luxe

whilst trying to type in bloggers address, i typed www.frustrated.com instead, and oddly enough, that site was not found. freud anyone? naw. i just want to sleep and am not even sort of sleepy, even though i took a sleeping pill and benadryl. not a damn thing. i showered for almost an hour. not tired. tired, but not sleepy. and i think it might be a full moon which would answer all of this. i really think i need to just get up and do some spinning. altough, then i know i absolutely will be up all night. egads. i have long stretches of not being able to sleep, and have been so much better lately that i thought i was past it. yeah, right.

i am going to make more recycled sweater flowers, so i will be cutting and cutting and cutting. weee! if anyone has wool felt or old plain wool or other feltable sweaters that they want to get rid of, let me know. i am also always looking for buttons that are an inch or bigger. and i love trades, so. and i still really really really want to learn to sew so i can make my own weird clothes and not have to go to the mall and buy sweatshop clothes anymore. so.

i am trying to wind down. and hopefully there won’t be another 10 posts tonight. sigh.
oh, and have you ever seen a more beautiful cat? a downright supermodel. look at that delicate brown snootles. ballet slipper brown. sweet.

i will post photos of fiber to-morrow probably. anyone interested, email me right away, or it will go to the wholesale orders, whether you want fiber or yarn, let me know!

wish me luck.
xo,
n.

i am having an odd day. i didn’t fall asleep until after the sun came up, and even then, i woke up every 20 minutes or so. i did a ton of knitting and catching up on emails and if i sent you a freaky email or left a strange comment, ignore it. it was probably 5 a.m. so.

i needed to dye fiber. so. i did the dishwasher method that shannon invented (methinks, or at least officially) but, i used the gallon-sized plastic zipper freezer bags that i normally use on the stove (that was the best discovery EVER! they are so sturdy) and i put dry fiber in the bag filled with water, closed the zipper, squooshed it around, added the citric acid to the water, let it hang out in it’s bag. moved on to the next bag. once it was wet all the way through, i took my dye of choice, poured it into the bag, but down the side so it didn’t dye the stuff at the top, squooshed it around and then did that with my other colors until i was satisfied. i packed a shitload of fiber per bag and also added silk noil and nylon doll hair stuff, too, so you need to really move stuff around and make sure the color is all the way through, unless you don’t mind it being sparse. also, this was superwash, so you can pour water on it and be rough without issues, the fiber i used that was just fiber, i was more ginger with, but still, make sure it is all the way through. i then put the bags upright in the dishwasher. i left the zipper a teeny bit open so that they wouldn’t pop from the steam. i put some on the top, some on the bottom, and none leaked, but i put the lighter ones on the top just in case. also, be careful not to puncture the bag on the metal thingies in there. also, the bag will be bloated and soft, so make sure to place it so it won’t pop. okay? now…i put it on the long cycle (not tough scrub though) and then sanitize and heated dry. it took about 2 hours.

for that two hours, we went to the grocery store. i bought more paint because…this ate up a bunch of my paint and made me realize that i was out of a bunch of things. which i had to go get some of. there are more photos of the 3 paintings i did, although, looking at the photo of them, they look like crap to me now. am i tired, or do they really look like crap? hm. i need to sand the finish, because there are brushstrokes in it, but…sigh. let me know what you guys think. i will be selling them. i think. i did really like them. 2 hours ago.

jake found a big container of UTEE for $7 in the clearance section (can you believe he even knew what to look for?) and i got a water brush (finally! yay!) and a few tubes of paint that i needed. i have to order some stuff from dick blick because they are soooooo cheap. cheaper than utrecht cheap. jake also found a big tube of liquitex copper paint for a buck or something and i got that. he is a keeper. and handsome too.

what is his flaw? well…he is a tapper. do you know any tappers? he doesn’t even know he is doing it, so sometimes i will tell him to stop doing it and he doesn’t realize that he is, at all. so whilst at the store, from lack of sleep and eating nothing but a scoop of icecream at 5p, after an all night knitting/blog bender, i first asked him to stop tapping, really softly, and then i snapped at him and instantly felt like an asshole. we never act mean to each other. seriously. i have never been around anyone else who is so nice to me and unless he is hangry (that is anger caused by hunger, hanger), he is very patient and sweet with me. and when he is hangry, within 5 minutes of eating, he is himself again. my mood didn’t improve. we left the store and it started raining. hard. really really hard. i hate driving in the dark and the rain. i can’t see. jake sealed the deck today and was all stressed about the rain (hard rain, seriously hard) and also, the doormat got left in the rain. and the barbeque.

when we get in and put the groceries away, i am getting fiber out of the dishwasher which is still super hot and i start to feel pissy and mean. and snappy. not in a good way. then, i get that paranoid feeling (pms? hunger? exhaustion?) that he hates me. so strange. i am 15 all of a sudden. i had to rinse out fiber (only 4 bags out of 8 or 9) and spin it out and hang it to dry, and it is raining so i have to hang it inside, and the big drying rack is outside in the pouring rain. so i hung that stuff up, and let the rest cool in the dishwasher because they are all dark colors that hadn’t quite exhausted, but i must say, it worked super well. i still need to dye some yarn, and i plan to do it in there, too. i will wrap it up in saran and then put it in a zipper bag. i did around 10 lbs (i think, anyway) of fiber in separate bags all at one time and they are spread out enough that they don’t need to be moved around and the kitchen isn’t hot and sweaty and stinky. so it rocks. i am sold. highly recommend it. i will try to post photos to-morrow.

also, i got an amazing package from velma that was so awesome that it is ridiculous. and i peed my pants. a little. i need to get her package together still, but that is a big shoe to fill. and two of them. velma, you are toooooooo good to me. you are the best. wanna see the stuff? plus, i whole bunch of fiber and pins and soap and bar-b-q sauce and, and, and. insane. she is so awesome. jake was jealous. methinks velma may get a painting in addition to her other stuff. hmmm? tell me a color. just one. and describe that color well. not “purple” more like “lavender” or whatever. there are more pics in my flickr of all the stuff.

there are also new yarn pics , studio pics, more pics of the other 2 paintings. so pop by and see whatcha think. the paintings are available. i think that the 3 look awesome together, but it doesn’t matter. so let me know. they have a super duper thick glossy finish. purdy!

ok. off to shower. and wish me sleep. we have colds and i have plugged up ears and sinus pressure. jake is sicker than me though.

mwah! sniff. sniff.
n.

i cannot sleep. i am starting to have that problem more and more. the thing that worries me is that i have a long history of insomnia, when i was little, i had horrible nightmares, repetitive ones that woke me up. and i would actually try not to sleep because they scared me too much. now, i have so much to do and i have ideas swirling around in my head, and once i don’t sleep one night, it just gets worse and worse. and of course, now that i am trying to go online, my eyes feel all googly. i hate that!

i spent the whole day working on 3 small paintings. the finish is drying and i am not sure what i want to do with it. most likely, i will post photos to-morrow. i mean today. it is 3:30 a. okay, my eyes are all crazy and i am having a hard time reading. so off i go to knit.

xo,
n.

i was looking at the wonderful work of cas holmes(who is a woman after my own heart doing insanely labor intensive things, like burying her fabric in the yard for up to 6 months to age it, and doing most of her processes the old fashioned long way. why do i like that? i dunno. i don’t like shortcuts for things like that. the process is really important to me. i don’t want to peel away a layer and realize that it is a fake effect. unfinished work, that is to say, things that look like crap on the back or on the inside, drive me nuts. i hate it. it is important that it be art all the way through. and i am willing to put the time and effort in to do that, or to not do it at all. in tha vein, i always wear nice underwear and bras. when they start to get the least bit ratty…garbage. in fact, the inside is more important than the outside to me, and in the world today, usually it is just the opposite. all flash, no substance. end rant.

what else did i find? a really easy tutorial for felt beads, which i have been meaning to make since i went to camp pluckyfluff last year at artclothstudios.com in addition to needing badly to dye fiber, so that will be my day tomorrow, and i get to use my new gigantor roaster! woot! also, shannon has a method of setting the dye in the dishwasher, and i called her today (to no avail) to ask if she thought i could put multiple batches in the dishwasher in ziploc bags to steam a whole bunch at the same time, rather than having pots and pans and roasters. i plan to just use the electric roaster to steam it in plastic, not loose. i think it should work, of course i will let you know.

what about making blueprints on fabric? and they don’t have to be blue, of course. i think that could be incredible. i wonder how it would look on handmade felt. hmmmm…

and thenruth asawa’s amazing crocheted scultpure. i love that woman. love. don’t tell jake.

the wire studio, in england makes theseamazing life-sized animule sculptures made from recycled fence wire, railway wire, etc. the work reminds me of giacometti a lot. and that is not a bad thing to be compared to. unless someone says that your build is like a giacometti, which wouldn’t be good at all. and like giacometti’s work, this stuff is life-sized, sometimes bigger. so when it is 7 horses, it is BIG. i love the dog, and the stag…okay, all of them. gorgeous. every one.

i have been spinning like crazy over the last few days, and am out of fiber, so i started carding bits and pieces and i forgot how fun it is to spin from batts rather than roving. i will take photos to-morrow. i spent all of my time winding skeins. i actually had to make a lazy kate for the louet bobbins from a metal skewer and a shoebox. it isn’t the greatest thing, but it works for now. the lendrum one doesn’t hold the louet bobbins, and the louet one is attached to the wheel, and i didn’t want to sit on the floor and wind like i usually do. so. shoebox. any ideas would be welcome. i bet i could nail a long long nail all the way through a board or base of some sort and just put the bobbin on that way.

i have been working on the knits for sugar and handspun yarn is so fun to knit with. i must say. i have been doing a sort of super coil on a lot of yarns lately, and 200 yards of a single turns into like 50 yards plied. insane. it eats yarn. but it looks gorgeous. and is fun fun fun.

oh, also, i realized that you can put the big lendrum bobbin on the louet. you just have to start the yarn on the second hook back rather than the first. i hate that the lendrum has to use the tiny bobbins for thin spinning, and that the big bobbins are not really useable for thinner yarns, because the orifice is way to big and the yarn comes out crummy. so. i mainly use it for plying, or spinning really thin luxe stuff, like silk. i wish they would come up with a head that held a big bobbin but had a smaller orifice. so i use both wheels a lot. which is fine.

*edit* velma tagged me for this meme. she is giving me 5 words which i need to write in the first word i think of when i read it…
1. book=mac
2. bottle=rocket
3. bench=mark
4. bounce=back
5. blink=blank

and my 5 words for you…consider yourself tagged if you wanna be…you can leave your answers as a comment if you want.
1. lick
2. snoot
3. whisker
4. number
5. plastic

i am super sleepy, probably because i fell asleep around 6 a.m. and have a headache cranking. i would love to work on a painting tonight, but i am not sure that i have the energy. sleeeeepy!

smoooooochies,
n.

i am so clean! i never smell! i swear it. even though my clothes have paint and dye all over them, i am a really clean person and always smell nice. i shower twice a day. why am i dirty bess? not cool. and bess is a 500 lb lady’s name. no offense to 500 lb ladies, or people named bess that aren’t. sigh.
i got this from regina…the lady linoleum loves jimbo’s handcarved crochet hooks, which are just amazing. gorgeous. i happened by and woah!

i am having issues with bloglines dropping some of my blogs. anyone else have this issue? i am a flake, so it takes me a while to notice, i think maybe it is under a different heading or something, and then…i realize…it’s just gone. what? and then on other feeds, it tells me they have 6 new posts and it is not only not new posts, but it doubles each post. eh. sheesh.

jake texted me from work that he has a pretty concrete job offer from the engineering department at his work, which he has been wanting to move to. he has been depressed at his job, feeling trapped, so this could really be a big deal. he is such a smart person, and so meticulous and nice to be around (and i thought this before i dated him, i swear), i am sure that he will go far. there aren’t a lot of people with his kind of work ethic in the world. his whole family are like that. so everyone keep your fingers crossed! i would love it if he had a job that made him feel challenged in a good way, and that he would actually enjoy doing. for once. he deserves it. he works so damn hard.

we both feel a cold coming on. he is full on sick. yesterday, he stayed home from work and ran errands with me. i packed orders, which always takes me forever. dunno why. so we stopped at my favorite antique/used furniture place and i did pretty well. i got a ton of old old ephemera of different sorts (yes, i just said ephemera) i am probably going to put some luxe piles together. i have a bunch of wallpaper sample books and other vintage books, in addition to planning to take the wallpaper and do some decorative papers with them to sell. let me know if you are interested, and i will put you first on the list. also, i am dyeing fiber this week, so anyone who wants some , let me know, i have wholesale orders for it, and i will put some aside for you. and i owe jess king some, i remembered yesterday, she has been waiting forever, so i need to email her and let her know it is coming.

ok, back to the thrift stuff…i got a huge mint condition old electric roaster for dyeing. the awesome thing about it, is that it has a rack and i think i can steam fiber in it, in which case, i can really put a ton in there. and he gave it to me for 20 bucks. i bitched and gave him eyes until he marked it down. i also go this awesome lamp…. it has this little pen holder and a date clicker…i can promise that the date will never be right. the only issue with it is that it wants to tip over, so i need to figure out where to put it and tape it down. the blue glow is amazing. i lurve it. i have pics of the amazing papers that i got there, too, on my flickr, so head over. what else?

i made this copper wire crocheted wide cuff using the paper beads and it came out gorgeous. i plan to sell it, so before i list it, let me know if you are interested…purdy, eh?

also, i found this cool book from the 70’s. there are photos of the inside of it on my flickr. the entire book is handwritten and illustrated. there is this cool illustration of a spinning wheel… i am thinking that i will copy it and use it in a collage. i have some ideas. i got so much more cool stuff. i almost peed my pants. there was a woman there sorting through the stuff as well that makes collaged cards and stuff to sell i guess and was aggressively guarding the stuff despite the fact that there were 5 tables just covered with stuff. she all put shoved me. freak. whoever’s house the magazines and stuff came from was a pack rat of amazing proportions. there were fishing licenses from 80 years ago. i got a fire policy from 1926. boyscout books from 60 years ago, which are hilarious. one of the projects is a special gadget for roasting wieners. ha!

i must do work. off i go.

mwah! mwah!
n.

i had a sudden migraine yesterday on the way to the in-laws for dinner. it happens fairly often and it makes me paranoid about going any distance away from home. i hate it. i never used to be like this, although, i also used to have migraines so bad that i had to go to the ER on a regular basis. so there is that. my inlaws are incredibly understanding about it. i was sleepy and out of it for the rest of the day, but otherwise okay. and today, i have one again. ah.

here is some one of the yarns i have been cranking out…

so i ran across this wonderful local artistblog and this particular painting of the telephone wires is incredible. i am not sure why i like telephone wires so much. she does a drawing a day, and then, went on to use guache and…this amazing idea for making a portable guache or watercolor kit out of fimo and a altoids tin. and then you use a special paintbrush that holds water inside so you can use it anywhere. how cool is that? i am so excited to try it! i was thinking that you could use a plastic pill case, you know the kind with dividers in it? as well. when i was a kid i would have freaked out over that idea! she also bound her own sketchbooks because the way she made them they lie flat so she can use both pages for one drawing. she is my kind of lady. i love people that go the whole way. they can’t find what they are looking for…they make it. i like that.

i got the minwax wood hardener and was not very impressed with it. it didn’t really harden the beads. it worked better on the beads i had used that were mod podged already (i am sure any sealant would work fine) but even with a bunch of coats, it didn’t get hard. i am letting it dry until to-morrow to see if that helps. i put it in a plastic cup and used a disposable sponge brush thing and it ate through the bottom of the cup and ate the sponge off of the handle. yeah. and guess who didn’t use gloves? i dunno what my problem is. it seems like i shouldn’t ever use them. so i eventually got all the sticky varnishy stuff off of my hands, but it was a pain. it also doesn’t thicken the beads at all. so far, the utee works best. i am planning to try some epoxy resin next. i need to order it, of course. no one carries it, except for regular epoxy for gluing. this stuff is thinner so you can paint it on. and it comes in a big container. i will post photos to-morrow if it looks any different. i made a ton more beads out of pages from different language books and they were much easier to make than the book from 1870, believe it or not. and again, that book is dry rotting and falling apart, i didn’t bust it. no worries.

i went to joann’s to look for resin on sunday before my migraine, okay, at the beginning of it, and picked up some gloves for handling hot stuff and they are so big on my i dunno if i can use them. i got the new interweave knits (and read in there about how all buffalo fiber is taken from the pelts of slaughtered buffalo bred for the meat, i guess they are not really into being sheared or touched, and you only get about a pound of soft fiber out of a whole animule. i mean, it would be thrown away otherwise, but still, i guess i assumed that like quiviet, it was picked off of shrubs or something. or grew on trees.) and an “N” sized crochet hook that is 15 mm. it is the joann’s brand hook and an actual N is supposed to be 9mm. that was fine, because i wanted a bigger hook that wasn’t my gigantic plastic hook, but i thought it was funny that they make up their own sizing. also, they are carrying the embroidery punch needles now, which i am eager to try.

what else did i see at joann’s? a new blog friend! a woman and her adorable daughter came up to me “natasha?” what? who? i didn’t have glasses on, and in lighting like that i am always squinting and confused and she introduced herself as squitching lady and i felt bad that i didn’t talk longer. i asked her how she recognized me and she said, “your hair!” i better not get rid of my skunk stripe. when i have all dark hair, i look like a washed out corpse, not just a corpse, although i would be up for suggestions. so hi donna! it was super nice to meetcha!

in other news, my mom told me that my niece rode her tricycle 2 miles. holy crap. my bro rides a bike and her grampa used to be a big bike rider so maybe she will be an athlete, my mom said. a fialkov? athletic? actually, my dad was captain of his rugby team in college and i think he had cousins that swam in the olympics. and i was the most leisurely competitive swimmer in the area. let me tell you. i am not terribly competitive. i just don’t care. maybe in the art olympics. the yarn olympics. i can ply really really fast. seriously.

we had a friend over for a little cookout and it was really nice. i worked on the beads, but the sealant on them and then got super tired and cold, for some reason when i get tired, i get really chilly, and fell asleep for a little while, whilst jakie had a hang out session. pavel hid in the bathroom all night until i went in and carried him out.

also, i saw this amazing sock monkey dress on the craftzine.com blog. oh my god. so cute! it would make an awesome cardigan! or a knee length version of the same dress with a shrug! oh my. so cute.

also, i saw some amazing tutorials on altering clothes, and i don’t mean the boring t-shirt tutorials that people make baggy ill-fitting garments that look even worse than the cheap-o sweatshop tshirt that it started out as. i mean, gorgeous clothes that actually fit you well, which is the point, right? making things that are unique, fit well and are beautiful. i don’t want to buy crap clothes from crap stores that don’t fit or even look nice. i can wear my old crap clothes. i do really want to learn to sew though, although i tend not to know anyone that is very good at it. and i want to learn. so if you live near me and want to teach me, i would be happy to work something out. i have a machine that was passed on to me by a lovely cohort from stich n bitch. so i wanna know. and the thing scares me. i don’t need to make a wedding dress or anything, but i want my things to be made right. so email me or leave a comment! okay?

off to spin…
n.

i finished a bunch more beads today which you can check out here. they are mostly more of the same, but i did long beads and cut them into smaller ones with the utility knife to see how it would work. the old old paper tends to fall apart, so it might be best to use new paper or a photocopy. keep it in mind, anyway. the other option when doing that is to actually just break them into pieces. i then go back over it with the UTEE. i cracked out the heat gun and went back over globby parts to smooth them a bit. i only got two burn blisters! woah!

what about the buttons?

i made some, i have just to drill the holes. i plan to get some fiberglass resin or polyester resin to paint on for some other buttons, i think it will be easier to control. and less dangerous. the issue with the modpodge is that it doesn’t harden the paper at all. and that is a bit of an issue. i love how the buttons turned out and i do plan to sell some.

here is one of the paragraphs from jenny dowde’s new book…i know it seems like i am showing off, but…i am showing off. okay. i am. and the fact that a very small percentage of the world even knows what the hell this means or will ever see it…well, i am still showing off, as much as a non-show-off sort of gal like me can show off. so. there!

what else? well, some wire crocheted jewelry…this one is a wide cuff that is garnet chips and glass…i am actually get the hang of crocheting a bit. i used 2 garnet chips and one glass bead per crochet stitch and it worked really well. so i think 3 beads is the trick per stitch. wooo! and another one, using PAPER BEADS!!! i am not sure what i think of it, and i think it will be on etsy because i don’t know what i think of it. rambling on…

i was supposed to see one of my favorite people, ambrose today, and was in the studio and totally flaked. flaked. forgot to call or anything. man. i feel like an ass. flog. flog. flog. sorry jen!

smoochies and so much more…
n.