Love Triangles in the Royal Courts

Here's a thing I made after I saw one on the Inspire Me Now tumblr and followed the link to the instructions at site, George Hart's website. It has to do with math and stuff... but I just thought it looked neat.

Apparently, "the form derives from the third stellation of the rhombic dodecahedron..."

OK. Thanks George!

Anyway, I had to make one... (something to do while watching my poor hockey team lose their shit.) 

* * * * * * * *

In progress, fractal moose:

Completed, and sitting with some other novelties:

* * * * * * * *

I used the face cards to make my card sculpture. 

Some interesting relationships in the Royal Courts were revealed in the process...

In the land of Clubs the king is suffering unrequited love... but not from his wife: 

The king of Hearts doesn't have the same problem... and the queen is pissed:

Everyone's lovin' everyone under the sign of the Diamonds:

...but there is no love at all in Spade-town:

So, this was fun. Try it yourself... if you like puzzles...

Ned Hanlan - Forgotten Canadian Sporting Dude and My Imaginary Boyfriend

OK. Here's another "restyled/remixed" thing. 

I cobbled this together to fancy-up the "gym" area of my living-room. If you live with your workout equipment in the room where you also go to relax, you have to try to make it bearable for your eyeballs... or at least I do. Plus, I have all these odds and ends hanging around that I'm compelled to either purge or make stuff with. Also, it is inspiring to workout under the watchful eye of a sports hero. Ha!

The little heart came from this plastic "Visible Man" I had until very recently when it met it's demise at the hands paws of a clumsy cat.  Sad. I like the old-fashioned word "hale" (meaning "hearty and healthy"). I won't bother describing where all the other little bits come from or what they mean to me (but I'd tell you if you asked).

There it is, hanging in place near Silken Laumann (that's what I call my rowing machine). 

When I started rowing I discovered the story of Ned Hanlan - a Canadian World Champion Sculler. Do you know the site "My Daguerreotype Boyfriend"? Well I nominate Ned for that site. He was a hottie with a body. I think the gay dudes at the nudie beach on Toronto Island, Hanlan's Point (named after the family's hotel that used to be there) would agree with me. There is a pretty manly statue of him there.

Anyway, Ned was quite a character and a tricky/funny sportsman. You should totally read up on his antics in the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame (because I'm not going to spend time rewriting them all here).

Here's some pictures of Ned that I stole from the internet:

Ned was called the Boy in Blue because he wore a blue shirt. And if you want to see Nicolas Cage portray him on the small screen, YOU CAN! Because they made that movie in 1986! I'm downloading it RIGHT NOW! 

...

I hope you enjoyed this relatively uninformative but link-filled heritage moment.

...

Building Blocks

I don't know what to call this. Art? I'm not sure that's the right word... maybe "restyling"?

Anyway, here's a thing I made. I found the book, "Toby Joins the Circus" in the laundry-room-give-away-spot. I took out the pictures I liked and embellished them with some watercolours. 

I was inspired by this necklace to add the shapes. It has a masonic/esoteric feel but I think of it more as just the "basic shapes" (of geometry, architecture, art-making, etc.) I paired the shapes with the primary colours because they are also the basics you need to make everything else. Building blocks.

I didn't read the actual book but I made a little story with the pages I picked. Is it a life-lesson about self-acceptance? Maybe it's about a young lad reaching puberty. Maybe it just looks cool? Perhaps it's all or none of the above... 

Here it is:

A young kid with a monkey on his back tries to escape his problems by running away. 

On his journey he learns many uncomfortable but necessary lessons. 

Eventually he makes peace with himself and spends quality time with his monkey - who is still around, no longer a burden but a pleasure. 

The End.

 *****

On a completely unrelated note, I noticed this morning what my friends do with my decor when they are cat-sitting!! Hahaha! Good one K&E!

And another unrelated note, I made these "Confetti Bars" after having some on the weekend. They make me think of potlucks in the 50s. Maybe next I'll make a jello-mold with fruit-bits in it...

The End II.

The White Elephant Game

Oh yeah. I have a blog...

Well. 

Here is what Husbo and I created and contributed to my family's "White Elephant" Christmas game this year. I'm proud to say they were very sought and fought for. 

We painted them at one of those paint-yer-own-ceramics places. We meant to do two owls but they only had one owl-mug left so Husbo (a.k.a. Robert Bateman) painted the owl and I had to freestyle on a plain mug - but I knew if we picked trendy animals at least the teenagers in the crowd would want them... so a fox and an owl were the natural choices.

Overall I'm really pleased with how these turned out and I think I might start making and giving more as gifts.

 

OH! 

and...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

.

overcoming blog neglect with double craft post

what did i do yesterday while the rest of the world was hard at work?

well... after recovering the homestead from the weekend's festivities, doing laundry, baking some bread, and various other acts of domestic goddess-ish-ness, i treated myself to some pure, ol' fashioned craft time!

i made a pillow from a cross-stitched basset hound picture (from thrift store). i just added the border then sewed it on to an already existing pillowcase.

(this is for a friend who has basset hounds and was recently admiring a cross-stitched pillow in my house (below, on left, found at a garage sale in San Antonio)... i wonder if she'll see this post before i give the pillow to her?)

... and then i finished up this embroidery of some Daniel Higgs flash that i saw here and fell in love with. (Coincidentally, it was tattooed by Zach Nelligan - whom I blogged about before.)

i'm probably going to overcompensate for my lack of posting by posting a WHOLE BUNCH of stuff today... thanks for looking... whoever you are out there that looks at this stuff!

.

No Quilt is Complete Without a Beer-Drinking Tiger

What follows are pictures of the patchwork quilt I finished yesterday in the delirium of head cold.

I actually made the top of this quilt and put it all together about 2 years ago - I've even used it from time to time - but I never finished top-stitching it. This is because I planned to do it by hand (before I knew how time-consuming that would be... it is King-Sized!)

Well, that wasn't happening and since I have this super-fast, industrial Juki sewing machine now, I decided yesterday it was time to blast this project off the To-Do List.

ALL the patchwork is old material I already had: old shirts (mostly the husband's) and pajamas, old bed sheets and some vintage material I had collected over the years. The bottom and inside are flannel sheets from Value Village.

So here it is:

It's intended as a summer quilt - quite thin, no stuffing.

But it is BIG!!

It is thin but vast...

This is the back.

Here you can see a few of the hand-stitched lines done before I went crazy with the machine.

The "Aloha" was from one of my nephew's shirts which he wore to my wedding.

The Superheros are from old bed sheets that first belonged to my brother and then to me. They are from 1978 (a good year!) and have been put to several different uses over the years - but I'm getting to the very last remnants of them now.

I like you!

No quilt is complete without a beer-drinking tiger.

I was thinking about the ocean when I made this section of blue.

Thank you for looking!

not dead yet

I'm back from the realm of the busy - where most people manage to live most of their lives (and blog meanwhile). Being of simple mind and low energy, I can only visit that realm from time to time and must then retreat into silence.

But this blog is not dead and now continues...

* * * * *

This is what the ever-evolving-sideboard looks like today. Not everything has changed but I had to free up some room for books that are currently new and/or being read. Our "bar" was briefly stationed on the sideboard but I didn't take a picture and it has since found another home. Books outrank booze.

Another new addition is this collage-y thing I put together this morning. The poem fragment (from Langston Hughes*) and bird picture has literally spent 8 years on my fridge (a friend letterpressed it back at Sheridan). Suddenly it felt like time to do something else with it...

So I put together some old things I had lying around my studio and framed it. I also added a button/pin of my baby-self (which I've had since... well... birth I guess**). Anyway, I've never been sure what to do with this button of myself... but it kind of fits in with the idea of holding fast to youthful dreams and pursuing them with the purity and innocence of a fresh-faced babe.

(I'm 100% certain that my dreams are less socially significant and far more self-centered than what Langston was talking about.)

So here it is:

In other newness, I got a neat book of weird old photos off the discount rack when I visited the National Gallery recently. It's like having the website Black and WTF in the palm of your hand - but NOT on an iPhone - haha!

The rocks are from various travels across Canada. The black lava-looking ones come from an island off British Columbia and the lump of coal is from Nova Scotia. The rest are from locales in between.

* * * * *

*Here's the whole poem, Dreams, by Langston Hughes (but I don't agree with him that frozen fields are barren or a bad thing...)

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

** I'm not sure WHY my family put my face on a pin. I guess I was cute as a button?

.

play-time

Today when I should have been working on sketches, I played with an old calligraphy set instead. I like to call it "skill-building" as opposed to "time-wasting".

I never did much calligraphy as a youngin' and haven't done any at all for about a decade but for whatever reason I've always had the tools around... time to learn how to use them!

The quote is from a drawing/animation book I've been reading by this old Disney animator called Walt Stanchfield.

Also today, I went downstairs to throw some junk away and came back upstairs with some other, different junk. I'm not sure what I'll do with these yet (maybe something on the backs?) but I'll just horse around and see what happens...

The reader (namely my husband) will be pleased to know that there was other tempting junk but I resisted taking the whole pile. Those plaqued family portraits from the 60s did beckon but I kept my wits about me!

Lastly, a reminder to myself that no handmade lines are ever perfect and also to remember/share how freakin' cool Margaret Kilgallen was, a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04ejN8ZlX4U

a look back at the christmas just past - part 1

we decked this wall instead of a hall...

... and hung our homemade garlands and stockings with care on another wall, for lack of a mantle...

... and I fashioned this stole out of the fur of an old coat-collar to feel festive and sassy and fashion-forward all at once (or is fur fashion-backward?!? I just know all the kids are wearing it on the blogs I stalk...)

no catchy title today

Last night's model at Life Drawing was really good. Very unique gestures, brought in some props, and even maintained active facial expressions during the longer poses! Unfortunately, I was not having the greatest drawing night (am I ever?)

But here are some that I managed to sort out of the cull pile:

a one-minute gesture that I like mainly for the odd placement on the large page

and two of the longer poses (I forget, 20-minutes each maybe?)

I don't feel like I've found that magical combination of materials yet that really lets me get past beyond struggling with materials and on to struggling with the drawing.

*****

In other, more crafty-news. I've been suddenly overcome with the desire to make friendship bracelets. I think this seed was planted last year or so by Ray Fenwick (my Halifax Art Hero).

He did a whole series about friendship bracelets which you must see by clicking the link in this sentence. But here's one of them if you're too lazy to click:

Friendship bracelets have also been popping up all over the fashion-blogosphere. I like the clever, up-graded twists people have been doing with them: weaving them through and around gold and rhinestones bracelets, etc.

Partly I think it's just because, in learning to embroider, I've been handling embroidery floss a lot lately and I used to be a Pro-Star bracelet maker back in the ol' days... so it was just bound to happen.

I've been having a hard time finding embroidery floss but I stumbled upon a GOLDMINE at the Lens Mill Store in Guelph recently. That place is a throw-back to an earlier time for me too. I made a big quilt in university and most of the fabric came from there. It used to be in an old knitting factory that was a pleasure to visit. It has since moved into an ugly strip mall and the factory is now condos that aren't very soundproof (I know because I have a friend who lives there). Oh well... it still houses all sorts of weird loose ends and embroidery floss is very abundant!

Also, I found this awesome horse-head-thread-organizer thing there! I never knew I needed this until now! Love it. Also love that I found FLORESCENT floss! And some sparkly gold stuff (not pictured). What what!?!?!