Art

Scattershot Progress

by CZeitler

My current progress doesn’t look like a lot, but it is a small amount on a bunch of different projects. Since I was sick, and my mental health needed adjusting, I wound up letting a couple of things around the house go a little bit longer than I would like. I spent some time clearing those up and getting back on track where I wanted to be. Fortunately, I’ve still had time for crafting in between all of those other things, so while there isn’t any progress on the projects I showed you last week there is progress on a couple of other projects that I had been working on earlier.

I had glued down all of the pieces for a Tula Pink Nova English Paper Piece quilt. Over this past week I’ve almost managed to complete one of the sections.

I had also picked up two kits for cheap and decided to work on those. One is painted rocks, I want them to be glow in the dark so I tried a base coat of glow in the dark.

I do not like how they have turned out so far, however I’m going to try a few more coats over the next week. I also picked up a super cheap birdhouse kit that I’m going to turn it into a fairy house instead. I like how the paint is going so far, but I’m going to try a few more coats.

That has been most of my progress this week. I’m still working on hiding threads for the whole cloth quilts I made for a colleague pregnant with twins. Until next time I hope that everyone lives their life A Little More Abstract!

Progress Not Perfection

by CZeitler

I have made some progress in warping up my loom. The threads are all through the front reed, I know that the weave is unbalanced because I did not measure it to begin with. At present I am working on getting all of the threads through the heddles in a twill pattern, straight 1-16 then 1-16 again. At the time of writing this I think I have the first 50 threads through heddles, wish me luck getting the rest set up.

This is not the only craft I have going on, is it ever just one craft? I have also been taking part of the Stitch Camp through TextileArtist.org. This is quite a bit of fun, and since it only takes about 30 minutes a day, lasting just 5 days, I find it to be a reasonable goal to maintain. The first step is to use a limited palette of 3 colors and make marks on your lightest fabric, then cut them apart, reassemble in a way that you like, and now on the third day I added in some stitching. I am not certain if I am finished stitching or if I will give it a little more jazz.

You didn’t think I was done did you? Two projects, pfft. I am also working on a pair of quilts. One was discovered when a friend of mine wanted me to make them rice packs was looking for the skull fabric I had mentioned. The other quilt I am working on turning into a tactile quilt or fidget quilt for the father of a friend of mine, he is having trouble with ‘Sundowner’s’ in the facility he is currently living. For the Halloween Quilt I need to add a label, since I was unable to catch one border in the binding of my quilt. For the Fidget Quilt I need to redo a couple of small sections of quilting, I had caught the side of the backing in the quilting, so I had to pick out the quilting. Once I have the quilting done I need to carefully trim the batting, and turn the backing over to bind the quilt. If I can get away with not having to trim the edges of the quilt and make a traditional binding I am going to take that and run with it.

For the fidget quilt I have added on a rough ribbon, soft fleece, and a changeable sequin patch. The sequin patch, much to my shock, was easy enough to sew on and did not break a needle.

Okay, that is it for today. I hope to have an actual update ready for you on Sunday, but until then Live Life a Little More Abstract

Crafting Through These Times

by CZeitler

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During these times I’m still working from home, it is going pretty well actually.  I am also doing some cleaning, not as much as I should, and some crafting.  For my public library I managed to create a video that uses some simple tools and cardboard to create art-ish.  The above is my creation.  I also did some work on washing wool.  I soaked some wool in cold water to get the basic dirt out:

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You can see, it helped a bit but there is still some major dirt and lanolin.  I washed a batch by scrubbing each individual lock across a bar of soap.  These results were amazingly clean, however very labor intensive:

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Then I took one batch and used hot water and unicorn simply clean to soak for ten minutes:

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This worked really well, I did not rinse this batch out just soaked and let dry so that I could use them as an example in the video I’m making.  For the rest of the picked locks I used hot water and unicorn to soak twice and then rinsed with just water a third time.  These results were wonderful, I just adore how well this works.

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You can see the amazing difference, how crisply clean and white all of the fleece is.  This is some Coopworth Yearling fiber, it started out as 8 ounces.  I picked out the washed locks and put them in a plastic bag after it had thoroughly dried.  I am so excited to be able to spin this fleece, however it is going to be some time.

I also used a large potholder loom I bought from Harrisville to make two separate potholders that were beautiful.  I’m looking at buying some more loopers for the larger loom, however they are a bit pricey.

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I’m also doing some work on my 7′ tri-loom.  I’m trying to do some cut string weaving as opposed to continuous string weaving.  Right now I think that there are too many gaps between the threads, so I am planning on trying to add extra yarn in between several of these picks.  Some of them I doubled up in one section, because of this I should be able to add a thread in between these doubled up to tighten things up.  In this flash I love how rainbow this looks, neat!

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Stickii BAO Box – Galaxy Edition

by CZeitler

For quite some time I have been considering getting one of the organizers from Stickii for my planner and sticker collections.  I know that I am always trying out new things, however in recent months I have found that by keeping my calendar both in a digital format, my ipad, and a physical format I can keep better track of what I am doing each day as well as what needs to be accomplished.  As I am not the slightest bit artistic I am unable to draw in my planner with any degree of success, so stickers are a good solution for me.  The Stickii Club has been a lot of fun so far, and is relatively inexpensive.

This brings us to the Galaxy BAO from Stickii at $88 it is not the least expensive purchase I have ever made, for certain.  I could have gone with the Stickii Folio for $15, however the soft sided nature seemed to be asking for trouble.  The regular BAO Box runs $68, and since I tend to love pouches as well as Galaxy themed items it seemed work the extra $20 to get a decent case.  I will not sugar coat my review.

When I received the box I was very excited.

Opening the box I was greeted by a sticker sheet with succulents on it as well as an envelope with a pretty stirring spoon sticker sealing it closed.

Upon further inspection the envelope contained a very sweet thank you note for ordering this set from Stickii.

I drew out my anticipation and took a photo of each aspect of my uncovering the actual BAO.  The white pouch that this arrived in, within the box, seems like it is a nice pouch.  I hope to use it to organize my Washi Tapes and other Paper Crafting Supplies that I am not actively using.

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Actually opening the box was like discovering Aladdins Cave.  There were so many amazing items to discover I could not wait to start.  Since I do not want to end this post with the negatives, they were really minor in the end, I will put them here.  The bottom rivet on the binder insert was not set properly.  I discovered this when I was starting to explore the pouches.  A little glue and the problem is fixed, I could have kicked up a fuss and sent it back (probably would have except I was so looking forward to this).  This does mean that I would not give this item as a gift shipped from the manufacturer.  If I find out that someone I love would use something like this I would certainly get it shipped to myself then send it off once I had inspected it (and stocked it up a bit).  The other problem is simply that for the first few uses the zipper stuck.  Now, check out these washi tapes I received!

The middle set has a paper backing that I am still finding out the best way to peel off.  The rest are so neat though, I cannot wait to start using them.  These are not the only treats in my box however.

The stamp was neat, though immediately consigned to staying at home since I do not plan on messing around with stamp ink on the go.

The pouch is very pretty, I love that it is mostly see-through with a carrying loop and easy to use zipper.  The included pen has a super fine writing tip, .3mm or less, and a really clunky bit of bling.  I think that I will either use the bling as a zipper pull or a progress keeper for my knitting/crochet.  As you can see the washi tapes fit wonderfully in the pouch, however I discovered that too many bags make the BAO hard to close.

There were two really neat pages of Stickii Packs included, and the BAO looks really deep.  These stickers were so much fun to explore and I look forward to spending quite a bit of time playing with them.

You can see there was everything from paper stickers, memo papers, raised stickers, and more.  The assortment is going to provide me with months of fun.

I firmly believe that this is a good purchase for me.  It will not only up my paper crafting game, I believe that it will help and inspire me to greater heights in my organization efforts.  Since I have 2 separate journals going on at one time, I will not be using this in the most conventional manner, however it should be more than adequate for my needs.  The purple journal is my financial planning, the red is my monthly/weekly/daily tracker.

Remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract.

Reading List Scroll

by CZeitler

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I Do not own Terry Pratchett, nor am I affiliated with him in any way.  This is just the next series of books I hope to read.

I have taken the books in the Discworld Series list that I obtained from Terry Pratchett’s website and printed them out as a list in order that they are to be read.

From there I created a ‘scroll’ like list with the most recent book on the bottom and the first book to be read on the top.

Then I taped the end of the scroll to a pencil and tightly wound the list around the pencil until just the first book or two are showing.

I then put a small piece of tape on the back to make sure that the list would not go flying off and unroll itself.

Next I taped the top of the list, the 1″ blank header, to another pencil and rolled it so that just the first book is showing.

As I read through the series I will roll them up to see what is next.  I think that this will be a very fun and visual way of tracking my way through the series.

Given enough time and access to a poster printer I could conceive of doing this on a larger scale for a public or academic library.  This would be a very visual way of tracking reading for kids as well.

Happy Reading (and Crafting!)

Rebecca Mezoff’s Class

by CZeitler

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I enrolled in Rebecca Mezoff’s Little Looms course, and then had to obtain a little loom to take advantage of the course, lol.  I tried to order a Hokett Loom from Woolery but ran into stock problems, one 10 day wait I can handle but when the items from the first wait came in they were sold out of something else in my order and wanted me to wait another 10  days!  That wasn’t going to work for me so I cancelled the entire order and picked up a Stash Blaster from another source.

I decided to warp this with some soft cotton twine I had lying around to see what it would do, unfortunately with the yarn I decided to use the results are closer to a balanced weave than a tapestry weave.  Oh well, it is really pretty and a good first try so I will finish my mug rug and try for a tapestry next time.

Happy Crafting!

Japanese Stab Binding

by CZeitler

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There are all sorts of interesting crafts out there.  Since I am a librarian book binding has fascinated me for years.  The intricate work and skills that can go into creating the text blocks of a book, sets of pages, then sewing them together creating the covers and spine, covering the cover and spine…the list does go on.  This process also takes several days depending on how intricate you are getting.  If you are stretching leather over the cover then there are presses, glues, and a few other things to take into consideration.  If this is something that interests you I have gotten supplies from Hollanders and Dick Blick Supplies, also Demco and Gaylord have interesting and fun supplies.  The only other thing that they all have in common, it is an expensive hobby to get into.  If you are into making paper, art, journaling, writing, or anything like that then creating your own books can be a very worthwhile hobby.  I did create my own book at one point, but I cannot find any of the pictures for the life of me.

Japanese Stab Binding, pictured at top, has just a few things in common with traditional binding and a much shorter supplies list.  Paper, scrapbooking paper if you want something pretty, awl (or screw punch), ruler, tapestry needle and some kind of thread or yarn.  With these few supplies you can easily create a very pretty book.  I recommend checking out some of the Stab Binding Videos on YouTube or searching for Japanese Stab Binding on Pinterest.