Empty Nest

Yesterday I received news that I won a merit award for my fiber painting, “Lily,” showing at the Naperville Art League gallery.  I just recently began my membership there after being away for nearly 3 years.  When I started working fine art in fiber I was eager to show my work and so I joined the art league.  My daughter was in high school at the time and even though I was excited about fiber art it seemed that there was never enough time to get even one piece done a month for the monthly shows.   It amazes me how much that changed with my daughter away at her first year of college.  While she was away I didn’t come home from my office job and have to put dinner on the table, or sew a dress for the next dance, or just simply be company.  Not that I didn’t love to do those things but now, with my empty nest, I can choose to do whatever I want to do.  A lot of times that means delving into my fiber stash, maybe creating a new accessory line or working on my latest “painting.”  Summer put a temporary hiatus on my work but I’m eager to get going strong in September.  I’ve had a summer of inspiration that I’m excited to put into reality. 

The NAL pictured my “Lily” in their August newsletter which you can see here.  This is a large file that takes some time to load.  Here's a partial photo of the painting:

 

Currently Showing

Last week David Sharos of the Naperville Sun ran a piece about Naperville Art League’s latest project, “Between the Lines.”  I was surprised to receive David’s phone call but the very short interview turned out to be a couple of pretty nice paragraphs in the article.  I was pleased!  You can read it here.  I received the call from David because I’m showing one of my felted pieces, "Lily," in the Art League’s current exhibit.  David also included a large photo of another fiber art piece, "Americana," in the article.  Unfortunately the photo only downloads half way but I uploaded to my blog for you to see.  

This was my first of what I consider a large fiber piece.  The size (20” x 28”) and the 3 elements made it quite an undertaking but it successfully pushed me out of my “little” box.  I usually think in terms of 16” x 20” now and with needle felted detail this can become quite time consuming.  While I compare needle felting somewhat to colored pencil in the way I layer and blend and often work only a few “strokes” at a time I would never have undertaken a colored pencil drawing of that magnitude. 

I’m also privileged to have been juried in to the Naperville Art League member’s exhibit, “Spontaneous,” at the Schoenherr Gallery of North Central College in Naperville.  This show runs until August 22.  North Central College is my Alma Mater and my daughter is currently attending there so it really pleased me to be accepted.  The fiber piece, "Uganda Couple,” that I submitted took Best of Show at one of the league’s exhibits which qualified it for the Best of the Best in 2008 held at the Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oakbrook.  I don’t currently have the piece up on a website but you can see some of my fiber art here.

Carrot Juice

Back in 1993, after 3 years of dealing with 3 family members battling cancer, I purchased a juicer.  Both my dad and my brother went through alternative treatments and my brother especially was very conscious of the food he ate.  I learned to make whole wheat pizza crust (much better than white!) and was turned on to pure juices.  I’m still using the same juicer I purchased in 1993 but have to admit that fresh juices haven’t been a constant through the years.  Recently I’ve been looking at raw food cookbooks and found a “bunny spice” recipe that is super delicious!  Carrots, fresh ginger, banana (I keep a supply in the freezer), almond mild and a sprinkle of cinnamon.  It’s this recipe that got me thinking about carrot juice and the coaster design that evolved out of it.

If you're interested in purchasing these coasters visit my Etsy shop at www.kruser.etsy.com or directly at

http://www.etsy.com/listing/51831177/carrot-juice-wool-coasters 

Angora, Silk and Cormo Wool

This was at times an experiment in terror but I love the end result!  I received some angora fur from a friend some time ago and didn’t get to working with it because it needed quite a bit of work.  It took a lot of combing and in the end I still had lumps but decided to give it a spin anyway.  I blended it with super soft cormo wool, spun and plied it.  I didn’t end up with a lot of yardage but knitted up what I had – my scarf was a little short.  I had about 40 yards of silk from a spinning guild meeting where we had a technique session on spinning silk.  I didn’t want to take the chance of the silk being limp so I spun up some more cormo and plied it with the silk.  Then there came choosing the knitting pattern.  I’m not a fantastic knitter but I find that difficulty is based more on concentration than the pattern.  I sure picked the wrong pattern!  After many start overs I chose a different pattern and this is the finished scarf.  A final go around with a crochet stitch with the silk gave it a nice finish.

 

Charles Van Grooten

Charles Van Grooten is a House Rabbit Society foster bunny who came into my life after I lost a dear Californian rabbit to a heart attack during surgery. I was smitten by the sweet nature of big white bunnies with their contemplative faces and beautiful red eyes. After over a year of Chuck living with us he developed a bump on his side. The bump was an abscess that apparently developed from a BB that was lodged in his side from being shot before I knew him. Poor Chuck! The BB and abscess removal went well but he came out of the surgery with head tilt. He’s recovered remarkably well but he does lose his balance once in a while and if his 4 feet on not on the floor he’s not sure which way is up.

One of Chuck’s activities before head tilt was skyping with my daughter’s friends on her computer. She took an awesome picture of him staring into the computer screen. I couldn’t help but transform it into a fiber art piece. After needle felting a wool layer down with the color scheme I decided to use a mohair blend of yarn for finishing. There is some metallic yarn and flax as well. I still have to work the border but I couldn’t wait to get it on my blog for everyone to see. As me and my daughter would say, ahh, Chuck.

Natural Fiber Dyes

Dyeing fiber from nature can be full of surprises.  I learned this while attending a natural dye workshop on Saturday taught by Dagmar Kloss.  We used mostly plants but also flowers and insects.  The repertoire included weld, osage, madder, fustic, logwood, cochineal and marigold.  Yellows come mostly from woods and leaves, reds from roots and insects, and blues from fermented leaves.   

After doing a value study with 3 different simmers in the dye we overdyed half of the skeins with indigo.  We got some really gorgeous greens and near browns.  What was interesting about using the indigo is that there should be a minimal amount of air in the dye pot for it to work.   You can tell that it’s ripe for dying if it looks green.  When you pull the skein from the dye pot it comes out green and when the air hits it, it turns blue.

We worked in teams and my team was privileged to work with the cochineal.  This is not something for folks squeamish about insects.  We ground the dried insects in a blender to a powder.  They appeared grey going in but the powder was a beautiful red.  Our fiber turned a bit purple, which Dagmar suggested came from having some iron in the water.  It could have come from the pot we made the extract in or from the water that the fiber was mordanted in. 

Now that I’m completely inspired to work with natural dyes I’ve begun collecting daylilies from my garden.  No loss for the garden, I collect in the evening after the flowers have had their show and will be wilting overnight getting ready for the next day’s bloom.

Fair Trade

These days when I hear “Fair Trade” I usually think of coffee.  Fair trade, which is intended to support decent wages and higher social standards, includes many other goods including handcrafts, cocoa, chocolate, tea and other items. 

When I was young a fair trade meant that my brother gave me what I considered to be the right amount of marbles for a handful of Jujubes.  With that definition in mind, this is my fair trade.  Every week a friend drives to my workplace, drops off the Sunday paper and picks up the coupon packets from my paper.  She is heavily into couponing and needs 4 sets of coupons for the best discounts.  I’m thrilled because I don’t have to concern myself with running out of newspaper for my bunnies’ litter boxes.  I ran out once and had to use wood shavings – it was awful.  As a bonus, the newspaper comes in plastic that’s used to protect it in the rain, which these days seems to be every day.  Sometimes the plastic from Sunday's paper is printed with advertisements and I’ve been waiting to have enough to spin some into yarn.  Here’s a pic of the yarn that I spun from the printed plastic.  What I learned while spinning was to avoid doing it on a hot, muggy day.  I had a dickens of a time getting the plastic to feed through the spinning wheel’s orifice and most of the time had to wind it on the bobbin manually.

 To see more of my plastic yarn and some of the items I made from it, here's a link to the yarn section of my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Kruser?section_id=5414269

Another Face Vase

When a friend saw my face vases he mentioned that it reminded him of the pottery face jugs currently made out in North Carolina.  Dating back to the 1700's they were originally used as grave markers to scare the evil spirits and then later they began to be used to store moonshine.  The ugly faces were supposed to scare children away so they wouldn't get into the moonshine.  In browsing I saw that some of them had reptiles on them.  I did some doodling and decided I'd either try a Chameleon or a snake.  Then I ran across this newspaper article and chameleon was.

Here's a photo of the face with his eyes trying to see what's crawling on his head and one from the back showing the chameleon.

For more information about this item please go to my Etsy site here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/50380360/chameleon-face-vase-in-wool-felt

"lives of quiet desperation" (Henry David Thoreau)

I don't know that it's possible to get around it, in one way or another as consumers we are forced to support overseas manufacturing and the exploitation of workers who can barely put food on the table for a day's work.  It hit me again this weekend when I was fabric shopping to finish my current project.  I looked at the really gaudy craft items hanging on the wall.  This is the stuff that ends up at garage sales or resale shops or landfills after a very short time of "service."  These are also the things that are made overseas for pennies.  It bothered me to think about it.  It bothers me now.  Now I buy wool from Illinois farmers because I want to support them.  The extra cost is worth knowing that I'm supporting real wages.

My current project ... My last post was about a bunny and my experiment in collage.  Bunnies are so delightful as subjects!  Over a year ago I fostered a family of bunnies, a mom and 3 sons.  Mom and one son were adopted together and I became friends with their new mom.  Her birthday is today and this is a small art quilt that I'm working on of her two treasures.

Little G

G is a rabbit that I bunny-sit for on weekends when her parents go out of town.  She's been nicknamed G because even though she's a Checkered Giant she's small for her size - so just G.  I was inspired to make a simple quilt of her because of her bold contrasting colors.  She has the cutest face with those big black splotches!  I also wanted to branch out a bit and work with some different materials.  For the background I glued paper napkins and newspaper strips to white cotton.  I painted the base with fabric paint and after letting it dry I did some sewing.  I put down a layer of tulle and couched the yarn down following the newspaper strips.  Then I took out my heat gun and melted the tulle.  All the time while I was working I expected it to be a lesson in failure because it wasn't until the last step that I liked what I saw.  Here's my finished piece:

Face Sculpture in Wool

For a few months now I've been giving thought to sculpture. I shopped with a friend to get her back into wood carving and my interest was peaked even more. Then one day driving home from an art fair I had a thought. Now this usually ends up badly, I miss turns, I get lost, all I really see is the vision of my new creation in front of me. This time it was a woolen vessel "sculpted" with a facial expression. Since I had made a few sculpted vases already, how different could this be? Why not add an eyebrow and a nose? What a delight this came to be! With felting you never can be too sure of the outcome so this could turn into quite an adventure.

See more detail here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/48642694/face-pottery  This item sold on June 28, 2010