I am no artist. I am a slap-dash scrap quilter. My craft is only good enough to make reasonably sure that what I produce holds together, at least till somebody tries to actually use it. Maybe.
This is actually my life philosophy: grab the good bits (the saturated, the painful, the gracious and glorious, the epiphanous, the dear and the sad), stick them together best you can on the fly, and live fiercely and hopefully with that. And don’t let anybody but God and those people you have very good reason to trust tell you what the rules are. (oh, and this corollary: always eat the junk you don’t like first, so everything after that is dessert.)
I don’t even have to finish what I start because I have set no easily discernable pattern – thus, nobody (especially me) can expect what comes next, and nobody knows when I’ve gotten to the end. Which I never do.
Even the only true work I have ever done was approached in this way, and all four of those people seemed to have turned out pretty darned well. So far. Even in a domestic wear-and-tear setting. I think, however, that a great deal of luck went into that project. Luck, faith, training and work.
So now I am putting up some pictures of things I have made my own self. Rachel took up knitting this summer (she had to do something that would hold her still), and as I had never done any knitting outside of making functional things like sweaters and Christmas stockings, I became super intrigued with the toy patterns I found on Etsy and the Waldorf School level of executing them. Small things you can put eyes on (thus giving birth to character). Some of it was very straight forward work, some clever and complicated. I’d have an interesting little pig to show you had I not adopted the two dog-pigs. Anyway – enjoyed making this stuff, and thought I’d show it off just for fun:
I love working with wool. At least, I do in theory. I love all the books and all the projects the clever people do. So I follow patterns. The part of this kind of thing I hate is having to cut all the little strips and find the materials. And pay for stuff. This hooking stuff is calming – I can’t do cross stitch and even needle punch begins to get to me, but when you hook, it works up quickly, and you can see your progress and get all excited and delighted and full of hope that when you finish, it will have been worth it.
This is a sort of trivet, candle holder thing that you don’t really want to end up using because if you put something in the middle of it, you couldn’t see the cool star, and why would you burn a candle in the middle of this and get it all waxy anyway? I had a little trouble with it curing, and getting the punchy cheese filled edge crust to work, but it turns out that steam and a good iron fixeth a multitude of sins.
I guess I could hang it here, but the spiders would get to it, and the rain and everything. So maybe not.
The afore mentioned toys. But after all that “putting on eyes” stuff, I haven’t gotten around to any of that, yet. So whatever character they have, it’s on their own merit.
A white sheep. He’s not done the way he’s supposed to be; I couldn’t figure out the arcane instructions. So I did it my own way, and actually liked the way he turned out. He’s a Waldorf favorite. If you want fun, search Waldorf on Etsy.
More or less the Waldorf favored horse. He’s done in stockinette stitch, but I’m going to change that on the next guy. I think he’s kinda cute, but wants eyes. Really wants eyes.
Boy band horse. Another patten entirely. This one’s from Knitted Animals, a translation from some nordic language – and is out of print. But worth buying. Especially if you have Etsy friends who will answer desperate questions.
This fat pony is from another cool little nordic translation: The Knitted Farmyard. Books like this are written by the lucky people who do one thing and do it well—better than well—brilliantly. I will never write such a book. But these instructions made the other book like plain English. Oy.
A white star made of parchment paper – the kitchen kind. I made a mistake in this one. Not sure how. Something upside down, probably. Yeah – I can see it now. But I love the secondary patterns made by the density of the folded paper.
I made this guy eons ago, gave up on him, probably because i had the wrong flux. But I found him in my glass box (lesson: take a look into your glass box once a decade and see what surprises you) and fixed him. Because I was making some of these (below) at the time and was in the soldering mood.
Here are two hedge hogs. A good one and a miserable excuse for one. The good one was made by Rachel. The sad one by me. Which is which? If you can’t tell the difference, then God bless you – but here’s the hint: you can tell by the eyes.
A suffolk sheep. Just like the ones we found in Shropshire. Was it Shropshire? Near Wales, anyway. In process. No legs or ears or tail. Or eyes. Yet.
My first hand felted ball. No bell in it, dang it.
A window full of stuff. The dirty window: courtesy of nature.
This bird is a copy of one I bought at Frog and Toad – original made somewhere in Peru or Tibet or somewhere I cannot remember now. Wherever the felt cat was not made. Anyway, my copy is primitive and sketchy, but still cute. And took WAY more hours than I’d ever sell it for. The women who make these (wherever that is – why can’t I remember?) are not getting enough for their clever hands and hours of labor.
A necklace I made out of a hand carved bead from a country china-way. I wish I knew who did these. They are remarkably detailed and beautiful. Read the conclusion in the caption above: it applies here. This is Chaz’ necklace. I stole it and she hasn’t missed it yet. The clasp is really cool, too, but it’s on the other side of the pumpkin.
The End.
24 Responses to Me: makey-makey