bit o office

Shower Dash Kitchen and Bath Design

I have some more work to do on this design today and tomorrow.  Have a consultation meeting with a contractor this afternoon, two actually - but one is a phone consult.  And then I have a dishwasher air gap project that needs to be done, got all the materials for that last night, and the bigger toolbox.

I still need to price out sealers and grout maximizer, as well as shop for a light to match the fixtures and grab another tile sample in between the two I have.  

I am hoping the customer likes the one on the left, because their trim is already gray, and it will coordinate better, yet keep the warm feeling and go with the top really well.  I really like the one on the right though, it is so warm and looks a lot like what they already have down (vinyl), so it might look okay with the trim too, once it is there against it.

I found a bulletin board we weren't using and a filebox and put those in my office, too - and spent about an hour rearranging and organizing papers so everything works better for me. 

Stencilling an octopus onto a t shirt

my drawing of an octopus

I took a drawing I made last night and cut it out into two different layers on cardstock.  I used the camera to take a picture of the drawing, as our copy machine was down.  Then, after using the regular printer to print the drawing onto cardstock, I used an x-acto knife blade to cut out the defining areas on one copy and the entire outline on another.  Using acrylic paint and fabric medium, I brushed the colors on in two steps, allowing the shirt and the stencils to dry a bit in between to make sure there was no bleedover behind the stencil.

The dark blue is a school shirt for Esme.  The light blue shirt is one I bought on clearance and have been wearing to work.  I think they are both going to turn out great :)

I have to heat set them later.
And yes, the tea towels we painted last week turned out pretty good through the wash!

 

Playing Indian with a hat, loincloth and bow she made herself, and the octopus shirt.  

She took it off after that and wants it to be for school.

On to knitting and maybe some patchwork... there is some cleaning to do yet, and the laundry (hanging up behind her) to sort and fold.

Note:  She woke us up at seven this morning, wearing an eyepatch from her Halloween trick or treat bag and asking to go to the zoo in Memphis for the day.  We knew we were 'in for it' with the energy bouncing right then and there.  It is nice to get a little project done here and there :)

Stencil paint a tea towel with fabric medium and cardstock

 I am using fabric medium, which is a clear fluid meant to be mixed with regular acrylic paints in order to turn them into 'fabric paints'.  You could use straight fabric paints if that is what you have.  Remember to heat set them as directed.

I chose an old tea towel that had been through the wash quite a few times - for practice, and to see how long this fabric medium will wash.  Since I could not find my Xacto knife, I cut a simple botanic border in chunky geometric shapes using a pair of craft scissors.

I painted along the edge of the bottom between the 'leaves' and 'flowers' to create a border stripe and to help to line them up so I could repeat the pattern across the bottom of the towel.

When it dries, I will heat set it and throw it through the wash with something that won't matter if it bleeds through - like garden jeans etc etc.  I really like it, and hope it lasts well.  Wondering if maybe to mix up a second color and make some splotches and dots in a few of the shapes, or to leave it all one color.

a second time around, with a straight piece of paper laid out to create the border diagonally across the corner of a worn teatowel.  Use a good flat brush and place something absorbent behind the towel, like cardboard - or something tough, (as shown) like the top of a Sterilite or Rubbermaid container.  I used the container top because it is easy to wash off and as it is used for fabric storage, doesn't need to be pretty and perfect anyway.

Be creative, Enjoy!

 Esme helping out after she came home from school.

 

Thanks to Daddy for sweet pictures :) 

Handy Robot toy for baby (custom order) at KnitOwl Toys and bits

 A soft washable robot toy for a yet to be born baby boy.  He has a little wrench and remote control that will entertain little  hands until they are big enough to toss all of him around.

He is 20 inches tall from toe to head and 9 inches wide in the chest.

Other than that, I am preparing mentally for Esme's speech IEP coming up next week, making a few little odds and ends, knitting on the striped blanket... have another toy that is already requested but I might need to draw a bit yesterday before making that plan.

I spent a midnight hour last night making a little washcloth for the bath, it looks like a sand dollar and I hoped it would be good for scrubbing.  If it is, I'll make a few more and post some pictures.

Handmade Dolphin Toy

Scarves are in the KnitOwl Shop

 

 Dolphin for Esme, from my original design drawn on typing paper and cut out.  It could use some tweaking before it becomes an official design for KnitOwl Toys - but for a prototype, it turned out pretty good.

 She gave it a green collar that was a bracelet of hers.

Puppet prototype

This morning I sat down with a notebook, tape, scissors and a pen, then progressed to cutting and sewing scraps out of my bag over the course of several hours.  About three reworks later, attended to by Esme, this puppet was finally something that worked like a puppet should.

It was supposed to be a unicorn, but it turned out to be a dragon.

She said this one was a hug, and I had to include it.

There will have to be reworks in order to get the actual pattern 'right', but she likes this dragon as a finished product.  She thought his ears could have been better - and I didn't take much time on them because they were 'could be anything' type of thing - not needing as much work as the shape of a head or arm etc etc..  She said it is an ice AND fire dragon that eats sunlight.  His family is away on a picnic, and we are looking after him until they get back. 

Just ducky

 It was my first day of vacation - and Esme asked to make a bird.  I told her she would have to find a bird and draw it first - which she did, and it turned out to be a duck.

Then about two hours later, Ducky was here and she was giving him aerodynamic tests.

I used scraps in my table in the colors she had used and she popped back and forth from the tv to the sewing area to check on my progress and ask questions.

Daddy getting an action shot :)

It passed the 'sniff' test, too for the calico coonhounds, Sweetie (back) and Spud (front) who are both growing up!

A Pumpkin for Halloween

 One Pumpkin and a Plan

This is the pumpkin we bought at the flea market yesterday.  We have all this week off from school and I close at the store - so I told her we would have to wait until today to do the cutting.  She came up first thing this morning and said she would like to make the jack o lantern... so I crawled out of bed.  I had her draw the plan out in her notebook and she decided on the one in the top right corner for the face.  Then she made a few attempts to draw it.  We talked about all the things and wrote out the words so she could see them on paper.  

 Most of it is my writing and some of her drawing.  She disagreed on how to spell knife...

A happy pumpkin for Halloween!

Now she is drawing EXIT and ENTER signs on her spaceship with chalk and trying to get me to come to a party... It is a rainy rainy morning outside and she is too full of energy and ideas!

Busyness, Lions and Bunnies

We've been busy around here, the beginning of the week is always that way lately, which isn't a bad thing at all. We've been looking for more ways to find out what Pixie's medical issue is. I've tried lots of internet groups and forums, even an 'ask the vet' which gave us pretty much the same answer our vet did. It's a tough case considering it isn't tetanus, or at least, it doesn't look like tetanus in any other way yet. We put her x-rays up here. We've had a few good reccommendations -- and if they pan out she might have a chance.

Second lion
It felt like I was tying wool lion mane hair for three hours!

I'm on the fourth version of the lion pattern, lions 1 and 3 didn't survive to be finished. Lion 2 was a little skinny (see above) but he is cute enough for his stuffing ;) Mark says he looks like a surfer dude: 'Like, RAWR... dude.' I'm also working on a very simple rag doll rabbit pattern to work up as a .PDF.

Three little rag doll "bunny rabbit" baby toys at the KnitOwl toy shop

These rabbits take 30 minutes to an hour each from tracing pattern to finishing faces. The hardest part is making sure their legs and arms and ears are in straight. Sometimes when you go to run them under the sewing machine, they move around! These are nice 'I can't sleep' items too, I did one of them at two in the morning last night.

We went to the flea market yesterday and found some interesting vintage finds to list on Ebay and Etsy. Mark found an Underwood typewriter for a steal that still works in most ways -- we're examining it today.

Absentmindedness: I exploded an egg on the stove this morning. Apparently I wasn't that hungry for a boiled egg. Luckily the type of pan it exploded in survived the impact so it wasn't that much of a disaster.

Pregnancy Dreams: Also have been having more and more very 'real' feeling dreams about the baby's delivery. Last night's was pretty scary, and I was glad to wake up. I don't worry about it a lot during the day, so I guess I make up for it at night. We have another doctor's appointment today.

Toy Design: Starting on paper

Everybody designs in a different way - for me, I use LOTS of paper - and start out sketchy. Then the geometry comes in - I might even get out a ruler and compass, but that is rare. I like the 'organic' human-made look and drafting can sometimes ruin that. I start making mental origami out of the paper before scissors ever touch cloth.


from the simplest happy lion sketch to
beginning of 'deconstruction'

'mental origami'sketches
begin to shape what I will cut out as actual pattern pieces

A lot gets worked out in the paper - but still things go through several stages. Sewing up a prototype pattern (a muslin, if it was a garment) isn't always as easy or as smooth as you thought it would be. Things get ripped out - pieces saved and others recut etc. etc... and hopefully by the end of the day (or two) you have a brand new, designed-by-you toy pattern with most of the major kinks worked out.

Hopefully you'll meet a cloth version of this lion soon!

Wool Bird Pincushions

Currently at the shop:

Wool felt version of bird pincushion

New design: owl pincushion (wool felt)

I spent the weekend playing with the bag of wool felt that came in the mail last week. We've also been going through stacks of books, and clearing up more old equipment to sort. Mark turned over the garden with the backhoe and we will have to get some plants and seeds. I have a bag of blue iris bulbs we can find a place for out in the yard soon :o)

Survey

Survey please! : So - for my shop for Easter should I make... Lots more little handheld rabbits... Some hopkin frogs... or a few of the new rabbits? (still needs some work) What do you think? Help me decide please!

Of course, I could continue making a little of each, since Easter is in April. I'm also getting hit daily in my search results for kangaroos and sloths.. go figure ;o) Maybe I'll do a few batches of them after Easter.

Working on the second knit dishcloth for my mom's birthday present. I have a little chunk of strawberry soap to put in with it. We have new Primus albums and Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus playing on the overhead stereo in a random mix, and 'The Dark Crystal' and 'The Neverending Story' to watch this weekend.

Fiat Bunny

The Rabbit Prototype (aka Cthulu) is finished!
I'm mostly happy with him. Also happy to announce his resemblance to the demony Elder God (<--Lynn: this links for you) has diminished.


As with all prototypes, there are little places you know can be tweaked in the next one.

His legs especially, while they sit nicely, look a bit funny when held like this.

Lynn asked how much time per day I spend on things like crafting, weaving, drawing etc... That depends on the day. We are usually up near dawn here, and working on all number of things. If I had to estimate - I'd say I probably craft for about four hours a day - but that is spread out through the entire day and in-between other things (like waiting for my machine to reboot into Windows or browsing through submitted news articles for my editing job). There is always time to tie a knot in a new needle of thread - or stitch up an arm or leg while reading.

Weaving is a different matter, though. That I usually 'take time out' for, mostly because the frame is across the room from the comptuer ;o) I haven't been working too much on my dream bag - but I have started the back side of it now.

For the drawing - pattern drawing and little sketches can happen throughout the day as well. I might take a half-hour or hour out later on to listen to some music and make one of my random-line drawings, that start in random scratches on the paper, and end up as many figures with symbols between them.

Also: Sorry to hear Blogger has been so awful lately with the comment verification! *growl* I'll see what I can do about that!


Mouse blisses out while getting petted in a sunbeam.

Rabbit Prototype coming along

Getting ready...
Those back legs might be a problem... we'll see.
I have a headache started today, and there is a tornado watch this afternoon.

Rabbit Prototype in progress...

Link to Visit: Peter Callesen paper cutouts



I guess it does kind of look like Cthulu at this point ;o)
Two legs, two arms and one ear down.. one more ear to go then I can sew it up and see how the body actually works with all these 'dangly bits' included!


Still doesn't look like much...
but more rabbity?