Carol and Leigh -- are you there?

Send me an email to  artwithaneedle@gmail.com  and I'll send you an ornament!

Ornaments -- still slogging away

I've been in the studio every day since Thanksgiving working on the ornaments.  Happy to report that after I spilled a glass of water all over my mat board, it dried without a trace.  I had a false start on the hanging apparatus -- made a handful with wire and then decided to use cord instead.

didn't like these hangers (sorry, no peeking)

cut them off

this is better

Now it's just a production line, cutting and pasting and punching and knotting. I have been amusing myself while working by watching the entire season of Dancing With the Stars, recorded through the fall but not touched until last week.  I have always felt confident that in the end one of the best dancers would win, despite the stubborn persistence of Bristol Palin or her awkward counterparts each season, whose fans vote them in the running long, long past their sell-by date.  But this year I am getting a bad feeling.

And for my own stubborn fans, if Carol and Leigh will send me your addresses, you'll be getting an ornament too!

Found poetry 47

Frustration over Christmas / thankful at Thanksgiving

Later this year than ever in the past, I have started grappling with the specifics of my Christmas ornaments.  I've had the general idea for the ornaments for several weeks, but in the flurry of activity of teaching, getting a solo show launched, and being sick for a week, I haven't actually sat down to work on them until Tuesday.  And it was a frustrating day.

First off, I couldn't buy mat board in any of the colors I had in mind, such as pale sage green, pale gray or pale yellow.  Settled for a gold, which is perfectly lovely, but not what I had in mind.  Couldn't decide which kind of glue to use -- YES! paste or glue stick.  Neither of them called out "Use me!!" Made a bunch of each one and waited to let them dry properly.

The last time I made ornaments using mat board I had a terrible time getting a hole punched through for the hanging cord.  I think I ended up using my industrial-strength hole punch and really leaning on it, which worked but gave me holes a lot bigger than I had wanted.  After that experience I purchased a set of heavy-duty paper punches which are supposed to drill neat little holes in three different sizes.  I forgot all about them, until miraculously a couple of days ago I came across them in a drawer while looking for something else.  Wow!  Serendipity!  Synchronicity!

So Tuesday I whipped out my new punches, found the right size, followed the directions and whapped them two or three times with hammer blows -- and the punch went through about half of the mat board.  Whapped some more with very little result.  Rooted around in a drawer and found a hole punch about the same size, which got me through the remaining layers, but "about the same size" also means "messy around the edges."  Futzed around with the punch for a while and got it a bit neater.

Wednesday was a slightly better day.  I figured out how to make the punch work better -- the very low-tech solution of positioning the board directly over the table leg so the table doesn't bend away from the blade when hit.  On the other hand, Wednesday was when I spilled a glass of water over my large uncut mat board.  Two steps forward, one step back.

I worked for a while on Wednesday while thinking about the issues yet to be resolved.  What size?  I had cut some two-inch squares and they seemed too small.  Then I cut some three-inch squares and they seemed too big.  Maybe two-and-a-half inches?  Maybe I need to incorporate paint into this process.  Beads?  Wire?  Linoleum printing?  If I didn't have to produce Thanksgiving dinner for nine people I could sit down and make a lot of progress today.

But let's be positive.  I am thankful that I have eight wonderful people to produce Thanksgiving dinner for.  I am thankful that I have 48 dear friends and family to make Christmas ornaments for.  I am thankful that my greatest worry this week has to do with paper punches instead of anything more serious.

As I do every year, I'd love to add one or two of my blog readers to the ornament list.  Leave a comment before Monday midnight and you might be the winner this year.  Trust me, by the time you get your ornament in the mail I will have figured out how to do it.

Crabby about pockets -- amen!

One of my art pals sent me links to a bunch of articles about pockets -- namely, rants about how the pockets in women's clothing are always much smaller than those in men's clothing.  I read them all and found myself getting madder the more I read.  Because they are so right!!

Read the best ones here, and here.

Fortunately those of us who know how to sew can remedy the situation.  I can't count the number of readymade garments that I have augmented with better pockets, or pattern-made garments that I have improved with more pockets.  Among my greatest hits was a pair of pants that I cut off to knee-length, then used the cut-off fabric to put huge cargo pockets on both thighs.

In my closet right now are a pair of jeans with the shallowest pockets I've seen in ages. 

I added five inches in length to the right-hand one just before I embarked on a trip (but never got around to doing the same with the other one).



And a suede-like shirt that had no pockets at all!  What were they thinking!!  Even if you carry a handbag, which I don't, where do you put a Kleenex or a Chapstick?

Fortunately the shirt had a horizontal seam right about where the top of a pocket should fall.  I opened the seam, added a big pocket in a matching batik palette, made a button loop out of the batik and used the extra button from the little plastic envelope.

Hah!  Outsmarted the product police!

Found poetry 46