Woolly Thinking

Triceratops Mosaic..but not really*

2011-06-26T21:09:00.003-04:00

Where has the past year gone? I have no idea. I haven't been taking any art classes at the Flint Institute of Arts, I know that--perhaps that lack is the reason I slipped into a state of dullness. I started this mosaic last summer (sigh) and had every intention of finishing it during the winter but, as I had written before, working in the basement on mosaics in winter is dull, uninspiring and, well, cold. This is not for me. I am not, particularly, a dinosaur fanatic. But I live with a former dinosaur fanatic and a current fanatic who is allergic to wool and therefore cannot receive any knitted goods (and refuses all wool substitutes I think out of sheer bloody-mindedness). So, when woolens and woolen substitutes won't do, a dinosaur mosaic is in order, or so I hope.

The glass is about 3' by 3' tempered glass, so it is really strong but, therefore, really heavy. The story behind the glass is really strange. My FIA connection was given 8 or 9 panels, most 3' by 3', but some 2' by 5' and some even larger. A couple had special ordered all the pieces for a bathroom (who has that many windows in one bathroom?!?) and had dark green bits etched into some patches and frosted bits etched into other bits. Apparently the person preparing the glass had warned them that it would look weird, but they insisted. Then, once it arrived, they hated it. It sat in their basement for years (it was wrapped in 10 year old newspaper when I picked it up, yellowed and brittle) until they couldn't stand looking at their folly anymore. In a fit of pique they dropped the whole heap off at the FIA, in the main office, and went off. [Apparently that happens quite regularly there--like hospitals finding babies in garbage dumpsters, the FIA finds everyone's ex-hobby and craft remains on their doorsteps with no note attached, and dried out or bits broken.] Well, the pieces didn't give me any sense of shame or regret so I took three panels home and set to work. I have come to think that dinosaurs have great artistic potential that is grossly underexplored. There is simply no reason to represent them in drab greens and grays, as they usually are. I wanted to express hugeness, strangeness yet nothing terrifying. I didn't want a slathering, bloody-toothed tyranosaurus -rex staring out at us for decades to come.

It was quite fun to work on this guy (or gal--s/he hasn't been given an identity yet). It was fun just picking out a crazy color scheme, like you would see with parrots. But now I have to deal with the background, and I am a bit stuck. I want to keep it simple, so it doesn't overwhelm the subject. But I also don't want it boring. I was thinking of very dark, browns and black, and then having a very complex pattern of leaves or abstract swirls which would mainly show up in the grout. But now I am thinking of letting strips of pink and wine/cranberry pipe through the brown to give it some zing. Here is the cranberry/pink/brown/black.

Here is just the browns and black. Hmm. It's a poser.

Mainly, I just want to get the issue settled because once I do, it won't take that long to get done as background is fairly straightforward and I JUST WANT TO GET IT DONE.

*People who claim to know tell me that triceratops are not a distinct kind of dinosaur but simply baby torosaurs. So what is this--is it a torosaurus, no-longer baby triceratops or something else? What I do know is that I dug through a giant tub of plastic toys in our house, found the funkiest looking beastie, set up a photo shoot, took various shots of it in various poses, enlarged them MANY times over, and then went to work from there.

Jelly Fishing

2010-04-07T16:57:00.004-04:00

Meanwhile, what have I been doing in class? Jelly Fishing. I actually started a piece that was going to be a close up of a coast line that had giant sea urchins and such, but then decided that I wanted to make those in ceramics, do the sand in unglazed black porcelain tile (which is AMAZINGLY difficult to get--you wouldn't have thought so but there you go), and have various rocks, shells, bits of mirror and glass--a mixed media piece, in short. Anyway, it was turning into a real confused palaver and, until I sorted that out, I had to get started with something in class. So, I set aside the other one (which is going to be on a piece of wood) and, inspired by some recently acquired books on the ocean, coral reefs and such (the benefits of a great Christmas), I set to work on this. I really had no plan other than use colors I would not ordinarily use and to use an entirely different pattern for each creature.

I'm pleased with how the jellyfish looks. This whole mosaic was incredibly satisfying to do; everything fell together just right. One person has said that it looks like a landscape in outer space and the brain coral in the upper left is a moon; another said it looked like an underwater Wonka Factory with everything made out of candy. Sounds like a novel for the 9-12 set in the making.

The Thing is DONE!

2010-04-07T16:40:00.003-04:00

I can't believe it. Here it is, after a mere 19 months or so of effort. I tried to photograph The Thing (as I call it) from straight-on, but there was always a glare spot on The Thing's face. I had a lens filter, a bounce flash--no dice, still glare. A real photographer would know what to do, but this photographer simply moved to the side a foot or so.

Simon insisted that there be a penguin classic placed in front of The Thing to show the size of it. (It's The Innocence of Father Brown.)

Here is a close up of The Hulk's face. Because his face is, strictly speaking, a human face with real emotion, it was the hardest thing to capture with the glass. I don't think it's a complete success, but it isn't as bad as I feared it would be when I was putting it together over a year ago.
Here is The Thing's face. I was very worried about how rock would be translated by glass, but I think he is a real success. It's shiny, but still fragmented enough to look like crumbly granite. I thought I would hate working on The Thing, but I actually really liked it; the black outlines look sharp and the orange is bright and "pops."
The other major worry: how would the speech bubbles look? I think they turned out fairly well. I used Delorean Gray (why Delorean?) grout, which is a dove gray sort of color, so it contrasts just a bit with the white glass but the difference isn't too jarring.

OK: It took about 19 months, cost about $650 ($100 for the sheet of plexiglass; about $500 for glass; $10 for grout; probably $15 for Weldbond glue; maybe $10 for wood frame and hardware; $15 for color copying of original comic page). Hmmm. Was it worth it? Well, I would do it again but I won't do it again. Though I was looking at the cover of a Hellboy comic and that definitely got me thinking about a REALLY big mosaic...10' by 10' maybe???

New Year Updates

2010-01-31T21:08:00.003-05:00

These are projects I completed some time ago but haven't gotten around to posting. This was the nautilus shell mentioned earlier. I finished making it in June or July and it was fired in August, but I didn't get around to glazing it until early December. This was in part because I hadn't decided what glaze I wanted to use but also because I hate glazing at was putting it off as long as possible.

Here is a closeup of the inside. Everyone who sees this asks, "What are you going to do with it?" I think that is a weird question. I'm not going to do anything with it. (Someone at the FIA suggested that I use it as a planter outside during the summer. Huh?)

It's hard to get myself to work on The Thing during the winter because the basement is SO COLD. (I need to convince everyone I live with to move into the basement so that I can work on the mosaics upstairs.) But I have (slowly) been getting some work done. I am ALMOST to the point of being very, very sick of working on the background.

And, just to show that I do still knit, here is the latest attempt to make a small sweater for someone who can't wear anything itchy. All past attempts have failed (either because I had miscalculated and the sweater ended up being too small or because he had grown by the time I finished). Ever hopeful...

Thanksgiving Weekend

2009-11-28T13:33:00.001-05:00

And here this is, finally. It's always a bit of a let down finishing something. Even if it turns out well (and I suppose I will admit that this one is well enough), there are always things I wish I had done differently. The blue background looks nice (nicer even than in this photo) but still...
And here this is, still so much potential. I'm nearing the outer ring. I won't set myself a date but it surely would be nice to be done with this before Christmas.

More on...The Thing

2009-10-26T10:30:00.002-04:00

Here this is, black frame finished (both the wooden frame that will support this on the wall and the lights that go behind it and the black, glass mosaicked frame around the picture). I've also begun on the background, which I'm doing with "architecture glass" which is frosted glass that lets in light but obscures whatever is on the other side (which, in this case, will be wiring and a wall).
Here is a closeup. The glue I am using, Weldbond, takes a really long time (2 weeks) to become completely clear so you can see how much work I do at any given time by how wide the various bands of drying glue are. The 3 inch wide thick white glue band was done two days ago. Underneath The Thing is a big sheet of kraft paper, about 3' x 4', onto which I drew out concentric circles to use as guides for placing the glass. I thought I was being very clever by using a nail in the middle, tying a piece of string to it and, at the other end, a pencil. Then, or so the plan was, I would spin the pencil around the nail, letting out ever increasing lengths of string so that I would get ever larger, perfect circles. Except that the string went around the nail and so got shorter, and so my circles spiral. In could be a good effect if it was noticable, but it will be broken up with the Hulk and Thing bodies. So will it look like perfect circles, slightly wobbly circles or an ever increasing (vertigo inducing) spiral? Or just a big slab of indistinctly broken glass?

Getting Somewhere?

2009-10-25T14:01:00.004-04:00

Here is one thing I have been working on. After a sputtering start (doing and then undoing the tentacles) I am finally back to work on this. The shell is done (I keep reminding myself that, although it looks too intensely bright now, the grout always flattens the colors out a bit) and so are the tentacles (barely visible now in a sea of sketch lines and gobs of old glue) and am starting to work on the background--always the hardest part.
The eye looked really big when it was the only thing done, but now it is sort of lost in the activity. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Fiber Show, Flint MI

2009-09-02T16:55:00.002-04:00

People with more energy than I can imagine are organizing a local Fiber Show in downtown Flint for sometime next week (or sometime soon--I can't remember the dates of anything except the upcoming semester that starts in 136.5 hours and counting). I was asked if I wanted to enter anything. Here is a huge piece of felt I made last winter during the felting frenzy of Christmas Break 2008. I didn't have a plan for it then and couldn't come up with anything too imaginative, so it is a shawl--at least for purposes of displaying it in the fiber show. (That weird little circle is just light reflected from something in one of our trees. It looks strange but it isn't part of the wool. No really, it isn't.)

Here is a close-up with a bit of glass being used as a pin to keep it together and on the hanger. Mainly what I want to do is write up a narrative about what a mad scientific experiment felting is.

Haven't Forgotten The Thing

2009-09-02T16:45:00.003-04:00

Just to show that I haven't completely forgotten about my promise to finish this before some Christmas or other, here is evidence that I actually do work on this piece once in a while. Here is the border SLOWLY getting done. I realized as I worked on this that I had to leave spaces for where the screws would attach to the wooden frame. BUT since I didn't know which screws to use, I didn't know what size space to leave so I was leaving huge spaces but didn't have the pieces for them... the whole thing was quickly dissolving into a mass of doubts and speculations. So I decided to get to work on the frame and then I could just get the damn black glass border done in a night or two.

Here is the black frame. This is just shy of being 4' by 4' (remember the broken corner business of over a year ago--still angry about that). Once I get enough layers of black paint on and it is COMPLETLY DRY (unfortunately I have a history of being a bit slip shod about these sorts of things--hanging pictures on walls before the paint is completely dry, that sort of thing) I will attach the frame to the plexiglass backing.

And here is one of the little holes I have drilled into the plexiglass so I can attach it to the wooden frame. I also have a dozen or so bits of wood that I am going to artfully scatter about within the frame to support the weight of the plexiglass and glass while I work until it is grouted. THEN I will finish the glass border and begin filling in the middle. Making the frame is tedious business and the black paint is really slow to dry (of course it has been raining every day for weeks, that might have something to do with it). But the end seems to actually be in sight...

Clay Nautilus

2009-09-02T16:25:00.005-04:00

Just for the sheer perversity of it, I decided to make a nautilus sculpture in my most recent clay class. Since the class was only 6 weeks long and in summer (while it was really muggy and the clay most difficult to work with) I see in hindsight that I was being foolish and deluded to attempt this. While I won't relive the whole experience, the nadir was when I came to class one day and, because the moisture in the clay had moved around [no really, it does that: if clay is almost dry in one part of the sculpture but very moist in another, the water will relocate more evenly throughout the whole of the sculture--unless you wrap up the different sections of the sculpture differently--which I didn't do...but now I would...] and so sections that I needed to be dry and strong became wet and weak. And so I found it at the start of one class after a long holiday weekend collapsed into a big, 30-odd pound blob. I was rather dissapointed. But, unlike most things in life, unfired clay can be forgiving and Addie, my genius teacher, helped me stuff it with newspaper and we got it back on track, more or less. I still see sections in the walls that are bumpier now than they were before the disaster. Here is it, post-disaster, and almost dry. The plastic vegetable bag wrapping on the edge is there to keep the very thinnest part from drying out too quickly and cracking (which is what happened with my 3 story house, see earlier post). So what have I learned about working with clay? The real artistry lies in knowing how to wrap clay in plastic to control wandering water.
Here it is after surviving its first trip through the kiln. Guy, the kiln man at the FIA, said it needed to be in an especially slow fire otherwise it would have exploded (I must confess that I like hearing that my pieces make the lives of others difficult--what is the point of making something insignificant and unremarkable?) so it not only needed to be alone in the kiln but had to be fired for almost 48 hours. Since the semester had long ended, I didn't have time to glaze it yet, so it is actually rather fragile right now. Here it sits, on one of my grandmother's towels that I remember using when staying at her house more than 30 years ago, in our basement on my work table. Once the next semester starts I will get it back to the FIA and glaze it. [I HATE glazing. It's hard work.]

A Few of My Favorite Things...

2009-06-25T11:30:00.005-04:00

I am taking a photography class at the FIA. I took photography classes MANY YEARS AGO when I was in highschool and I got very comfortable with my Pentax k1000--the classic photography student's first camera: relatively cheap, reliable, heavy and virtually indestructable. (I dropped that camera into the Yellowstone river and then later on a cement pathway in East Berlin and it still took great pictures!) But the world has moved on and now I have a digital camera (a Nikon--eee!!!!) that is light as a feather and can do ANYTHING (or so the manual tells me) but I can't figure the damn thing out. So I am in a class, with other people that really belong in an Agatha Christie murder mystery: there's the guy who only "shoots raw," the woman who wonders whether or not her memory card will be in b/w or color, another woman who "LOVES taking picture of children--ANY CHILDREN," and the guy who claims that "all photography is prevarication." So far I have learned a little more about how to used my camera (and a lot about what it could do if I only knew how to do it). Here are a few of my first photos:

This is late afternoon, looking up through our grape vines. I spend quite a lot of time in our backyard but never really noticed how many bugs there were until I really got up close and personal to everything.
Most of our yard is surrounded by hedges (which I refuse to trim too rigorously because it is unnatural but the result is that we can barely fit the cars down the driveway as they close in on us more every year) which get covered in tiny flowers (I think I am allergic to the pollen) which attacts THOUSANDS of bees.

This taro used to be 3 feet tall but suffered from poor care while spending the winter in my office. The plant died back to the ground and I thought it was all over, but after a series of amazing thunderstorms, these signs of life appeared.

More bugs enjoying themselves. I think these are fireflies.

We have an enormous tree stump in our backyard which is an ecosystem all of its own. Sometimes as I head to the compost pile it hides I can hear buzzing and scratching coming from within it. It had bark when we moved here 10 years ago, but most has fallen off. A few days ago several hundred mushrooms appeared during the night.

Delphi Adventures!

2009-06-13T10:39:00.003-04:00

Wednesday Thomas and I headed for glass paradise--though you wouldn't know it by the sign.

I'll have to take their word for it. There certainly was a lot of glass to look at. A good location to set a murder mystery... spend a lot of money. I didn't go hog wild but I did finally get the glass I needed to fill in the background of The Thing. Now I will do the black border and away I will go. Maybe I will even finish it before next Christmas! (Interestingly, Thomas didn't think this place was all that great. What's wrong with kids today?)

The Thing and more

2009-06-09T17:21:00.004-04:00

I was putting off chipping off the tentacles for months because it just seemed too depressing to undo 30-odd hours of work. But, today seemed like a good day for destruction and I went at it. I expected it to be slow and tedious but, as the saying goes, with the right tool any job is easy. And for this job, the right tool was a big ass screwdriver. I chipped off the glass pieces in about five minutes. This left me sitting amongst several hundred glass shards but the art process cannot be tamed! I finished the ground (brown and black glass) in just a few hours and here it is. I'm actually toying with the idea of not including any impact lines--gasp!!!--but just finished with a frame in black glass and the frosted shattered glass for the background. The idea is frighteningly tempting because it would save dozens of hours of work.

The Thing Update

2009-06-07T17:02:00.004-04:00

I haven't given an update on The Thing mosaic in a long time. I had a burst of energy in January and got quite a bit done but then, halfway through the second speech bubble, I stalled. The letters (most seemed to be round and very small) were really frustrating and I just couldn't face it. Simon started to despair of ever getting his Christmas present. Then, inexplicably, about three weeks ago I had a burst of enthusiasm and started working on this once again for several hours a day. The second speech bubble was done in under an hour and it seemed to take no time at all the finish up The Thing's second leg and second arm. Here he is:
Notice I extended the B of the BUH out past the frame. The idea is that the content of the picture is bursting out of the frame--not hard to figure out but I thought I would be explicit. This was Simon's idea many months ago and I don't know why I resisted for so long--perhaps simply a habitual response to all his suggestions that I have acquired in the past twenty odd years of living with him. He now has no memory of suggesting the B extension and thinks it was my bright idea--I certainly came out ahead on that one! Next I will work on the ground with brown and black glass and after that the "impact lines" which frame the image. I'm not sure how I am going to break up the glass for the impact lines--if they are too even, it will look static. Thin lines look like motion but thin, squared-off pieces of glass do not. Glass shattered (like a broken windscreen) would convey motion but it would be hard to pack that into the spaces. I could double the width of each line (and so have half as many) and therefore would have more room to arrange the pieces...Hmm. Not sure. Have to think about this more. Anyway, here you can see the ground The Hulk is standing on and the impact lines on the bottom half of the picture.
The other issue that haunts me is the moment of shifting this mighty construction onto the wooden frame that will house the lighting. Should I grout first (adding 20 odd pounds of weight to something that will already weigh at least 20 pounds) and then shift it hoping the grout will keep the billions of glass pieces in place OR should I shift it before I grout and risk the plexiglass bowing and billions of glass bits popping loose? Working through this problem is keeping me up nights.

Flint Institute of Art Art Show--June 2 to June 30

2009-06-01T13:56:00.002-04:00

Here is the finished version, (tentatively) titled: Broken Glass Inside. I just finished it and schlepped it up into our bedroom to be used as a clothes horse (what ARE you supposed to do with clothes that have been worn once and so should not be rehung in the closet but that do not actually qualify as dirty and therefore needing to be put in the hamper?) when I got the word that it was wanted for an art show at the FIA. The show is featuring "The Figure" and, although this was never intended to have a human form, most people think it is a female human abdomen (indeed while I was working on it several women leaned into it and caressed it--longing for those long ago but not forgotten "baby bumps", perhaps?). Works for me! So off it went, back down the stairs, back into the car (strapped in, of course) and back to the FIA. The reception is on June 9th. (When I asked Simon if he wanted to attend with me, his only question was, "Will there be snacks?" Yes. "Then I'll be there.")

Hey--I'm in Knitaly

2009-05-04T10:04:00.003-04:00

Check me out! I was looking through Google to find out who has been paying permissions to use excerpts from my text and this is what I found! (You have to read past the Italian to get to the mention of me--keep going, it's there.) I wish people would let me know if they find what I write interesting. It's so thrilling to get something published and then you spend year after year wondering if ANYONE ANYWHERE gives a rip about what you did.

Here is the original article: Hegel Knits.

(And I never did find out where the excerpts from my text are going--will someone please tell me who is quoting me and paying royalties to Prentice Hall? It's not as if I will make a dime but I am rather curious.)

Clay in Car

2009-04-29T10:19:00.002-04:00

Here is the clay pot, after being glazed, on its way home. It's in the basement now, awaiting mosaicking and grouting. What its future holds after that, I'm not sure.

Clay Update

2009-04-21T17:06:00.007-04:00

Here is the mystery pot just after getting five coats of glaze. I used the sprayer in a hooded, vented area (wouldn't want to get black lung or anything else nasty) at the FIA. It was quite satisfying watching it get darker and darker and (or so I hope) softer looking with the velvet underglaze. I don't know when it will get fired, but I am rather anxious to find out if it will make the journey to 1900-odd degrees and back without cracking. (Hmm. Sounds like a Jules Verne novel.) The long term plan is to mosaic the inside of the...mouth (?) with glass, light green and turquoise.
And here is my house. I did say in an earlier blog entry that I wanted to learn how to work with slabs and here is what I came up with. Each of the three levels is a separate box that, I hope, will survive both the bisque firing and the glaze firing without cracking or distorting to the point of no longer fitting together snugly. This structure has no purpose but I am rather satisfied with it nonetheless.

The Nautilus

2009-04-01T14:11:00.004-04:00

Mosaics class ended and not too surprisingly I didn't finish The Nautilus. But I did get some decent work done and it is possible to see where this is all going. I hope to finish the red/orange/cream part of the shell and then will work on the backdrop once the next class session starts.
I have decided to chip off the tentacles and start again. Not only are they moving in the wrong direction (they will start in the shell and wiggle off to the lower right corner) but I decided that I want to make the tentacles creamy yellow/pinkish/whitish instead of the blue/green/purple that I have now. I want to have the blue/purple for the background. I chipped off one piece, and that only took about five seconds so, if you multiply that by about 300 pieces, I should get the old tentacles cleared away before I die of old age.

Clay...what is it?

2009-04-01T13:56:00.002-04:00

Here is the clay thing so far. It's sitting, drying out, waiting for the first firing, on a shelf next to a window which is why it looks so stark and alone. I am not sure how I am going to glaze it, but I do know that I want the glaze to be very matte and variegated. I ended up using 40 pounds of clay so it is a big baby. A few (a very few) other FIA students have praised me for making this, one guy (who really reminds me of a type I used to see quite often when I lived in LA but haven't seen much of since moving to the heartland) stopped me in the parking lot to ask me about it and stated very enthusiastically how "cool" he thought it was. Others just seem bemused if not slightly offended. One person went out of her way to explain to me why making such large things is unduly burdensome on the school because of the kiln space it will take up. Those hallway monitors who hassled me 30 years ago have all grown up and are still at it.

Little People!

2009-03-20T14:19:00.003-04:00

It's the 50th Anniversary of the Little People sets. I remember playing with these exact sets for hours and hours when I was little. Looking at them makes me feel so happy inside.

Meanwhile, the clay

2009-03-02T17:21:00.004-05:00

I started taking pottery (wheel) classes at the FIA about 4 years ago, and always enjoyed them but realized pretty quickly that I had no artistic skills when it came to making things on the wheel. Or so I told myself at the time--I just kept churning out these endless medium bowls and rather clunky urns. (Though, if you are into clunky urns, mine were pretty good.) But it just wasn't clicking. Then I stumbled into the mosaics class (and I can't remember why I decided to take that class but there you go--one of those fateful moments that are seemingly uncaused yet, in retrospect, seem to fit in perfectly with everything you want or have been trying to do) and suddenly I began thinking about structures in a whole new way--not as ends in themselves but as means to be covered in tiny shards of glass. And mosaics book are, as a rule, filled with fantastic pottery that people have then covered with tessarae--it was a whole new way of thinking about clay and glass. So, when the FIA offered a handbuilding glass that promised to teach the student anything they wanted to know how to do, I signed up and started making my list. Firsts, coil building. I wanted to know how to make coil rolls (see play dough reference below) and build them into fantasticly improbable shapes. I had some sort of seed pod or gourd in mind. We've just finished our third class and this is what I have so far:

It's about 30" tall and (so far) has used about 25 lbs of clay. I will probably use another 5 or so pounds before I am done. People wander in the classroom while I work and comment (always annoying)--so far I have been asked if it is a chiminia, fireplace (?) or flower pot (?!?). I tell them that it isn't anything yet and will never be anything functional but that doesn't seem to satisfy. I'm toying with the idea of mosaicking just inside the mouth of the vessal when it is done--whenever that will be. What next? Slabs. (That's a technical term. No really.)

More on The Nautilus

2009-02-23T10:37:00.003-05:00

Saturday I went in to the FIA to donate a box of glass bits to the kids mosaic glass and took these photos of The Nautilus while I was there. It always feels like I am getting so much done but, when you see how much there is left to do, it looks like I have hardly begun.
I am still SO PISSED that I have the tentacles (not legs or arms, I now know--though tentacles with no suckers, so unlike octopi and squid) coming out of the eye area instead of to the left, the large part of the shell. ARGH! In theory I could bust all the glass and do it correctly. Sniff. I can't think about that.

I do like the green stripes (so far) that are on the shell. I bought every damn shade of green glass in existence, cut each up into little pieces (about 1/8" by 1/2" or so) and then set to it. It's surprisingly satisfying working up a color run all within one color shade. And it looks pretty good, too.

Meanwhile, The Nautilus

2009-02-19T11:16:00.004-05:00

My glass class at the FIA continues. This picture is AGES old (from the first day, I think, back in the first week of January). The board (just 3/8" wood attached to a 1" x 1" frame with knots and other uneven bits wood puttied and then covered with primer) is 3' by 4' and so weighed about 4 pounds naked. I wanted to do something rather abstract, but not completely detached from reality. I have always like patterns on shells, in particular nautilus shells, and so thought a massive nautilus would be a cool thing. I happened to have this piece of wood and so used it and, since I wanted to have it be very close up I didn't worry too much about the image ending up assymetrical. Now that I am farther along, I am worried and wonder if I should have done it on a 4' by 4' board. Well, too late now. Here you can see a few of the legs (arms? appendages? not sure) at the bottom and the start of the eye. I had it in my head that nautilus eyes (cephalopods and relatives of squids and octopi, apparently) were simply big, black circles, but they are actually quite complicated and beautiful.

Here is the pupil up close and personal. I intend to add a few more legs/arms/things in a while, but just got sick of doing them and not feeling like I was getting anywhere with this guy. By now I have the eye done, a horn/beak sort of thing done (not sure what that is, but will find out) and have started on the shell. If I remember to bring my camera to class next week, I'll get an updated picture then.
I am very peeved that, because I was so rushed the first week of class (my semester has started that week, too, and I was already desperately behind and disorganized) that I didn't have time to print up a picture of a nautilus to take to class to use as a basis for a quick sketch. Going by memory, I plotted out what I wanted to create. Then, a week later, I did get to looking at photos of the real things* and I was really cheesed to find that I had inverted the things in a really stupid way. I had the legs coming out of the main opening of the shell, and then had the main curve going up the right, over the top at the left, and then down and around. WRONG! Of course, they fact that the legs aren't really blue and green doesn't bother me at all. I immediately remembered Gary Larson (The Far Side) writing in some preface or another, that he was really annoyed with himself for drawing bananas growing down on a banana tree, when in fact they should grow upwards. The fact that he draws cows standing up, talking and wearing horn rimmed glasses, is entirely tolerable. There's a rich philosophical analysis waiting to be created here that will explain the rules of these things.

*My now favorite nautilus is the nautilus macrophalus, otherwise known as the "bellybutton nautilus". They are cute as buttons!

Glassy Eyed

2009-02-19T10:42:00.002-05:00

The lack of updates is not because I have not been working on this. Here is a photo of The Thing from about two weeks ago. Filling in the orange spaces is surprisingly quick work. It's also enormously satisfying to give the body some size and heft. I switched back and forth between the speech bubble and The Thing. Since the glass pieces for the letters, bubble filling and outlining are so very, very small, I couldn't work on too much at a time without bumping and shifting all the pieces. So I would do a few letters then, while they were drying, work on a few more orange patches, and back and forth.
Here is where I am as of right now. Since I am officially on winter break (spring break for the rest of the world, 10 degrees F here in Flint makes it winter break here) I hope to really get to this and completely finish The Thing by the end of February.

Here is the speech bubble. This was far more tedious than I expected, and I was expecting it to be pretty grim. One the one hand, working with black and while tiles was very pleasant because it looked so clean and stark. It reminded me of the bathrooms I once saw in the Hot Springs, AR health spas from the 19th century--medicinal yet luxurious. Makes me want to toss around a giant leather medicine ball. One the other, it was very annoying because it's so important to make sure the letters really look like letters, can be easily read, and also accurately protray the three kinds of font so as to capture the tone of the speech.

Resolutions

2009-02-18T09:58:00.007-05:00

So how am I doing? I haven't had a single nap in about 15 years. So a big F for that one. No homemade icecream, either. Not one spoonful. I HAVE added more art to my life in that I have decided to take a handbuilding clay class at the FIA, which started this past Monday. The class runs from 1-4 in the afternoon and it felt really weird to sneak out of work to do something utterly self indulgent. Also nice was the fact that there were only 3 of us in the class (though 2 more are alleged to be there from now on) so we had the whole room to ourselves. My only experience with clay is with wheel throwing classes which, though interesting, never seemed like art but did seem like a lot of work to fill the house with very heavy bowls of all sizes. I have never attempted handbuilding and am determined to make nothing practical or useful in any way whatsoever. The first project is using coils, which are surprisingly hard to make properly. (You know what it is if you have ever played with Play Dough. You take a glob and roll it on the table until you get a long, even sausage. The tricky part is that it must be a sausage that is perfectly even, smooth and tubular, not wobbly, lumpy or with flat sides.) Addie must be an excellent teacher because my clay rolls were things of beauty. I decided to make something REALLY BIG (of course) and so am attempting a thing that has a 14" roundish base and will have coiled sides that gently curve outward for about 12", and then cut in and close off and curve around. I have in mind something seed pod shaped but that has a flat bottom. (I am worried about that--should I have started with a bowl shape so it would be more like a gourd than something that looks like the top half of a gourd?) I built it up to about 5 inches on Monday and so am giving it a rest while the walls get stronger so I can add more. It's all rather exciting, in a very calm and heavy sort of way.
As to the other resolutions, well, I think I need to get to it. Fortunately, I will be on winter break starting in about 124 minutes, which is when my law class ends today. And, as we all know, winter break is when not only will I get caught up but I will be 6 months ahead of schedule!

A Daily Dose of Architecture

2009-01-22T12:28:00.005-05:00

One of my favorite blogs that I stumbled across accidentally is A Daily Dose of Architecture. For reasons that I do not entirely understand, I like to read it before going to bed at night. It's always fabulous, but I particularly enjoyed this filmette, Mr. Glasses.

Mister Glasses

Poster Boy

2009-01-22T12:21:00.000-05:00

I just found this on YouTube. I wish my brain could think this way.

Marvelously Marveling

2009-01-21T17:40:00.005-05:00

I didn't work on this most of my holiday break, but I have been working lately and here is the current state of play:

The Hulk is done, purple pants and green face and all. I also started working on The Thing. I put off beginning this because I thought it would be hell on Earth but it turns out that it isn't. The internal debates were Debate 1: Should I fragment the orange sections (easier, but may look choppy) or try to cut each piece surrounded by black as a single piece (almost inconceivably difficult but more "rock like" in appearance). I struggled with this until I convinced myself that fragmented bits of glass can, too, look rock like or so I told myself so that I would begin working on it. Debate 2: Should I use the marbling side of the glass which has half a dozen or so shades of orange swirled within it (prettier colors but not very true to the original picture) or should I go with the other side which is a solid, dark orange (which is more like the original comic but would look very "flat" and not as interesting. I went with the swirls and, I tell myself, it also looks more "rock like" because it looks variegated and more shaped. I also just started The Thing's speech bubble. I have done the circle around it, and a bit of white in the bubble stem just to see what working with white would be like. I finished the black outlines on the right arm. Working on this went particularly easily, perhaps because I was listening to Atom Heart Mother (I've always wanted to take photographs of cows--what's that about?) which I haven't listened to in many, many years (two decades?!? Eek!). And, if all goes well this evening (which even typing that makes me think I have doomed my chances), I will start filling in the wrist and lower arm.

And here is the whole thing so far. Hmmm. I doesn't look like I have done all that much. How could I possibly think I would get this done by Christmas? Perhaps Summer Solstice is more likely.

Debate 3, as of yet not settled: And what for the background color? In the comic, it is a rather drab faded soft yellowly newspaper color. Not appealing. I want it to looks like they are bursting through a broken windscreen, so I am thinking either tightly fragmented clear glass or (fearing that may reveal a bit too much of the machinery behind the piece) lightly frosted glass. Hmmm.

New Year, New Look

2009-01-21T10:48:00.004-05:00

I thought of a long list of New Year's Resolutions and was determined to commit myself to accomplishing them, but I never got around to writing them down. So although it is already January 21, it still is early days in this year. So I will write them down now and commit myself to accomplishing them...some time before the next January 21 comes along.
1. Give the blog a face lift. (done!)
2. Exercise 60 minutes on five days a week. Ok, this one stems from a meeting I had with my physician several years ago who then informed me that (a) given my family history and (b) given my high cholesterol levels dating back to when I was 21, I should do serious aerobic exercise for 60 minutes five days a week. I mulled these words over for about three years and then, this past December, decided that maybe she was on to something. So on January 1, 2009 I dutifully got on my free exercise bike (nabbed from my mom's basement just after her foot surgery when she couldn't stop me), put on my new Ipod and my awesome Bose headset--with REAL ear muffs and not those ridiculous ear buds that cause dizziness and headaches--turned on my newly acquired book on tape, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, and set to it. And then about 5 minutes later I realized that 60 minutes just was not going to happen on that first day. I managed 20 minutes at level 5 and was amazed I lived to tell the tale. I am now up to 30 minutes at level 8.5. I have kept my promise of 5 days out of 7 (and am now into my next book on tape, Master and Commander) so so far I am in compliance with this one.
3. Get more art in my life. I have slowly come to the conclusion that the life of the mind, while often very satisfying, is not in an of itself good enough for the good life. As stated in earlier posts, I started taking art classes when I was 10, shelved that interest for years and then during the past four years have been taking art classes as often as I can. But I always viewed the art class as therapy (an escape from a stressful life) and/or education in the mechanics of ceramics/weaving/or whatever. But what I never really embraced was the possibility of ME making ART. Probably because I assumed that because I am not a professional artist, that I would have no right to make anything and call it art. So, very uncomfortably, I am trying to reconceptualize my efforts as ART, not mere activity.
4. Start finding pleasure in my job. I see myself heading for a serious mid-life crisis prompted by profound disappointment in my profession--both as practiced by others and myself. If I am to avoid that fate I have to start finding pleasure in what I do for 5-6 hours every day at the office and for 2-4 hours every day at home. But, as every well-trained philosopher knows, the pleasure paradox prevents us from pursuing pleasure simply for the sake of it. So what to do? Not sure about how to go about realizing this goal yet...Can professional philosophy be pleasurable?
5. Get rid of a lot of crap. I've said if before and I will say it again, but this time I mean it. Is 30% feasible? Let's go for it: 30% by volume, not weight. Starting sometime very soon. But not today.
6. Get out of debt. Same deal as 5--said it before but this time I mean it. (Ok, this one probably won't happen but I have to keep saying it.)
7. See more movies. Let's say one a week during the school year and 3 a week between semesters.
8. Have more naps. I propose at least 2 a week. But they don't have to be REAL naps (I don't actually have to fall into a deep sleep because then I get sweaty and have scary dreams) but I do have to "doze" peacefully for more than 10 minutes.
9. Eat more homemade ice cream. This one needs no explanation.

Felting Frenzy and MORE

2008-12-26T21:48:00.005-05:00

It's been damn cold recently, which has prompted a knitting and felting frenzy.

And here is the knitting machine, all set to go. All those yarns are ones that I inherited when Thomas's school relocated and the art teacher, whose specialities include ceramics, photography and sculpture but NOT fiber arts, gave me hundreds and hundreds of pounds of yarn. I couldn't bear to give them up but I also couldn't figure out what to so with them. My mother in law came to visit and the felting bug has bitten her and she suggested that I make up a big sheet of fabric to felt.

Here is the first attempt. I used a dark blue and a medium blue and for reasons I don't quite understand the colors alternated sides so that there are random stripes of the two colors.

And here is something that I didn't know was possible: plating. You can load two yarns into the knitting machine, one in the middle feeder and one on the side, and it would knit them so that one always stayed in the front (and knitted it) and the other would be on the back (purled). And it worked! And here it is! I have felted it since and will supply photos as soon as I get the energy.
And here is my eldest, Thomas, modeling my latest production. He requested a 1 up mushroom and I managed to do intarsia IN THE ROUND!!!!!! I was very pleased to have invented a system that worked and then, of course, I discovered that a varient of MY SYSTEM has existed forever and I could have saved myself a LOT of bother if I had done a bit more research. Oh well, you can't beat the pleasure that comes from inventing something that works well.

It Is Finished (Almost)

2008-11-12T10:08:00.005-05:00

Tonight (last night, really) is the night. Here is the Rose Thing (I really should think of a name for it--"Still Life In Front of Blobby Swirls and Bathroom Tile" doesn't really sound nice) complete, but not yet grouted. It's tempting to not grout, since it's always a mystery what the grout will do to change the picture but I had scribbled and sketched so much on the surface board, that I could see millions of lines (pencil and pen as well as purple, blue, red and green colored pencil) between the pieces. It had to be done.

And here, almost three hours later, is the piece grouted:

Smooshing the grout into the cracks is really satisfying but wiping ten thousand pieces clean is not. And it isn't really clean yet, anyway. I need to let it set for a few days, let the grout really cure, and then take a damp cloth and really get the glass clean. They should be as shiny as before I grouted which, you can see by comparing the two pictures, they aren't. So it will really be done in about a week...but then I have to seal it....So it will really be done in about two weeks. So I started this in June--six months ago. Spending six months of one's life (how many hours?) seems about right for creating one wall hanging, doesn't it? And the big question is: Where am I going to hang it? (But the even bigger, and more interesting question is: What next?)

Hulky Pants

2008-11-11T09:50:00.012-05:00

Finally, I have the hands, feet and pants done. The pants were quite fun to do. I wanted to have the glass look like fabric stretching across muscles. So I cut the pieces into little trapezoids which made it possible to line them up in a gentle arc. That way, they had a clean line across each leg like woven fabric but they were curving, so now it looks like the leg is thick and rounded, not flat.

I've been putting off the face for as long as possible but feeling confident yesterday (listening to Flight of the Conchords, "Bret, You've Got It Going On" and "If You're Into It" was a big help) I decided to get serious and get it started. It's a real pisser, because not only are the spaces very, very small, but if they line up wrong, then once it is grouted it will not look like muscles being flexed but a 2-D solid that has been shattered. I don't like going to the dentist (am 5 months overdue for the 6 month cleaning) and am saving the teeth for last.

Once I finish the teeth, I can get to work on The Thing. Right now, all he has is a pair of tiny underpants. I think it's time he got some dignity.

Summer Art Walk

2008-11-01T20:30:00.007-04:00

Last June sometime, there was an art walk through downtown Flint one Friday evening. Tracy (of The Lunch Studio) asked me to display "something knitted" as art on the walls of her restaurant. I have been toying with a lot of ideas for really big knitted pieces (using the knitting machine) but I hadn't really had time to think anything through. I had made a felt heart last Valentine's Day but it wasn't very detailed. So I made another, this one has more valves as well as floods of blood coming out. These are two long pieces of red wool, both knitted up from 4 stitches and gradually increasing to 100 stitches. I attached one to the aorta and the other to the major vein going into the heart. Here it is on the left side of the photo:
On the right, and pooling onto the floor, is another piece I did on the knitting machine. It is about 30 feet long, 100 stiches across. It has an unfinished end and is hanging from two knitting needles, and the yarn being worked goes right to the 1 pound blue spool on the floor under the piece. I had originally hoped to write out the script of my thoughts while I knitted this thing (which took me about 4 hours without stopping) because my thoughts were so repetitious, inane and unproductive. The idea would be that, while one end is being knit, the other end is unraveling, ultimately leaving nothing accomplished therefore mirroring the repetative and unproductive (and slightly insane) thoughts I have as I go through most of my daily activities. Unfortunately, I was so rushed making this (knitting it up at midnight the night before) that I didn't get to write up the script. There's something very telling in being too rushed with the mundane to have time to transcribe one's thoughts about the mundane.

I enjoying making these things and get a kick out of having them on display, but I don't really think they are art. (I can't think of myself as an artist. I'm not sure why. Is "artist" too noble a term? Would it be hubris to refer to oneself as an artist?) Nonetheless I have gotten positive comments (one person from the Flint Institute of Arts calling the blue thing "powerful"--that was nice but weird) which leave me bemused.

Flint Craft Fair Coming Up

2008-11-01T20:25:00.003-04:00

The annual December Flint City Craft Fair is coming up and I am thinking about going to it. I have an annoying compulsion for felting old unwearable sweaters and turning them into little bags, coin purses, ipod or phone holders, or whatever. Which is weird, considering that I would never use such a thing. Here are a few. (On top of glass.) The Craft Fair itself is quite a strange experience. Last year, the doors (of The Lunch Studio, in downtown Flint) opened at 10 am and there was a CRUSH of people waiting to get in--the fact that it was 20 below outside MAY have had something to do with it but they did gather in downtown Flint on a Saturday which is not normally something that ANYONE does. I really don't like having people stare at or comment on things I have made. But I do like getting rid of these things (otherwise what the hell else would I do with them?) and making a healthy profit is always nice.

Hulk Feet

2008-10-23T17:25:00.004-04:00

Here are the feet thus far. It was very strange filling in the toenail area. Sort of like doing a pedicure. I have been putting off doing the face because it is so detailed and bitty. I keep waiting for that day when I am craving frustrating and fiddly work, but so far that day hasn't arrived.

Yea! I giant box arrived in the mail, stuffed with more styrofoam peanuts than anyone could want in their house and...two kinds of purple glass! Here they are:

To look at one its own, I prefer the bluey-purple on the left but am going to use the reddish, concord grapey color on the right because I think it will give a better contrast with the blues in the other part of the picture. It also reminds me of grape popsicles. Mmmm, yumm...grapey glass....

Rainy Days and Mondays

2008-10-20T17:38:00.006-04:00

It's rainy today. And it's a Monday. Blegh. Nonetheless, I bravely trudge on with my Hulk, slowly working my way across his giant green muscles. His hands were not as difficult as I imagined they would be. I tried to keep the glass piece lines following the lines of the arms, hands and fingers. So, in theory, when this is grouted, the grout lines will take the viewer's eye from the central part of the figure, right to the end of the extended arms, therefore giving the image movement and perpetual flow. We'll see. The hardest part of designing a mosaic is keeping in mind that the real art of it is not fitting the tiny pieces into any particular space, or even choosing the colors, but thinking about what it is going to look like once the grout is in place and the dominating image isn't anything make of glass, but is made of the millions of fractured cement lines. (And what color to use for the grout? I can't even think about that yet.)
Here are the feet thus far with a bit of the pants done. These were not fun. I thought they would be, but they weren't. In general, the Hulk is annoying me and I will be very, very glad when I am done. Which reminds me, I haven't gotten that purple glass in the mail yet. If you look long and hard at this poor guy's left leg, it looks like it has been broken in half just below the knee. I didn't notice it when I was looking at the comic page, but now that it is enlarged to almost 6 inches across, it is hard to ignore. In fact, I get quite nauseous if I look at it too much. I thought about changing it, to make it the way it should have been drawn, but that somehow seems sacriligious...or something.

That little red spot just below the image is blood I dripped after I cut myself on the glass. I do actually forget most the time that I am working with glass and that I am supposed to be a bit more careful. This time, I put my elbow on top of the plexiglass while I leaned up and across it to reach the running pliers. Yes, there were thousands of shards of glass on the plexiglass but, really, who would have thought they would all grind into my elbow just because I put all my weight on them? I'd like to think I learned a lesson of some sort, but I am sure I haven't. (Do I wear the safety goggles I am supposed to be wearing? Of course not.)

Hulk 'n' More

2008-10-17T21:37:00.007-04:00

It's Friday, which means it's my chance to head to the FIA to work on my flower mosaic (featured a few weeks ago). Here is the studio (or, more accurately, the southeast corner of the room with all my stuff spread about).

I was completely at a loss as to how I should finish the background. I was intending to do a simple blue fade to green background. When I mentioned that to Amy, my mosaic teacher, she had a hard time masking her derisive snorts. She suggested something with "wild colors" and with "lots of motion." What the hell? So I came up with this octopus-type blob. She loves it; I feel the verge of an anxiety attack coming on when I think about it too much. I have no idea where I am going with this, and I have no idea how I am going to finish it. It should look like roses in front of a funky, but discreet, wallpaper, but I fear it looks more like a space creature about to devour the roses.

And here's how far I got today. It really is a wonderful space in which to work. I had to whole room to myself, which isn't unusual, since any classmates that do show up for studio time tend to work (or live lives) during the weekdays and go in on the weekends. As I work I can look out over the FIA parking lot and just beyond it to Central High school. I didn't enjoy my highschool experiences in the least, but I do enjoy watching other people enduring it. I wish I had made the fruit platter much, much bigger.

Meanwhile, the Hulk gets filled in. I worked on his hair today. (That was a pisser; how do you make glass shards look like locks of hair? You don't.) He looks a bit like a tiny guy in a giant, green, padded muscle shirt. I am dreading making the face. It's one thing to do a chop job on a fist or shoulder, but if the face looks blocky or bitty, it will be really bad. I did want to do the pants first, but I had a sudden panic that the purple glass I got was too drab. I ordered two pieces of other purples online and can then decide once and for all after they arrive. Why is good purple glass so hard to find? Another one of life's little mysteries.

The Beginnings of The Hulk

2008-10-13T17:58:00.004-04:00

Here is The Hulk just starting to get "fleshed out." This is really a pain, as the glass does not want to look like muscle. Oh, well, I have to remind myself that this is an interpretation of a comic, not real life.
The chest and abs are done, and the arm is started. The plan is to finish outlining the left hand tomorrow, and then complete the arms and hands next. All right, enough for today.

Biggest Glass Underpants Ever

2008-10-06T21:55:00.003-04:00

Again, because The Thing's underpants are in the middle of the picture, it seemed like a good thing to get them done early in the project. I expected that it would take me days and days to complete the outlining because I expected it to be very fiddly, but I finished it in under and hour. Maybe the trick is listening to Blondie. Would Debbie Harry permit the outlining of underpants to drag on for days and days? I think not.

In an underpants fever, I decide to cut the blue fill in glass and begin.

And here, late in the evening are the complete Undies. Total time, including cutting the darker blue glass, 2 1/2 hours.

I think The Hulk's purple pants will be next.

BUH-WHOOM! I begin...

2008-10-06T21:44:00.005-04:00

I decided to work on the words first because (1) they are in the (relative) middle of the picture and that way I wouldn't be leaning across what I had worked on (it isn't nice to lean on many hundreds of bits of cut glass) and (2) I thought that it would be hard to mess up words and that that would be a good way to get comfortable with the picture. So here is the outlined WHOOM!
After letting it set for a day, I got right into filling in the blue of the letters. Since the letters have a "shaky" font, I broke up the blue pieces unevenly so each lettter would look a bit like a smashed windscreen glass.

Here's the whole WHOOM!

And here is the finished BUH. I only noticed after getting ready to outline the BUH that the WHOOM and BUH have completely different font styles. So I tried to keep the pieces in keeping with this font and cut the pieces as regularly as I could, so the BUH would be more even and tidy.

I'm surprised how really nice the black glass looks. I didn't think creating the outlines would make it look so much better, but it really does. The black glass is completely opaque and really shiny. (It is also a pisser to cut and, since there is SO MUCH BLACK in this piece, since everything has thick outlines, this is going to get tedious--very, very tedious.)

Almost Ready to Start

2008-09-29T22:11:00.004-04:00

Here it is as of right now: the xeroxed sections taped together, lovingly placed under plexiglass. (What a mess this work space is. I try very hard to get it organized, but the fundamental problem isn't disorder, it is excess and gluttony. I simply need to throw out/give away/fob off a lot of stuff. But every time I pick up an object I think, "Maybe I'll need that some day." When would I possibly need an entire tub of old wooden spools? I don't know but imagine I do and then how will I feel when they are long gone? Pretty ridiculous, right? So there they stay, along with a thousand pounds of other things I have squirrelled away in here and never use. [See those blue spools? Fifteen 1 pound spools of 100% extemely itchy wool in "grenadier" from the 1950s. Why? What could I possibly do with such things? I have no idea but there they are.])

Here's a closer look. It's a pretty cool image, even in b/w. Stan Lee sure had a gift for drafting a dramatic, action-packed image. (I'm not so impressed with the dialogue but I suppose Oscar Wildesque wit--or even P. G. Wodehouse ["I say steady on there, old chap, what?"]--would not be quite The Thing.)

And here is the glass (purchased today NOT at Delphi but at nearby and utterly ordinary Stallings Glass--oh, Stallings is ok but it doesn't leave one breathless, unless from the smell of the mildewy carpet) which will soon be cut into teeny tiny pieces. But not tonight.

The Thing Update

2008-09-28T16:36:00.005-04:00

So: I cut off the broken edge of the plexiglass, so now I have a (roughly) 45.5" x 48" piece of plexiglass. (My resentment over that whole event is fading, but still present.) And now the question is: How do you go about creating a giant , fairly accurate, reproduction of the page from the comic? Simon suggested using a Smartcart from school and projecting the image up onto a giant piece of paper, and then sketching it out. That would work if I had good drafting skills (which I don't) and had the patience to do a good job (which I don't). So I xeroxed several copies of the page, cut one of the xeroxed sheets into small (about 1.5" x 1.5") pieces, and then enlarged each one 400%. Here are the pieces:

I did the math and still the enlargements were too big, so I tried again, this time with only a 375% enlargement. Here are those pieces:

Now I will cut off the excess, tape them together, place them under the plexiglass and BEGIN! But before I can do that I have to make a run to Delphi Glass (EEE! Everyone I know who has been there says it is UNBELIEVABLE--the selection, the options, the hugeness of it all.) in Lansing sometime this week. The comic uses only 8 colors but I want to make sure (1) that I have enough of each color to finish the whole thing (like yarn, glass sheets have a very specific color run and a batch using exactly the same chemicals but made at another time won't be exactly the same) and (2) that I get colors that really POP. What is the point of doing a comic book page in dull colors?

Meanwhile, The Thing

2008-09-22T16:12:00.002-04:00

Yee haw! The package (from U.S. Plastics) arrived, along with a complementary catalog of plastic devices, gadgets and containers all in various plasticated colors. I had no idea one could buy plastic buckets in so many shapes, sizes and colors. (It also contained a small religious pamphlet reassuring me that, if I were to give my life over to Christ right now, I could die in peace, knowing that I will soon be living as Jesus' wife. Move over Simon, you've got competition!)

Here it is, all ready to be turned into a replication of an original Jack Kirby version of The Thing. (No, the plastic isn't blue; it is clear. It comes coated with a thin sheet to prevent it from getting scratched.)

What's this? I didn't order a nearly $100 sheet of plexiglass with a busted out corner. But apparently that is what I got. Sigh. Yes, the comic page isn't exactly square and so this can be cut down to match the exact proportions of the page. But that isn't what I had in mind for the start of this project. Argh. Why do I get the feeling this is the first--and far from the last-- moment of disappointment I will have with this Thing?

The Plaid is Done!

2008-09-22T16:08:00.003-04:00

Here is the plaid with both yellows all done and half the cream patches done. By this point, I was thoroughly sick of this and really looking forward to finishing the background of the upper half of the piece.

Ta Da! The Plaid Is Done! Of course, now I have to decide once and for all how to design the background behind the roses, get the glass, cut it, and get to it. Now, rather than very exciting, it seems like a lot of work.

And for the big question: Does it look like a plaid tablecloth or just so much nonsense? I can't go there.

Getting the Plaid Done

2008-09-17T10:23:00.005-04:00

Here I am just getting started on the plaid pattern that will be in the foreground of the piece. I decided to start on the middle color, the light yellow and get all those done first. The diagonal line was to indicate a fold in the fabric and I thought at the time that a light orange would go well with the darker yellow.
Here I am almost done with the mid-yellows. This is really tedious, much less pleasant than doing the flowers or the fruit. (The fruit was the most fun--perhaps because it is food related or because the vivid red and green are so nice to look at.)
This is where I am as of last night--the mid-yellows are done, the orange lines are gone (see pile of rejected orange bits at top right of photo) and have been replaced with very dark yellow. I'm almost done with the dark yellow--only one patch remains to be finished, just to the left of the fruit platter. I am going to complete the remaining patches with a soft/ivory white. The dark yellow glass was "crap glass" (a term that someone in my art class came up with to describe glass that doesn't cut cleanly, but shatters instead) so I will be very glad to be done with it. The ivory glass is great--it cuts cleanly and effortlessly.

MEANWHILE the plexiglass for The Thing still has not arrived, and Simon is getting restless.

The Thing

2008-09-16T14:39:00.005-04:00

After grumbling about my affair with glass for almost a year, a few weeks ago Simon announced (relevant to nothing we were talking about), "You know, if you mosaicked something GOOD, I would like it a lot more." Well, what IS good? What EXACTLY would you like to see done with glass mosaics? After a brief pitter-pattering of him scurrying up to one of his secret spaces (a box in out our closet) back he came with a midewy, tattered, comic. "THIS!" he declared, opening the page to this:

What the hell is that? So, after some long hours of Marvel-lore explanation (who knew?) I was given my instructions: spare no expenses making a super-fabulous, super-sized replication of this picture. After stewing this over for some days, I have decided to go with a 48" x 48" sheet of plexiglass (I had no idea how expensive large sheets of plaxiglass are), I'll frame it, and then backlight it so the light shines through the glass. Yeah, it will weigh a LOT. Here is my inspiration:

Latest Project

2008-09-16T14:24:00.002-04:00

Again, I wanted to do something really big--this is a 2' x 4' wall hanging. (What the hell will I do with these things? I have not a clue.) I liked the idea of doing a traditional still life (our mosaic art class was sharing a room with beginning drawing, and they were doing the standard fruit/vases thing I remember doing in 8th grade art). In retrospect I don't know why I wanted to do this, but I'm seeing it through. Here is the fruit bowl part:

And here is a closeup of some of the roses in the vase (which isn't pictured here).

I've decided to to a modified check table cloth in the foreground and a bluey/turquoise/citrony green background--which, I am guessing, will take quite a bit of time since the pieces I am using for this are about 2 mm x 2mm each. (On the table, they were about 3/4" x 1/2".)

It's Been a Long Time

2008-09-16T14:09:00.007-04:00

I feel like I am about to confess to having an adulterous affair--worse still, one that has been going on for over a year, is still great and that I have no intention of ending. It's not that I don't still love knitting and yarn, because I do, but it just doesn't thrill me right now. Maybe it will again sometime--after all, I have been with my knitting needles for over twenty years. You just don't throw away that kind of history. But for right now, I am really have a great time making mosaics with glass. It started innocently enough when I took a night class at the FIA (Flint Institute of Arts). I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just curious. But once I tried it, it was great. The glass is just so amazing--similar to yarn in that you can really make anything you want, any size or shape you want, to any design that you want. And the colors are equally vivid, brilliant and rich. But, unlike the coziness and nestiness of yarn, glass is brittle, fragile, and dangerous--a little thrilling. Here is a bit of my supply so far:

This is my first project--which doesn't photograph so well because the hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of pieces all reflect the light at a slightly different angle. It's impossible to get all the pieces looking their best all at the same time. This is a table top about 48" x 30". I made the design up as I went along because I had no idea what I was doing.

Here is a closer look:
Here again.

That table took up the entire fall class (8 weeks) and I took another class in Winter (again 8 weeks), during which I did this window. The stained glass is on a storm window (thank you, Wandmachers, for donating this to the cause). It is bigger (and therefore heavier) than the table, I would guess about 56" x 36". I wanted to do something entirely different so I would learn how to cut larger, curved shapes. And I did.
This fish isn't what I wanted him (her? it?) to be. I would do it very differently if I could do it again, but isn't that the way of things.

Sweater Suit

2008-03-11T12:51:00.004-04:00

Although an all-striped, felted body suit obviously sounds like a great idea, this guy seems to think otherwise. Perhaps it itches.

Philosopher Monkeys

2008-02-29T12:56:00.003-05:00

I made these while watching the last three episodes of "The Singing Detective" and three episodes of "Torchwood." I wanted them to look anxious yet determined to contribute their ideas to the conversation at hand. It's all in the eyebrows.

Woolly Cozy

2008-02-22T15:41:00.004-05:00

You know it's cold when you're worried about keeping your tea warm. Here's the first project created from the mass of felty sweaters I have. I'm not quite happy with it. Originally the thought was to have the roses tightly together, encircling the entire bottom of the tea cozy. But, as is usually the case when I make something, I got sick of doing the same thing over and over again and by the fifth rose I had had enough. It's always surprising to me, and a bit disappointing, how tedious I find trying to be creative to be. MAYBE one more rose will (eventually) get attached onto the right edge. Then again, maybe not.

Time to stop felting and start...hmm, I'm not sure.

2008-02-19T11:35:00.003-05:00

I like to go to our local Good Will store and check the sweater racks for hidden treasure. There must be a lot of dissatisfied Gap and Eddie Bauer shoppers in this town because every visit I find at least four or five of their woolly rejects. So, for a mere $1.89 each and after a quick dip in an extra hot, super agitated wash, I get a teenie weenie felty sweater ready to be cut up and turned into something amusing or bizarre or...What? I'm waiting for inspiration, but I'm not coming up with much. It doesn't help that it is gray and dreary out. (When in doubt, blame the weather. I do and so far it has worked for the 9 years I've lived in this gray wasteland.) But these felties are starting to take over my basement, bedroom and project bags hidden in every spare space throughout the house, so it's time to get busy.

Felty Heart (but not heartfelt)

2008-02-18T11:37:00.006-05:00

I'm not a big fan of Valentine's day, but last week I did have a sudden and inexplicable urge to make a heart sculpture. It made sense, then, to make this and use it as a Valentine's Day gift. The wool comes from a sleeve of a felted sweater. (Thank you, The Gap, for creating all those sweaters that appeal for about a month and then end up in my local Good Will store.) To my own surprise I still have my college Human Anatomy and Physiology textbook (or not so surprising when you consider what else I have been schlepping around for the past 20 years) so was able to remind myself of the hookups for the various significant veins and arteries. I would like to be able to claim that it has four chambers and functioning valves, but I made it is less than an hour, so...no, it doesn't. If I make another, I do intend to include a cholesterol clogged artery on the exterior of the heart, portending certain doom. I considered doing that for this one but, since I made it to give to my 9 year old for a Valentine's Day present, that just didn't seem appropriate--especially since I have been taking meds for years in hopes of reducing my cholesterol.

And, just to give a sense of closure, here is how the moment of presentation went:

Me: Here is your valentine (holding out felty heart).

He: Where?

Me: Here, in my hand (waving it about, yarn blood flailing).

He: Where's the heart?

Me: (slightly peevish) This! This is what real hearts look like!

He: They do?!?!

Me: Hold on. (Stomping off to retrieve above mentioned medical text.) Here, look!

He: Oh.

Next day:

He: I want to see that heart picture again.

And, after spending a good 15 minutes comparing and contrasting the felty heart with the diagram, He: Can I take my valentine heart to "sharing time" at school?

Success!!

Is Knitting Fun?

2007-11-20T12:50:00.000-05:00

I don't think I would ever use the term "fun" to describe knitting. Relaxing, yes; satisfying, yes. I also don't think this cover did anything to sell the idea that knitting is fun.

Hand knitted shorts and matching top? Now THAT's a kickin' outfit! And I LOVE those sandals!

Knitting + Gifting = KNIFTING!!!

2007-11-08T12:07:00.000-05:00

It's the most wonderful time of the year--the time when I can offload my knitted goods or, KNIFTS!, as I like to think of them, onto unsuspecting (and, sadly, sometimes uninterested) parties. Knitted goods for all occasions! Of course mittens, hats, sweaters and scarves but also tea cosies (which always require explanation and explain I do--going into great detail about not only the wool chosen and the color [for example: red indicates warmth and cosiness--perfect for the tea COSY! Get it?] but also the stitch types, design style and so on--and can you believe that not everyone finds this facinating? Imagine that!), kitty and doggy blankets, ornaments and stockings! And whatever isn't knitted is FELTED. [Felting + Gifting = Felgifing? or perhaps Gifting + Felting = Giffeltig? Hmmm...isn't that a Swedish fish dinner? I'm pretty sure that is what my swedish-american grandmother served for christmas dinners many years ago. ] Felting, that crazy fad that's sweeping the nation and causing otherwise sane people to intentionally boil and abuse their sweaters for the sake of making a clutch or a tote bag. A friend of mine once said, while eyeing a felted purse in a yarn catalog with suspicion, "Why would I want a fuzzy purse?" But why NOT, I thought?! Obviously she missed the point entirely--it isn't about wanting the purse, it's about wanting to create a fuzzy thing--any fuzzy thing! It's that magical experience--powerful yet mysterious--of transforming yarn that is lovely, soft and has wonderful loft into something tiny and matted. And those felted things look great...for a few days until all the cat and dog hair in the world covers their lovely fuzziness and the straps and buttonholes stretch hopelessly out of shape, and then that wonderful felty thing looks like a big hairball. Which is what it is, afterall.

Knitting in the Late 80's

2007-05-11T21:04:00.000-04:00

Here is the cover of my first knitting pattern magazine. I can’t explain the power this German knitting magazine had over me then. Twenty years later, it looks decidedly goofy: more than 100 variations of the long tunic cinched with a giant belt slung loosely around the model’s hips over stirruped leggings and metallic flats—“perfect for ‘lustig’[1] weekends”—and sparkly v-necks perched atop bulging shoulder pads for “office chic.” None of these knits was even remotely “my look” and yet I was strangely entranced by this publication. Perhaps the fact that I was living in a foreign land and couldn’t speak the language adequately is part of the explanation. My life in Tübingen was surreal and cockeyed because I could never be sure that anyone understood what I was trying to say or that I really understood what anyone was saying to me. Of course I got things accomplished—I paid for things, managed the washers and dryers, even answered the house phone (and took a message!) but I was always aware of a profound disconnect between myself and everything and everyone else. I could not even be sure that anything was real. It seemed perfectly possible that one day I would simply fade away and then cease to exist. These knitting magazines presented themselves as a key to making this world make sense. The gridded patterns, the stitch glossaries, the sloganized poses: if I could master these, Germany and all the Germans in it would be comprehensible.

It was agonizingly slow work. Learning how to make a particular cable, collar, or shoulder seam required spending hours poring over mysterious scripts and working through my German/English dictionary. (So “senfstrick” is mustard stitch. So far so good. But what does mustard have to do with knitting? I later figured out that mustard stitch is called seed stitch in English. But I can never remember that and still think of that stitch as mustard stitch. Just as “knit and purl” is really “rechts und links”.) German patterns always come with patterns pictorially represented in coded grids.[2] And the key to cracking these grids required learning dozens of new stitches, all auf Deutsch.

In the end, I made my choice for my second ever sweater. I picked this men’s ski sweater. (But why? I have never liked ski sweaters—I still don’t—and I particularly dislike white clothing. I don’t trust anyone that can wear white all day long and still be clean by the end of it.)

Certainly the confident posture of the model partly motivated my choice. He certainly seems to know what he is doing as he stands there casually inspecting the implied slopes. (But where are his skis? And why is he wearing light gray corduroy pants to go skiing? We’ll never know, since he is obviously in no mood to talk to us.) I picked out a cranberry yarn for the main color, and light cream for the snowflakes. I was very excited to tell my housemates that my second sweater was going to have a two-color pattern throughout. I expected them to be impressed with my bold choice. I did not expect them to shout protests. I was told that maintaining proper tension with two yarns is "unmoeglich" (impossible) and that attempting it when a “mere beginner” (that hurt) was evidence that I was "Wahnsinn (insanity)." I was disappointed at their negativity but I was determined to knit those flakes. I don’t remember much about working on this sweater other than one evening, when I was alone in the kitchen working my way through the larger snowflakes across the upper back, one of my housemates came in and checked up on my work. After scrutinizing the stitches—from both the right and wrong sides of the sweater (no one told me before beginning that the truly well-knit sweater is regalmässig[3] on both the inside and outside)—she said, “Hmmm...nicht schlect[4],” got a drink and went back to her room. Well, with praise like that, how could I not be pleased? As with Sweater 1, Sweater 2 (as I affectionately call them) was not perfect. But knitting with two colors was not the hellish ordeal that those doomsayers made it out to be. I did an admirable job keeping the tension even while knitting the large snowflakes across the chest (if I do say so myself), but the section below that part, around the abdomen and lower back, was much looser and pooled out rather unattractively. And it was really, really, big, despite the fact that I made a swatch and figured (and refigured) exactly how many stitches to cast on. So here was the first time I learned a painful lesson that I have relearned many times since: swatches are really important for getting the sizing right, yet you can make a swatch, measure it exactly and the sizing might still come out all wrong. Perhaps for that reason I almost never make swatches now. Like calorie-rich desserts, they more often disappoint than deliver all they promise. Yet despite it being merely not bad I nonetheless I regard Sweater 2 as a success not because I made a sweater I would wear (I couldn’t, it was big—really, really big) but because becoming moderately good at controlling the tension for two yarns meant that controlling the tension for one yarn was a snap. (And it was. My next sweater, in navy blue and with a “bretzeln[5]” pattern that I think is pretty nifty, turned out to be "echt tragbar" (genuinely wearable--about the highest compliment I think I heard my housemates give to knitwear). Yet, if I am honest I must also admit that knitting with two colors is not pleasant and it was not for another eighteen years that I attempted to do so again and then, though I used five colors, I was knitting a small child’s cap.

[1] best translated as “fun” but much more amusing if translated as “lusty”
[2] I love these grids and am still amazed when I find a knitting book in English that provides only verbal knitting instructions for patterns. I am convinced that half the reason that so few Americans knit is because the patterns are so poorly and illogically presented. How can anyone think that 100 or more line-by-line instructions (usually of the sort “work like #2”) is better than a 3” x 3” grid that also includes directions for making the necessary adjustments for sweaters of 5 or 6 different sizes?
[3] “regular” as in even, that is, having perfect tension
[4] not bad but also not good
[5] pretzel

Learning to Knit auf Deutsch

2006-11-21T19:28:00.000-05:00

I had several objectives when I went to live in Tübingen, West Germany (as it was known then) in Fall, 1987: live among total strangers for a year, improve my German, see Michelangelo’s David, and see Peter Gabriel. Despite having such a bizarre collection of goals, I succeeded in realizing them surprisingly well. Although I did not manage to live among strangers for the entire year—several people from home managed to find their way to Germany and me—I did improve my German (enough for a young woman from Hamburg to think I was “echt Schwabish”), I did get to Florence to see David, and I did see Peter Gabriel in concert. What I did not set out to do when I went to Germany was to learn how to knit. Yet, I managed to do that as well. And now, almost twenty years later, I remember little of the Peter Gabriel concert (such as what city it was in, how I got there or back home, or even who I went with) and my German has deteriorated pitifully. I vividly remember walking into the room that houses David and the feeling of seeing the sunlight on his marble surface, as well as my disappointment at seeing many attempted and abandoned versions of David—wasn’t Michelangelo genius enough to get it exactly right the first time? Apparently not. And I haven’t forgotten how to knit.

Before I went to Germany, I had never seen anyone knit. I knew that there was such a thing as “knitting,” though I had no idea how it worked or what it was about. My grandma wore tiny booties knit for her by her mother, but they seemed utterly foreign to me: thick, dowdy and dangerously slippery (a bit like the woman who knit them, except for the slippery part). So knitting was about making strange things that I didn’t want. It had no interest for me.

It didn’t take me long after arriving in Tübingen to notice that every female of every age was knitting. They knit while waiting at the bus stops, while waiting between university classes, and while chatting in the evenings in our shared student housing kitchen. This was strange enough, but I was really floored when I arrived on the first day of my philosophy seminar in one of the oldest university buildings in Tübingen. The classroom was what all German university classrooms ought to be like: a tall room, one wall with floor- to ceiling windows, and a series of wide, dark oak tables of gently curving semi-circles, leading higher and farther away from the front of the room. The professor was truly geriatric and, I was told, lecturing on aesthetics. I couldn’t understand a word he said—I had only arrived a few weeks earlier and my German had not yet improved noticeably—but even if I could, I would not have been able to concentrate on his lecture because I couldn’t stop staring at the dozens of women knitting during the class. Not one took notes, not one even looked at the professor while he spoke; they just sat and knitted, needles clicking unashamedly as he spoke.

Later that day, when I got back to the communal kitchen that I shared with eight other students (six German, one Japanese and one French) I related what I saw. “They were KNITTING during the lecture!”, I said—or, more accurately, conveyed given how ungrammatical my German was. “So what?” was the response, in grammatical German. I think I gaped for more than a few seconds, trying to process what I was hearing. Did I misunderstand or did they really see nothing bizarre about this? Dzintra, whom I later learned was a very accomplished knitter, went on, “It makes perfect sense to knit in seminar. I can listen to what the professor is saying and get something accomplished at the same time. What is wrong with that?” There was a general murmuring of agreement from the other German women. (In retrospect, I don’t remember the German men contributing to this conversation. I was later told that all German boys were taught to knit in school, but the German men I lived with didn’t show any signs of knitting.) It was then that I found out that all the German women I lived with knit as well—each of them knit every day, as often as they could. Suzanne, who agreed to teach me to knit, got her current project out: an olive green, long sleeve sweater with an impossibly complex cable pattern running throughout. I was intrigued: it was nothing like my great grandmother’s booties: it was not sturdy or dowdy and was not at all slippery; it was a piece of art.

I wish I could remember what happened next, but I can’t. All I know is that Suzanne was going to teach me to knit and this required her taking me to a yarn shop. I do remember her telling me that my first project should be something small and simple: a potholder or, at most, a scarf. I wouldn’t have it. I wanted a long sleeve sweater covered with a complicated pattern of cables…in brown. She tried to reason with me—the expense! the frustration!—but I wouldn’t budge. I wanted a sweater and that was it.

A few days later Suzanne and I were off to the yarn shop. I had never been in a yarn shop before and was intimidated. Not only was it a beehive of activity, the woolly smell was slightly intoxicating. Suzanne wasted no time: What kind of yarn? Wool. What weight? Thick, so it knits up fast. What color? Undyed brown. She stared at my body, then the yarn label, muttered mathematical formulas. She announced that I needed 10 skeins. I paid for the wool—slightly dazed by the sticker price (a feeling that I still experience with every yarn purchase I make) and went home convinced that I was making a terrible and costly mistake yet excited by the prospect of making my very own sweater.

Back at our home, she brewed a pot of tea (which was to become an essential part of our many, many knitting sessions, though chocolate featured quite often) and we set to it. Suzanne explained that I had to make a “swatch.” I didn’t want to mess around with a patchwork piece, I wanted to get to business. “Can’t we just start with the sweater?” “No,” she said firmly. She then asked me endless questions about cables—how many, what in between? I must not have had anything interesting to contribute to the design of the cable pattern, because I remember her inventing the pattern completely. And now, finally, we got to the first step: casting on. I am certain she made me cast on myself. I remember working the needles—circular, a contraption I had never seen before—and yarn at an agonizingly slow pace. Worse still was the fact that she insisted on teaching me to knit in German. My German was poor and my biggest weakness was prepositions—over, under, through, nominative, accusative, dative, masculine, feminine, neuter—the chances of getting the phrase right were slim to none. The yarn (What is the gender of yarn?) goes around the needle (Is that accusative because it is the object of the nominative or dative because the yarn is in motion—unless, because the motion is localized, it is accusative? And what, by the way, is the gender of “needle”?) and then back through the loop (and the gender of “loop” is?). Around the finger, over the needle, off the needle, through the stitch …the prepositioning never stopped. Over and over, I got it wrong, with both my propositional phrases and my stitches. Suzanne was a strict teacher and never allowed me to keep an incorrectly made stitch (or let go by a misspoken German sentence). I undid hundreds of stitches but, nonetheless, my swatch grew larger. Drenched with sweat, my neck and back aching, I worked my way through row after row of my swatch. After what had to have been several hours, Suzanne said, “Ach! I must have a break! Let’s make spaghetti for dinner.” I was a bit nonplussed until I looked out the window and saw that it was completely dark out. Where had the day gone? It was only just after noon when we started. After dinner, we agreed to let the knitting go for the rest of the day, but I made Suzanne promise to knit with me again tomorrow. I wanted to get past this swatch business and on to my sweater.

True to her word, Suzanne agreed to spend the next day with me and my swatch. This time, the knitting was easier and soon my swatch was done. Once we knew how many stitches I knit per cm, and exactly what size I wanted my sweater, we were really in business. Suzanne then took my swatch, pulled it of my needle, and ripped it apart. I shrieked in horror. My swatch—nothing but a piece of wrinkly string! She laughed and explained that the yarn was better used in a sweater than in a tiny square, but I didn’t believe her. It was all I had to prove I had knit anything, and now it was gone.

Again, the cast on (which I had since yesterday forgotten how to do) and the beginning of the ribbing along the bottom of the back. I can only say that a kind of fever came over me; I knitted like a thing possessed. I wasn’t fast, but I was determined, and I couldn’t stop. Every chance I had, I knit. The back, loose and misshapen, got done. Then the front, tighter and more even. Then one arm, better still and then the other, even better. Finally, the last part, the neckline (not so well done—rather loose and saggy). A few Saturdays later, Suzanne and I looked at the just finished piece. She praised me effusively, and insisted that I put it on and model it for everyone in the kitchen. I didn’t want to. Not only was I not comfortable modeling anything, but I wasn’t happy with the sweater. Why did the back hang down 6 inches longer than the front when I knitted the same number of rows for each piece? Suzanne explained about tension and how, as my knitting improved, my tension got righter. Hmmph, I thought. But why did both sleeves cling so tightly to my arms—I know I increased the right number of stitches from the cuff to the shoulder. That’s because we had to adjust the pattern to accommodate the increases, and that changed the tension, too. We forgot to take that change into consideration. Harumph, I thought again. Faced with these as-of-yet unconsidered complications to sizing, I came very close to slipping into a deep sulk. It didn’t seem fair to work so hard to master “knit” and “purl” and then be foiled by tension at every turn. Suzanne seemed to sense this and, as she would do many times during my year in Germany, took me in hand, persuaded me to put on the sweater, and went with me to the kitchen. I was met with what I believe were sincere Ooohs and Ahhs coming from my housemates, not possibly because they thought my knitting was excellent (I had seen the knitting abilities of all my female housemates and knew very well that they were treating me as a beginner and not their equal) but because of my evident determination and ability to complete what each had more than once told me was a foolishly ambitious first knitting project. “Well, what next? Or are you done with knitting?” asked Dzintra. “No,” I said, “I want to knit another sweater. But I don’t know what it will be like.” (But it will NOT DROOP, I thought to myself). Suzanne promised to lend me her knitting magazines for inspiration. I thanked her, not really thinking about it and still sulky about my monstrosity. (Little did I then realize, standing there in that ridiculous wooly tube, the power these German knitting magazines would soon have over me. I soon had to buy my own copies and spent hundreds of hours poring over every page. I still have them. More about them in the next entry.)

The sweater was really, really hot. After a polite period of time, I went back to my room and took it off. I don’t think I ever wore it again; if I did, I certainly only did when I could wear a large coat over it and knew I wouldn’t have to take the coat off. I still have the sweater and still have mixed feelings about it: I still think it is a horror, yet it is my first finished piece of knitting and so I will save it forever. Here it is: