08.28.08
Posted in Beading, General at 2:01 pm by deRomilly
I had a bitersweet time last week - one of my favorite bead stores went out of business. They are demolishing the shopping center where it was located, and the owners decided that it just wasn’t feasible to move. I’m losing the opportunity to learn dichroic glassmaking and lampworking locally with a studio that could be rented. The owner is keeping her artist studio, however, and we’ll still be able to get her beautiful art glass.
My loss is also my gain, however, because they had a 75% off sale where my husband encouraged me to spend some of my business capital. $65.00 later and I had almost $200.00 worth of beads in my possession. Hee hee.
Here are some of the results, all destined to turn into SOMETHING. Several of the pieces already have design ideas brewing… Click to embiggen.
Stash one, two and three. This is only a partial view. You don’t want to be looking at supplies forever! Yes, Stash three is being overseen by the “kitten” of the house, three year old Dora. I still can’t believe she’s already three. She thought the stone chip strands were there just for her to play with. And pose with.
Closeups of a few of my favorites. The cab bead (it’s drilled, oddly) in the first photo has a hankering to go into a needlelace necklace. I’m still playing with ideas for the shape of the lace. The two donuts with skrimshaw kitties I have NO idea what they’re going to be, but they are sure cute! The glass beads I just fell in love with. The red ones are very smooth and have a very deco feel to them with the grey and black swaths through them. And the blue… well, I just love blue vintage beads!
And Pookah made an appearance, too… This is Dora’s mother. And a full pound and a half smaller than her daughter! Pookah should maybe have been named Pixie, she’s so small.
I can hardly wait to play with these, but for now they are going to have to go into the storage bins, because even though I’ve got ideas, I’ve also got things that have to be done first. Durn it.
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08.16.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:23 am by deRomilly
I am very definitely stressed right now. I’m in a situation where my goals are on hold until the family life straightens out a bit. Not that there is anything going dramatically wrong, either. Just little, petty wild fires that sap my energy and keep me from accomplishing much on the creative front.
On the other hand, my Studio Journals class kept me at least a bit active, and I’ve tried out several things, some of which have been inspiring, and others complete failures. But it’s kept me doing at least a little every couple of days, if not daily.
Some of the things I have actually accomplished follow: (since it’s always a good idea to list what you did accomplish when feeling inadequate)
- The designs for the samplers discussed in Disappearing Act.
- Playing with cut paper designs & snowflakes.
- Playing with more geometric motifs for cross stitch.
- Sketching bellydancers.
- Taking photos with my new camera — mostly macros. And realizing that I really do still know what I’m doing.
- Researching designers programs with suppliers.
- Playing with paints and pastels.
I’m frustrated with the last because although I enjoy working with them, I never seem to be able to achieve any results I like with that kind of colored media. The exceptions to this are thread and colored pencil, both exceedingly fussy and time-consuming techniques that don’t particularly lend themselves to quick sketchbook work. I also can’t seem to get results I really like with the computer. But the last may well be simply because I spend so much time on a computer in my day job that using it as a design tool — even for simple pattern manipulation — is a pain in the backside.
So wow. I have accomplished a lot! It’s just that pesky stress thing making me think I’m drowning and not progressing.
And yesterday evening, after I wrote the draft of this to here, Dear Husband reminded me that no matter how stressed I am right now, there’s actually a final date give or take a month or two that I can plan for. So as of today, my plan is to start sorting and emptying my supposed studio space (now a muss of storage that I try to work around). Then the full remodel can begin on January 2. He promises me bookcases, real drawing tables and drawers for my bits and pieces. So I can put things away, even if I do often like to work in a creative disaster area. Right now it’s just a disaster area, not creative at all… This is going to be fun. Planning hat on!
And just to finish on a happy note, here is one of the photos I took that I’m really proud of. One of the last of the summer daylilies out by Dad’s apartment. My Dad and I were playing “one upmanship” with our cameras. I won. Click to embiggen.
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08.11.08
Posted in Stitching Genres, Lace at 3:37 pm by deRomilly
I just discovered this form recently — there was a post asking about the book by Elena Dickson on the h-needlework list. I was so intrigued that I bought it sight unseen and without any real reviews.
All I can say is wow - it’s beautiful! And faster than a lot of needlelace, unless you mess up. Errors have to be fixed by carefully cutin gout the offending area and beginning the knotting again.
I’ve been playing with larger threads than she recommends - both becuase I thought they’d be easier to learn on (they were, for me) and because I saw a potential to use this as an alternative to crochet for hip scarves and other bellydance embellishment (I’ve also been playing with macrame for this purpose, more on that later!)
I like the effect, and may make myself a hipscarf using this technique. One of the advantages I can see immediately is that if a thread breaks I wouldn’t lose an entire row of beads and coins, the way I do on the purchased, crocheted scarves.
And since I try to go through all the stitching on the purchased scarves myself because of that ravelling tendency, starting from scratch with this technique doesn’t sound quite so bad right now, although time is always an issue!
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08.04.08
Posted in Samplers, Historical at 3:02 pm by deRomilly
Now I am not a sampler historian. Until I discovered 17th and 18th century samplers I didnt’ care for them much at all, actually. I hate stitching words in cross stitch or backstitch, and just can’t wrap my head around the little pastoral houses with oversized dogs and cats in the yard. I dislike the “primitive” style intensely on a personal level. I loved Thea Dueck and Just Nan’s samplers, but couldn’t see myself hanging them on the wall once I’d finished stitching them. What to do, what to do?
Then I discovered the historic band sampler and the spot motif sampler, and all the ones in between that combine the best of both worlds and kajillions of different stitches. I was hooked. Basically what this, combined with osme of my other tendencies underscores, is that if it happened before 1800 I’m much more likely to be interested in it. <grin>
Samplers and the motifs you find on them have a bit ofa torrid affair with historians. Just about everyone who gets involved with studying them wants to know the history and meaning of each individual motif.
I fear this has become a bit of a game. You find cats defined as quick-witted, but also as lazy. When I put a cat into my work, I’m much more likely to be thinking of my furry baby at home than about some deep symbolic meaning of the motif. (English majors do the symbology thing too… even though Poe has written countless letters stating that “The Bells” was nothing more than an excercise in rhythm and rhyme, the English departments all insist we dig out whatever meaning we can from it.) As my heart-sister says, “Sometimes a cat in a flowerpot is just a cat in a flowerpot.”
That said, there ARE some overarching archetypes. However, these are often nationality, or even region-specific. We see crowns in the samplers of monarchists families under Cromwell. Some German samplers have coats of arms or crests related to their region of origin that crop up. Dutch samplers often have stylized tulips.
I think rather than symbolic, most sampler motifs are either regional or just something the stitcher liked. The historical pattern books like Scholyker’s Scholehouse for the Needle don’t assign meanings to each little design. Many of the symbols developed out of older symbology, especially in Eastern Europe.
But although people have loved including secret messages in their lives (language of flowers, language of fans, symbols in samplers), even if a meaning was intended we would need to be using the same dictionary as the maker to interpret it correctly. There are as many Victorian dictionaries of flower meanings as there are flowers, all different. And, as different meanings for motifs crop up almost daily — finding the one true dictionary seems to me to be so close to impossible that it becomes irrelevant.
So I’ll continue to stitch historic samplers, but I’ll also continue to design my own. Find what symbology in them as you will: I’m not putting it there intentionally!
Other links of interest:
And that should probably keep you busy for a while!
I’d love to hear your views on samplers and sampler motifs…
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