Wrastling~

Yesterday was spent wrastling with my light tent and photographing a pile of spectacular new skeins from Arabella, Therese of Jump Sheep and some new Reenie skeins!

Here is some eye candy~
Grab them while you can!

Crone

Some yarns seem to design themselves and this is one that definitely did!
It gives me chills really. I have piles and bins of doodads and beads and such that inspire me. Sometimes I have an idea of a theme or plan, and I knew this skein was to be a Dark Princess or Witch themed yarn. The orangey/blue novelty ply found me first, at a craft thrift shop in Portland. It paired perfectly with my Donna batt. Next came the skulls....... then the feathers and then voila! The hippie-crone earrings....
As I spun the base I could see her personality develop, a strong, magical lady.
She would make an amazing scarf or cowl. (at least that's what she told me).

Evergreen Frost

Eve wanted to create a few batts for me to spin so I let her just go with it. She is my earthy girl. This is a literal interpretation of her creation. The browns and greens represent an evergreen tree and the iridescent glitz (a choice that would never have occurred to me!) represents the frost. In honor of the stately trees that surround our home.
Will make a great snuggly and warm hat or scarf.

Nevertheless

This batt was designed and carded by Ann. She seemed drawn to the colors and at first I thought the skein may take an oceany/sea inspired directon, but as I plied it I kept thinking of the three small novelty skeins from France I had set aside to design a yarn around. Not a color pairing I would usually make, but it works, nevertheless!
Very Paris/chic.
This skein will make an amazing scarf or cowl, the novelty strands are balanced throughout.

Sycophant

This batt was designed by Eve (my earthy girl) in her favorite colors. They are really very autumnal, but will work any time of the year. Will make a beautiful scarf or cowl. The name?

Inspired by a character in her latest book obsession....Leven Thumps

Visit the Handspun Shop~

I Needed Glue~

So Jackie and I took a quick trip to Michael's while our girls were in guitar class.

ALL of my glue was used or dried up. Not sure how they all decided to do it at the exact same time...maybe I don't want to know. haha.

Glue~

After class we headed down to Portland to Alberta and Bolt Fabric Boutique.

They were having a sale.

dangerous.

Here is some eye candy that now lives within my stash:

After Bolt we stopped in quick to see Sally of Close Knit. I refrained from a massive yarn purchase that I could not justify with any specific project and only got a new magazine.

Next was a trip to Land in Albina. Here is their online shop, Buy Olympia.

Oh my.

Graphic art heaven.

We got a raccoon print for Ann's room~

by Ryan Berkley

Eve chose this beauty by Jill Bliss.... still need to get a frame.

I have been collaging in the big 'ole scrapbook. Just glueing first layers of collage down for now.

Not sure where this is heading, but I suppose that is the point.

Later!

Vintage Scrapbook

The other day Paul was driving through Portland and came upon a shop called Vintage Pink in the Hawthorne District.

Apparently the pink exterior reminded him of me so much that when he got home he insisted on taking me.

LOVED the place. Retro heaven. Silly me did not get a shot of the outside of the building.

I had to try reaallly hard to contain myself and not fill the car to the brim.

All we left with were 4 oven proof mugs and this beauty...

12x15 inches with leather covers and intact pages!

The front cover had a grody wool fluff batting that was fluffing out at the corner so I peeled back the leather, removed the fluffoos and glued it back down.

I then took it apart to see how it is put together and contemplated replacing the pages with Fabriano Artistico and then decided the pages are just too awesome to remove.

Not acid free, all yellowing and cruddy...

...and with corner sticky things still attached!

I put a thing layer of gel medium all around the edges of the leather cover since it was deteriorating and making a mess.... I figured it would help it to last longer and not make a mess in my art.

Here are some shots of inside Vintage Pink.

Eve & Ann looking at old movie reels~

A Gianormous lamp that I still think we should buy. The base is some sort of clay? but lightweight and the shade is HUGE... the whole thing was at least 4 feet high.

Gnome display! Too cute and I of course wanted them ALL...

I will be returning soon with my tribe of ladies in tow.

Bookmaking- The Next Day

This morning I was very excited to see how the spine of my pages dried and how strong the bond is... (see yesterday's gluing follies here)

I think it is strong enough to give it a test run, but not completely convinced it will hold up to the vigors of Reenie.

Here is the spine with 5 coats of PVA glue with two layers of cheesecloth in them.

It dried nicely and seems strong enough.

I checked between the pages, there was a tiny bit of glue seepage on the pages, but I don't care.

They all seem intact when pulled on except for some of the CT copies, which are printed on regular copy paper. If pulled it seems they will come out like pages on a tablet.

Do I need stronger glue? not sure....

More shots of pages...

Edges of the pages...

The plan for now is to art and collage the pages and see how they hold together.

I will not attach to the cover until I decide if I am happy with the glue layer or not.

Cover closed...

Inconspicuous, isn't it?

Update (11-10-09)...

The PVA glue did not hold, so I peeled the glue off the edges and tried some epoxy. The epoxy seemed to hold ok.

Just ok, and maybe great for a thinner book made from thinner paper that would only occasionally get used. NOT for what I intend to do to this journal. >:)

So onward and upward. It is shelved for now... I am onto the next 11 things I have my hands in.

I will post when my A.D.D. travels come around to it again.

The Falls~ and bookmaking!

Yesterday we took a spontaneous road trip to Multnomah Falls.

This is by far one of my favorite places on the planet.

The falls are ethereal and spiritual, plus there are so few places one can watch such a beautiful array of people. All different cultures and types and styles and shapes and colors.

I saw a crew of Buddhist monks in robes and knit beanies (you can see them in this shot of the bridge).

Then there was "The Warrior" (what I called him) with his pony-tail on the top, shaved underneath hairdo and his big wooden walking stick. He just stood and stared at the falls, then at the view behind him, etc. He was amusing. You can see him really teeny tiny in the shot Paul took off the bridge.... see below.

There were many many more characters, wish I had the guts to snap all of their photos.

I was the invisible almost-40 mom sitting on a bench knitting.

See me waaaayy down there? Next to the teen-angst-girl on her ipod. (she was not my teen-she belonged to someone else).

Close-up... HiYA!

Paul took the girls up the trail to take pics. He got a fancy new camera for his birthday. You can see the album of his shots HERE.

~~~~~~~~~~

Today I spent time in the studio. Jackie came over and we planned and brainstormed over bookmaking ideas.

I decided to just jump in and make a trial book by gluing the pages together, rather than sewing them into signatures, which just thinking about makes me want to cry for some reason.

So I selected my pages, which are a combination of Fabriano Artistico nummy artist paper, prints of my CT scan and some artist papers I bought at Michael's and have been hoarding.

The book cover is a score from Scrap Action that I have had for some time.

The spine says "Cunning, Wile and all that Beguiles" hilarious.

I put the pages in order and put card stock on the top and bottom for cover pages. I plan to use fabric for my endpapers, so I figured the card stock would give it some support. (more on that later when I actually do it).

I clamped all of the pages together using binding clips, you are supposed to use a board and a clamp jig thingy that goes the length of the book, but I wanted to try the lazy way first.

This is the edge I want to glue.

Here is the edge with the first layer of glue. I used "Twice as Tacky" PVA.

Two layers of cheese cloth.... with layers of glue in between.

I then added short pieces of binding tape to the ends, as that is what will show on the ends once the cover is attached. Ths is how a book I dissected was made, so I copied that.

Now it is drying.... until tomorrow.

I will see how well it glued and decide if it will hold, etc. More later!

Press~

The following mentions and articles are from the past few years.
I wanted to post here to archive them.
~~~~~~

Our Vertigo yarn featured in the Editor's Picks Section of

Knit.1 Magazine Spring/Summer 2008 p.9

close-up

Ocean Wonder

Stitch 'n Bitch Page-a-Day Calender 2008
Kismet Bag~
Fiber Buzz
Vogue Knitting Fall 2008 p. 37

Craft Trends Magazine
Jan./Feb. 2008 p. 16-18
(click images to read article)
Tree Hat Kit
Fiber Buzz
Vogue Knitting Holiday 2007

Craft Trends Magazine October 2007

Needlearts Products Page

Vogue Knitting Fall 2007
Silver Anniversary Issue
Fiber Buzz p. 47

Knit.1 Magazine
Spring 2007
Editor's Picks Section p. 10

Interweave Crochet
Fiber Buzz
Spring 2007

Yarn Market News
January 2006
"X-treme Spinning" by Leslie Petrovski