Journeys

What a busy boys weekend. Both boys started their Spring tennis season (misnomer!), one with a good win, the other with a devastating loss. Saturday afternoon was spent making a huge banner for our youngest to run through for his 50th game on Sunday. This was successful as the banner disintegrated in a most satisfying way and the team won. Friends and family finished a most satisfying weekend.

However, I have been working. I have two weeks to get a good photo of the progress on my newspapers, totems and eyes piece. This is a short time frame and I will send off as much as I have.

I've been given some already shredded paper, which I'm spinning up. Because it is quite short, I'm using a cotton core to spin over. This has made joining easier, if not always neat and it's spinning up fairly fine (for newspaper) and fairly quickly.

I now have my totems. Originally, the base was to be larger and the poles shorter, but, I've just taken those I found at Reverse Art Truck and was playing with the arrangement and I liked the tallness of it all.

So, I'm on my way. Eyes will come and I think I've worked out how they will attach, but more on Totem poles another time.

Abandoning a project

It comes with some relief that you've run out of time and can't get something done, especially when it's not really a properly formed idea.

I wanted to put an entry into Craft Victoria's members' exhibition, but have run out of time. All I needed was a photo to sen, but this is a project which will now form part of the experimentation for the small sculpture award.

I have learnt alot about knitting paper and how fragile it is. When I spin next time I'm going to try and get slightly less twist and work with very evenly cut paper.

It is disappointing, however, the need to really concentrate on newspapers, totems and eyes is obvious.

What a difference a day makes!

Yes, what a difference a day makes. I had the best day since I've been there....that's right, the best. What was really good was that a bit of everything sold. Except hats! They're supposed to be what is selling, oh well. I did sell some wall hangings, scarves, a little yarn and my fingerless mittens, again. It was fairly quiet, having fallen on the Queen's birthday weekend, so even better. I do hope this continues.

As a result of the boost in confidence and thanks to the long weekend, I had a flurry of activity. I've two 'commissions', one from the weekend, a pair of wrist warmers, and one that I've had for awhile that I've been putting off.

The wrist warmers are knit in some handspun that was slightly felted. I'm not sure how it is working out, but they've given me some more ideas for wrist warmers that are a smaller version of the fingerless mittens. Need to find more buttons! (Apologies, problem with the pictures)

The scarf is machine knit with ping-pong balls tied in. I'm trying to felt it, yes it will felt! but had to abandon the dyeing in favour of feeding my family. I'll boil it to death, take out the ping-pong balls and add buttons to make the resulting ball shape more of a floral shape.

I've then made my first totem. I like it, however, I don't think I'll use toilet rolls as a basis. They just don't have the right look of authority.

Finally, I've started knitting a tri-scarf (must think of a better name) with wool that I spun for the workshop in Bendigo. I wanted to finish this so they could see how the yarns they're going to create look when they are knit up.

It's amazing what a boost of confidence can do!

More spinning newspaper

Yesterday was spent doing my homework for my Web Design class, getting to grips with Dreamweaver. I'm starting to feel confident that I understand what can be done with all this new technology, which means that I now have a feel for how much more I need to learn. However, the products are excellent and I think that I can do some excellent development.




I was tired after the class, so I sat down with my newspaper spinning. I decided to try using a sponge to wet the paper. This worked really well as you can control how wet the paper gets (important when working with different papers), and the paper is wet very evenly.



As a significant breaking point is where dry paper meets wet paper, I also dampened the 'yarn' already on the bobbin. I felt much more confident, the spinning was good and the wheel drew the paper on reasonably well, though any bump did mean a little hand winding.



The biggest problem is really wetting the paper. Paper dries really fast when just damp, so you are literally stopping for each piece of paper. The next part of the experiment is to get a wet towel and see if they stay wet in that.

Much fun.