

For Karen's Wedding Shower, Mom and I made our First Altered Book!

We had watched the Altered Books with Beth Cote video and visited the runnber stamp store in Westport to get lots of inks and fun wedding-related stamps.

We found a book on Grandpa's shelf called "How to Get Married Now the You've Been Asked" and altered it with photos, buttons, cut-outs, stamps, and anything else we could find.

The title page of the book

This page has an embedded envelope with their save-the-date card inside

The back cover of the book