Alison: Oooh shiny!

The sewing will have to wait, the dolls will remain unrealized - I am under deadline to paint a cover for the annual Community Guide. Since the early 2000's the newspaper I once owned and now am blissfully employed by puts out a glossy four color (remember when that was a new thing?) publications listing facts and whatnot for the towns I live in and around.

Last year I painted a watercolor a la the New Yorker's view of the world by Saul Steinberg.

Above: His awesome version. Below: My attempt to steal his awesomeness.

This year I have NO IDEA what I am doing! I think it will be a painting but so far I have spend a gazillion hours agonizing over it and have produced one crappy acrylic painting I gessoed over yesterday, a watercolor that is now in the garbage can and a watercolor sketch I made yesterday evening on a postcard sized piece of watercolor paper.

Here are my inspirations that make me want to tear my hair out:

Eric Sloane

By the way - I stalked him one day, while an art student in Connecticut - I found his address in a local phone bok, found his house, knocked on the door. He was having lunch so he sent me to his basement gallery with this advice: go out the basement door that leads to the driveway when you leave. Ah, such words of...I can't be bothered with you, you annoying art student.

My sister's art teacher, Anda Styler

The vibrant colors in her paintings are only matched by the vibrant colors in her amazing quilts. I adore her. I loathe myself.

My sister.

Andrew Wyeth.

The opposite of Anda and my sister, Susan Warner, he is not a colorist. Just like me. But his drawings and drybrush paintings of grass showing each individual blade and portraits showing each strand of hair. Up at 1 a.m. reading his autobiography - a book I found in Rockport, Maine... I DO have bald spots from all this. Or at least piles of hair on the floor.

Last night I dreamed I had piles of my hair around me, white against red and black cloth. See? SEE?!

So I have lots of photos of this one spot I love - this wonderful old barn on a sleepy dirt road set on a hill above the farmhouse that has been in the family since the early 1900s. The more I visit the place, the more I am in love with it.

Originally we were going to create a cover with one scene that shows the four seasons but that was too hard for me!!!
Then we decided to make it a timeless scene - late fall with summer clouds and snow on the distant hills.

It's early spring for chrissakes! The barn is set in lush greenery! We have endured six months of grey and white and brownness and now I am supposed to skip right over all this greenery and immerse myself in brownness again?! I don't think so!

Okay, I may lose my spot as cover creator forever, since I have produced nothing and it was due YESTERDAY, but I have to paint the way I imagine I can paint not like someone else wants me to. I'm stubborn like that. AND I can't paint what I don't know or cannot (will not) feel.

I'd better get to work! Wait. I'll eat a pop tart.

I mean, never mind I haven't painted in YEARS!!

Okay. I can do this. First to cut a path through all this hair...

Kelee: Embroidering Dreams

It's not that I am not crafting, it's just that I'm sort of in between crafts. I have a couple of big deals in the works, though. In this time of transition between the two clays and the yarns, I have been doing a lot of soul searching, And nose blowing because I've also had a cold.
Back in October, I decided to try to embroider. The Girlchild drew a very lovely picture of our dog Stella, and then picked out some thread. I traced the picture on the shirt with a washable marker and followed one of 400+ tutorials that I read and used the back stitch.
Miraculously, she's been wearing it ever since, and it didn't fall apart in the washer.


I really enjoyed the whole event and decided to relive the wild ride this week. I started with another drawing by the Shegirl on my pillowcase. A very lovely pink and purple horse.


Then I moved on to the HusbandBen's pillowcase. He relented to let me embroider it on the condition that I would embroider his Stratocaster. He found a copy of it in the Musician's Friend catalog of embroider patterns.
I traced it with a Sharpie so I could sort of see it through the fabric, and then I traced it on with a pen. If Ben's version of this guitar was the nearly $4000 version, by the way, it'd have been long since pawned.
I used the split stitch for this one, French knots for the tuning knobby things and for the volume knobby things, and can you see that I even put on those little black dots on the fretboard. By the way, those spots that look like dirt on the pillow case are, in fact, dirt. I had the pillow case delicately strewn across my couch as I was admiring my own handiwork when the very same dee-oh-gee (from the original t-shirt embroidery fame) came in from the outdoors and immediately wiped her muddy little paws on the pillowcase with total disregard for my handiwork.
So while I'll be dreaming of horse riding through the fluffy pink clouds while eating cotton candy, Ben will dream of rocking out in front of millions of admiring fans, becoming addicted to the dope, std-infested groupies, bankruptness, and a slow descent into obscurity. Cool.

Alison: In remembrance of my mom

March 19, 1926-May 11, 2011

To Doris Bullard, who lived 85 years: I love you, mom.

Kelee: Make Jewelry, Not War

This has not been my favorite week ever.

Starting with those horrible tornadoes in my old stomping grounds.

Now there's massive flooding in Vermont and in Mississippi and everywhere in betwixt.

I watched that horribly terrible movie Bounty Hunter, which made me question the existence of integrity. How did that movie get made? More importantly, why did I watch the whole thing?

All this rain has stirred up an undeniable crochet-caused ache in my fingers.

Nothing reminds you how motherless you are more than Mother's Day. (Unless it's having a baby.)

I have a birthday coming up.

I have a Journey song stuck in my head thanks to Glee.

When I switched from winter-wear to spring wear, I realized I put on a molehillish gut over the winter so I had to start exercising. Now I'm sore.

My kids (aged 4 and 5) have decided my music is not rocking enough for them, which makes me feel old and all “back in my day”ish. The good part of this is that they only want to listen to the White Stripes, which I am pretty psyched about because

1. It's the White Stripes, and they are awesome
2. I was concerned when the girl really liked that “Who Let the Dogs Out” song
   
3. I've been enjoying all the erratic, spazmatic dancing we've been doing.

I made two loaves of banana bread, and after they'd been baking for ten minutes, I found the butter sitting on the counter, softened.

I gave my kids a bath and forgot to plug the drain so the water flowed in and just ran right on out until it was no longer hot and there still wasn't any water in the bathtub. This was right after I read an article about water consumption and preservation. I felt so guilty about wasting all that water, my kids were bummed about the loserness of their bath, and we were all concerned about my brain.

Plus, the Osama bin Laden death – facebook debacle. The excitement, the anger, the patriotism, the misquotes, the conspiracies, the mounds and mounds of politics mixed in. I kept thinking of the wisdom of the 20^th century scholar and leader Elvira, mistress of the night, who said, “Listen sister, if I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you.”

You probably want to gently remind me that I don't have to read stuff just because it's there, and I want to agree with you and say that I just turned it off when I realized it was making me angry. Then we can both take a sip of coffee, look out the window, and one of us will change the subject. Like this:

Oh! Did I tell you about the new yarn I found right next door at the Enosburg Pharmacy? I went on a hat-making spree! Until I bought up all the psychedelic yarn and had to switch to ninja yarn and then I used it all up, too. Gorgey.

The yarn is Bernat's Mosaic Yarn. The hat that is right above these pointers ^^^^^^ is what happens when you just use the yarn in the order that it's made, which is pretty awesome. After the yellow at the bottom, it starts back over with green. For the one on the left, I got two skeins of yarn and merged them together at the yellow to go back through the colors of the greens and blue variety. And I did the same with the one on the top left but with the other colors. Then I added a tiny little black yarn to one of the hats because I liked the way it made the colors look more separate and the stitches stand out. I definitely want to try more of this yarn. Although I bought up all the ninja yarn, I don't have any photographic proof of the gorgeousness that pursued.

There were some seriously good parts of the week, too. Like when my Girlchild said, “I can't believe how incest with Barbie he is.” She says “incest” instead of “obsessed.” Or when she called her chipped tooth a “chimped tooth.”

And when we nearly doubled our garden size.

There was the gallery reception last night that was fun. I got to gossip with my favorite British nurse who uses the best British slang.

I watched Easy A, which restored my belief in the existence of integrity. At least in Hollywood.

My birthday is coming up.

I've gotten to listen to nonstop White Stripes.

So while lots of people discussed important events of national security or insecurity, I kept my head low and made all of these lovely treats. Fresh from my oven...

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.