The Muse of The Day

My Mistakes Are All Mine

Each of the members of our family had things to do today so I had the luxury of the house to myself for a bit. I spent it all in the studio. I can't remember the last time that happened, so I shoved my to-do list aside and made a sincere attempt at some progress on the shade I talked about yesterday.

Cutting the doily was scary ... all those loose threads... open and exposed. Yikes! Like my pouring my guts out on the blog; there is serious concern that the whole darn thing will become unraveled and one will permanently reside in the Land of No Return.

My mind was still happily full, from all the creativity that rushed in yesterday, as I tackled the knitty gritty of the project and got down to business. Getting down to business is always the difficult part. While I worked, I enjoyed hearing the "Ping!" of my computer with all of your emails coming in. I tried to answer most of them (I still owe you one Susan, a long one), it was good to have them coming in - they gave me food for thought while I worked on the project. Melissa had also posted about "process" and she and I volleyed the emails a bit this morning.

I had left her a comment regarding the process and how Charles Eames (of Ray & Charles Eames) viewed it. I am paraphrasing but essentially he said "that he spends 1% of his time coming up with a new, creative idea, and the other 99% of the time making sure the product stays true to that original idea. I think that is how it went, perhaps he said it more like he "spent the other 99% of the time chasing the idea and not letting it get away." He was talking about the non creative part of everything Ray and him made as being mostly responsible for the object coming before our eyes." Coming up with the idea is always the fun part.

I thought about this while I pinned my doily to the fabrics so I could sew it into place.

Things didn't go so well. The doily must not have been that "antique" because it had some give to it, almost like as if there was lycra in it. After a couple of hours work, I had a nice wobbly mess.

The mess was an obvious mistake. I had no intention of spending the better part of the day with my least favorite tool in my arsenal: the  bloody seam ripper.

As I worked, I remembered something I had read in the book Art & Fear. It said: "... vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue." I think I have got the "vision" part and the "uncertainty" part figured out (although the uncertainty part always fools me, perhaps I'll talk about this next time we meet here). What is for sure, and written in stone, is that I have a ways to go on the "knowledge of materials" part, no matter the medium. The mistakes are all mine, if I had found the answers as to what to do and what not to do in this situation, well of course I would have attempted to avoid my blunders. But where do you look for answers to solve mistakes when you haven't even an inkling that you are going to make them in the first place? Mistakes are a given when your knowledge of your materials is flimsy, at best.

I worked through the problem, trying out several options to find one that worked.

So I made mistakes. Big ones. Lots of them. But had I not made them I wouldn't have what I have today. I worked on the process and now I have progress. Or rather, Progress, with a capital "P".

I will continue on this quest for knowledge and realize that my path to succeeding in the realization of my visions is paved with mistakes. My mistakes. For that is where my growth will come from.

Carolina

From Warped To Right

Life has been so warped lately, it is time to get back to normal. School is FINALLY done with and so is my wacko driving schedule. Did you hear me hootin' & hollerin'?

Today I set about making things right again. I want to get back to being me again and doing my creative stuff. It was either that or have a total meltdown. Last night, just before falling asleep, I promised myself that today I would get back to my art. I started off, today, like the good little procrastinator that I am, and cleaned the house top to bottom. Just to vacuum and wash the floor takes me about 4 hours. Mental note to self : "next house, make it small, really small." ... "and make the studio big, REALLY BIG." By the time I was done with the cleaning, the Ellis family needed a feeding, of course. I "threw" down a meal and made a bee line to the studio. If there was even the slightest delay, something might have gotten in my way and I would never be here, in the studio. Let me show you what I have been doing:

I walked around and around the studio in circles. Not quite sure where to begin. I figure I may as well begin by fixing problems.

Remember this?

As I tested different bulbs, going up in wattage, it started to warp.

At first it wasn't too bad, but when I got to 100 watts, the shape of the shade seemed to have a life of it's own. When the light was off it would harden nicely, but as soon as you turned on the heat, well sugar, it was a sad sight indeed. I thought my eyes were tricking me - I would turn around for just a minute or so and when I looked back up at it I could swear it was a different shape.

The entire history of this shade seems to mirror my own life. Well ... all of it needs attention. This amount of warpage, whether in my shade or in my life, simply won't do.

This is were we are at now:

I just gave the shade a major bath. I am cleaning up my act as well. I want to get back to my projects, and I figure that the worst lampshade I can make is the one that never gets done and sits there in a pathetic heap of fabrics. The ugliest painting I can paint is the blank canvas. The worst sketchbook I can work out my drawings on is the one that never gets cracked open. Right? I will discuss this topic, of doing vs. not doing art work, as I putter along on my projects in the upcoming weeks.

Back to fixing problems.

Enter Meliisa P., I won a giveaway on her blog. She has a new website to go with all the fame that is coming her way now that she is hanging with the big dogs of the fabric and quilting world. A note to you - she has loads of free patterns and project how-to's on her website.

This is what I won:

Crazy awesomeness or what? Thank you Melissa!!!

So what am I waiting for I thought? Lets fix that lighting problem. While the old one was drying I pulled out a few of my fabrics that always seem too precious to cut into.

I found a beautiful antique crocheted doily that I can't bare to get rid of just because it has a hole in it.

Added it to a few fabrics I thought might go with Melissa's gifted ones:

And while the old shade is drip drying in the sink, I have started to work on an all new shade.

That is as far as I got today. I figured I would spend the rest of my studio time, while I still had the energy, writing this quick post. Let me add here, that even the simplest of little posts, like this one, takes a long time to do. It is no small feat and I am high fiving myself for still HAVING a blog and still hanging in there, writing to you. I hope you liked what I shared with you today. I will be back sooner rather than later because I am going to try a new blogging tactic. I have had this feeling that I needed to show you only my finished projects. Ridiculous. I had to go back to the beginning, when I wrote my "ABOUT page" and see what my "mission statement" was. If I wait to show you only the finished products, then it is like Kindergarten "Show & Tell" time. This makes it longer between posts. Since I don't make money from my blog, I need to be clear what I use it for. I am here to share my process of how I go about progressing as a creative person and get closer to that mission statement. I need to focus on process, not the products I make, for the "product" is me, the creative me. Staying focused on showing you the process will take me "from warped to right."

I want to be a "Creative". EVERYDAY. That is all. This, this blog, is where you can see the steps I take along that never ending path.

See you soon. Real soon.

Carolina

 

PS. my husband, who can screen share our computers, just called me from the other room saying his "stomach is warping and it needs to go from "warped to right" and he is wondering if my mission statement has any mention of what is for dinner." That is my life, ladies!

Taking A Cue From Mother Nature

I finally finished all of the stitches on the Blue Skies top. It is the rosebud stitch, but reminds me more of leaves on a vine. I am glad I have finished it.

I have been out hiking around my mountain ... "getting my feet wet" and thinking about going back to tackle what I started on the other blog. My ankle is not perfect, but with Spring here, I am chomping at the bit to get out and do some long hikes. I have been having breakfast out on my local, shorter hikes, here on the mountain.

You can't imagine how absolutely content I am to stop for a bite of breakfast out on a hike and peel my oranges listening to and looking at this:

  

Lately, Mother Nature seems to be on a roll. It is hard to walk more than ten feet at a time without having to pull out my camera and attempt to capture the beauty she has placed before my eyes.

If you enlarge that picture you will see all the bees that were collecting nectar while I was there. It gave me immense pleasure to stick my head in amongst the blossoms to shoot this picture and have all the bees buzzing around my head but way too busy to take notice of me.

There was even a butterfly.

Looking up at the sky filled my heart with hope. How can this be sooo beautiful?

I made it back to the house, inspired, and attempted to make a collar for a jacket that reflected what I had just seen.

OK, so it needs some work. Both the embroidery of the flowers and the free-motion quilting could use more practice. The point is that I got inspired by Mother Nature, took her cue, and went home and did something about it. It felt good to not think and just do.

On one of my hikes I also saw this, future leaves I believe:

The colors inspired me to try this:

I goofed on the flower pattern - it is supposed to have a total of six petals. At the point of taking the picture, I realized I was going on my seventh petal. I wanted this project to be well on it's way for next week, but it is simply not going to happen.

Mother Nature has been making an appearance all over the state. I love it.

I haven't photographed even a tiny fraction of the trees in bloom, but seeing them has been enough to propel me to work on inventing my own flowers.

I was accused, the other day, of not living in reality - of living a fantasy existence. I didn't respond to them as they were cloaked in bitterness. I have sadness and stress in my life too - EVERY day, but I push with all my might against it and choose to focus on the beauty this life is offering me. Let me reword that - it is not so much that I focus on the beauty around me and dismiss the intensity of the stress and sadness, but rather I put myself forth as a vehicle for the beauty that mother nature provides me. I guess the best way to explain it is that I try my hardest to re-express it, all of it: the color, the peace, the awe in it all.

If you are going to take a cue from something outside yourself ... don't you think that Mother Nature is like the top-dog of all cue providers?

?

I will remain in someone else's fantasy existence because it is my reality.

I have made it so.

Carolina

 

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

I know that you have been very patient with me. I have been, like an elf, working, working on lamp #2 in hopes that it can hold a candle to lampshade #1. To help ease the wait, I am doing a quick, but photo heavy post, of the process, so that maybe you can make some of your own (I would love to see pictures). I am going to be brief, as how-to's are not my thing.

First prewash the fabric - you don't want any of the colors running in the end when you get it wet.

Next, cut out your shapes, and do a blanket stitch around it so that your crochet work has something to hold on to. I went around each shape with the blanket stitch, then I did one row of single crochet, followed by more decorative crochet.

After you have a few pieces made up, start stitching them together.

keep stitching, hooking ... swearing ... you get the idea.

Some will go together with just a stitch, others you need to make a long chain and do like a spider and start connecting things together. If your shape is going to be round, then work on a ball ... stitching, crocheting, and swearing as you go along.

Don't forget to mark the spot from which your light fixture will come through. I actually put part of the fixture in there and stitched right up to it and around it. I left it in there until I hung it.

Having the ball in there let me see what pieces I was missing. I liked the color of my ball (a regular kids ball sold in the toy department at Target) so much that I felt I wanted to keep the color of the ball in there. After a fruitless trip to the fabric store, I resorted to bleaching some fabric in my stash so it would look like the same blue that made up the ball.

Then comes the part most of you are wondering about : how did the fabric keep it's shape? I used Stiffy, sold at my "local-but-I-have-to-drive-an-hour-and-20-minutes-to-get-to"" fabric & craft shop. One and a half bottles was all it took for my shade. I bought more in case I got carried away (which at this point I am regretting).

Once the stitching of the ball was complete, I found a jar to prop it up on. I left an opening in the stitching large enough for my hand to fit through. This is so I can have easy access to the bulb when it needs changing.

I pored the Stiffy into a large bowl (18 inches across), and dipped the shade, ball and all, into it until I felt the fabric and crochet work was fully saturated.

Needless to say, this is messy. I covered an area of the floor in the studio with thick plastic. I made sure I made this mess in an area without much foot traffic so it could stay put to dry.

The jar was placed right under the spot left for light bulb changing. I used a sponge brush to remove any excess and left it on the jar to dry for a couple of days. 

Once it is dry (48 hrs. later) take the eraser end of a pencil and push on the ball in all the empty spaces you can find. The idea is to gently pry the stiff shade from the ball. Go all the way around releasing the shade from the ball - only push on the ball, not the fabric.

Be brave for the next part, take your utility knife and pierce the ball through the opening you left for changing the light bulb. Pull out the now deflated ball through that opening. Let it try another 24 hours. Once dry The next step is CRITICAL.

PRAY TO THE LAMPSHADE GODS.

I have a feeling I should have done a bit more on this last step. The title of this post is "Testing, Testing, 1,2,3" for a reason. West Coast Elizabeth thought I might not want to share a "how-to" because I might put my shade into an Etsy shop that I have been contemplating. That is not it. I actually have been testing the shade. The first few days after it's completion I would crawl out of bed propelled only by the hope of finding my shade still hanging rather than in a lump on the dining table. My fears were unfounded. Since then I have been testing out different wattages - creeping up in number as I go, crossing my fingers. At about 150 watts, unfortunately, I believe I am beginning to see some warp-age. The other day, while composing an email to Alicia, I thought I saw patterns dancing on the wall. My globe was  - ever so slightly- twirling. I thought for sure it was the heat of the 150 watts. Then I thought - "no, it is the hot air from my forced hot air unit kicking on because my mountain hasn't clued into the fact that in the valley it is already spring".  That, my friends, is what we call wishful thinking. I think it is warping from the heat.

So why post a how-to after all that? That is why I have delayed. I have been wondering if I should work out all the kinks and then give you a how-to or share with you where I am at. I have been working like a madwoman on shade #2. My second one is even trickier than the first, but I missed you so much that I couldn't stay away from Blogland any longer. I just need to keep working out the bugs. In the meantime, I thought you might like to give it a go so I posted the general "how-to" you see before you. By the way, all Target stores within a 150 mile radius of my mountain are running low on the pretty light blue balls. I wonder why?

April has been a yucky month aside from the lampshade saga. We have been privy to a seemingly endless bout of tornadoes in my neck of the woods that all seem to be arriving right in the middle of much needed beauty sleep.  Our days have been spent wrapping up the school year. I hate this part - it seems to never end and all I want to do is get it over with. I have other stories to tell, but I am going to hold off on those and go work on my eye-crossing lampshade #2.

 

Until next time,   Carolina

My Ta-da Moment

Most of you know that I have been working on this crocheted doily project for a while.

I have been dealing with a lighting issue, a lack of the perfect light fixture to be exact, that simply could not be fixed by shopping in a catalog, going on line, or shopping in a lighting store. Margie of Resurrection Fern to the rescue. I have been reading her blog for several months now, and have stared at her mind blowing  crochet covered stones for just as long. More recently I have been drooling over her missing pieces stones. She had a giveaway that some other lucky person won, but it left me with the idea of making a project inspired by Margie that would fix my lampshade shortcomings. 

I almost feel like I am presenting one of my children. Here it is, the product behind all those times you wondered why I wasn't posting as often:

Ta-Da!!!

 

 

 

As you can see I have two more to go before the dining room ceiling can be considered "finished".

I can finally breath a sigh of relief - the kind of relief you feel when you finally see something in front of you that had previously only been your mind. It feels good.

Carolina

 

Just So You Know

Just so you know, it is not like I have forgotten to blog or that I haven't been working on anything. Life gets a bit full and I think that I have to have the project "done" before I post - this is the reason for any delay you have in getting a new post. I bought this jar of Chilean honey for my Dad. My intent was to put up a post titled "Honey, You Know I Love You" for Valentine's day. I was going to make something in the shape of a honeycomb and send it to my parents along with the honey. Obviously that didn't materialize, Valentine's day is long gone. 

Here I am now, the hexagons are now circles, and I have only had a few minutes to work on this project. I, too, like some of you, have debated about not blogging any more since the tug away from blogging gets downright depressing. The frustration I feel from not getting enough of my own time to do my creative work is my biggest personal challenge at this time.

This has brought me to face my issue straight on and find the answer to the question "Why do I blog?"

I blog because I notice things and I want to share them with someone whom might also feel they are worth noticing. This is why I love to read your comments so much. I get caught up in how the sun makes the tea in my cup glow from within, it makes me want to paint it. I love to see pattern in nature and bask in the beauty it offers me. My craft tastes ebb and flow like the ocean tides as the waves lap onto the shore on a lazy summer afternoon. Only you can I share this with. My children seem to be on "speed" and think it odd that I so often stop to notice things, and even worse that I want to talk about it. They try their best when I attempt to force the topic, but they are more interested in other things. My husband, bless his heart, focuses most of his time on making it possible for me to put food on the table.

 

So, my blog, then, is more of a conversation that I am having with you. Perhaps, once the education of my children is not as pressing, my blog will be a space for me to showcase my "wares", but for now, it must remain a place for sharing the things that catch my interest. I, then, need to work on my conversation skills a bit. I need to worry less about the "final product", and simply share with you whatever I am into a bit more often. Until next time,   Carolina.

 

When Is Color Too much Color?

My knitting chair is a BRIGHT, acidic yellow color - a color that I hated as a child, but can't get enough of as an adult. Seeing it here, next to my blog banner, I notice that the very same yellow color is in my apron. It is a color that goes with nothing, but a color that I love to see, especially when it is next to something all natural in tones like the wood floor and walls.

I see now that I even have that acidic yellow color on my favorite tea cup.

 

I have spent the better part of the last few weeks dealing with internet issues and the needs of my children. This work in progress, the multicolored knitting, has taken a back seat to everyone else's needs. In the peppered few spare minutes that I have had, Maggie has been a true blue friend to let me pin my project into her as if she were a voodoo doll. I tried it many ways. One of my favorite ways, below, required a knitted panel to cover the backside. When I was done with the panel, it only served to accentuate my backside - something I would rather hide instead.

 

I pinned, unpinned, and re-pinned. All the while trying to assess if I had enough yarn to complete the project. I have to say that having Maggie there to actually see my ideas in a three dimensional way is heaven. Right away I could tell if placing a square, here or there, had a reasonable expectation of working out or not. 

 

It has been WICKED cold here, but for you I went outside to model the finished product. It needs a little something, but I am not yet quite sure what it is. I considered stitching up the middle, under the sides, and making sleeves in another color all together.

 

I think I decided against adding all that simply because I want this project over with. I probably should have never told all of you that I was going to finish all my WIP before buying any more supplies. With winter still hanging around, I am dying to work on something that will more quickly usher Lady Spring in like I did last year.

Can you see just how cold I am feeling? Don't I look like I need some glorious sun?

 

Anyways, my one big beef that I want your thoughts on is it seems that I get enticed with a particular yarn or fabric at a store. I get this overwhelming feeling that it just has to go home with me. The vibrant colors usually draw me in. My problem comes when I am finally all done with the project (even if it is much, much later) that I can't pull it off with what I already have. Either I don't have the right shoes, the right blouse, or something falls short of the "look" that had been so crystal clear in my brain as I had passed the checkout lady my American Express card. Does this also happen to you?

Below I have paired this multi-colored concoction with all black. I even pulled my Dad's old medical bag to act as a purse for this picture to illustrate my point of the consequences of not having a good enough plan for the final look from the beginning.

 

I am going to try to be more aware of that when I return to being able to shop for supplies. I think that fashion designers have a story board or something to follow as they come up with their designs. It is a smart idea - that way they can see not only their inspirations and the final look, but also every part of the puzzle in between. I DO love color, but if I am going to continue to use such vivid colors, I am going to have be patient enough to have a full blown plan sketched out before my credit card crosses the no-going-back line. If I don't I will only continue to add to my stash until it chokes me into the inability to see where I was headed, therefore leaving me at a dead end of sorts.

 

Let me know, if you have a spare minute, how you go about this dilemma. I really would like to ponder it for a while. Having your thoughts also in my mind might give me a light bulb moment - something that in the dreary endless days of winter I could really use.   Carolina

Lady Spring got me started

    I am like a dog that lifts its' head up toward the window facing the driveway every time I hear a noise. I am waiting for the UPS man to bring me my Typepad For Dummies. I really want to conquer this beast, my tech shortcomings, that is. While I wait, and before our homeschooling day begins, I am trying to contain myself. I have sooo many ideas for fun stuff I want to share with you. I guess I ought to share with you just how I got started on this whole blog thing.

    This winter was a very long one for us, the-middle-of-nowhere-on-top-of-a-mountain clan, it felt like Lady Spring NEVER would arrive. It seemed like she had made a u-turn at the equator and left us all wondering what had we done wrong. Had I admired for too long the crystal fairytale that was the woods outside my door after the ice storm? Had I offended Lady Spring?  Making something to entice her back to our mountain was in order. I decided to look for fabric on line, since I live far from good fabric stores, and low and behold all my tap, tap, tapping on the keyboard landed me on a craft blog. I had never been a follower of blogs. To make a long story short, I lifted my eyes from the keyboard about a week later. I was smitten. I had fallen in love. Last time I had done that was 22 years ago with my husband, the human asparagus (more on that another day). I was in blog heaven... every free second on I was batting my lashes at someone's beautiful blog. One such blog was rosehip . So I bought these yummy fabrics.

 

I got back on rosehip's site again, and I got inspired to make this

Here is the other side

 

    For now you will have to check out her site on my Blogs I Love list to the right. Hopefully my Dummies book will teach me how to make it easy for you to point and click on a word and you're off to their site, like the big-daddy sites do.

    I had in mind "Make it and Lady Spring will come". But no, I slept all night on my beautiful-doesn't-match-anything-but makes-me-smile pillowcase. But I awoke to gray sky and another day of wearing my scarf and hat around the house. So I made this

 

    Still no Lady Spring. By now I had shed a few tears. You see, I thought I would be perfect. I was going to make pillowcases that wouldn't disintegrate in the wash, unlike most of the stuff I have made in the past. I have a bad habit of just wanting to git-r-dun. Not this time. I was going to make myself an HEIRLOOM, something that would truly convince Lady Spring to pack her bags and come up and stay a while. I pulled out my serger. Shortly thereafter... tears ... yup... big fat, full ones. I swear that machine has it out for me. Threading that bugger threatened to keep Old Man Winter here on the top of my mountain. I would have none of it. I prepared for battle. I purchased a pdf download of the manual that had been lost in one of the gazillion moves our family has made and proceeded with my attack. It took a third try, but finally

 

    ...  Lady Spring has unpacked her bags. Finally.