Craft Fair Detour

Thank you for all your nice comments about my monkey yardage! I am very busy right now-- I only have two more weeks left before the end of term. This past weekend I decided to put off all my school projects and create a product for a craft fair that our class was invited to participate in. As you can see, I made iron-on animal badges. The animals are silkscreened on cotton fabric with iron-on Heat-n-Bond on the back. Most of the animals I drew myself. The rabbit and the bug were taken from my 5,000 Animals book. It was a beautiful fair and I wish I had taken more pictures, but my camera ran out of batteries. I am happy to say that I sold quite well at my first craft fair!

Adventures in Pattern

Well folks, I have not been the best blogger of late. I have been hard at work on all sorts of new projects. One of my big assignments was to create 3 metres of fabric using a repeat of a silkscreen image. I have been thinking about this project for weeks. It took weeks to design and hours to print. Here's the result:

There's No Place Like Dressew

Maryka and Kevin came up to Vancouver last weekend. They said they wanted to hang out with Andrew and me but I think the real reason for the visit is that Maryka has become a Dressew Junkie. Dressew is a bargain basement wonderland full discount fabric and sewing related notions that has to be seen to be believed.



Kevin is thinking, "Maryka better not buy that creepy plastic doll's head! I don't care if it's only 25 cents!"



So much fabric, so little time.



Buttons! Buttons! Buttons!



Oh, my! Come to Vancouver and see for yourself!

Weaving and Felting

I wove two scarves (one for me and one for Andrew) for my latest weaving project. The project involved loosely weaving the scarves and then hand-felting them after they came off the loom. They are both wool and as they were worked with soap, hot water and friction, they shrunk, becoming softer and thicker. Here they are on the loom, pre-felted and then finished, around our lovely necks!

First Silkscreen Project

This is a series I created for my first silkscreen project. I was very much inspired by my children's literature class. I was thinking about the importance of reading and education, of discovery and imagination.

Rain City

It has absolutely poured for days here in Vancouver, but it is warm and sunny in the cockles of my heart thanks to the Red Sox victory yesterday evening. Andrew and I will now be spending even more money on beer and greasy food as we cruse the neighborhood pubs in search of places to watch what is sure to be a very exciting series. Being a Red Sox fan in Vancouver is a lonely pursuit. There were three of us in the pub last night: Andrew and me and our friend Steve Moss. We want all you Bostonians out there to know that we will stay strong!





Here are some pictures taken on a recent trip to Granville Island (it is not really an island, for those of you who haven't visited us yet, it is mostly surrounded by water in a tiny, peninsula-like fashion). Granville Island is a haven for artists and crafts-people and one of my very favorite places in the city. That cozy little shop on the right in the picture above is The Silk Weaving Studio. It is full of silk yarns and looms and I love it. In addition to silk, the other purchases of the day were sausages stationary and apples!

GO RED SOX!!!***pleeeeeease??!!!!***

Even though we don't have a TV and no one we know has a TV; even though when we try to watch a Red Sox game at a pub here in Vancouver, they will often change the channel to a hockey game (hockey??!!), our hearts are in Boston these days. I can imagine quite a number of my loved ones glued to their TV's and radios, desperately hoping for a comeback. So, if any of the Red Sox read my blog, take a good look at this picture. You guys do NOT want to to disappoint your youngest and most adorable fan.

Happy (belated) Canadian Thanksgiving

I don't know if you folks south of the 49th parallel were aware, but Monday we Canadians celebrated Thanksgiving. Our friend Aaron Bandstra's parents invited us to their home for a full-on turkey dinner.



I made some Milana Thistlethwaite-style Brussels sprouts. In my opinion this is the only way to cook Brussels sprouts: cut sprouts in half, saute in olive oil, combine with toasted pine nuts, yum.





Andrew made a sweet potato dish, featuring large amounts of butter and brown sugar, double yum!





Noah, our godson, slept through dinner...



but was awake for dessert!




I am so very thankful for my sister, who was able to come up to Vancouver from Seattle. I am also thankful for little Dutch chocolate sprinkles for sprinkling on my buttered toast!

New Weaving

Here is my first completed weaving project from this term, called Moon and Bamboo. It all started here.
I was working with the following techniques: transparency- a loose, delicate weave structure; inlay- weaving different coloured weft in a decorative way into the weave structure (the circle and circle within the circle); and painted warp- the green vertical shapes were stenciled onto the warp before weaving.
Phew! It's nice to be done.

Silkscreenin'

Here are some of my first silk-screened images from my Surface Design class.

The Boat

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing, absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
- Rat to Mole in The Wind in the Willows


We were in Bellingham last weekend visiting the Bandstras. Andrew and Aaron spent a few hours aboard the Cape Anne.




Here is the boat that Aaron built. Isn't it beautiful?!!




**gasp** who is that handsome man at the stern?




ARRrrr! It's Andrew!

The Things He Carries

I'm taking a children's literature class and I have the trill of reading The Hobbit once again. I just finished the chapter which introduces one of my favorite literary characters, Gollum. I thought all you Gollum fans out there might enjoy this little list taken from Chapter V:

The Things Gollum Keeps in His Pockets
fish-bones
goblins' teeth
wet shells
a bit of bat wing
a sharp stone to sharpen his fangs on
and other nasty things

Dyeing With Bugs

That's right bugs. This beetle is the cochineal. They are plucked from cacti in Central and South America and their carcases are ground into a powder and used as dye. The dye has been used for hundreds of years by the indigenous of that part of the world. When the Europeans arrived, they went wild for colours it produced and for a time, the dye was a hottest export from the New World.


I was lucky enough to be a part of the cochineal group during the natural dye section of my "Precision Dyeing" class. Here the little ones themselves (may they rest in peace).




This is the ground up cochineal. Look at the change in colour! Nothing was added-- that is pure bug.



Oooo, so red. The cloth has to simmer for about 45 minutes.


Voila! The darker fabric is the protein fibres (wool and silk), the paler fabric is cellulose fibres (in this case, cotton/hemp and linen).

Have a Lovely Weekend

Here is our breakfast table from last weekend. Baked french toast is one of my very favorite breakfast dishes. This one is adapted from the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I added less milk and shoved some late summer blueberries in between the slices of cheap french bread before baking. It was delicious, all smothered in maple syrup!
Well, this weekend we are off for an impromptu visit to the Bandstras' in Bellingham. Ta for now.

I Have a Thing for Sock Monkeys

My latest: a monkey for my bicycle-building brother, Christopher. The wonderful block print on the t-shirt was made by my talented friend and classmate, Emmily (yes, that's right, with two m's).

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Speaking of monkeys... Andrew and Sarah gave me this book for my birthday:


Each sock monkey has so much personality.



Nothing puts a smile on my face like a pile o' monkeys!

In the Loom Room

Our weaving studio. In the textiles department space is a commodity. Look at all those looms!


My good friend Kimberly gets some help with her warp.
We spent most of the first day of weaving class warping up the floor looms. The "warp" are the fibres that run length-wise and remain under tension as you weave. (The "weft" is what you weave with, threads that cross over the warp) For me, warping up is the most tedious part of the process. I feel so relieved after finishing: now I can get down to weaving.


Here is the warp on my loom. It's a little boring, I know. There will be more pictures to come. We will be working on transparencies and inlay... stay tuned.