Showing posts with label designing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label designing. Show all posts

Friday, December 22, 2006

New Star For Friends

I woke grateful to awake, grateful to still feel grateful for the moment of peace. And had an insight into the star, an idea for another approach, because a member of FFCrochet (the freeform group) had a problem with with the adjustable ring. So
before I arose, I made two lareger stars using another method, felted them and then while on Liftline, pencil and finger shaped their hangers.

Here they are:


Felted Star Ornament 2

Ch 4 , 9 dc in 4th ch from hook,join, ch1: 10 dc
2sc, sc, around, join, ch1:15 sc
sc,dc,trc,picot:(ch2, sc), trc, dc,sc, skip two sc, repeat: 5 points
sl st to first sc, fasten off.
Using contrasting yarn, pull through center hole sl st, ch1, sl st:
You could just sl st, but adding a ch1between sl st seemed to improve the pattern

(3.5” prefelted using Grand Patons merino wool)

It was sheer pleasure to lunch with my former colleagues and what treats: dim sum of bean cake, vegetable bun, scallion pancakes, unagi sushi( my favorite and boy was it buttery sublime with my mash of wasabi and soy swirled together in the lovely porcelain demibowl. And the sublime dipping sauce. The only sour note was the horrible tasting water, but i was too busy blabbing to remember to ask for tea or something bottled.... and too soon it was time for me to go. In my nervousness I thought that 90 minutes was plenty of time... I should have made it longer, but i did not wnat to sitting there alone waiting. part of it was that everyone arrived late... oh well, rain and the weird liftline bus driver who required 4 parking spaces to pick me up because she deemed two not enough and that would be paralell parking, despite that inanity, i was grateful to get out and actually have a conversation about something other than someone's loss, or mindless chitchat.... OTOH, there was a handsome young man driver who treated me so gently and shared his concern about getting to apply his schoolwork to the work world and I told him about myself and my father--- did we ever get to apply what we learned?

Nope not to work, but to ourselves, to our friends and loved ones, in service to our community only a lucky few get to do what they are trained to do--- truly... I was reviled when I tried to apply any of my newly minted MBA skills at the ad agency in the 70s... maybe they are smarter now, but I told him that work was hell but he seemed old enough to know the truth and he was to get his degree anyway and perhaps design a way for us to be free... howw I knew my faher's job was far far less than his intellect ranged until the end of his career when he traveled around the country advising on computerization and mechanization

Thank you dears for calling me out to play.... makes me remember the girls who cme to get me when I first moved to queens and would have just stayed inside and read, Lord bless them for coming to get me, in that way that kids know there is a kid in need, not the mean kid paradigm, but the other where somehow, the group of souls connect and bond and Leslie Walker, Sharon Brown, and Cynthia Atkinson came and got me and rescued me and helped me grow. Thank you dear ones.

Like meeting Marilyn Beverly as a prefreshman at Williams College that was some magic i grokked her we were both music majors she a violinist-- that was my first instrument and I was a cellist , basoonist and singer and here we were two young black women going offf to this formerly all male cold hostile New England Berkshire barren psycholgical gulag,leaving the Emerald City behind--- what were we thinking? We should've gone off to the Sorbonne or Oxford-- we would've been treated better and come back with exotic connections and had a hell of a lot more fun. oh well....and going to discos in Manhattan wearing those six inch platforms I bought on 8th street and loved so much-- trying to walk with them up that steep Harlem hill on/by Edgecombe Avenue.

My my my . Rescue me rescue me.... Andrea rescued me this year and all praises as did Karen and Jim and Jacqui
and all those who worked on the benefit for me thank you dears and all those poets who sent money that kept me from starving and living in the street. Thank you thank you thank you. Connie and Louise cutting my lawn o! thank you thank you I've never neede so much help ever before... how is my catalpa that i palnted? My new maple? my emotional rescue. my material rescue. Keep those cards and letters coming folks. Keep me in your prayers I want to rise up and walk again and make my way.

I no longer ask to be without pain, I would take the pain to walk again, because it hurts anyway, everyday. Be clear, i say, what do i need? To walk again and then I can get all I need, myself. sigh.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Designing, Discovering





Felting did not yield quite what I wanted…
For some flowers the densification was a muddying

For the bud and sepals, a caressable object that suggests an organism was formed.



I’ve tormented myself searching for a solution to my flower scarf. I wanted it to be flowers and leaves. Then I thought of oversizing the leaves, then the ever challenging for me question of color.





Especially now when I do not have my stash, my “fiber office” as my second niece, when a baby, so aptly named the room that was the library and yes was filled with books, but whose closet and diaper station turned into yarn shelves, and floor spoke of fiber use.

I see my table top loom there on the floor by the fronT facing window. O lord let me walk again..please!

Back to today’s narrative which is about design and my limitations. I feel it like a craving like a hunger that can’t be sated until it is enumerated, articulated, clearly defined, spelled out.

My next flower pattern set was to be Akua’s Fabulous Furled and Fluffy Flowers which I so thouigth that the wool felting would improve but no… To be fulfilled in felt the design owould have to be amended as the furled petals hardened and were wayward and the fluffy petal, so dependent on stitch construction for their loft, deflated.

I saw two commercial flowers that I dug.


http://www.cardsandcraft.co.uk/embellishments/405-big-crochet-flowers.html/1418.jpg




http://www.meimeicrafts.com/images/flowers



One took more work than my nature-mimic multilayer rose and it is flat, but the spoke rays of it are energetic and while my color pallet is more winter than n summer, the stretch and size of it gave me some new thoughts about the flower scarf.









Then I found this flower and loved loved loved the spiral and was reminded that a simple embelishment of the crochet hook and yarn itself could be used to enhance the flower.
At Gourmet Crochet













This Bolivian scarf showed an oversized direction but it's not integrated....
http://thestripeysheep.co.uk/index.php?itemID=161&jump=navbar#navbar
http://www.rosylittlethings.com/scallop.html-- $68 ?!
http://www.imaybeknittingaranchhouse.com/archives/2006/10/a_free_scarf_mo.html
between this and this

I knew there was an easier way:
http://heidisknittingroom.com/BoleroCrochetMotifs.htm

this suggests joining as you go:

(http://www.oaktrees.org/blog/?page_id=119)

and that's just what I've developed for this very greengold or browngreen--everything else made it look heavy. and the makeflowers sew two together was too much sewing and I did not to be another mere.near doily flower maker. I remember thinking about interlocking rings, so that's what I've designed: interlocking flowers, one open and the sme motif with a densified center, making it slightly larger.... I wonder if I want a their flower, but it's so wonderful that as I complete a flower, it's complete!

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Leaves


For that they shelter yet fall
fall and cover
save from rain
rain they sift down
dry water
becasue they effloresce
as dying flame some
their last days
because their name is
stands for single thing
a page or many and
departure because
so much has left

i miss my catalpa. She leapt large and survived that first year's attacks to produce leaves bigger than my head.
What is she like now i send her my love and my apple tree too....

I've been designing leaves and now have some woold to evolve Aku's furled and fluuffy fflower patterns with to make the
multiflower and leaved scarf....

Friday, December 08, 2006

Looking, Learning, Designing



I've been thinking about leaves and scarves and developing a (new for me ) leaf pattern.
It's a maple leaf. I've got a new flower in process, too. I'm working on a leafy, viney scarf
pattern, but I'm tugged toward freeform.


Amazing as I completed objects to be given away, I got a gift... a wonderful box of yarns, hooks, candies and needles and angels from CA in Montreal. Merci mille fois, ma chere! I've been dining on these felt creations
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/hats.php?page_num=1&showimage=yes&img=74

Elina Saari is so compelling--- I want everything I see and the pictures from her workshops are
so exciting. You can tell they worked with souls alighted there, the energy leaps out of the pictures
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/process.php

I've been working on a reindeer and then saw this and was annoyed at my own literality
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/other.php?page_num=1&showimage=yes&img=6
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/other.php?page_num=1&showimage=yes&img=19