I said I wouldn't...

...but I will, post pictures of my ceramics experiments - at least of some of the better pieces. These were made in pottery class using low-fire clay.

Bottom of a slab-built bowl, hand-painted in majolica style with lead-free glazes. The white glaze could have been a little thicker. More coats next time!

The top of this same bowl was imprinted with a floral design by pressing eyelet fabric into the clay after the slab was made and shaped. (Evidently I have to use textiles in everything!) White glaze was then washed into the design and the piece was coated with a clear glaze.

First attempt at beads. These have one coat of "pottery patina" glaze. The grooves were made by pressing with wooden skewers after the beads were rolled into shape by hand. I am fond of the melon shape.

Same pottery patina glaze but the word "imagination" has been imprinted on the bead using stamps made for metals. I think the bead is too small for words, and the imprinting would better on a pendant.

The round pendant was a test to see how using buttons and jewelry components would work for making designs. This piece was just a "play-around" item, not a finished one.

Oh, by the way, this background is my new favorite for close-up photos. It's just a piece of scrapbook paper, but I like the subtle pattern in soft browns and golds.

I have only one more pottery class, so I must have all my items glazed and ready for final firing by the end of next Wednesday evening. I'll post pictures of the best pieces after that, which should include more beads and two more slab-built bowls, provided that they survive the kiln (crossing fingers!).

Is it a scarf or...

...a table runner? Well, you decide. It was intended as a scarf, but as I look at pictures of it, my latest project could almost be a table runner in southwestern style. It is vaguely reminiscent of a serape to me, or am I just odd. (Don't answer that!)

In my last post I wrote about the construction of this, let's call it a scarf, which was woven on my Ashford rigid heddle Knitter's Loom. The warp is a deep blue 5/2 perle cotton, a free yarn from the Weaver's Guild stash, and the weft is a white and blue synthetic chenille of unknown fiber content, which was received through Freecycle. After receiving feedback that I should add some stripes, I decided to go ahead and insert six rows of a multicolored, nylon ribbon yarn every seven inches. This resulted in six widely-spaced, narrow bands of rainbow-like color punctuating the denim blue which formed the bulk of the piece.

The finished length is 53" (without fringe) and it is 8 1/2" wide; the twisted fringe is 3" long. If I had actually planned this project, I would have made it longer and more narrow, but such is life at the loom.

Hand-twisted fringe. It took me a little time to get the hang of making warp ends into fringe and it was time-consuming, especially since the warp was a fine 5/2 cotton yarn. The process was made easier by taping the scarf to a gridded sewing table cutting board for consistent measurement of fringe ends, and by using a beader's knotting tweezers to get the knot at just the right location each time.

I am somewhat disappointed with the drape of this piece. You would think the blue chenille weft would have made it soft and flowing, but that was not so. I think the cotton warp made it a little stiff. But did I mention that the warp yarn was FREE? Yes, sometimes projects are determined by the materials at hand and we just need to accept the results without judgment. Yet another life lesson learned through crafting!

So what's next in my fiber adventures? Well, I still need to weave those twill dish towels that are idling on my floor loom, and I have a bag of that pink and yellow wool-mohair roving to be spun. After that, perhaps I might try weaving a scarf on the Ashford using my latest handspun yarn if it is strong enough for the warp. If I ply it, I think it will do. And tomorrow is our local weaving guild's annual meeting with a potluck lunch, a fashion show, and - oh, oh - a silent auction with all kinds of fiber-related tools and yarn goodies. I know I shouldn't, but I'll bring my checkbook anyway. One never knows when a bargain might appear and call my name. I suppose I could put my hands over my ears so I wouldn't hear the siren call of crafting supplies, but then how would I hold my potluck lunch plates? ;-)

Sprouting

It's about time I got back to blogging, and a lot of other things that have been in deep hibernation these past few months. Lots of seedlings have been sprouting here, and I'm not just talking about young plants. Ideas have also been growing in the back of my mind. Some idea-seeds have fallen on fertile soil and are taking root, while others never broke out of their protective shells to find nourishment and grow. Alas, such is the precarious life of a seed. Here's a quick look at what is sprouting at the moment.

"Hello, I hope to be a grown-up tomato plant some day."

At this time of year, the subtle caresses of spring sunshine and the melodious songs of mating-hopeful birds awaken the gardener in many of us. I finally stopped hitting the snooze button on this seasonal alarm clock and started some vegetable and flower seeds in flats indoors under fluorescent lights. In an effort to pare down my starts to manageable levels this year, I limited my indoor veggie plantings to tomato, pepper, broccoli, basil and celery seeds. The rest of the seeds will be going into outdoor beds very shortly (weather permitting). In previous years I started too many seeds indoors and then struggled to pot them up into larger containers and keep them under the lights until it was time to transplant into the garden. Inevitably I had to give away lots of plants...not a bad thing, but I felt the need to be less overwhelmed this year.

My husband has been able to arrange my indoor plant lighting so that it is powered (mostly) by energy collected from two small solar panels stationed in the yard, next to the greenhouse.

On the crafting front, I have been weaving! It's only taken me about...um, 16 years, to really pursue my interest in creating textiles via a loom. I may be slow, but I get to almost everything eventually! Thanks to a wonderful "weaving buddy" and teacher from the Weaver's Guild of Boston, my Leclerc Nilus floor loom is now "dressed" (yarns put on and threaded) and ready for action. Looking back at my previous post on the loom's arrival, I realized that it had been almost a year since the loom came into my life. I was feeling a little guilty every time I passed it, sitting alone and untouched, in the corner of the bedroom. But in March of this year, a switch in my inner workings finally flipped on and I found myself calling the Guild for help in learning to weave. A teacher came to my home and spent six hours showing me how to plan a project, measure out the yarns, get them onto the loom, thread the heddles which are attached to the harnesses, "sley" or thread the reed which also is used to beat the weave in place, and finally, to tie the yarns onto the loom where weaving takes place. Oh yes, and then there is the weaving process itself to learn. Making textiles is a complicated process!

While I began to work at home on my own floor loom, I decided I needed to repeat the "dressing" process again so that it would be clearer in my mind, which was reeling from the input of too many details in too short a time. So I jumped into a weaving class at the Guild which was taught by the same wonderful mentor that had come to my home. Taking the class really helped to imprint the weaving process a little further onto my brain cells. I also encountered a problem or two which served to teach me even more about what not to do; our mistakes often teach us much more than our successes do. At the end of three weeks, all that leaning over a borrowed Louet table loom and determined concentration resulted in my being the proud owner of my first handmade textile: a yellow, green and white, plaid, cotton dish cloth/table runner. (It started out as a dishcloth but I can't bear to use my first woven child to wipe up anything messy! So it has graduated to a table decoration.)

Both warp and weft are 5/2 perle cotton

I was fairly pleased with this first completed weaving project. Of course, the selvages are a little uneven, but I was told that it might take years of practice to get these right, and even then, they might not be perfect. One can always stitch the sides rather than leave them exposed; sewn hems cover a multitude of errors!

The pattern is a plaid, but I learned that there is much more to a pleasing plaid than meets the eye. Apparently there is a certain mathematical set of proportions required to create a balanced plaid or stripe pattern. My teacher explained that Italian mathematician Leonardo Pisano, better known as Fibonacci, and his sequence of Fibonacci Numbers provided us with a simple way to plot out stripes and plaids in a way that mimicked balanced patterns found in nature, thus making them pleasing to view. I admit, my eyes grew wide and a feeling of panic washed over me as she jotted down lots of numbers and looked at me for some glimmer of understanding. In the end, I got the general gist of the concept but I will rely on others to fully explain how these number patterns are calculated and used. A couple of useful sites about this topic are:
http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com/2007/05/my-fascination-with-fibonacci.html
http://www.fuzzygalore.biz/articles/fibonacci_seq.shtml

My current project, still in process, is to make fabric yardage for a handbag or two (my current plan, always subject to change) using my new rigid heddle Ashford knitter's loom, a lucky, discounted find that I had purchased on eBay earlier this year. There are so many types of looms and I would love to try them all at some point. The rigid heddle loom is different than the floor and table looms that I have been using in that it does not have multiple harnesses that move the heddles up and down to create a complex pattern. The rigid heddle has one reed which keeps the yarns separate, acts as a beater, and is moved up and down to create an opening called a "shed" through which a shuttle is passed, drawing the weft yarns to cross the warp yarns, thus creating a plain over-under weave. On a harnessed loom, the harnesses are moved up and down to create the shed while the reed is used more as a beater. (For more about weaving and looms, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom, http://mktag.org/projects/cassandraChoosingLoom/content.html, and http://www.fibrecrafts.com/resource/fact_file/looms/types_loom.asp)

Four feet made so far. Only five more to go!

The Ashford Knitter's Loom has several great features such as portability, a wide range of reeds including one with large eyes that accepts handspun or bulky yarns, and the ability to fold down into its custom carry bag. It was easy to take to class, where I put on yarn, then closed it with yarns in place to take home for further weaving. My loom came with a matching floor stand which is useful for holding the loom when no table is available against which to lean the loom while working.

What I am weaving:
Plain weave
Warp is an older cone of Maysville 8/4 cotton carpet warp in natural.
Weft is Schachenmayr Nomotta Safari; 35% cotton, 20% viscose, 15% flax, 15% acrylic, 15% polyester - a blue-gray and natural toned boucle made in Italy and received from a generous Freecycler (thank you!)

My Ashford is a 20" wide loom but my actual weaving width measures about 18".

This combination of yarns is making an interesting texture. I wonder how it will look and feel when washed?

At the last weaving class, my teacher showed me how to use an inkle loom and she put the notion in my head that, if I had one, I could make matching straps for bags made from my handmade fabric. Hmmm...dangerously interesting idea! When the Guild holds its silent auction next month I might be lucky enough to get a bargain inkle.

Lest you think I have abandoned jewelry-making, I am still slowly making a few new pieces here and there, trying to catch up on the backlog of designs I started and have strewn about my work table. I am hoping to achieve some sort of balance between jewelry creation, weaving and gardening in the coming months. I find it incredibly easy to come up with project ideas for all these pursuits but very difficult to follow through on those ideas in any organized way. If anyone has found a solution to this problem I would love to hear it!

Hearts and Flowers Necklace

Tiger Lily Bracelet

Internet Blog-In: CPSIA

If you haven't seen or read about the upcoming February implementation of a new law called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act or CPSIA, then I'd like to help spread the word about how this ill-designed law will negatively impact all small businesses and crafters who sell items that could be used by children under 12. The CPSIA is supposedly designed to remove children's items containing lead and phthalates from the marketplace. Understandably, no one wants lead and harmful toxins in their children's toys or clothing, but this law punishes the wrong people. Extensive and expensive testing of individual products will now be required of all manufacturers, including the small home handcrafter. This is retroactive, meaning even existing inventories must either be tested to be within compliance, or items must be removed from sale, and/or destroyed.

While large companies producing toys and clothes on assembly lines in batches by the thousands might have the money to pay for testing each batch, the individual crafter who carefully and lovingly makes one item at a time would be hard-pressed to pay for testing each and every handmade stuffed animal, child's sweater, book or wooden toy. Only large mass-marketers will be able to comply, further limiting the consumer's choices for obtaining clothing and toys for their children and grandchildren. A better plan would have been to make manufacturers of raw materials provide certification of lead and phthalate content so small businesses could assure their supplies were safe to use without having to perform prohibitively expensive testing at their level. And not only are small handcrafters and manufacturers required to comply, but sellers of used and vintage goods that could be used by children must not sell any items that may contain the banned substances. Although they are not required to test their items, these vendors must rely on their judgment to remove suspect items from their shelves; a difficult task at best, and likely to drastically curb sales of recycled and used goods.

Now is the time for every concerned parent and consumer to voice their opinions before the law finally takes effect. Below is a protest letter written by two Etsy shop owners, Chichiboulie and Winklepots, to be posted on participating blogs on Wednesday, January 28, as part of an internet "blog-in" (an electronic version of a sit-in), to protest the upcoming implementation of the CPSIA law. The complete list of blogs involved can be found on the originating Etsy thread, http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6013238.

Here is their letter:

As parents and concerned citizens I’m sure most of us at one time or another have been confronted with the question of lead poisoning. But have you asked yourself what your government is doing to protect your children from lead contained in toys? The answer? They're banning toys, taking books from schools and libraries, hurting low income families, killing entrepreneurial spirit and risking putting the economy in an even greater depression than we've seen in decades. I'd like to introduce you to their solution: the CPSIA.

Do you know about the CPSIA? No? Then I ask you to take a few minutes to find out about it.

The CPSIA stands for Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, a new set of laws that will come into effect on 10 February, 2009 and will impact many, many people in a negative way. Make no mistake, this is very real. View it for yourself. If Forbes, the American Library Association and numerous other media are paying attention, perhaps you should too.

How will these new laws affect you? Well, here are a few examples:

To the Parents of Young Students:
Due to the new law, expect to see the cost of school supplies sky rocket. While those paper clips weren't originally intended for your student to use, they will need to be tested now that your 11-year-old needs them for his school project. This law applies to any and all school supplies (textbooks, pencils, crayons, paper, etc.) being used by children under 12.

To the Avid Reader:
Due to the new law, all children's books will be pulled from library and school shelves, as there is no exemption for them. That’s okay though, there's always television. Our children don’t need to learn the love of reading after all. Article from the American Library Association http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=1322

To the Lover of All Things Handmade:
Due to the new law, you will now be given a cotton ball and an instruction manual so you can make it yourself since that blanket you originally had your eye on for $50 will now cost you around $1,000 after it's passed testing. It won't even be the one-of-a-kind blanket you were hoping for. Items are destroyed in the testing process making one-of-a-kind items virtually impossible. So that gorgeous hand-knit hat you bought your child this past winter won’t be available next winter.

To the Environmentalist:
Due to the new law, all items in non-compliance will now be dumped into our already overflowing landfills. Imagine not just products from the small business owners, but the Big Box Stores as well. You can't sell it so you must toss it. Or be potentially sued for selling it. You can't even give them away. If you are caught, it is still a violation.

To the Second-Hand Shopper:
Due to the new law, you will now need to spend $20 for that brand new pair of jeans for your 2-year old, rather than shop at the Goodwill for second hand. Many resale shops are eliminating children's items all together to avoid future lawsuits.

To the Entrepreneur:
Due to this new law, you will be forced to adhere to strict testing of your unique products or discontinue to make and/or sell them. Small businesses will be likely to be unable to afford the cost of testing and be forced to close up shop. Due to the current economic state, you'll have to hope for the best when it comes to finding a new job in Corporate America.

To the Antique Toy Collector:
Due to the new law, you'd better start buying now because it's all going to private collection and will no longer be available to purchase. “Because the new rules apply retroactively, toys and clothes already on the shelf will have to be thrown out if they aren't certified as safe.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123189645948879745.html

To the American Economy:
Already struggling under an economy that hasn’t been this weak in decades, the American economy will be hit harder with the inevitable loss of jobs and revenues from suppliers, small businesses and consumers. The required testing is far too costly and restrictive for small businesses or individuals to undertake.

To the Worldwide Economy:
Due to this new law, many foreign manufacturers have already pulled out of the US market. You can imagine the impact of this on their businesses.

If you think this is exaggerating, here is a recent article from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/16/cpsia-safety-toys-oped-cx_wo_0116olson.html

And for those of you prepared to be stupefied and boggled, The New Law http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/cpsia.html


So what can the average person do? Contact your local congressional or senatorial representative, sign a petition, tell friends, blog about it!

For more information:
Handmade Toy Alliance
http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/

Ways to contact your local governmental representatives:
Congress
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
phone numbers
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/phone_numbers.tt?show=hill_phone
Senators
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Links to Petitions:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/economicimpactsofCPSIA/index.html
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/handmadetoys/