Inky fingers

That’s what I have this morning, in spite of some serious scrubbing.

The weekend was cold. Way cold. Frozen pipe cold. The best place to be after dinner was either in the den, where the space heater lives and my handmade and printed noren (originally designed to capture chilled air in the summer) is doing double duty keeping the nice warm air in, or the kitchen, where the wood stove was humming along. My better half chose the former, where the TV also lives and where they were running a Bourne marathon, but Dinah and I settled down in front of the wood stove with a couple of carving tools and a new block of Master Carve.

Quite a few hours later (but still in time to catch most of The Bourne Ultimatum), we (okay, I–Dinah was mostly helpful at snoring and hogging the warm air) had a tidy stack of new hand-carved stamps in front of us. I got 13 good stamps out of a 4 x 6″ block of Master Carve, and still have a couple of good sized pieces left, plus the backs of a couple of pieces on which I have (so far) used only the fronts.

My better half likes this one best:

We are big William the Hippo fans around here–this guy joins our collection of two ceramic Williams (that get pride of place on the Christmas tree every year), a stuffed William toy, and a sterling silver William pin.

Second Child likes this guy best:

We are also serious Hayao Miyazaki fans, and this fellow was inspired by the susuwatari (soot sprites) that appear in both My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.

But my favorite stamp of the evening is this one:

Guess what I want for my birthday this year? Chocolate brown. Women’s size 9. Converse, are you listening?

Oh, and a carton full of Mastercarve. Staedtler, are you listening, too?

Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Coasting along

Every couple of weeks I try to spend an hour exploring at our local Goodwill store. This past trip yielded up some great goodies. First, three wonderful linen shirts (I love linen), one of which still had the tags in it.

As I wandered through the housewares department, though, I spotted these:

A tall stack of thick paper drink coasters, like the ones you get in bars and restaurants. About 50 of them, neatly stacked up and secured with a rubber band.

For a buck.

Of course I scooped them up. There must be a million wonderful things I can do with these.

They were adorned on both sides with ads for vodka:

Not being one to need more encouragement to buy vodka (my drug of choice being an extremely icy 5:1 vodka gimlet), I didn’t need the ads, and immediately set about covering the coasters on both sides with gesso.

Being coasters, they did what coasters are designed to do: they sucked that gesso right up. Here they are after the first coat:

And here they are after the third coat–much more like it:

I still haven’t decided what to do with all of them, but here’s one I picked out of the stack to play with. I stamped my old Daruma image onto one and then painted it with a little watercolor, which (though this image is a tad fuzzy) it took well.

Second child suggests that I make some round books. Hmm . . .

Knitters without borders

It hasn’t been a good news week, has it?

Between Haiti and the Massachusetts special election disaster and the deaths of two of my very most favorite musical folks (Kate McGarrigle and Lhasa de Sela), I’ve had to put myself in a little news blackout for a day or two. Sometimes a person just has to do that for a little while.

But not before I tried to help a little.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot) is helping a lot. Her organization Knitters Without Borders has inspired knitters all over to send what amounts to a boatload of money (they’re closing in on a million dollars) to Doctors Without Borders to help with emergency relief. DWB were themselves hit pretty hard in the Haitian earthquake. They need our help so they can continue their good work of helping others (no matter who they are or where they are).

KWB doesn’t actually collect donations (read more about it at Knitters Without Borders faq). They just encourage people to help, and keep track of reports of giving, the best kind of encouragement sometimes in situations like this, in which it’s tempting to think “this crisis is too big to be dealt with,” or “I can afford so little that I might as well not donate at all,” or “someone else will do it.” For me the coolest thing about KWB is that it demonstrates right up front that a little bit of money times a whole lot of folks can add up to a significant amount of good work.

The Floating Ink household is not exactly rolling in it this year (hmm, or any year within recent memory) but this week DWB got my little stash of quarters (plus a little kick in from My Better Half) that I save all year to spend at the Duchess County Sheep and Wool show in Rhinebeck, NY in October. I’ll have time to save more quarters between now and October, and I can (shhh–don’t tell) get by with a little less fleece, but DWB and the folks in Haiti need help now.

I don’t know anyone who’s in terrific financial shape these days, but (in spite of what my mother thinks) my house isn’t falling down around my ears.  If yours isn’t either, pony up a few bucks to the emergency relief organization of your choice.

Origami on steroids

Over the holidays I came across an astonishing program on PBS about paper folding masters. Here’s a clip:

All my life I’ve dabbled in simple origami–a fish, a frog, a crane, a shrimp. But this program blew me away. I immediately went to my library’s web site and had them get me all the books they could by the artists profiled in the program.

Yesterday I sat down and folded my first slightly more complicated one. It’s light years from the fabulous folds I saw on the television program, but a bit more advanced than what I was doing. I wonder how many simple things one has to fold before being able to branch out and create new forms.

I’m guessing lots.  But here’s a start:

McMansion

Happy holidays

From my family to yours–best wishes for a safe and happy new year.

Another noteworthy gift

There’s always a present that I find myself working on at the last minute. This year it was a gift–actually, several gifts–for my niece, my nephew, and my nephew’s girlfriend, a delightful young woman who appreciates a handmade gift (I hope).

Simple stuff, but I’m pleased with how they came out. Each got a set of Japanese stab-bound journals, one each in folio and quarto size:

I finished these just in time to wrap them up and get them into the mail, and I used up the last of some wonderful kraft paper cardstock making them. But as soon as the smoke clears and I can find another source for the heavy brown cardstock, the Japanese screw punch and waxed linen thread are coming right back out again so I can make some more.

Birds of a feather . . . or of wool

My mother, who doesn’t get out as much as she used to, has grown fond of the birds that frequent her back yard. She used to fuss at my dad for feeding them, calling it “bird welfare,” but these days, with dad no longer with us, she has taken on the task of keeping their feeders full and keeping a watchful eye on them.  She watches the birds so much that she’s afraid the neighbors, who see her at the window with her binoculars, think she’s watching them.*

She hates the neighbor’s cat, a skillful hunter of songbirds.

With winter upon us, I decided she needed a hummingbird for her house.

So I needle felted her one:

Once I got started, it wasn’t so easy to stop. Not only did she get a hummingbird, but several other birds, all native to the part of Tennessee where she lives, also found their way south to her house for the holidays:

She ended up with a cardinal, an owl, the hummingbird, a bluebird, and a goldfinch. About the goldfinch, the less said the better. He’s apparently from the shallow end of the goldfinch gene pool, and I hope to replace him soon with a more advanced goldfinch.

The cardinal is my favorite:

Special thanks to my niece, who made sure a nice sturdy branch was waiting for the felted birds to perch on when they arrived in Tennessee. And merry Christmas, Mom. Spring down your way is only about 3 more months away.

__

*Oh, okay, so maybe she’s doing a little of that, too.

The details

Now that Christmas is over I can finally post details of some of the gifts I made for my friends and family this year. This was an all-handmade Christmas, except for a few gifts for First Child and Second Child, who are more into tech than textiles.

As some of you (but none, thankfully, of the intended recipients) may have guessed, the textile photos I recently posted refered to more scarves fashioned out of vintage kimono sleeves. I think I finally have the knack of putting these together properly, and the scarves were well-received.

This one, especially, tickled me:

Not only was this my favorite of the several fabric pieces I bought (I am partial to blue and white), but I was delighted to find, as I carefully measured and pressed the cloth, a few tiny and meticulous repairs to the fabric. Though I was careful to make sure that this side of the fabric didn’t show in the finished scarf, knowing that some earlier seamstress (am I wrong in assuming that this is likely a woman’s work?) took great pains to mend this sleeve in such a way that the repair was both nearly invisible and maintained the pattern of the fabric.

I confess I could not let this piece go–this one I kept, not because it was, in a small way, damaged, but because I felt close to the previous owner of this fabric, who obviously loved and cared for it.  Would we, today, take such care to mend the sleeve of a silk blouse, or would we reject it and buy a new replacement? I wore it to a number of holiday parties, and will continue to do so in the future.  And if it needs mending at some point in the future, I hope my skills will be up to the task.

Shhh . . .

Some sneak photo peaks at Christmas. Details to follow after all gifts have been safely distributed.

It all comes together, I promise.

More to come soon.