(i carry it in my heart)

 On Saturday I attended a paper making and valentine printing workshop at the Soybean Press. This is the press that I took my students to in the fall when we visited the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois. They have a new initiative called Fresh Press that is researching ways to make paper from agricultural waste. We got to make heart shaped paper (natch) for valentines and then use their type to set valentine messages on paper that they had prepared for us.

We made paper from recycled cotton pulp. You can see the big vats of water and pulp that we used to pull our heart shape pieces of paper. Once a bunch of pieces of paper are pulled and stacked between layers of felt, they go into a press that squeezes all of the water out of them (I saw it go up to 2,000 pounds of pressure), and then into a drying box. The finished paper is so soft and lovely, I just want to keep fondling my finished valentines. I would like to figure out a way to hang one of them in a way that shows off the edges.

In a week, I will be working with the artists at the press to do a four day class for my high school students. We will make our paper on Tuesday, set our type on Wednesday, and then hopefully print a folio of their writing on Thursday and Friday.

I wish I had taken the photos in this post. They are all taken by Eric Bensen, one of the two artist/researchers behind Fresh Press. The line on my valentine is from this e.e. cummings poem. It’s one of my favorites.

What is the Up?

This blog is nearing a year old (2/23/11 was my first post). When I started the blog I promised myself that I wasn’t going to impose any rules about how often I post, make myself feel bad about not posting, write long posts about why I haven’t been posting, or keep blogging past the time when I was enjoying it. Now that I am almost a year into this project, and have been absent more than present in this space since the beginning of the new year, my resolve is being tested.

The truth, for me, is that life happens sometimes in a way that doesn’t leave much space for creativity. Or the space is so small, timid and rare, I don’t want to point it out to the world, lest it run away. I’m in one of those places now–when work and life and family seem to be taking up all the available oxygen in the room. I have faith that this too shall pass and that I’ll be back soon with creativity to spare.

Until then, I hope you are well and furiously making lots of wonderful things.

Slow Crafting

Do you know the slow food movement? I seem to be in the midst of a slow craft moment these days. Inspired by selfsewn’s Rose Star Block Party, I spent a day doing some English Paper Piecing, but after about 8 hours, I still don’t have much to show.

 I cut out fabric pieces for two stars, and have basted all of them to their paper patterns, but haven’t gotten far with the whip stitching together. I don’t have a specific project in mind or a deadline on these so they are only being worked on when they call my name.

I’ve also chosen my theme for the Hoop Up! Stitch & Send swap and am starting on my inspiration piece for that. My theme will be images of reading drawn from vintage children’s illustrations.  I found a treasure trove of images in this set on flickr. I received a lap stand for Christmas that I’m testing out with this project. So far it has been very nice to work with sitting at a table, I haven’t tested it in my lap yet though.

I’ve started a honey cowl with some lovely 50/50 merino/silk yarn that I’ve had on hand for a couple of years. It is a very easy project to work on while chatting with others or chaperoning a high school dance (as I did last night). I also finished this feather and fan scarf, which had been done on my needles for months and only needed to be cast off and blocked.

It’s been cold and grey and very busy at work recently and I’m enjoying working on projects by hand without any deadlines. There are days when I feel like I should be producing more, although for what or whom, I have no idea.  The truth is that so much of my mental energy is being used at work right now that I don’t have a lot of space left for my own creative projects. I’m trying to accept that for now and know that these things are cyclical. In the mean time I’m knitting and stitching when I can and reading a lot more, burrowed into my down comforter with the space heater on.

How are you spending the dark part of the year?

New Year, New Stairs

When my spouse and I first moved into our split-level house, there was mauve carpet on these stairs leading to the main level. The previous owner had cats, and I’m deathly allergic. We ended up having to take the carpet out earlier than we had intended (read, budgeted for) so that I could breath in the house and were never happy with the way the stairs looked. Because they had been covered in carpet, the risers were full of nail holes and other dings and scratches that no amount of paint could cover.

We found ourselves with unexpected extra days of vacation this winter break and decided it was time to tackle the stairs. We had discussed building entirely new stairs, new risers, or false fronts for the risers, but finally settled on filling in the nicks in the original risers with wood putty and covering them with paintable wall paper from Lowe’s.  It took some concentration to cut the wallpaper to the right size (measure twice, cut once and all), but we managed that task and made a decision about color the first night.

wall paper prepped stairs

Once the stairs were prepped and we had decided on a robin’s egg blue for the background, we went to the amazing Community Fab Lab at the University of Illinois (trust me, the fab lab is way better than their website) where a former student of mine happened to be working and helped us print out the numbers 1-7 in both red and white vinyl and in two different fonts (total cost, $2). The next morning we gave the stairs two coats of paint and, when it was dry, moved on to the numbers.

finding mid-point of numbers

We were nervous about how to position the numbers so that they would look like they lined up (I was a fan of these stairs, but my spouse is a little more aligned than that). We decided on a distance from the wall (8″) and a distance from the stair below (3″) where we wanted the middle of each number to hit. I then marked the midpoint of each number and we commenced with a complicated measure, attach post-it note triangle on stair, try to hit post-it note with the number game. As you will see later, we ended up removing these original numbers and were much more relaxed applying them the second time.

late night fiddly number application

We lived with the blue stairs with red numbers for a couple days, but weren’t completely happy with them. They didn’t feel finished and it took us a few days to figure out what they needed.

blue and red somehow didn’t seem complete

About this time my spouse, Jay, started telling people we were inspired by Steve Zissou, which made me think we should add the yellow we had bought for the stringers (the side wall that is cut to fit the stairs) to the main stairs so we took off the red numbers, masked  a six inch rectangle on each stair, and painted it yellow.

masking for yellow paint

Once we had our yellow stripe, the only step left was to reapply the red vinyl numbers (which were surprisingly resilient). This time we eye-balled the application–neither of us have much experience with vinyl decals and transfer paper and when we first put the numbers on we wanted everything to be absolutely perfect before we pushed them down. This time, we knew that they could be removed and reapplied without too much effort, so we tacked a couple points on each number, stepped back to evaluate, tweaked their position a few times, and then pressed them into place.

finished stairs

The vinyl seems like it will stand up like a champ and the wallpaper seems a pretty safe bet as well for durability. I’m most concerned about the paint getting scuffed and wonder if it is worth a coat of polyurethane to protect our work.

basement stairs

While we were at it, we put the white numbers on the basement stairs. We both like how clean the white and blue look together so we didn’t add an additional stripe to these ones.

2011

I just tallied up the books I read on goodreads and realized I’ve read 65 books in 2011. Then I clicked over to flickr to make this mosaic of what I made in 2011 and realized that the maximum allowed 36 photos wouldn’t cover everything I’ve made this past year. I’ve written 85 blog posts since February of 2011–when this blog was unleashed upon the world–and all of this on top of working my full-time job, feeding a family of four, volunteering, visiting family, and maintaining friendships. Somewhere along the line I got it into my head that I have a tendency to be lazy, but when I look at the numbers, it’s hard to see where I got that idea.

Some trends I notice about the things I made last year:

• I’m moving more and more towards hand work–embroidery on projects gave way to English paper piecing which gave way to hand quilting.
• I have a preference for the immediate gratification of small projects versus big quilts.
• I’m gaining a better sense of what my own style and taste are, rather than trying to make what I am seeing everyone else make in the colors and fabrics they are also using.

What I think you’ll see from me in 2012:

• Lots more letterpress. I just signed up for a Valentine’s Day card making class in the end of January and my spouse and I were talking about the next print he wants to make.
• More hand stitching. This was under the Christmas tree for me. My mom has a crazy quilt top that my grandmother pieced but didn’t finish that we want to embellish and assemble.
• Foundation paper piecing bee blocks. I’ve been invited to join the Pastiche Bee and will be jumping into the deep end with foundation piecing.

Here’s a sneak peek of some redecorating we’ve been working on over the holiday break. I’ll share more when it is finished.

What does 2012 have in store for you?

Christmas Projects Revealed

I have a few remaining Christmas gifts that haven’t been shared on the blog, either because they were finished at the last minute or because they had to be kept a little bit secret. Today I thought I would share with you the projects that were finished late in the game and, sadly, are poorly photographed as a result.

I spent another afternoon at The Living Letter Press, this time working on a print to give to my parents are as gift. The idea for the poster came from a line in one of my parent’s favorite Advent songs, King of Heaven by Jim Croegaert. He got the line from a 15th century author, William Langland. The full quotation is:

But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea.

It’s a beautiful sentiment and my folks were appropriately excited about the print.

The other letter press gift I gave was a set of note cards for my sister in law who is a graphic designer by training and profession, although spends most of her time these days caring for my three young nephews. I gave her cards of several different designs and a gift certificate to work together at the letter press studio when she is next in town. She was so excited about that gift that she cried. I would share the photos, but I think she would kill me.

Don’t you love it when a handmade gift is so well received?

 

Finally, I made a set of three rattles that I “screen printed” (really stenciled using screen print paint) for my newest nephew, Ollie. All three are images of robots that his older brother Lucas drew. You can see the full set in my flickr stream. Ollie isn’t old enough yet to appreciate them, but Lucas was delighted to see his art on the rattles. I wasn’t able to find hard plastic rattles to put inside so substituted big jingle bells which don’t give quite as satisfying of a rattle sound as I wanted.

And the winner is…

And the winner of the SMS Giveaway Day is Claudia, who said:

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” always works for me.

Congratulations, Claudia. I’ve sent you an email. Thank you to everyone who shared book recommendations. If you haven’t already, you can read my round-up post about the books that were mentioned in the comments. I’m thrilled that I also won a giveaway this time around (my first win on SMS giveaway day ever–and I entered the fewest number of giveaways. Perhaps there is a lesson there as well?). So thank you to Victoria of The Accidental Crafter!

*image by Weeping-Willow

Printed Word

Word.

Words about Books

Thank you to everyone who has recommended books to me over the last 36 hours! With the sewmamasew giveaway day open until Friday, I thought I would take a few minutes to respond to some of the book recommendations that I’ve received in my comments over the last two days and perhaps offer a few of my own.

Books that have been recommended that I have already read and loved: Barbara Kingsolver’s fiction, Princess Bride (one of the rare instances I love the movie adaptation as much as the book), anything by Wally Lamb, both Franzen’s (although I enjoyed Freedom more than The Corrections and, while I think he’s a good writer, he isn’t the literary reincarnation of Jesus), A Prayer for Owen Meaney, The Hunger Games trilogy (have you seen the trailer?? Can’t wait!), His Dark Materials series,  The Help (although I have mixed feeling about this one), Girl With a Dragon Tattoo series, (mixed feelings here too), Water for Elephants, Secret Life of Bees, Time Traveller’s Wife, Goon Squad (LOVED the chapter told via powerpoint), Persepolis, Fun House (if you haven’t read this, you totally should).

Books that have been recommended that I tried and weren’t for me (but I totally understand that others enjoy them): Outlander series, Twilight series, pretty much any romance, science fiction, or fantasy.

Books that I’m so excited to add to my list: Cloudstreet (this has been on my list for awhile but it just moved up), The Go-Between, The Sense of an Ending, Salvage the Bones, These is my Words, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, City of Light, and Started Early, Took my Dog (I’m a huge Kate Atkinson fan and had missed this one)

And here are some recommendations from me that haven’t shown up in the comments yet: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, Motherless Brooklyn, The Brothers K (by David James Duncan), My Year of Meats, Carter Beat the Devil, The Brief, Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, Blankets

And here’s to reading! Thank you for all of your book recommendations. I just got a line on a library copy of 1Q84 and my winter break starts in a few days so I think I know what I’ll be reading for the rest of 2011. Please come back and tell me what you think of any of these books, or find me on goodreads and we can talk about books there.

 

 

 

Giveaway Day!

Hello! Welcome to Girl For All Seasons. Thanks for stopping by this week. I know you are busy, but I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself in the hopes that you might stop back during a less busy time of the year. I’m a high school English teacher who like to make things in her spare time. I’ve put together a mosaic of things I’ve made in the last few months to give you an idea of what I get up to–a little patchwork, a little paper piecing, a little super hero costume making, a little knitting, some zipper pouches, and lots and lots of hand stitching. I’m also learning to letter press and am looking forward to sharing my excitement about that process here. I know you are busy today, but if you like what you see, maybe you’ll come back for a visit another time. I’ll be happy to have you.

 And now the giveaway:

I’m giving away this stack of fabric–it’s a hodge-podge of FQs that I’m ready to share. The top four are Robert Kauffman sewing related fabrics and the bottom five are a grab bag of fun prints. All told, it’s more than 2 yards of fabric looking for the right home. I’m also giving away the Ruby Star Rising coin purse you see pictured at the top of the post.  I’ve been making these as stocking stuffers this year and saved back this one for today.

To enter: I’m a huge reader and fan of the printed word, so to enter please leave me a comment with a book recommendation or a book-related quotation that you like. I’ll choose one winner using random.org at the end of the week. My favorite reading related quotation is from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

return to Sew Mama Sew for more giveaways!

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