Katazome with Akemi Cohn

Anyone desire a little art getaway. Pippa Drew has these wonderful workshops in the Upper Valley of NH-VT. Just a couple of hours from home for me. How lovely is this place?

A beautiful lake nearby. Lovely views of mountains - nice farm market nearby.

The weather is just lovely. Cool nights warm days. Maybe fall is coming?

Floorcloth SALE - closing out of the old stuff

Yep - it is time to move on. This is your opportunity to buy a cool floorcloth for your hardwood, tile or lineoleum floor. These are designed to go on any hard surfaced floor.

Bargain prices. They are all on ETSY. http://www.etsy.com/listing/50256950/faux-candy-tile-handpainted-canvas

Check them out. There are 14 of them for sale.

My process is that I cut my own canvas, prepare the canvas for the floorcloth, handpaint each piece individually without any patterns. Upon completion, I use a special floor covering varnish which lasts 10-12 years with just a wet wipe - nothing harsh.The floorcloth is stain-resistant, durable and great for any room - especially a hard surfaced floor.I am selling my floorcloths at close out prices because I am closing them out. No special orders, please. Final sales. I have more than twenty years of painted floorcloth experience in the arts. I know how well these are made and how long they will last.

More information about me as an artist is at www.lipmandesigns.com.

Have fun shopping!

Garbage Journals!

Ever hear about a garbarge journal! This is it! Art Studio garbage is what the journal has.

Each page is a piece of art. No real theme - Just 8 pages and 8 paper pages for journaling!

This is the front cover. Created by Beth Lipman, my daughter, in college in the early 1990's. The others are my creations - dyed fabrics, an old Needlepoint, paper cloth collages, etc. The cocoa pod is from that delicious chocolate, Burdicks' in Walpole, NH.

This is the perfect thing to create when Life gives you lemonade and any thing you do is Dark. This allowed me to feel better during a difficult time in my life. And I have used some lemons!

Hop on over to Etsy http://www.etsy.com/your/listings?show_panel=true to check it out.

Text on the Surface

I have been a guinea pig for a pilot project Susie Monday is doing. She accepted the SAQA (www.Saqa.com) challenge for a visioning project.

Poor dear, her computer crashed, she had other emergencies but the 20 or so of us are trying to carry on. Here is a collage using paper cloth

and words - one of our test projects. It was a coincidence that my paper cloth was already done. The S letters on the left were part of Lesson 1, using letters to create a composition. I used a transfer method to create those letter in this collage.

I like the paper cloth idea and will definitely do more of it.

After the big S, which I just painted with puff paint, dries, I hope to mat it and sell it on Etsy. http://www.etsy.com/your/listings?show_panel=true

Introduction to Katazome

Karen Miller (http://nautilus-fiberarts.blogspot.com/) is traveling across the country this summer.

She and her husband will travel by car/truck and a motor home stopping in various places to teach "the Art of Katazome", the art of Japanese Stencil Dyeing. Fiber Art at its best!

We are fortunate to have Karen coming to Keene, NH to do a workshop here on July 17 and 18, 2010. A two day workshop in our backyard. And Karen isn't charging us for her travel time! Therefore, the cost to us has been reduced to only $300.00 per person for the two days.

Email me if you are interested. Put your phone number in the email so I can call you.

Sunday in MA

It was predicted to be a rainy day, yesterday. But only a drop fell on us.

I met my brother in Cambridge to spend a few hours together. It was a wonderful afternoon. Too bad we live so far apart.

We started the MIT press bookstore. http://web.mit.edu/bookstore/www/ It took us an hour to browse through all the indie press titles. That bookstore is a wonderful resource. The art selection is not the ordinary. One book, about Crochet, was crochet shown and created using math configurations. Thus, MIT's interest!

I bought Inspiring Writing in Art and Design: Taking a line for a while by Pat Francis. This fit right in with my current classwork by Susie Monday: Text on the Surface. http://www.susiemonday.com/ I am one of her test pilots and the class is motivating me to create more art.

Back to yesterday: Following the hour of browsing through all the terrific books. We lunched at Legal Sea Foods in Kendall Square. www.legalseafoods.com Umm, the Asian Vegetables with Scallops were delicious.

Two very full people decided to walk. And we did. Around MIT and across the Harvard Bridge to Boston. Along the Charles River : things were so beautiful and in bloom. Then across the crumbling Longfellow Bridge to Kendall Square. - 1 1/2 hours! It seems everyone was jogging or sailing or walking.

Rick, my brother went on to fly to Germany to work in Europe for the week. I drove home and two hours later it rained! What luck.

(This is a bridge in Back Bay Boston.)

HELP! Seeking advice for the UFO

Several years ago I took a fair isle class from what was then the Webs’ Master Knitting program. They had personnel issues and the program changed. To make this short, I did not continue with the program. I had started this fair isle sweater during the Master Knitting Class and the new program leader washed her hands of helping the previous customers. Thus, I am left in a lurch with a sweater I am trying to complete.

Here is my dilemma. I created the body of the fair isle sweater using Knitting the Old Way by Priscilla Roberts-Gibson. I never bound off the shoulders and instead went to my LYS, which has since closed, to try to learn how to finish this sweater. She had me steek the front and put the front bands on. Before I got that done, she closed her shop. (Sounds like a bad luck story here!)

Now, the sleeves are knitted. I want to finish the sweater and I can figure out the neck band but I have all the stitches on the needle – neck and shoulders, etc.

Shall I bind off doing a three needle bind off for the shoulders now or knit some more? And shape the shoulders? Or shall I count off the neckline stitches and create it, after which I can do the bind off for the shoulders.

Any suggestions are welcome!