Looking or Listening

There will be NO visual content in this blog today because I'm worried about us turning into crack babies who are always wahhhhing for our next visual fix.

I've derived most of my inspiration since becoming a hooker through visual stimulation.

Lately though, no matter what I have to look at it and just so you know it is VAST because I collect things to look at and in my day to day life I notice EVERYTHING and I want you all to know how exhausting that is... as well as how exhausting these run on forever sentences are....LOL! and now back to the point..... what I'm seeing is not thrilling me like it once did.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you'll know about the jaded old hooker syndrome. I'm ever on the watch for that. I want to look at things and experience like a beginner, but a wise old crone of a beginner.

So how to be all juicy and sweet with possibilities then ?

I've turned to listening to people speaking about what vivifies them. Not all the speakers are gifted and I do enjoy those more whose talents also include public speaking.

But it is wonderful to hear people being passionate and excited and connecting dots on their topic of life study whatever that is.

For your own self driven, look for the areas that interest YOU, passionate speakers go to TED

for Ideas Worth Spreading.

And in that vein of championing audio stimulation I'll be starting and I hope NEVER finishing a group of interviews with hookers about their work and passions. These will be on The Welcome Mat under music as that's the only way to plant them in there.

Try talking to somebody today to find out what makes them all alive and ardent about why they are here.

You are what your deep driving desire is; As your deep driving desire is, so is your will; As your will is so is your deed; As your deed is so is your destiny.
The Upanishads

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.
Willa Cather

Let's take a look at this

This message is brought to you in greatest of lazy fashion, I'm still in bed.

It's cool in the house and I'm a teeny bit tired.

But not too tired to take a look at this:

The whole general thrust of this work by Emily Carr, titled: Tree Trunk 1931, is upward.

Somehow though we are not tired of this powerful singular focus. How did she do that?

There is a slight curve to the main line of the tree and it tapers. This creates relief. Then there is the skilful use of colour to bring some areas into high focus through light values and diminish other via darks on the trunk.

Look at the curved lines in the base, they sweep along the horizontal plane creating a wonderful thick drape, as well as depth.

You will also see my favourite... glow, you will see it in all parts of the painting, in foreground, mid ground and back ground. It is good enough to eat.

Look how high yellow is used to shed sunlight., how its compliment violet is used on the opposite side of the trunk, the wonderful call and response of opposites we see in nature. The warm and cool play with each other to unify the whole. Could she have picked a more desirable green to use? The brights behind, the dulls ahead... the amazing rich neutrals.

I love how the trunk has a beginning like us, all but has no end to how high it can reach.

We can learn a ton from this trunk!

“You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.”

Emily Carr quote

Creativity and Our Abilities- An order

Creativity in place with this rug using an unusual grid background!

Please watch this great talk, by Ken Robinson.

Examine your experience, are you bound by the expectations of what or how things are done? Are you balancing your own creativity on the fulcrum of what you needed to fit into? Tip the scale!

Thinking seriously

Today I was thinking about my friend Jane, here are some of her amazing rugs, she understands the concept of traveling with colour very well.

And I'm thinking, thinking about why every time we go out for a walk I end up on the edge of a terrifying cliff.

Dyer At The Stove/Shibori

Here I am last night rectifying so blue I needed today.

It's never too late to dye!

Spot dyeing a safety pin shibori brick is a great way to vivify boring wool. I do different colours on each side and make several letters S instead of spots to create this look over already dyed wool.

These can act just like a plaid when hooked.

When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.

George Carlin

Winsome- A New Wandering

This recipe is so desired I have made yards of it since I invented a week or so ago.

Winsome

1/64 Yellow

1/128th Blue

1/128th Chocolate Brown

1/128th Brilliant Green

1 tooth pick wet dipped in Caramel

Running out, it happens/ Dyeing Yarn

Hooking along on my Vogue rug I had begun to use a hank of wool I had dyed back in the ice age when I was teaching myself to dye yarn. This teaching consists of making a kajillion mistakes and continuing to soldier on.

This hank of wool had a colour scheme that appeared and disappeared into its background as I hooked it into poker chips, and as I'm hooking more and more on this rug I see that as a theme that is emerging. This rabbity quality, colour disappearing into a hole/whole... I like it.

I needed more yarn and I like to use thicker yarns to hook with and if I whip I like to use finer ones.

I remembered I had dismembered a partially constructed afghan to procure the first hank. And talk about keeping things until they are useful; I had made the afghan squares from a sweater I had knit and didn't like about 33 years ago. I still had some squares for two reasons, I couldn't believe at one time I could crochet and I just like to look at their chunky business from time to time.

Yesterday I got down to a scant foot of yarn left so I dug out two squares and undid them. I tied them up in two places to insure they were easy to wind up after dyeing (you cannot believe the mischief wool will get into if you don't handcuff it, what a rogue) and followed the method below with proc chem turquoise, majic carpet red violet and majic carpet yellow.

Dyeing Yarn

I like to use the electric frying pan for this.

Make sure your wool is arranged in skein and is loosely tied in four points. Wet it.

Make three to six colours of dye in jars, use 1/2 cup of water, more if you skein is big, or thick wool.

Lay your wool in the frying pan, try to get it as much of it in contact with the bottom of the pan as you can. DO NOT ADD WATER.

Turn on your pan.

Pour the first colour over the wool in a cross. Wait for this colour to mostly take up

Pour the next colour in a cross beside the first cross.

Work in this pattern adding all colours one at a time. DO NOT STIR. You can flip over if you wish to inspect for undyed parts and redo them using the colour in that area

Heat until all colour is gone from the dye bath.

Enjoy!

“...human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but...life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

Gabriel Garcia

What the bunny brought

I don't know what the Easter bunny ate all winter but here are her eggs!

What's Up?

Here is my Vogue rug and the mess I create while hooking.

We haven't had spring and summer's arrived. It was 26˚C yesterday and so far today 25. That's 77˚F ....

With no leaves on the trees and a sirroco blowing in from some distant desert, it is too hot to be outside for long, at least for me.

So I'm hooking and catching up and you are part of that!

It is wonderful to be hooking again, it does so much for me all the way around, though I have to say it is easy to put a few pounds on if you are steady at the frame. I think if I placed my cutters way, way over there from my nest I could easily burn 20 calories or so an hour! LOL

We've had a lot of firsts of the year this week, bbq, potato salad, hanging out the clothes to dry.

It has been fun but one thing spring creates is incessant crying at the door by cats to go out for a minute, this is an activity that requires supervision. It does help me slow my day down when I heed the cries and let the naughty girls out for a time and it makes them happy, have a happy moment yourself today if you can find a minute.

ALlaN K Chalmers:

The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Woolgathering Challenge

This is a single value multi-coloured circle.

Here is the info people got yesterday:

Our Strips WandaWorks WG 2010

There is no doubt we have them, the question is what can we do with them?

My friend Marilyn Bottjer has so many she has hooked over 8 good sized rugs out of them to date,though she swears to me they are mating and raising young in her closet.

You can over dye them. You can use them for a hit and miss rug. You can replicate anything you want using them! FLOWERS BIRDS PEOPLE SCENES CREWEL ORIENTALS...

ANYTHING YOU SEE!!!

You have to learn to handle them... to sort them.

You can sort them according to colour families.... that can be useful for using up the odd strip here and there. If you want to really go for the gusto while using up your strips you might want to consider sorting them according to value.

Every colour has a value... values just don’t happen in swatches. The value of a colour is part of what makes it what it is, it is a graduated scale running from white to black.

Here is an easy way to sort the values of strips.

Take a handful of strips and place them before you, give them a close look. Can you see any darker ones? Pull them out and make a new pile. Are the lighter ones shining out at you? Make a new pile of those. The medium ones will be left.

It is possible to subdivide each value group, light, medium and dark,into a further two or three piles using this same theory of pulling out the lights and darks. For more excitement and accuracy in your work you might want to do this when you are working with more strips.

You might encounter a problem with brights,where should they go? They are darker than you think.... lay them on one of the piles to see if they disappear or get stronger, you want them to fit in or kinda disappear.

Think of sorting your laundry. Have your loads all the “same”, darks with darks, mediums with mediums and lights with lights.

You will see you probably have many colours together in your piles.

The most magical thing about hooking these colours together as though they were one is the splendid iridescence you can get, really it is the only way to get this effect, you cannot get a true “oil slick“ event in your work by dyeing wool that is iridescent.

The other amazing thing is the speed at which you can use up all manner of business. It won’t take long to whittle away your piles of strips when you can hook anything with them.

Sorting them will also help you dye them. Say you have three piles of various colours and you need them all to be dark blue. Make your formula, throw in the lightest ones first, wait a few minutes, then add the medium, and a few minutes later add the dark, they will end up all being close to each other’s value.

Here are two patterns, play with value, here today or by the next gathering, you can do your own pattern too, just remember you want a contrast of value! Lights separated by either darks or mediums or vice versa! Have fun! Wanda

Hookers need values

man's practising is creating greatly improved photos regardless the subject

WHEW ! I look tired and I am. But I'm happy.

Woolgathering was yesterday and it was a very busy but fun filled day. There were tons of rugs and tons of treats and great products to look at and buy. People came from all over and it was wonderful to have them there.

I gave a program on using up your left over strips by sorting them according to value. I talked about using them just as they are, and I talked about re-dyeing them.

You can make very exciting events happen either way.

I'm afraid I lost my audience part way through this unfortunate program. When I tell people actual colour doesn't really matter, the value of the colour is what's key, frankly, they don't believe me. And I think this is where it happened, the losing I mean.

Also when I show them a dyed value scale in black and white and a crazily random coloured one and I tell them they are the same value wise and will act the same when hooked... well they want to call the men with the little van and the pretty white coats for me.

You believe me right? I think I'll make a slide show to further shore up my case for next time.

By considering what you are creating using the idea of values as your base to "colour plan", Thinking about what you want to hold weight or become more emphatic in your artwork and making these areas bold in value either light or dark you will save yourself a boat load of effort and even heart ache.

Ever had a place in a rug where there was trouble and you replaced it time and time again with a different colour but the same thing happened? You are getting different colours but they are all the same value so you still have the same problem.

Ever had a rug where you outlined something because it didn't show up? You are doing this latter day of course when the rug is almost done... what a strange afterthought tradition this is.

You could have anticipated and corrected this by considering the values you were using from the outset saving the outlining that looks like a Cinderella among her spoiled step sisters, and before you think I'm being harsh, I've done it myself before I knew the secret of values.

On top of being aware of values we want to use in what areas, we also need to be aware we are comfortable as individuals at certain points on the value scale real estate. Though our rug might long for value #8 trees ( quite dark ) in a value #2 snowy landscape (quite light), our idea of light starts at value #4 and we might only go as dark as #7. These are our comfort zones. So having to create a tree that is very dark might give us the heebie jeebies. Or using snow that is so light... well that won't feel good either.

All of us sacrifice our work on our own altar of personal colour preferences.

We create deadened works when they could be alive with glow and depth.

I gave the Woolgatherer's a challenge.

I gave them a couple of simple geo patterns. And I said use your scraps, value sorted in three groups, light, medium and dark to hook the pattern with multicolured 1 value wool in each section and create contrast.

4 people out of 60 said they would accept the challenge. Would you accept the challenge too?

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.

Harbingers/Recipe for Bali water

Two things that are sure D signs of spring here:

Obessesion

Over 1/2 yd natural in a dye bath with majic carpet dyes:

1/16th tsp turquoise

1/32 bottle green

1 wet toothpick dipped in 1/4 inch of seal brown

I have a compulsion to dye this each spring!

The green was a gift from the the next batch which I laid beside it.

I wasn't adding acid until I was all done a colour rotation.

Then I popped all in the oven in an acidy dye bath

It made interesting effects.

Many Days Dyeing/ Dark Wandering Recipe

Dark Desire, a wandering

Here is the recipe:

Dark Desire

1/4 tsp Moss Green

1/4 tsp Brilliant

1/8th tsp Red Violet

2/32 Golden Brown ( Aljo) you can use equal amounts of orange and chocolate brown for close to effect.

1/4 tsp Blue

I'm spending my days dyeing. I only have to do this about 4 or 5 times a year and you know I kinda like that way. I like being single minded.
I like looking at the shelves and seeing what's missing. I like recreating something greater out of something lesser.
I like seeing all those newbies playing with the oldies on the shelves.
And they all look better for it.

NEWS FLASH- this week I'm recording most of my recipes. That's good news for you and for the Mat!
I ran through blues, greens, reds, oranges and browns today before I called it quits.

I was wondering if you knew that if you double the amount of dye in a recipe you only gain one value.

I think this is why we don't get the dark darks we need on our shelves because we never use enough dye.

Have you ever used a wandering recipe but changed your measure? Like use a toothpick instead of a /32?
Or used a 1/2 tsp.instead of a /32

Just wondering if you have played enough with getting lights and darks into your life, you need them.

"The first rule of focus is this: "Wherever you are, be there."

Anonymous

Co-Ordin8s

Here is more of yesterday's dyeing. Many varieties of textures and plaid wool- one dye recipe. Instantly interesting.
I have to keep in mind if I'm dyeing yellow and I want it to appear yellow I need to use textures of light or medium value for instance and that orange will make blue turn gray and all other interactions of the complements.
I try to make sure I include a crazy in each one that creates something truly strange. And I make sure I throw in a small piece of natural to show people what the dye colour looked like alone. It never ceases to amaze!!!


And to really make your imagination run you can see them before they are dyed on the right hand side of the stove. Sorry T.


Happy hooking!
"It's a much more valuable kept together than it is in pieces."
Lee Smith
PS,
You might notice our lady of the fence sitting dye methods strikes again. It is easy to get darks and mediums with this method, not so easy getting lights. We gotta keep these things in mind as we dye, so when it is time to do our project we have what we need before we start hooking and get in a flap!

Simply Marbleous!

On Wednesday Laurel got me all ready to dye. This is no small gift.

You can see the marblizers ready with their partners rolled up in a box. Tony- sorry about stove porn. It just looks so dang handsome!

Yesterday Laurel wet wool for me, also a terrific gift!!


And here are the results of our marbleizing roughly sorted according to value. You will noticed there are no real light nor darks, marbleizing is the best way to create a grand group of middle values! Look out for an indistinct blur when you hook with them!
You know it is my secret dream to sort all my wool into value piles and not the colours ones I now use. I think it would crack open wide the things we imagine we should use and where we put them in our projects.

"Values provide perspective in the best of times and the worst."

Charles Garfield

Redyeing The Dyed

The Wet Befores

Oh I've been having fun these last few days.

Laurel and I went through my wool and culled out the little pieces and the ugly and put them aside for an upgrade.

Upgrading these wools is one of my favourite things to do.

This is what I love about this business- my stock never gets rotten, passe or even obsolete for lack of parts. It is infinitely and wonderfully transmutable.

The Dry Overdyed with Moss Green Afters

What really turns my crank is the amazing subtleties that transpire when I over dye something that is spot dyed or dyed using Karen Kahle's method - marbelising.

The magic for me lies in taking a big pot of something no one loved, adding an unexpected colour to it and getting a brand new "look".

Dior's got nothing on me.

“One thing you can't recycle is wasted time” - Anonymous

Marching Along with Vogue Rug

Not going to The Annual

Me and Donna G thinking over something ??? last year in Kitchener.

I'm sad to announce I won't be going to The OHCG Annual Rug Show this year. If you needed something you can still contact me and maybe even come to visit here in Wiarton. I'm having classes too this summer and fall.You can find the info by clicking the contact me link above and going to classes.

I gotta tablet

Results of tablet drawing.
Cherry Blossom try out for April's free pattern on The Welcome Mat ( I hope to have it perfected by then but not a bad start)
Here is my boney tree. If you want to do something with either of these please do.

I was able to fulfill I dream I had of getting a draw tablet.

You can see to the right I'm tweeting some of my drawings and also I'm trying to tweet dye recipes in 140 characters or less. That is kinda fun!

It will take some practising with the tablet but I'm already half addicted.

My user id there is wandakerr

The recipes look something like this

OLD RED 1yd wl mix txtrs. 1/2 t MC Red 1/4 t RBrown add 1/4 tsp C acid after almost all dye is up Rinse well in H water and synthrapol

Kin ya unnerstan it?

We are also working on podcasting with interviews over the phone here at the hub and frankly I feel like I'm operating well over my intelligence level! LOL

It's kinda exciting though.

On the Welcome Mat we are trying our hands at writing hooking poetry.

Cathy, you wrote a real sweet one!

Thank you.

The Point - A Recipe- Getting The Blues

Getting The Blues

Using the Point Method over 1/2 yd of natural wool

6/32 tsp of Majic Carpet Blue dissolved in to the pan, add in wool.

Point in :

Turquoise

Blue violet

Bottle green

Moss green

You can see a video of the point method on The Welcome Mat

The first month is free!