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Flower Basket Shawl #2

After finishing the baby blanket, gift knitting continued with the second Flower Basket Shawl in a series of three (if you recall). This FBS is destined for my mother, who just informed me that it arrived safe and sound.

The yarn (Cherry Tree Hill Cascade) was really lovely with this pattern, but then again, what lace pattern wouldn’t benefit from being knit with hand-dyed reeled silk? Seriously, though, the yarn was soft and shiny, and blocked out beautifully, and there was enough left over from that one hank that I could almost make another FBS from it (though I might play it safe and make a skinny lace scarf instead).

I have gotten a start on the third FBS, which needs to be finished in January. It is in a lovely deep shade of Cherry Tree Hill Glitter Alpaca, and coming right along.

Floofy Scarves

Finally, here are a few floofy novelty scarves I’ve made recently. The first is the birthday scarf I made for myself from Trendsetter Jupiter, back in October.

Most recently, I knit two basic fuzzy scarves from Trendsetter Aura Print, both gifts made for my mother to distribute. They were each made with 1 skein of the yarn, and 23 sts on #10.5 needles in garter.

I do have one other completed project since my last knitting update, but since it is a sort of Christmassy surprise, I will wait another day or two to post about it.

I’m outta here… off to PDX!

My apologies! It’s been quite a while since I’ve written in with a knitting update, primarily due to laziness over formatting photos. Since I have now accumulated enough material for numerous posts, I’ll spread them out a bit.

Cable Scarf Set

Remember the chunky baby alpaca yarn from Yarn Garden? It has transformed into a lovely cabled scarf and ear cozy set, which I have worn almost every day since finishing. I maximized my use of the 2 skeins I had by starting with the headband (keeping in mind the possibility of turning it into a hat later on), and then working the scarf as a shorter keyhole scarf.

(Depending on your monitor, you may or may not be able to see the texture of these items through the dark coloring. I can at home and can’t at work.)

I made up the pattern myself, and am extremely pleased with the results, which used almost every bit of the yarn (I had just a few inches left in scraps afterwards), and combined to make a very warm and functional set of accessories. The headband scrunches over the ears and neck for warmth and stretches over the forehead for coverage; and my usual ponytail isn’t mooshed underneath. The scarf is warm and thick, and stands up around my neck to keep out drafts, but lays flat under my coat, and the keyhole—which is worked to look like a separation of the cable stitches—keeps it securely in place without needing to wrap it or tie it on (which would have been unspeakably bulky with the thick yarn and ribbing).

Despite my sensitive skin, I have absolutely no problem wearing this baby alpaca against my neck and ears. It is extraordinarily soft, warm, and squishable.

Baby Blanket

Next, I finished the baby blanket for my foster brother’s son, who was born on November 28. It turned out well, though the finishing process for this pattern is extremely involved and tedious. 16 squares, 4 colored contrast strips, and a lace edging with mitered corners—just imagine all the ends I had to weave in afterwards! Still, in a twist of fate, my mom and I had the good fortune to choose the exact color of the baby’s room, and the blankie is already in use, so it was all worthwhile.

Check back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of today’s post—shot off quickly before going up to the airport to get Jeremy!! Whee!

The Year of the Rooster is rapidly approaching, and I have spent this past week working on a linocut for the annual Baren Forum New Year’s Card Exchange. This will be my first year participating, and I am already having fun getting little printed treasures in the mail every so often.

I chose to base my image on a rooster silhouette of my grandmother’s. She is a very talented artist herself, and a year or two ago gave me some plastic templates she created for blind embossing. One was a rooster’s profile, and I knew right away I wanted to use it for my print. Unfortunately, it is too large for the card exchange, so I shrunk the image on a copier and used that silhouette as the basis for my plates.

I’m always interested in experimenting, so I originally thought I would do a ghost-carbon thing, but it didn’t give the effect I wanted with my plates, so I adjusted the plan. (I still plan to give the ghost-carbon thing another shot for Print Australia’s SSNW—Southern Summer Norther Winter—Mini-Print Exchange, so I’ll describe the process then if it works out.) One plate was the basic silhouette of the rooster, the other a detail plate of feathers and texture. I ended up printing the detail plate in green first, which looks kind of neat and abstracted. Now I am blind embossing the silhouette over that for a subtle textural outline that you only see from certain angles.

The prints are still damp enough to transfer a bit of pigment to the blind emboss plate, and when I cleaned it by printing off onto scrap paper last night, I really liked the effect. So I’m doing some incidental ghost prints as a separate edition during the blind emboss. Actually, it might be fun to try a little series of animal silhouettes using this technique.

It was a bit beyond the camera’s ability to capture the embossing, so you’ll just have to take my word for that one. At any rate, here is the completed print.

It’s hard to believe that the final week of classes is upon me. I’m pretty much caught up with my work. There is still some painting that I need to finish, but I’ve pretty well finished the rest of my projects. Here’s a peek at some of things I’ve been working on in the last week.

First up is a drawing for my Composition and Design class. It’s a synthetic composition (basically that just means that the elements were drawn from disparate sources) of three figures. The inspiration for the work comes from the Iliad. There is a scene at the beginning of the work that I’ve always liked. Agamemnon decides to take the slave-girl of Achilles for himself. Achilles becomes angry at this and is about to kill Agamemnon, when Athena appears behind Achilles, pulls him back by the hair and convinces him not to kill Agamemnon. There are many different ways of interpreting this scene, from an allegory of law to the virtues of men and the virtues of women. But my favorite is seeing the three as the id, ego and superego.

At any rate, I wanted to try my hand at composing figures from the imagination. I know that John Jacobsmeyer is going to complain about my anatomy, but I still feel that I learned a great deal from the process. The figures of Achilles and Athena were done from imagination. The Agamemnon figure was done from a model.

This past Friday, I spent pretty much the entire day working on a cast drawing for my Structural Drawing class. Frank Porcu taught me how to render… I’ve learned so much in his class. Can’t wait for his Anatomical Drawing class next semester. The drawing is in vine charcoal. It could use some more work, but there isn’t really time to finish it properly. The leg in the lower right corner was drawn by Frank (in about 10 minutes, I might add).

As I mentioned, there is still quite a bit of painting left to finish. We were assigned a self-portrait. I’m using the Venetian method. Here I’ve painted in the dead-layer, added the green velatura and the yellow glaze. I need to go back in and paint in some highlights and add some body to the light masses and of course paint in the hair. (Yes, I do have a beard at the present, and yes, Julie has made me promise to shave it before I get back to Salem. )

I should have more time after next weekend to post more about the philosophy and some of the technical aspects of what I’ve learned this past semester.

– Jeremy

Christmas must be closing in. The Star Trees are now all lit up when I arrive at campus in the dim morning, and when I arrived today, I discovered that campus had been further decorated for the season with tinsel garlands on railings and ornaments and stockings on bare tree branches.

At lunchtime today I will be participating in the Lessons and Carols choir for the second time. As an announcement for the event states, Lessons and Carols is “based on a service from Kings College, Cambridge, alternating nine biblical passages (read by representatives of various parts of the campus and community), congregational singing of familiar carols, and anthems sung by an ad hoc choir of faculty, staff, and students.” The music was once sung by formal WU choirs, but a few years back, they decided to make an evening event of it and charge for admission. Now the Lessons and Carols service at convocation is manned with a volunteer choir instead, on only about four hours of practice time.

Last night (after choir practice, yoga, and a trip to the store for about 25 lbs of baking supplies to lug home on foot), I was up until midnight getting a start on baking Christmas cookies, and will be revisiting the same project tonight. The cookies I baked last night were a new recipe to me, and I think they’ll go into the regular rotation—ultra-fudgy and not difficult to make. The recipe is here. They don’t really rise or spread, and they definitely need a few minutes to cool on the cookie sheet before attempting to remove them; otherwise you end up with a delicious, fudgy MESS.

Tonight I bake loaves of eggnog bread and pumpkin bread for a holiday party at the library, and hopefully a few batches of the Russian teacakes and date-nut pinwheels chilling patiently in the frig.

PS: 9 days and counting…

Some of you may know that I have become very interested in bookbinding and repair in recent months, thanks to the opportunity I have had since spring of doing bookmending for Hatfield Library. I took a basic repair workshop at Portland State University this past August, and have read several books on the subject, but was eager for further advancement in my studies.

This past month, I began Saturday sessions with Max Marbles, a local bookbinder who works out of Mission Mill in Salem. I’ve learned quite a lot already, even just through watching him work, that I am beginning to apply to my library mending. This past weekend I got to see him do blind embossing on leather for a title onlay, and helped do cosmetics on the pastedowns and flys of a book damaged by a previous strapping tape “repair.”

The previous weekend I got to make my very first book, and I finally have a photo of it. This is a single-signature sewn binding with 80 pages (40 leaves, 20 folios) with a simple cloth cover. I did everything myself: cutting, folding, trimming, and punching the leaves; laminating the cover and fly with marbled paper, and dying the bookcloth to the shade I wanted; and sewing the binding. It’s just a small book (measures about 3.5″x5″), but sturdy and functional, and—I think—lovely in its simplicity.

As my studies with Max progress, I may be making several other small books with more complex constructions, to familiarize myself thoroughly with the anatomy of a book, so stay tuned for updates on the bookbinding front.

We are really starting to hit crunch time. I’m going to keep this brief, as it is already past midnight and this is first chance that I’ve had to be on the computer. Really I should be spending the time writing my paper, but I wanted to post some pictures here…

Most of these are continuations of earlier works or are self-explanatory.

We are working on a second figure painting… this time using an a la prima technique. I’ll explain it more next week. (It’s all based on inverted compliments).

Here’s a preview of another painting that I’ve just started. This is the first painting that I’ve done that feels like it will be a painting and not just a drawing done with color.

Back to work…

– Jeremy

Who cares about Christmas? In two weeks I get to see my sweetheart.

(I’ll post a proper entry soon… promise!)

-Julie