Jumbo Flyer and Maiden

Jumbo Flyer Heaven!!!

Art Yarn In Progress

Here's a start, I need to change my maiden/flyer over to the jumbo flyer/maiden if I want to spin any appreciable amounts of yarn. The oriface on the standard Ashford flyer is too small for this type of spinning, some day Ill have a second wheel base!

Art Yarn

Here's a start and I've decided I need to change out my flyer for the jumbo flyer as these standard bobbins don't hold much! I th ought I might get away with using the standard flyer but was wrong, the oriface is too small for most of the yarn chunks to slide through easily.

Some Toys

I mean tools! Don't ever let anyone tell you that Angelina fiber cannot be spun up by itself here's a half spool of a lovely bubblegum pink color that I spun up quite some time ago.

Art Yarns

Wool batts, silk carrier rods, and more available in my shop

What I'm up to, making art yarns for embellishing my moss piece of course!

Art Batt

Wool batt, silk carrier rods, silk sliver, flax, mohair roving, and thrums are available in my shop.

Normally I don't post here but wanted to share what I was up too tonight, I'm experimenting with some new art yarns. Right now I'm tired and am hurting a lot from doing yard work today, so I cheated and instead of making up a new batt I pulled a half used one out of my stash. The silk carrier rods to the right are rust dyed the others were dyed using acid dyes.

Thomas in Window

Kitty Still Life! Thomas my Maine Coon cat sitting in the window sniffing the great out doors after a down pour.

Clematis After Rain

Sounds like a good name for a beautiful plant that has been recently drenched!

Silk Carrier Rods

I've been adding new silk carrier rod colorways to my shop this afternoon - thank you for looking!

Family Portraits

I drew these quite some time ago but they still crack me up!

Flees!

Well tonight ensued an emergency trip to the pet departmeent of my local super megalomart! I found not one but three flees on Angel, our sheltie, this meant bath time again (the poor dogs just had a bath last weekend), for all of them and then application of the anti-flee medication. Tomorrow I will commence cleaning the whole house, using the cleaner on the sofa and easy chair, and clean the carpets, I will then go to the big box megalomart super hardware store and buy flee and tick killer for the lawn!

Paranoid? Maybe. But experience has taught me that I'm VERY allergic to flee bites and this is something I'm just not willing to mess around with. It's been in the back of my mind as it's been really wet here, and a wet spring equals lots of flees, and now I have proof. Back in the 90's I had about a dozen bites on my legs they both swelled up to about twice their normal size and turned a purplish black color, I looked like I had been half beaten! Two trips to the doctor later and it was discovered that I had been bitten by a flee or two and had had a nasty reaction.

Oh and cats really don't like taking a bath!

Grape Arbor

John got it built finally! Orignally it was supposed to have reclaimed columns and a brick patio but at the last moment we decided to put the vegetable garden back in this year. Next year I'll work on container gardening.

Brown Out

We just got back a bit ago from picking cherries at a friends house, hey Becky, and found out our town had been having some serious brown outs while we were gone. Needless to say my electronics, computer, etc., were all freaking out when we got back.

More later from the land of the brown out.

Sour Cherries

Will post pics tomorrow, we picked about 4 gallons of sour cherries tonight. My friend, Becky, invited us down to pick the cherries at her place! tomorrow I will can them, it's a lot of work right now but will be well appreciated come January.

Still Life 2

Another still life I created that hung out in my studio for over a year! I made color studies of the pieces some of which ended up in altered books and collage pieces.

Monochromatic Texture

Found in a box of vintage pins!

Visual Library Part 2

I will set up a still life in my studio from time to time, I spend a lot of time studying the pieces, and rearranging them. Do I draw them? No, I just enjoy them but there is a lot to be learned from them by simply having them around.

Organize your collections, I picked up inexpensive trays (2.99 each) at my Salvation Army.

I picked these up at a yard sale, they reminded me of my trip to California.

A walk in the woods and I found these lovely gandodermas!

Found along the road in California.

And then theres the collections and I don't mean wealthy millionare collections I mean crazy like a fox collections! I collect bark, pinecones, lichens, fungi, rocks, fabric bits and some vintage items, but it's always about texture and form.

Art Notebooks

Color decks, this one came from the local paint store, help in ways that are beyond measure in my studio. Finding that "right color" can be a daunting task at times, even for a color hound such as myself.

Some ways of storing visual inspiration, I collect images and take thousands of photos which comprises about half of my visual library. I do have a couple of clip art books but interestingly enough I bought these for the fonts they contained! Having studied calligraphy I've always had a penchant for script!!!

Where do I get my Inspiration?

From time to time this question comes up on the quiltart list, new art quilters want to know how or where us old timers get our images and our inspiration for creating a work from, below is my response.

I have 10 ring binders filled now with images and the like I've been collecting since I was in high school. I didn't realize what I was doing until I made it to art school in the 90's and my professor required that they be put into plastic sleeves and categorized. (this was a requirement for all of us)

What I learned about myself is I collect color and texture. I love macro shots and have lots of them. The more expensive decorating/home magazines are lush with color, if this is what trips your trigger that is.

Since the advent of the digital camera, and SLR cameras, in my life I've basically quit collecting images from other sources and now take thousands of my own. I've had a new digital camera since February and I've already taken 20,000+ images with it. I've been building my "own" visual library since 2001.

A suggestion I have for those collecting imagery is to make a 1 inch square view finder, we used an old manila folder, and place it down onto an image you like and then start moving it around. What do you see? Do you like it or not? What is it that speaks to you? IS it the texture, shape, voids, movement, etc.?

Most importantly get a digital camera and get out there and take your OWN photos, and do your OWN sketches. I don't want to hear that you can't draw, everyone can draw writing is drawing! Some just draw better than others.

More later from the studio - where I'm debating driving many miles to pick cherries today!!!

Kimberly
http://www.prairiefibers.blogspot.com/

More Wool Batts

Orange Dreamcicle

Nougat

More fond memories of the summertime! These lovelies are available in my shop and are completely feltable.

Embroidery Yarns

Very nice slubby yarns, I dyed large skeins of this and am using what I need for my embroidery project, the rest has been broken down into 20 yard skeins and are available in my shop. They have been dyed with natural dyes, cochineal, osage orange (the rayon turned orange for some reason) and natural indigo.

Wool Batts

I've been busy this afternoon making more wool batts, will do a big reveal on Monday of some new goodies I've made for the shop. I really love this colorway it's called "Taffy" , it reminds me of the treats we could only get during the summer months as kids.

New Freezer - NOT

Well our new chest freezer was scheduled to arrive next week but now it's not coming until July 3rd! Sears called leaving several frantic messages telling us it was being "reshipped" the last message I recieved informed me that my chest freezer had been damaged when it was dropped off, literally and figuratively, of the back of a moving vehicle. Nice well at least they told us the truth, I'm figuring it must have been damaged and really badly for them to admit to the fact that it had been damaged.

Until the new freezer arrives it'll be an ongoing archeology dig in the upright as it's still producing a ice at a breakneck pace! There may be no glaciers atop the mountains but there is definately one growing my my upright freezer!

Garden Detail

Garden Piece In Progress

I started this piece in 2001, I'm thinking of hacking it up into smaller pieces now in the spirit of getting it done. It's painted cheesecloth, silk flowers, bits of fabric chopped up, threads, yarns, and fabric paint on a nylon scarf.

Vintage Scarves

I've been collecting these for years to use in various art projects.

Shakespear Books

Cloth covered book 4.2" wide by 5.5" high, there are 36 of these in the series.

Nice gold gild lettering on the sides of the books, some are older and may have been purchased over several years?

I picked up 36 of these books by William Shakespear at an estate sale, now to find out their value as I have no idea when they were published. This particular book is titled The Tempest.

Texture

I put a bunch of yarns for sale on my etsy.com store, I couldn't resist the texture of these skeins and photographed a bunch of them in various ways for my texture gallery.

3 yo Jacob Fleeces

The quality of these two fleeces ended up being really nice, I was quite suprised. I now have about 30 more of these that I have yet to take a peak at so we'll see where things stand in a week right! The one furthest away is a lamb.

Jacob Wool

I managed to clean half of a fleece last night, here it is drying on my skirting table, it still has a lot of Vegetable Matter in it and now I'll work to remove this from the wool. I'm planning on dyeing this bit here with madder root and will probably spin it up for socks for John and I.

First Harvests

Rhubarb Sauce!

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam this will be really tastey this winter on homemade bread!