Alison: Wuh.

Wuh. That's what Otto says. It means "look." He squeezes his fingers into a group, holds out his hand, palm up, showing me his Spiderman pajamas, and says "wuh."

Anyway...

I recently met my sister at my dad's condo in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Zoe and I drove about 4 hours south, my sister drove 3 hours north, and we collided at dad's. My sister needed to get away for the weekend, and I was so glad to be able to hang out with her. We brought along Zoe so someone could be the adult. Poor thing. She is only 15.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the shops of Peterborough.

In 'Grove and Main' we saw ribbons from an old New England textile mill. We had to buy some!

Wuh:

Either side of the ribbon is beautiful. We, my sister and I, got so misty-eyed about how to use these ribbons.

Next door was a cooperative gallery, set up like the one we have in our town.

Earlier Zoe had found a bookstore and stayed in it (far away from us).

Then the motherlode. Next door, in The Window Gallery, we came upon an exhibit of porcelain one of a kind art dolls and crazy wooden chairs and ladders by Mona Adisa Brooks.

I was soooo happy! Coming from the end of the earth to a small town in New Hampshire and seeing this?! The man watching over the gallery said Mona had recently moved to Peterborough from New York City and while the building her exhibit was in was being renovated into a hotel, the owners let her show her art there. I am so lucky to be in the room with all this art. So inspirational, so much fun. Her dolls, especially the ones in "Book of Fools" on her website, were awesome in real life. The fabrics, the hats (she designs hats, so no wonder), the expressions...

Sigh.

My dad, my sister, my daughter and I walked through old cranberry bogs, along paths around a beaver pond; we found an owl pellet beneath a tall fir tree, bones and the outer portion of the shell from an old snapping turtle, and a few sticks.

It was a nice weekend spent with my sister. One the way home, I wished we could live closer to each other so we could create art together.

Kelee: Electric Kool-Aid Yarn Flashback

Our local grocery store has probably been curious about the substantial spike in Kool-Aid sales because I've been dying like a mad woman! Here are the results - both successes and failures.

Here's the girlchild in her Velma-inspired orange and red cloche.
I was going for Velma as a flapper.
The colors are really nice and lined up well on the hat.
This is a success.

Here's the boy in an overly-intense green and blue and dusty purple mistake.
I also tried placing the colors on the yarn in a more random pattern.
The randomness did not make sense in the end product.
This is a failure.

This hat is orange, yellow, and purple.
I tried putting the colors on the yarn in big blocks.
Putting the colors like this was okay-ish. It wasn't exciting, though
and didn't make too much sense when crocheted up.
This is a failure.
It made me realize that I don't like the purple Kool-Aid yarn results,
which is especially odd since it's my favorite flavored Kool-Aid.
The boy and the dog are just there for cuteness.

Collection of hats.
Three shade of green.
Orange and Red.
Blue and Yellow with green overlaps.
Gritty Kitty

Coming Soon: Krafty Kelee's Konsignment Korner

Crafts have a coolness hierarchy. Art is way cooler than crafts to start with so already I'm at a disadvantage.
For yarn, it goes like this.
From American Craft (cool) to Krafty Kelee's Konsignment Korner (not cool):
Weaving
Knitting
Crochet
Macrame
Although I can knit, due to a knitting injury back in ought-five, I usually just crochet. Did I say knitting injury? Geez, I meant a professional ice hockey/X-treme wilderness survival challenge/saving the dolphins injury. Very dangerous but important. Not to distract you from my wimpiness, but check out this cute picture of my big cat in a tiny box.
Since I crochet, I'm already near the bottom of the yarn hierarchy. And I've been considering marcrameing a belt, but I can't decide if it'd be worth dropping me down to that bottom category. Especially since I don't wear belts.
In the clay world, it goes like this:
porcelain
stoneware
earthenware
liquid slip
polymer clay
I rank well here since I mostly use porcelain. Whew. Nice save.

Down at the bottom of all lists are any crafts involving seashells and including the phrase “melt-n-pour.”

That is why I am so embarrassed to tell you what I've been doing these days. In a moment of weakness during the Holiday of the Spring Break, I bought some polymer clay with my kids' persuasion. I really can be easily influenced. Purple and green and with glitter. With glitter, for pete's sake. Polymer clay is not cool. It's too cheap to get started using, too easy to access, and too non-deadly to make it very cool. Here I am trying to go professional in crafting, and I am starting up in a new uncool craft. And with glitter!
It's just that the colors are so nice. They mix so well together. The more you use the clay the easier it gets to use. The results are so immediate. It's challenging and surprising and whimsical and tactile and exciting and easy. And with glitter!
I love how even when two colors are almost totally mixed, there will still be a very thin stripe of one color. And unlike play-dough, mixing two colors together does not take you immediately to brown. I'm smitten. Addicted. Obsessed. I've been having dreams where I'm mixing the clays. Then I wake up and lay there thinking about mixing more colors. I am late in my self-imposed deadline in writing this blog because I'd rather be playing with the clay than tell you about playing with it. My family does not know how lucky they are that I actually got around to cooking Easter lunch.
I've been watching YouTube tutorials, Google imaging polymer jewelry, and following this lady on facebook.

I've bought no new tools (though I have my eye on a pasta roller and an extruder).

I invented a striping method accidentally while trying to find a new way to mix colors. It did not work for mixing the clays, but I am loving the striated layer effect. And with glitter!




And now I will answer to WSB FAQ which is What Should Be Frequently Asked Questions.

Why are you always using colors that are so bright?
Because bright colors are awesome.

Why are they all rectangles?
Because the simple shape accentuates the color patterns.

Why are you so awesome, in general?
Good genes.

Are the earwires sterling silver and shaped by hand?
Yes.

Will you be making more?
I already have.

Can I trade you cash for the ownership of a pair of these lovely earrings?
Yes. That is called "purchasing" or "buying" the earrings. They are available online here at my etsy shop or in real life at The Flying Disc at 342 Main Street in beautiful historic downtown Enosburg Falls, Vermont.

Did you really injure yourself knitting?
Yes. Then I reinjured my shoulder lifting a blanket to cover myself up. Injured enough that I had to go to physical therapy. Physical therapy for a knitting/blanket-lifting injury. Now you see why I am so concerned about not decoolifying myself.

Alison: My Little Prince and Arthur Rackham

My world is richer for having seen Arthur Rackham's illustrations.

My beautiful collection of fabric, I have amassed over the last month, is an inspiration to create fairies and princesses, lost in the woods, waiting patiently for their prince or just living their lives in humble, unassuming ways.

Dressed in beautiful fabrics, of course.

So, steeped in steamy French films, my basket of threads, scissors and lace trims, by my side I came up with...

My handsome little prince.

He is dressed in velvet pantaloons, a brocade jacket trimmed in gold and black, accented with engraved buttons and pearls. His sleeves are silk - taupe with pearls gathering the sides, on top of cream colored silk sleeves gathered at the wrist and trimmed in lace. Around his neck is silk with pearl trim, organza ribbon and lace. His cap is velvet, trimmed in ribbon and gold rick-rack and pearls. His shoes are maroon velvet with bows and metal heart shaped clasping buckles. He lounged on the couch while I spent afternoons hand sewing the trim.

I like his pensive face, and he, like the princesses in my imaginary stories, is unassuming, quiet and kind, with a studious appreciation for the arts and music.

This morning he moved to the gallery. I hope he is happy there.

Maybe, on rainy afternoons, he can come back home and he and I can lay on the couch and watch romantic French films, eat a few tootsie rolls and think about grassy fields, and maybe a lost young princess wandering among the decaying apple trees, collecting wild onions for her soup.

Kelee: Vermont River Rock Jewelry

I grew up in the Mississippi Delta where the water is muddy. Not the drinking water. It's nice and clear (except in Greenville where it's sort of brownish). Just the rivers and ponds. It's because the bottom is dirt instead of rocks since the land was made from the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers depositing dirt as they overflowed their boundaries instead of being formed by rocks and boulders being deposited by glaciers when they moved down from even norther like they are here in Vermont, where I now live. When you mix water and dirt, you get mud. When you mix water and rocks, you get water and rocks. We used to travel way up north to the mountains of Tennessee to see water flowing clear. It's really lovely.
I didn't take this picture, by the way. Here's a link to where I found it, however.

Before you start getting too high and mighty about your clear-flowing water in your town, please remember that it was by the sides of these muddy rivers that The Blues was born which gave birth to both Rock and Roll and was perverted into Pop. And the wonderful feeling of squishing your toes deep down into the muddy bottom of a lake and feeling catfish nibbling at your little pipe cleaner-sized legs is to die for. Literally, you could die when your leg is punctured by the spine of a catfish fin which then deposits a venom that causes scalding pain to spread upward from the wound and muscle spasms so severe that you fall into that muddy water where a water moccasin finishes you off. But right up to the point of the scalding pain, the mud between your toes really does feel good.

Out of the blue the other day my sister called me and said, "Remember how we used to go play in that swampy area across from our house in Silver City? Remember how Daddy would give us a stick in case we came across a water moccasin? Would you let your kids do that?"

To which I replied, "No, but I would let them play the Wii version of that."

When we moved to Vermont, Alison (my blogmate) was constantly trying to take us to Belvidere. I don't know why we were reluctant. Maybe because of the wacky-premised sitcom from the 80s with the same name. Maybe because we were tired of spending our one-day weekend driving around with a carsick child trying to follow directions like this:

“Go down to where the original barn was for the Boudreau farm. It's not there any more, but you turn right there where it used to be, and you go east on that road until you pass where the road flooded that time and you turn left. The road splits there. Go either way, but turn right if you go left and left if you go right. And do you know where the old 108 meets the new 105? Turn left right before you get to it.”

When we finally went out there, we couldn't stop asking, “Why have you never brought us here before?” It's really quite lovely. Alison's daughter's father's mother's husband's uncle's nephew owns a little patch of land there that is all grassy and bouldery and foresty and ferny and has a gorgey clear-flowing river running right through it. We camp out there and build bond fires and swim and hike about and nap and read and sit around in a lot of circles but without singing. Despite being a musician, Ben is not one of those kumbaya drum circle kind of dudes, and for that I will be eternally thankful. Amen. For some reason, it's always about ten degrees cooler out there, too. During that one week of really hot summer when the concrete jungle of the Village of Enosburg Falls has lost it's charm, we head out there. Of course, going from the sweltering 90 degrees of the Village to the 80 degrees of Belvidere makes it too cold for me to even think about getting in the water.

Oh, right. My point.

There are all these really gorgeous rocks that are just sitting out beside the river. Just sitting there. Like ordinary rocks. Only they are obviously jewelry-quality rocks. Let's say you are really into Topaz or Emeralds and you came across a stream and they were just sitting there waiting to be collected and turned into jewelry. Or you really like daisies, and you go somewhere where they are just considered a weed. You get to collect them for freesies and make a lovely bunch of flowers. Or you really like guitar pedals, and you found this tree where guitar pedals grew like leaves. This is how we felt. Alison and I and our offspring have spent many an hour gathering rocks from there (and various other swimming holes). We separate out the “keep rocks” from the “throw rocks.” I still remember a few really lovely specimen from the Keep Pile that were accidentally thrown into the water. I also remember hearing myself tell my children to not get my rocks dirty. It'll just give them a little something to talk about during therapy.

We worked for an embarrassingly long time trying to learn how to turn them into jewelry – drilling holes through everything but the rocks (including Alison's dining room table), finding out that we had no plan for attaching them to a necklace, using up our rock-jewelry-budget buying the wrong thickness of sterling silver wire. We are quite happy with these results and plan on expanding on this line of jewelry as soon as possible. In fact we just spent up our new rock-jewelry-budget ordering Raku-fired beads to combine with the rocks, and earrings are definitely in the works.

If you are interested, you can go buy one of these gorgey rock pendants at my etsy shop.

 

Alison: It's Spring! No, really. It is.

April 1: If it weren't for the sugarhouses belching steam in the cool evenings you would think it is still the middle of winter.

We look for signs of spring, and have found Canada geese, lots of robins, skinny deer munching dead grass in fields, and yesterday I heard red-winged blackbirds.

So, I retreat to my basement studio to pretend the daffodils are popping up and bits of green are coming through the snow. Soon, there will be crocuses and snowdrops, right?

• • •

I have a list of projects to do for other people: two dolls a friend asked me to finish for her - one was chewed on by a mouse and one is an old Holly Hobbie doll that needs a head.

And I need to create a cover for a community guide the local newspaper puts out each year. The sap buckets are props for that painting.

AND, I need to sew the handles on the goat bags so I can meekly crawl into the store up the road that sells goat products and hope they want to display my bags... AND, I SHOULD make more bags, huh.

Maybe this litle guy will be inspiration.

(Look at all that snow!)

But enough of what I SHOULD be doing.

Instead, I am working on two dolls and have an idea for a third in the bunny series.

Here is the second bunny doll as a work in progress.

He is bunny boy. I love his little face.

This one has a little more color in his face than the first one.

I dyed the furry material with fushia dye. I was trying out different ribbons and like the purple on him. He also has red feet sticking out of his too short costume. Bunny baby had furry feet.

Now it is nearly done; I need flowers for the base but have to drive to a store that is one hour away to get them so I'll save up my errands for that area and do them all at once.

Oh look, it is snowing.

Back to the basement.