wired

i'm wired! This is what i'm up to instead of studying. Got some wire from Fibrecrafts yesterday and couldn't refrain myself.
These are small samples, maybe beginner's luck but the material is behaving. i am aiming for distress, so i don't care for a little hole here and there. And i am excitedly planning all sorts of things with the outcome. Lace and wire? HMMM!

neki desu

The power of scrim

This week is almost a goner and between studying for an upcoming nihongo test i haven't had enough time to push the TIF work- in -progress. i transfered the image on cotton and was faced with some design decisions. Should i try to be as close to the original as possible or should i interpret freely? If being close to the original option wouldn't that be sort of painting by numbers? Does that make me uncomfortable?

Then color decisions too. i went for the DMC colors, but they did not resemble the colors i had worked with and based the preliminary designs on . Nor the outfit. Consequently i went ahead and kept going with the colors i had started working with. In my colourway i'm using DMC
3787 green and 3782 beige.
i am aware of the screen calibration and graphic card issue and think this should be addressed. i suggest that since Sharon is putting out the challenge she could give the color numbers either hex or rgb or Pantone . Then we'd all work with the same colors regardless of how they appear on the screen. Sharon? Am i giving you extra work? if so please ignore :) Would that facilitate the translation to DMC colors?? Other suggestions?

Another decision was using scrim (cheesecloth for USA folks) to unify the elements. Added some stitching for texture and cut out some parts exposing the stitching underneath and also the glued on cut up floss. But i still need something more and i'm stuck. The left hand area is visually commanding, me thinks. i should also remember not to let scrim wander off the edges of the piece because it then becomes a royal pain to photo or scan. Too bad because i really like those wispy edges :)

neki desu

more boro textiles

Woven scarf with a boro look. This was woven a year ago, before i was lured away from the loom by other textile pleasures. It is crepe wool in a very open plain weave. It was then wet finished thus creating ripples and ridges and then folded. tied and dyed.

neki desu

Taking it very very far

Japanese classes have taken over my life again. We are doing the subjunctive now and it is the most mind twisting way of making something simple very difficult. Today we spent the whole class stammering and forgetting particles and indicators.

And miss smartie pants here needed something quick and fun for this week's post on the TIF challenge. Went to my closet and although not my colorway, i had clothes in those colors so i could whip together an outfit. :) Is this taking it too further? All i can say to justify the exercise is that it opened my eyes to new combinations in my wardrobe. The beige is given by the shoes not the wall. That would have really been taking it way too far :)

Then feeling i really was taking the easy way out i sat down at the computer and worked with the colors creating a pattern for a printed fabric. At least in theory because i don't think it will ever materialize.
Well, now i have the weekend to translate last week's designs into fabric.

neki desu

this is fashion because i say so

Folks, this was a blanket.
It's a great medium weight felt sandwich one side black ant the other stone grey with parts of black peeking through. i fell madly in love with it and had visions of myself swaddled in it.
Very little of what i see in stores attracts me.I mean i still like Marc Jacobs ( do check his fall 007 collection), but there's a big problem with his clothes$$$$$.
And i'm much more into creating my style than following someone else's dictum :)

My husband, sweet soul, gave me the blanket for Christmas and coyly asked if i was going to walk around town like a Pashtun wrapped in a blanket. i thought the remark was hysterically funny, but he had a point there.
So i made up my mind to cut it up and sew something out of it. Looking through my patterns i found an old Vogue pattern, a seven eights length jacket in a rather timeless style. Got the sewing machine out and got down to it. i really wanted to make the jacket reversible taking advantage that the blanket itself was reversible. And wanted red zigzag stitching on the black, but it didn't work out because the seams were too bulky. As a result the garment went totally shapeless.

Therefore i 've settled for this look. There are no facings, only a zigzag stitch finishing the edges. i'm thinking about stitching around the black spots, or maybe stitching the whole number with straight stitch, thus creating the Japanese boro textile look that i like so much. Jude?

neki desu

Serendipitious TIF

i started working this week on the TIF with the intention of simplifying the photo a bit more, but other than that i was pretty much open. In other words i had no clear design plan. Working on the last photo erasing some sections to simplify it, i inadvertently selected a layer and pasted it as new. Liked it! liked it! Maybe because i'm currently going through a phase of simplifying and decluttering life and its environs the image spoke to me, so i decided to continue working on it.

Here i just added a color background.

And here i changed the background color and added some elements in light green. i like the two very short dark gree lines on the center left of the image.i think they provoke some tension in the image, although they might be unnecesary. Opinions?
i have to decide yet what textile treatment i'll give the image, but i'm almost certain that the background won't be light green. That for me would be a challenge :)

While at the computer i came up with 2 fun ideas for the challenge. Will blog about them next week.


neki desu

knitting 101

i was beginning to feel confident with the basic sitch- stocking is it called? and turned the page to lesson 2- using punch cards!!One can do many things in that lesson which help you hide knitting mistakes, how clever.Take the skip pattern. By using a card and pressing the two keys on the carriage i can automatically drop stitches! Just to think that i was doing that on my very own and feeling klutzy about it, well, well.

i was having a jolly old time, too good to be true, when the carriage started getting jammed. A jammed carriage is a highly stressful situation. Can't use brute force to move it because you can wreck the whole number.You have to turn the knob to the CR position and it breaks free from the knitting bed. Sort of.

The operation also means unraveling the the pass, controlling all that yarn that you suddenly have in front of you and keeping the card in coordination or the needle selection, thus the pattern, goes wonky. Ask me how i know.
Now i was getting jammed carriage in both directions, whereas at first it was just in one direction.
I was heading into desperation direction when my fairy godmother, working overtime poor soul, appeared with a checklist of suggestions.

Of all it appeared to be bent needles and what the heck, i went for it. How does one change the needles? It has to be a pretty simple operation because i refuse to believe bent needles only happen to me. Looked in the book. NADA!!trouble shooting page, NIET!! kept on turning pages NIENTE!! By the i was sweating, cold sweating i mean, thinking i'd have to send the Gizmo to the nearest repair post which happens to be in the UK.

Went for a walk and a Magners. A sense and sensibility walk.
Cold air clears heads and helps brain cells. Magners numb the senses. The sense of feeling incompetent, that is.
When i came back home i took the instruction book and went page by page. And there it was. Beginning in a corner of page 106 and continuing in 107 the instructions on how to change needles!! People are really slow, man. They start bending needles on page 106 in the how to shape garments lesson.
How accomplished and advanced i was, already bending needles in lesson 2, my, my.

Well i won't go into details of how to change needles because apparently it's common knowledge. It will only suffice to say that when the book says push them down there are various ways of doing so.

Changed needles and i am automatically dropping stitches, no effort.


neki desu

What to do with a digi printed piece of silk organza?

The one that didn't print crisply and has been lying around for years. Getting shuffled from one place to another. From the top drawer to the bottom one because i can't bring myself to throw away a piece of silk organza.

Recycle! turn a UFO into something else, something different because one has made changes in two years.

The silk organza print was a project for a submission to a juried show whose jury never saw. scanned a lace doily and assembled it with a fractal image that i created and then printed it.i Wasn't happy with the outcome so i dropped the project.
Last summer i was testing iron on transfers for an end of the year present to my Japanese classmates and i used the piece to test the transfer on. Figured that being a discard it wasn't going to get ruined. Done and moved on, yet i could not bear to throw the jinxed fabric away.

A couple of weeks ago i found the piece again and since it was a f.up i cut it up and used it ad a base for needlefelting. i liked what was happening to it so i stepped on the gas, ignoring the speed limit and went for a joy ride :)

This was the first one.
And here comes number two

My doubt is whether to tag this as a UFO or a WISP.

neki desu

here TIF 1

i decided to work on the Take it Further Challenge on a weekly basis and blog about the progress.This will give me time to think and develop the concept or colourway and still have time left for my other endeavors. At least it is my intention as of Jan 3rd.

For the first Tif i opted for the colourway because it has some greens and i've always have found it a difficult color to work with. The other part of the inspiration comes from Gunnel as she remarked on a comment to this post that the tulips looked like spring. Nice thought, the promise of spring days to come.

Double clicked on the colourway image and opened it in Photoshop. Then created layers
by selecting and copying parts of the image and assigning a color to each layer by using the flood fill tool. i also used textured background and added a very transparent color wash to it.

Next step was eliminating unwanted information, in other words flattening the colors and eliminating color areas.
And some portions of the photo were literally wiped out :) for the sake of composition and simplification.The textured background was also eliminated as this piece will be worked in a yet undecided textile form. But this will be next week's post.

i am still pondering whether the extra colors left, albeit being the same hue, but different values is some form of cheating. In other words should i just constrain the exercise to the proposed colouurway without further color additions?
What do you think? Opinions. please.

Oh and you can see the full sized photos here

neki desu

it was a very good year

Ok, ok, except for the last 2 months LOL. But 10 out of 12 isn't a bad record.
i guess it will go down in history, my personal history at least, as the year i broke studio isolation with a vengeance.
Came in contact with a fantastic crowd of creative, extremely generous, like minded, fun people thanks to the wonders of the Internet!

The year was also a year of learning techniques and exploring different mediums, yet keeping textiles as the focus. That was the good news. The not so good is that i wasn't able to produce a coherent body of work during the year just lots of stand alone pieces which makes me slightly uneasy because that's not the way i work. My system is approaching a theme and working on it until i exhaust it thus ending up with a coherent body of work.
A new approach to working in sight? On verra.

It was also the year of discovering my two extra thumbs while learning to stitch. i will have to sit and practice with patience and diligence all that i've learned in the TAST challenge thanks to Sharon B.
And the leap into needlefelting, something that has seduced me away from the loom with its instant gratification charm. It has also prompted me into recycling all those weaving samples using them as backgrounds and for low water immersion dyeing.

2007 will also be marked as the year of finally being able to get an indigo vat going, let's not forget that!! And trying my hand at kakishibuzome.

2008 holds lots of promises in the way of machine knitting and design exercises as i've signed up for Sharon B's challenge Take It Further while i wait for the summer to tackle aizome and kakishibuzome.

Only hoping that no more construction workers -god-forbid- get in the way :)

Thanks to all of you who have visited along the year and left comments of support.

best of the best,

neki desu