Thursday Theme: Oops.

The purple is staying for the rest of the week, folks.  Because my Ravens are the SUPERBOWL CHAMPIONS!!!

Destiny!

So, logically, I should have something purple this week, or something Ravens-related.  Maybe even a theme honoring Edgar Allen Poe, whose famous poem the team is named for.  But I don't.  Partly inspired by a recent mistake and partly inspired by how Ravens head coach John Harbaugh is always willing to admit where he and the team made mistakes, I am making mistakes the theme of this week's post.

See, as artists, when we share our work we don't often share our failed experiments.  We show off what worked, what we're proud of, what turned out just perfectly.  And that's great, because it shows people that yes, we are actually kind of good at this stuff, and it's therefore worth the time and effort and money we put into it.  But there are a lot of fails along the way.  For those of you not as internet culture savvy, "fail" is now a verb, noun, and I'm pretty sure it's an adjective now too.  Modified for emphasis by preceding it with "epic."  For reference, click here.

The great thing about art fails is that they keep you humble, and you learn so much from them.  Okay that's two things.  Grammar fail.  Anyway, the point is, I decided to share some of my fails with you, my few but loyal Pocketeers, so that you can see what I learned and maybe learn from my mistakes instead of having to make your own.  And because sometimes it's funny.  Here we go...

Art fails happen for so many reasons.  Sometimes, something doesn't look the way you thought it would.  Like these layered canvases.  I had such grand plans...

Turns out, black tissue paper is REALLY DARK.  This would be an epic fail.

I'll be honest, I was really discouraged with these.  But after a while, I took what I didn't like about them and used that knowledge to entirely redesign what I was trying to do.  And that's how I ended up with these:

Much better results.

There's also this, which then became scratch paper to test the next steps of my project on:

Don't know if you can see, but I got a little too crazy with layering the quatrefoil stencil and it just looked messy but not in the fun way.  And this was to be Mom's birthday tag, so it had to look good.

Sometimes, the materials fail you.  Like when your embossing powder doesn't stay put:

WTF happened here?

Or your inks get all muddy:

At least these I might be able to salvage.

When that happens, I just start over and relegate the failed piece to either the scrap pile or the "maybe I can still do something with this someday, just not now" pile.  And to be honest, those piles are usually the same pile, teetering on the edge of my worktable, hopefully not falling off and scattering all over the floor.

Sometimes, you're just dumb, and forget to mask off the space around the edge of your stencil:

You can even see that I tried to wipe it up before it dried.  Say it with me, folks:  FAIL!

But it's okay because you learn and the next time you do it better (and less heavy-handed, too):

Woo!

Or you're dumb and forget that gesso is not as porous as bare paper, and will not accept water-based spray inks nearly as well, and your awesome red spray effect ends up pink because it all dabbed off:

*sigh*

Still other times, you just over do it.  It's not something I often do, since I favor a simple look, but it happens.

WAY more pink than I wanted all in one spot, not to mention that AFTER I glued down the graph paper I decided I should've written on the looseleaf.  Head. Hit. Desk.

This last one is the oops moment that inspired the post.  I hate it.  But here goes.  Remember this, from the tree post?

Off to a promising start, yes?

Well... I got a little carried away... and, well... here...

Mom says it's not THAT bad.  I hate it.

What really killed it was a combination of two things.  Futzing too much with the crayon wax that I melted onto it from the top because I'm a perfectionist, and adding the thick gesso quatrefoils.  Mainly the gesso quatrefoils.  They just crowded the thing too much.  So, I took that knowledge and a Michaels coupon (to get more canvas) and started over.  Now I have this:

Much happier with this one.

I'm still going to keep the first one.  I've been starting to keep my mistakes, because I think it's important to look back at what you learned from, both to refresh what you've learned and to remind you how far you've come.  I could show you so many more fails, but I haven't kept them all, and, well, these are the good ones ;)

Thursday Theme: Destiny

"Voices in the air

I hear it loud and clear

Telling me to listen..."

 

This week, pocketeers, I have no art to show you.  Work has been getting only busier, and while I've gotten to dabble with a couple of things, there's nothing I think is worth showing off yet.  And besides that, there's been one preoccupation I've had all week...

 

THE RAVENS ARE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!

 

Pic from 2009 playoffs.

 





The closer it gets the more excited I am :)  I even did a temporary blog makeover to honor the occasion.  The lyrics at the top of this post are from "Invincible" by Machine Gun Kelly. Not a song I would normally listen to, but it's the soundtrack to the splash video that's up this week on www.baltimoreravens.com.  And when you read the lyrics, it really does seem written for Baltimore, especially the line about "the city of people who came from the bottom."  Baltimore has its problems with poverty and crime and all that big city stuff, but it is a proud place, and they've been waiting for this for a few years, knowing it would come.  With this Superbowl run, the Ravens have had a lot to say about "destiny."  To be honest, a lot of it does seem preordained, if you believe in that sort of thing.  And one thing Baltimore does well is believe. 

 

Somewhere along the line, Ray Lewis, the team hero and spiritual leader, started quoting Isaiah 54:17:

 

No weapon formed against you shall prosper,
And every tongue which rises against you in judgment
You shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
And their righteousness is from Me,”
Says the Lord.

 

That's something to believe in.  I'm hoping the Ravens win, but what I know I believe is that it's going to be an awesome game. 

 

I leave you with a video, which I hope you'll watch because it's really fun.  There's a couple who have been doing Ravens parody songs, and their "Bring on Brady" went viral when they posted it before the AFC Championship game.  For the Superbowl, they've posted two new ones, but this one is a little clearer:

 

 

 

GO RAVENS!!!

Thursday Theme: PURPLE!

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before...

~The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

Purple Nation is a very happy and hopeful place right now.  If you don't follow pro football and don't know what I mean, here's the very simple explanation:  the Baltimore Ravens are in the playoffs, and very well might make it to the Superbowl - and it's really important for them to make it, because after this season, our beloved Ray Lewis, the heart and soul of the team, is retiring.  I've been wearing purple every day since the first playoff game, which makes it very fortunate that purple is one of my favorite colors.  And between Ravens Purple Fever going on here and me having had a hankering for adding purple to my wintery green tags, I decided it was high time I purpled the blog.  

I haven't always been a Ravens fan, per se.  I would say I've supported them since they came to Baltimore and became the Ravens, but I didn't follow pro football.  I was always a Navy fan, and didn't bother watching any other games.  What I have always been a fan of, however, is purple.  When I was little, my two favorite colors were purple and red.  Over the years, they've changed to pink, blue, and black, but purple and red always came back.  The first shawl I made was purple:

It's alpaca, and super cozy.  I'm actually planning to wear it tomorrow...  Note: this is the same pattern I would later use for my Raven Wing shawl.

Back when I was knitting and crocheting like a fiend, I was buying more purple yarn than I knew what to do with.  No, seriously.  I never used most of it.  It's still sitting there, waiting for the "right" pattern.  That's a problem when you buy single skeins of things and tend to like patterns that use a lot of yarn.

In my paper arts, you don't see as much purple.  I tend to stick to neutrals and reds and blues.  Not that I've never used purple.  But while I have purple inks and purple paints, I don't use them much, except for the Seedless Preserves color of Distress Ink in the Fall.

I just love this color!

But I did pack my purple paint when I went to CREATE last year, and sure enough, when I got in trouble with Teacher for not having something on each page of my Debris Journal, I went back to the hotel room that night and this is how I committed to one of my pages:

I call this spread "OMGPURPLE!!!"

Yep, still haven't done anything more with it.  But still.  Lately I've been thinking how nice purple and green look together (I mean, lavender is beautiful, right?  And other purple flowers as well, like my purple pansies that somehow still keep going strong out on the balcony), and since I've been so enamored with green lately, it seemed logical to bring some purple into what I'm already using.  BEHOLD!

More playing around with Michelle's stencils, replicating the background of Mom's birthday tag.

I also started thinking about bare trees, it being Winter and all.  And I had this idea to use the dot stencil from Michelle's line to give a tree sort of faery orbs... or... somethinglikethat.  So, using a stamp from a Tim Holtz Christmas set by Stampers Anonymous, I tried two different versions tonight:

Version 1 has embossing holding the Distress Ink watercolored tree color in place, and version 2 has just Archival ink, with a speckle stamp as well as Michelle's dot stencil.  Both tags used Iced Spruce and Seedless Preserves Distress Ink and Iridescent Gold Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist.

Because I can't leave well enough alone, I will probably tweak that idea a bit.  It's a little weird for me still to be doing such simple things, and without any dimensional elements.  It's like they're not finished.

Well anyway, that's all the purple I have for you today, and it's almost not Thursday anymore anyway.  So I will leave you with a video to enjoy on what I am sure will be a fine Purple Friday, anticipating what I hope will be a Ravens victory over the Patriots this Sunday.

What's Our Name?

RAVENS!!!



That is all.

Well Hello There...

Happy New Year! Hello 2009! For some reason, I'm not very optimistic about this year, but I'm trying not to focus on that. Instead, there is a bit of a short-term list of things I'm trying to focus on.

1. Operation Stashbuster 2009. Yesterday Mom and I weeded out all the stuff we don't want from the Yarn Room. It's all going to charity. Why have yarn you don't like anymore or are never going to use sitting around? Plus, we rediscovered stuff we had forgotten we had, and found perfect yarns for projects we've had in mind. Next step for me is to finish what I've got started, or else chuck it. There are some things that I have to finish. Other than that, if I'm not interested in it anymore, it's getting frogged or pitched. After that's done, I'm pulling from the stash and getting things done. Already streamlined my Ravelry queue down to things I'm actually going to make, which I can make from the stash. Plus, I'm going to comb and spin all of that alpaca fleece I have. It's been washed, now it needs to be used. Furthermore, no yarn or fiber buying, except at MDSW.

2. School is starting. I'm going to grad school, and it's going to consume what little free time I have. In the long run, this is a good thing. I'm also going to use it to aid Operation Stashbuster 2009, because I have a train ride to my campus, which I am going to use as knit/crochet time.

3. RAVENS IN THE PLAYOFFS!!!! Wildcard game against the Miami Dolphins is this Sunday. I'm psyched. Even if the Ravens don't make it past this game, I'm thrilled, because who expected that team, with a rookie coach and a rookie QB and a dismal last-year's record to do well at all this year? Not even the devoted fan sitting right here. Even one playoff game is a fabulous surprise. Dare I hope for the Superbowl?

So far, those are my thoughts on this new year. Not much, and not great, but that's another thing I'm working on: optimism.

P.S. It's been so long since I posted and there are no pictures because my computer got eated by a virus. Weeks ago. And I haven't had the chance to get it fixed yet. Cross your fingers for me that my files can be retrieved...

A Very Happy Handspun Monday :)

A very happy indeed. My Ravens broke their losing streak, finally, with the last game of the season. SQUEE!!!! *happy dance* I generally hate to gloat, but I think a little celebration is fair. They looked great today. I'm a happy little Ravens fan.

Two other happy things: a Christmas present and a handspun FO! Present first. FO further down the post.

My brother wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas. I sent him an email full of possibilities, with several Etsy links and a few fiber suggestions. He and my sister-in-law chose well. They chose:


Baby Camel down! A full pound of it. Eeee!

It's washed but not prepared into roving or batts or anything, as you can see. Doesn't matter. I wanted to spin it right away anyway. Gimme...


Before Christmas dinner, I brought Ford down to the family room and started spinning. Just let it flow. Long draw, not much drafting, just taking a handful and drawing it back and letting it spin into an uneven, somewhat slubby singles.




I think I'm going to Navajo ply it, but I'm not sure. I'm just having fun with it. I like to spin random slubby yarns like this; of course I want to do smooth yarns too, but it's fun to just let it spin itself sometimes. Plus, imperfect yarns have character and texture.

Speaking of imperfect yarns, I have finally made something with my own handspun. Ok technically I've done that once already, but that was just a little neckwarmer to pin on for Easter. This is a real project. It's Calorimetry!


The galaxy yarn I spun on Ford (first yarn I spun on him!) is considerably bulkier than the yarn called for in the pattern. So I had to recalculate the size based on the gauge of my yarn. I calculated a bit off, so I had to overlap it more and add two buttons instead of one.

I actually kinda like the two-button look. Kinda like a double-breasted coat. Which I've always loved.

I also stitched around the buttonholes with some leftover Manos cotton that my mom had lying about, which just happens to match the pink silk noils in the yarn. It just kinda bugged me to leave the buttonholes unfinished. Besides, now I'll be able to find them more easily behind my head.


The buttons I found are really cool, too. Found them in Mom's stash, of course.


I'm pleased. I will definitely make another of these. I just need to see now whether I need to line it. I don't like the wind cutting through my headgear.

And btw, one more happy: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Yay?

Last night was a night fraught with emotions. Most of them negative. I will explain.

First off, Mom and I went to the fabric mecca yesterday. I got some of the stuff I was looking for (rayon velvet so I can try embossing it), but the main thing I wanted just wasn't there. I'm more than a little frustrated.

Then there was the evening. My computer was just not responding to anything I tried to do to fix it. Even advice from Roxy's hubby was in vain. But finally, last night as I reached the breaking point and gave up in a fit of rage, my dad stepped in again. Seems he had turned on a security feature that was blocking my laptop. So he turned that off, and now I'm connected! Woohoo!!!

That, however, could not help my Ravens. As a Ravens fan, I am depressed and more than a little embarrassed over last night's sorry excuse for a game. I don't even know what that was. I had to turn it off after the Colts' third touchdown. Did turn it back on in time to see the last two minutes of the game, though, and saw Troy Smith play with some guts. Granted, it was against the Colts' second-string defense, but still. He didn't dither. He didn't cower in the pocket. He played. OMG! I hope we get to see more of what he can do. In the meantime, I am not making any Ravens gear. I had plans. Those plans will be on hold until the Ravens come back and play in Baltimore. I'm a loyal fan, and I still love them, but if they're not gonna put in the effort to play the game, I'm not gonna spend my crafting time making Ravens gear.

And now, since it is still Handspun Monday for another few hours, a spinning update! I don't have pics (bad Carrie! no cookie!) but fear not! I have spun in the past two weeks! Last Sunday, I tried spinning some of the silk/merino I got from Lisa Souza. It was such a frustrating exercise that I had to walk away from it. I'm not one to give up on things, but at some point I do have to acknowledge that I'm not having fun and shouldn't waste my time. On the other hand, yesterday I pulled out some of the alpaca I got at MDS&W and started spinning it on my square spindle. Yum. I'm in love with that alpaca fleece. Being alpaca, it's a little tricky to spin. A little bit slippery. But if I'm paying attention it works just fine. Woohoo!!! Pics will come soon, I promise!

I've also started a Christmas present. Remember Charmed? I'm developing a crocheted version, this time using the cashmere I got from Habu Textiles. Having never worked with cashmere before, let me say: YUM.

This present may or may not be aided by a class I took on Saturday with mom. The class we took was on soldering small glass pieces together to make jewelry, ornaments, multimedia art, etc. My pieces ended up a little wonky, but for a first attempt they aren't bad. I'll have to post pics of those too. Mom and I now have a little soldering kit and plenty of little glass bits to encase pictures or fabric or whatever we want. Whee! I really wanna play with it right now. But I can't. Have to make an hors d'ouvre for the office Holiday Party tomorrow. Ah well. Soon. I will be making charms, and pendants, and such things. After all, the only way my soldering is going to get better is by practicing!

Go Ravens!

So, my Ravens may have embarrassed themselves last night in Pittsburgh while I was at rehearsal, but there is still cause to rejoice. In the yarn world, that is.

Blue Moon has finally released their Raven Series! I've been waiting for this on the edge of my proverbial seat. I mean, it's me. I've long adored black and ravens and Poe and gothic themes. So the idea of a collection of yarn or patterns (cos I wasn't sure which it would be, or if it would be both) centered on ravens thrilled me, filled me with fantastic visions (to paraphrase the poet). Fortunately, it's all I had hoped for and more :) I want one of every color. They are SO beautiful, and I'm sure even moreso in person.

Now to scrounge enough money to pay for them all...