peephole stones :: work in progress

when i'm at the beach, i love to look for stones with holes in them. i also love felting stones, tho' i do always have a pang of anguish over covering up my carefully-selected stone. so last night i decided to experiment with felting a stone with peepholes, so i could have the felt and still enjoy the stone.

i ran a couple of experiments - wrapping the stones, cutting holes and then felting. that doesn't work too well. you have to wrap the stone (use lisa's great tutorial), felt it a bit, so the felt is tight around the stone, then cut your holes and continue felting.

i got a bit fancy with this one, using two colors. i felted the orange around the stone first, then added the red, felted a bit and carefully trimmed the red layer away from the orange before they got too stuck together. i loved that the stone had a little hole started and i wanted it to show.

a couple of them came off the stones and i ended up with these little felty vessels instead. i'm going to play with them some more to see what they might become.

i'm also going to add some more embellishment (stitching, beads, painting on the stone) to these, so they're still works in progress. but i just had to share them already now. i feel like they're a breakthrough in making the felted stone notion my own. and they're getting me closer to a picture that's in my head. stay tuned.

i played a bit with my new inks yesterday as well, painting a few feather stones and even a bit of driftwood (the inks bleed on it in unexpected ways). i am madly in love with the paynes grey. the sun has gone again and there's a light sprinkling of snow on the ground, so it's a perfect day to stay inside with a cup of tea and play with felt and stones and ink.

the view from sunday night: making things and reading books

still playing with the transfer glue. although it's made for transfer of photos to fabric, i found it worked much better to transfer to paper - the fabric ones didn't turn out at all. my plan is to stitch on this one, ala the techniques that anne brodersen showed a few weeks ago. so far, i've just brushed it with beeswax (from our very own hives) to give it a bit more body. husband thinks i should leave it as it is, but i haven't decided yet if it's done.

in the spirit of experimentation, i decided also to try transferring onto a leaf. it's an old photo of little me! i'll have to see how it turns out tomorrow once it's dry.

it may be that a leaf is too fragile, but i like the idea of it.  it's all an experiment at this stage.

we made a bunch of felted stones last weekend and, using my fabulous friend lisa's tutorial, i've tried my hand at stitching on them, like she does (only she does it much, much better). it's fun, but difficult and gives me even more admiration for her amazing work. i love french knots and variegated thread, but on about every 5th knot i get a big tangle that looks really ugly, so i've got a long way to go on these. and besides, they're lisa's idea, so i would definitely not want to have any commercial gain with them, so they're just for me, unless i find my voice with them.

lisa wrote recently about her process of stitching the stones. i had a bit the same feeling, that i had no real idea what was going to happen when i began and that something just comes out. for lisa, the stitches echo nature, i think for me (and for sabin), they might be more a reflection of a mood. and one of them REALLY didn't work (i snipped it all out before photographing it, so i'm sparing you the sight of it).

this one was sabin's attempt - i love how bright and cheerful it is. i think it's the best one so far.

i also played with bright and cheery after seing sabin's. after taking the photos, i decided this one needed more french knots. this one started to go more in a me kind of direction, but i'm not there yet.

there's something about holding wool and the heaviness of the stone that's very appealing, soothing and meditative. and while i was working, an idea came to me, so i'm not quite done with these yet (stay tuned - it got dark and i couldn't execute the idea as of yet) - it involves sneaking into husband's workshop and using power tools!).

the last one i worked on today, i decided to cut a little window into it. i think sometimes that cutting into something i've made is the hardest thing for me. i really had to force myself to do it. at first, i saw this little fabric birdhouse in the window, but as i worked with stitching the raw edge, that changed a bit. i'm not sure where this one's going yet either, but it's just really nice to be feeling inspired and making things again. who knows? maybe i'll end up with a few stocking stuffers.

when i wasn't stitching or entertaining guests or staying up late drinking wine and laughing, i was reading - i've got four books on the go right now. errol morris' believing is seeing (observations on the mysteries of photography), salman rushdie's joseph anton, david whyte's crossing the unknown sea, and nicole krauss's great house. so something for every mood.

what did you do with your weekend?

thoughts from sunday afternoon

a splitting headache, brought on by teeth-grinding dreams of my former workplace. i hope those stop soon, but i suppose my brain is still processing and getting rid of the poison of that place. because poison is what it was. a truly diseased atmosphere.

spatterings of rain buffet the windows, followed by fleeting periods of sun.

in all a good day to stay inside on the couch, watching a new scandinavian cooking marathon on BBC lifestyle. they've all featured the earnest andreas viestad, with his fresh, clean norwegian look (as if he'd just wandered off a mountain) and his amusing but charming accent.

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i'm mourning that i've finished jonathan franzen's freedom. mourning a little bit how it turned out and simply sad that it's over.  good books are like that, aren't they? like a friend you don't want to see leave. i may have to dig through the boxes of books and find the corrections so i can reread it and wallow a little bit more in that very midwestern sensibility. i realize franzen lives in new york, but he can't really escape his midwestern roots.

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it was quite amusing watching the eurovision song contest last evening and following the conversation about it on twitter. most of the entrants were nothing short of heinous and azerbeijan won, leaving me wondering if i should have paid more attention in geography class (not that we had that in the US, since we're brought up to believe we're the only country on earth). but i honestly didn't think azerbeijan was in europe.

if you're not familiar with the eurovision song contest, i think the closest we have in the US is the miss america pageant - where costumed people of limited talent perform and pretend to have ambitions of bringing peace to the world. true to form, the azerbeijani winners have expressed their wish to "bring europe together" (apparently with central asia if my map is correct).

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husband is preparing the barn next door so we can bring matilde home and discovered the source of the strange poo i had seen near the cats' dish. it seems our little hedgehog has moved into the barn as well and has been helping herself to the cat food! she had made a little nest underneath some plastic tarps. husband uncovered it, but has built her a new little more protected spot. meanwhile, little penelope (as i've taken to calling her), curled into a ball and held as still as could be. it's amazing the way they don't run.

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so i leave you to nurse my headache and work a little bit more on my felted stones, which is about all i can manage as long as the headache persists. enjoy the rest of your sunday. if i can get rid of this headache, i will too.