Happy Halloween

This beauty showed up on my timeline on Facebook, from a site called Diamonds in the Library. It is a Sante Muerta pendant by Lydia Courteille. I think it is awesome. And the next thought I had was, how do I get something like that on a T-shirt? Zom, an Internet friend, suggested a drawing printed on fabric, then beaded and stitched. All the little gray cells in my brain started dancing around in my skull with ideas, thinking of ways to make it happen. I will have to do some research on printing on cloth, as I have never done that, but wow, the possibilities are endless!

In the meantime...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Crown Bolero Almost Done

I finally got the binding sewn on the Crown Bolero, which gets it pretty close to being done. Then again, I guess "pretty close" is a relative term, as I intend to bead the binding, and that usually takes quite a while. However, I won't start on that until next week, as I want to wear the bolero this weekend, and there is NO WAY I could bead all that in time, and I don't want to wear it with just one sleeve beaded, or half the front done. It will be fun taking it for a test spin and seeing how the double layer differs from my other boleros, which are all single layers.

So, here it is,  minus the binding beads, which will be the same small purple and gold ones used in the main body of the piece. I really liked the way this one turned out, and I like the heft of the doubled fabric, so I am sure I will make another one. These boleros are kind of addicting—little blank canvases to play on, and I can wear them with almost anything.

Crown Bolero: AC pattern, Goodwill T-shirts, stenciled, stitched all by hand, reverse appliqued, and beaded.

I will wear this over tank tops and skinny long-sleeved T-shirts, and with jeans. I don't go to that many fancy places, so all of these boleros get worn with my everyday wear. Otherwise they would all hang in my closet gathering dust.

Fall

Every Fall I go around our place and take photos of the turning leaves, even though here in southern Oregon we don't get the vibrant colors that those living on the east coast do. It's really fun to stand under an oak or ash and shoot straight up through the leaves, which end up looking like stained glass against the blue sky, since the sun is shinning through them instead of directly on them.

I have mixed feelings about fall. On the one hand I love the lingering warm weather and the change in the light. However, it also signals that winter is close at hand, which means four to five months of fog, gloom, rain, and snow. Winter makes Sharon a very crabby girl.

In the meantime, while the sun still shines, and the sky is still that beautiful electric blue, I hike around taking  pictures, wishing in my heart of hearts that the Fall weather would hang around until, say, Spring, and we could skip winter entirely. Probably piss off all the skiers, though. Ah well.


Looking up through the Madrone trees growing on the hill behind our house.

Ash tree leaves.

 

Oak leaves.

 

Oak branches covered in moss.

Moss.

 

And one more of a native oak tree against that awesome sky.

In a Hermit Kind of Mood + Playing with Vintage Clip Earrings

All of September and the first of October were really busy weeks for me. In September I attended the first Gathering of the Amazon Mounted Archers, which took place at the Flying Duchess Ranch in Arlington, Washington (more about this event and the SCA one will be posted on my horse blog site, Equine Madness. The link is given above, on my header) After initially feeling completely overwhelmed by the caliber of women I was riding with, and after getting over a meltdown of insecurity one night, I pulled up my big-girl panties and got on with it. A nice pep-talk from two of the women certainly helped, but the bottom line was, I had ridden up with friends and was basically trapped until the meet was over. I had to either pull myself together, or stand aside while everyone else had a fabulous time riding and shooting.

This issue of being overwhelmed was not caused by anything any of the other women did or said. They were all great, and very supportive, but I am more of an introvert, and tend to be a bit overwhelmed when in a room of extroverts, all laughing and joking and having a great time, especially when I didn't know over half of them. They were all much better at mounted archery than I was, since I have only been doing it seriously for one summer. Some of these women compete internationally and have been doing mounted archery for years.

But I got over my feelings of being overwhelmed and outclassed. I told myself that I could still have fun, even if I was the worst archer there, which after the scores of the competition were toted up, I was, coming in dead last. But by that time it didn't matter. I had fun. I met a lot of wonderful women, and am looking forward to next year, when they all meet again here in Oregon. It will be even better for me, as I will have another summer of practice under my belt, be riding my own horse instead of a borrowed one, and will be riding on a course I am very familiar with, as it is the home course of the Rogue Mounted Archers, to which both my husband and I belong.

So for all you who bother to read this, here is what I do when I'm not doing some kind of artwork, making jewelry, or sewing. I ride a horse at a fast gallop and shoot arrows at targets.

Me and Jebe, my borrowed mount (he is wearing war paint), do a back shot. I love that the photographer timed it so that all four of Jebe's hooves are off the ground.

After getting back from the Amazon meet, I had about a month to prepare for an SCA event due up on Oct 4-6, that also included mounted archery. I was in charge of that part of the weekend activities, which included, along with regular target archer, a mile and a half hunt, where we shot at animal targets...all of them made and painted by me. Fortunately, all the targets I used last year and had stored in the attic above our garage were still good. But for me and Robert, it is a big job putting all these targets up, marking the course, and getting everything ready for the riders coming in from out of town, then going back and taking everything down again. I also got tangled up in some politics and personal issues with people over this event, which didn't make my life any easier. I am highly allergic to drama, but got sucked into it anyway.

So I jumped from one busy, emotional event to another. By the time the SCA event was over, I wanted to do...nothing. A big, fat nothing. I didn't want to ride, I didn't want to shoot, I didn't want to work outside, I didn't want to talk to anyone other than Robert. I wanted to sit on the couch with my cat and read a book while drinking copious amounts of tea. Part of that feeling lingers on, but I am slowly pulling out of it. Slowly. It was almost like I needed to detox, which sounds terrible, but that's exactly how I felt, and to a certain extent, still feel.  So, lots of tea, lots of reading, and lots of private time to myself.

Which brings me to playing around with vintage clip earrings. I have had a stash of them for quite awhile, picked up in bags of other stuff at thrift or antique stores. Some I used by cutting off the backs and adding them to beaded necklaces or bracelets. I recently acquired a few more pretty ones from an Internet friend. Most of the nicer clip-ons sit in a little bowl on top of my antique dressing table, looking very sparkly and fun, but I hadn't really decided what to do with them.

Here they are out on my deck, so they will show up better in the photo.

Here are a few of the ideas I came up with on how to use these little gems, which you can usually find quite cheap. The two sweaters are high-end, pure cotton ones I recently found at the Goodwill for $4.99 each.

I have already worn the taupe sweater with the little clips, and will take the purple sweater out for a spin soon. The next way I wore the clips was to help hold down the front of one of my hand-stitched and beaded boleros. They tend to flip open sometimes, so I clipped the fronts to the straps of my tank top and it worked beautifully and added a bit of sparkle.

 

Oh, and, um, apologies for the cat hair. It's impossible to get all of it off, so...sorry.

Lastly, I clipped one into the hat band on my old felt fedora. I think it looks great.

 

This particular earring (also shown on the purple sweater) belonged to Robert's grandmother. There is only one of them, the other having been lost who knows how long ago. I love the color and flash of these old rhinestones. 

So, there are my ideas on how you can play around with these fun old earrings. I'm sure I'll think of more ways to use these sparkly bits of eye-candy as time goes on.

Crown Bolero - Layout

Here is the results from the stenciling. I wasn't sure how my own drawn and cut stencil would work, and as it turned out, would have been better on heavier paper. All I had on hand was a heavier grade drawing paper, which isn't meant for wet mediums. It worked, but barely.

The Lumiere paint I had was old, and getting a bit thick, so I added some water and stirred the dickens out of it. However, I think that is why I ended up with a rather mottled look to the paint. At first I was upset. But the more I looked at it the better I liked it. The uneven coverage gave the crown an antique look, like old gilding that has started to wear off. The center portions of the base of the crown I did not even try to cover, as all of that will be cut away when I do the reverse applique. Why waste the paint?

The arrowhead shape and the long center shape I cut out of tape and stuck to the shirt so it would leave the negative space in the design. That was another experiment that turned out well. Those negative spaces will stay the color of the shirt, and most of the gold cut away around them to reveal the purple underneath.

Here are all the elements ready to pin together. You can see how my paper stencil buckled, so next time I will get some good heavy stock, or even see if I can find stencil plastic, if I do anything like this again. The tiny pieces of paper are the negative spaces that I used as a template for the tape.

And here are all the pieces pinned together and ready to start sewing on. The thread is regular sewing thread, but heavy duty, and I will double it. I will use that to outline all the design elements. I will probably use embroidery thread for any other decoration, and will use that to sew up the bolero when the fun of stitching and beading is done. Last will be to add the dark teal binding around the edges.

Crown Bolero - Design & Color

I have been thinking about his design for awhile, and decided on the muted colors after seeing a reproduction of an Italian tapestry from the fifteen-hundreds. The photo of the tapestry had been darkened for use as background for a rather dark and gloomy fashion ad. But I kinda like dark and gloomy (except rain and gloom all winter. That I don't like at all). I suspect there is more Morticia Adams in me than I care to admit.

Anyway, here are the crown designs I played with, made by folding a sheet of printer paper in half and just cutting away freehand. Like making those paper snowflakes when you were a kid.

Then I took these and played a bit more with cutouts. I can't get too carried away with those, as this will be a stencil. The design, once stenciled on the shirt, and stitched around, will then be cut away to reveal the second layer of fabric underneath — a reverse applique — so the design has to stay pretty simple. Next, I will draw the crown on heavy cardstock paper, and cut it out to make the stencil.

I didn't like the one on the top right at all, so eliminated it straight away. It was too clunky looking. In the end, I decided I liked the spiky quality of the one on the top left.

The hard part was the color. I wanted muted, except maybe for the crown, but even that couldn't be an in-your-face color, or cheesy, like a fake gold lame' or something. I wanted an old, faded, tapestry look without it being made of old tapestry material. And without the old tapestry dust.

So here is what I came up with, all from T-shirts purchased at the Goodwill. The light gray-green will be the main color of the bolero. The royal purple with be for the crown - of course. And the dark teal with be the binding color. The crown will be stenciled with Lumiere antique gold paint, which will only be an outline once the fabric is cut away. The small fleur d'lis will be stenciled on the front panels of the bolero and then cut out in reverse applique like the crown. After that, it will be stitching and beading. Not sure of the binding stitching color yet, but might be a lighter purple than the crown, or something that matches the gray-green. In any case, something that shows up nicely on the dark teal. That's still undecided (there is an insidious little voice in my head telling me to use metallic thread. I did that on my first bolero and loved the look, but hated working with that thread. It breaks, kinks, and doesn't go in the needles very well, so I am slapping a mental hand over that inner voice's mouth).

I am going to have a lot of fun adding beads to that crown! In fact, I like that crown design so much, that I can also envision it in black on a red bolero...or red on black. My husband gets tons of either red or black promo T-shirts from work, so I would have plenty of material to do either.

So, that's my current project, The Crown Bolero.

Wildfire Update, Plus Cat vs Deer

After over a week of anxiety over whether we were going to have to evacuate our house, it seems the fire danger is over, for us. The blaze closest to us is now pretty much under control, and after attending a community meeting last Sunday evening, where many of the fire coordinators were present, along with local law enforcement and health care monitors, we feel safe enough to bring our furniture and belongings back home. However, fires still burn out of control all around our valley, and we were told at the meeting that we would be dealing with smoke for the rest of the summer. And the smoke is pretty bad, both for us and our horses. We can stay inside, but obviously they can't, so we ride either early in the morning, when the air is cooler and the smoke not quite so bad, or late in the afternoon or early evening, as sometimes a breeze will come up and blow most of the smoke to the west of us.

Here are a few more photos. This level of smoke, more or less, is pretty much it until the first rains in October. The level of nastiness greatly depends on the inversion layer. If we get one, it holds the smoke low and at ground level. If there is no inversion layer, then the smoke stays a little higher. These photos were taken in the afternoon, around 3:00, during a bad inversion layer episode.

 So, in the words of Monty Python, "Now for something completely different."

For years, we have been feeding a little feral cat we named Harp. We originally thought she was a boy, and because of the markings on her face, we called her Harpo. After we discovered she was female, we had to adjust the name. At one time she was tame enough for me to catch, take to the vet and have spayed, and then release. Now, once and a while she will let me pet her, but just, and not always.

She shows up at different times of the day, but usually either early in the morning, or in the evening just before dark. So we always keep an eye out for her, and when we see her, we put her bowl of crunchies out. At night, when she is done, we pick the bowl up and put it in the house so the racoons can't have it. Nasty little things, racoons. Lately we had noticed that Harp was really chowing down a lot of food, more than what her size would warrant. I was a bit suspicious, so this morning, when I saw the doe coming down the hill behind our house, a very intent look on her face, I had a hint of what was coming, so grabbed my camera.

Mom came down the hill and intimidated Harp into leaving the bowl, then proceeded to snarf down the food. I could hear her crunching away with gusto. I guess I will have to put out more "cat" food, so both Harp and Mom can have enough crunchies to share. (It was a low-smoke morning, so the photos came out nice and clear. By the time I was done writing this, the smoke had moved in again)

Harp enjoying her breakfast.

Momma deer approaches.

Momma deer pushes Harp away from bowl and digs in.

Lots of crunching noises ensue.

 

And this is why mom needed the extra protein.

 

Baby gets a snack. Snacking can be rough on mom.

 

Mom and baby stroll off.

 

After they had gone, I put more food out for Harp, and she came back and finished her breakfast.  

BTW, not sure why Mr. Blogger decided all of a sudden that the text should be centered, and no matter what I do, Mr. Blogger won't change back to left-side orientation. Ah well. 

So, that was my little wildlife encounter of the day. Made me smile. Smiles are always a good thing.