countywide evident octet

"I dream my painting and then I paint my dream."  Vincent Van Gogh

Spent all yesterday trying to do the glucose testing on poor Molly.  I stuck here here, I stuck her there and simply couldn't get any tiny blood droplets.  It all became so frustrating to both of us I gave up.  I don't have any trouble giving her the insulin shots but the testing is ridiculous so far.  We think we are noticing a difference and she is getting a bit more herself finally.  

In between sticking my dog with needles, I used my own bamboo needles to knit a bit between dog sessions.  I have a whole plastic bin full of leftover Koigu (poor me, eh?) that I love but none of it is enough to do much with, no full skeins, only wee balls of leftovers.  So by accident I found somebody on Ravelry who is making an afghan of the stuff by making double sided hexagons and joining them at the corners.  Hers looked really nice and she is stuffing each little puff with fiberfill but I am just sticking in a piece of flannel before I close the last side so it won't be too hot.  So far I have maybe 15 hexes and they look a bit wonky together so I'm not joining them until I have the full bunch of colors.  I got two done while waiting at my eye appointment yesterday. This is actually a perfect project to drag everywhere because I only need a 1" ball of yarn, three small dps, and a 1" square of filler.  And the cutter thing I use for clipping articles and takes no room AND is airplane friendly (though I could certainly cut a few main arteries with the thing before they wrestle it away...) 

A whole tub o' lace! (this doesn't show the whole bag of lace trims all rolled up and starched

and silks! And this doesn't show the several kids prints.

Bonanza Afternoon!  One of my friends here was helping a friend of hers clear out her house and she grabbed a huge bag of old lace and fabric to give me.  She stuck it in my back seat when she saw my car and I can't wait to get it to the studio today to paw through.  It's mostly the kind of stuff we all have in those bottom drawers that we mean to 'fix' and think we will use.  When one gets to a certain age this shit needs to be gone to clear our minds and make life simpler.  But for me, now that my house is pretty much clutter free, I LOVE still collecting as long as nobody gives it to me with that 'precious stuff' face that means they don't want me to cut anything.  I just don't tell 'em when I do.

  

"Send me your tired, your poor, your cluttered laces yearning to breathe free...

The wretched refuse of your teeming drawers, Send Them,

The Homeless Ripped Stained Stuff to meeeeee!"

Sung at my 6th grade graduation and  still ingrained.  How sick is that?

Cayce Zavaglia | Portrait and Process

Cayce Zavaglia does portraits in wools on linen.  Her background is a painter and she follows the same rules of portraiture here, building up layers of tiny stitches to imitate textures.  These blow me away and I know I've shown them before-  just can't find them so another time will do, right?  

and the reverse-  absolutely as wonderful and awe inspiring as the front!

How things happen:

I was looking for quilt tops and came across these amazing colorful pieces I originally thought were illustrations because they are so graphic.  Well wouldn't you know they are done by a team of graphic illustrators HERE!  Amazing color palette!  I blew them up as far as they would go and yup, they ARE made of fabric, I had thought it was a computer trickster at work, or maybe a REALLY good one who can add ripples.

 Hvass & Hannibal — Outline Artists   was set up in 2013 in response to a growing number of requests from a wide range of clients to commission original imagery for commercial projects. The Copenhagen-based duo created silkscreen prints, wooden sculptures and offset posters, beautifully and tangibly expressing data sets such as the probability theory or the registration of natural phenomena. Adding their own sensitivity to hard statistics, the multimedia designers imagine the data in bold colors, sometimes playing on traditional geometric shapes and at other times turning to more abstract imagery.

These may turn me from my 'safe' subdued colors with lotsa black, LOVE the complexity of design against the simple bright candy colors.  But don't ask me to copy those quilt tops!  I can't sew a straight line and have hidden that fact forever.

Well those used up all the color in my computer so I'll sign off with this instead of a squirrel today.  I have to go look at my lace haul.