Dangle Bombing

As you may (or may not) remember from this post, I found a bunch of styrofoam balls covered in plant-y things in the Michaels dumpster. A friend and I put them to excellent use, stringing them on yarn and dangling them from a trellis on campus - we call it "Dangle Bombing"! It's like yarn bombing in that it's not permanent or damaging to property, and is awesome and exciting! Plus things hanging from strings are so much fun.

Anyway, enough talk, picture time:


Photocredit to Gaelan, who didn't want to put them on flickr himself, so I did.

It was difficult to get pictures because the balls blended into the background so well....which was part of the point. We climbed up on the trellis and crawled around to put everything up, and the construction workers who were on lunch break nearby were really confused about what we were doing. They didn't really seem to get it even after we explained, but ohhhhh wellll.

I really like making art out of things that would otherwise have been thrown away.


Coming soon:
I'm going to make a introductory guide to dumpster diving, since people seem interested! I'm not a freegan, so it really will only be an introduction, but I'll have pictures and such.

Dyed Yarn and Beads!

So far I've dyed two of the skeins I got a few days ago! Both are dip-dyed with food colouring, and steam-set in the microwave. I'm really happy with how they turned out!


This one reminds me of this gum.



The first one I re-skeined after dying it on a slightly smaller niddy-noddy, which is why the different colours are all mixed up together; the second one I just twisted into a hank. Which do you think looks better? I'm not sure which I prefer.


I got inspired by this person's photos to play with polymer clay again! I made some beads and mushroom pendants. I forgot they were in the oven, so they got a liiiiiittle overcooked. Heh, oh well.



I threaded them into sets and attached them to little cards because I'm going to take them to Rare Funk. I've got an assignment account there, but I haven't really used it, only taken some hats there aaaages ago. I have some armwarmers I knitted that I might take there - I made up the pattern so it's legal for me to sell them. Ftw!

I'm kind of annoyed at Canada Post, I wasn't home when they delivered a package, so I have to pick it up, which is fine, but it is not at the post office that is LITERALLY around the corner from me, or at the one which is a 5 minute walk away, or the one that's a 10 minute walk away. It's actually not that far away, but there are THREE post offices that are closer than the one I have to go to! Bah.

Also, for some reason I got 407 views on my flickr two days ago - waaay more than usual. No idea what's up with that.

Storage Solutions Make Me Feel Good In My Pants

Mmmmmmmmm, storage solutions. I am planning an ikea expedition sometime this week, after getting sudden untameable ikea urges. I need better things to put stuff in on my desk; as is, debris gradually builds up on it until I don't have space to do anything. A second desk might be nice, I could have a craft desk and a school desk. A craft room would be nice too, while I'm dreaming.

Being a student sucks. When I have a job that actually pays me money, I'm gonna rent TWO rooms and use one for crafts/books AND IT'S GONNA BE SICK.

Anyway, this started because I spend a while today reorganising my unmounted stamps, they are now in trading card binder sheets in my old ATC binder. Check this shit out:



I would feel accomplished, except I only did this to avoid working on my essay which was due last thursday. Ditto this blog post.

Recently I decided I wanted to have an art journal, so I ...have one...now...

Here's a page from it:


Printed image I got from a swap, buttons I cut off a shirt then spray-painted.

In retrospect, I should probably have chosen a book that wasn't lined. But whatevs, I'll make do. I have my sketchbook for flat stuff anyway? Which is unlined. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to differentiate my sketchbook and art journal. So far, art journal is random crap I like that I've done random crap with, and sketchbook is sketches. So far, so good.

Yarn forms

I've realised that skeined yarn is the prettiest way for yarn to be stored. I skeined a ball of the white yarn I bought this morning (on my DIY niddy-noddy!) in preparation for dying, and for some reason it looks so much more appealing than when it was in a centre-pull ball. They are both Paton's classic wool in Winter White.



Maybe it's because the yarn isn't all criss-crossed, or because fancier yarn is usually skeined, or because it looks like a sugar twist, or because it's harder to use in a skein. I just don't know! I have actually noticed that most variegated yarn looks better before it's knitted/crocheted. Which is sad, because I really really like variegated yarn, but then am always disappointed once I've knitted/crocheted it. Self-striping is SUPER satisfying though, oh man. Especially Noro. Mmmmmm, Noro.

I also spun about 116m of yarn, and it's ready for dying too! I'm going to use this for plying, so I'm trying to decide if I want to dye it now, or wait until I've made a second skein. I've only got a drop spindle, so I'm only going to attempt 2-ply for now. I'm leaning towards doing separate initial dyebaths for some spotty colours, then one big dyebath with both of them for overall colour.

Speaking of dying, I read Hand-Dying Yarn and Fleece the other day. It was interesting, definitely had some useful information for a beginning dyer (is dyer the word I want?). I've been baking my yarn to dye it, guessing at the time and temperature, based on vague instructions from the lady at the knitting store. This books deals with using a stovetop or microwave, so I don't know if I've been doing it wrong (probably). Anyway, the basic instructions are useful, and she has some interesting alternative methods, but there's a lot of repetition in the instructions, to the point that I feel like a bunch of different methods could really have been one set of instructions, with a "try these alternatives" section. So yes, worth reading, but I'm glad I got it out of the library.

Is two blog posts in one day excessive? What is your favourite way for yarn to be stored? Should I go eat bacon?

Pressing questions.

ALL THE YARN

I am proud to announce I can now go into Len's Mill without attempting to buy ALL THE YARN. I think it's because I'm now a total yarn snob, and want to save my yarn money for buying gorgeous fancy yarn.

Anyway, I got some white 100% wool yarn because I want to practice dying yarn! I'm only using food colouring for now, since I can get it locally, it makes bright colours, and I can still use the dishes I dye in afterwards. I've only dyed yarn I've spun so far, but spinning takes quite a while, and I'd like to be able to practise on yarn I didn't put tons of effort into.

Here's the skein of yarn I spun + dyed most recently:



100% "organic fibre" from Louet (I'm not sure what "organic fibre" means). Hand spun with a drop spindle. Single ply. Hand dyed with food colouring. Approx 200m, 145g, DK weight. There's a bit of slub in this, but not as much as previous yarn I've spun!

Exciting Things

Look what I found at the Michael's dumpster this time! A gazillion dried flowers and random styrofoam balls with nature-y things on them. The dried flowers are gradually being passed out to people who can use them (I can't, they're scented and I'm allergic...I stole several peacock feathers out of them though!), and we have made MOST EXCELLENT use of the styrofoam balls, which I will talk about when I get pictures of it. But for now it's a SURPRISE!


I went back with my sister, and we found her a really awesome portfolio case! In perfect condition except for where the plastic got cracked a little, but that is easily fixed with duct tape! It's enough to make me go to Michael's and "accidentally" break things I want.

And now, for a bunch of ATCs!



Also, the following ATC, which is what I did with the background from my last post. I am...reasonably pleased with it.



In less exciting news, I sweated so much at a rave that my phone broke. :( It stealthily deletes texts now, and the camera WORKS, but exits before I can take any pictures.

:O

My FUCK!! ATC swap on swapbot has made it into the top ten swaps list! (At #9 currently, but still...)

I feel famous. And a little silly.

WIPs

I have a couple cards I'm stuck on.

The first one has stamped flowers that were washed out on a foreign text. I really like how it's turned out so far, but it feels like just a background right now. I was thinking I might make a flower (or something) with wire, but I'm not sure!



The second one is layers of mushroom stamps in green ink. Again, I like it so far, but it still just feels background-y. No idea what to do with this one!

Suggestions?

FUCK!! ATC SWAP

RARG!

On swap-bot recently, there was a One Word ATC swap. This seemed interesting, so I looked, and yes, it was an ATC swap where you picked a word and your partner ATC'd it. Only thing was that most of the chosen words were along the lines of "Breathe," "Faith," "Bliss," etc. While I'm sure the lovely people who requested those lovely words will enjoy them, as a young, tough (grrr), secular, foul-mouthed, etc, student-person I don't really want to make any of those into an ATC.

Choosing to focus on the foul-mouthed aspect of myself, I've made a FUCK!! ATC swap. If you join, you get to make an ATC with (and this is key) the word FUCK in it! So exciting...

And just so everyone is well-informed and educated in preparation for this swap, wikipedia gives us this fine information:

The word "fuck" did not come from any of:

* "File Under Carnal Knowledge"
* "Fornication Under the Christian King"
* "Fornication Under the Command of the King"
* "Fornication Under Carnal/Cardinal Knowledge"
* "False Use of Carnal Knowledge"
* "Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge"
* "Felonious Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "Full-On Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "Found Under Carnal Knowledge"
* "Found Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"

Censoring Myself

...sort of. So, I bought these labels to attach to my yarn bombing:



They say "Zilliah Bailey" and "zilliah.ca." They iron on but I'm sewing them on to be safe.

(Sidenote: look at my awesome tiny craft iron! )

Anyway, so now my yarn bombs are traceable to my website, which is traceable to here and my flickr. Plus I had to use my real name to get the website, etc, etc...and while I don't really think yarn bombs count as graffiti, certain other ...art-related things do. So pictures of graffiti aren't going to be public on my flickr anymore, and I probably won't blog about them (had I? I don't remember.). Oh well. At least I'm self-censoring instead of someone else doing it? I'm only going to censor things that have legal repercussions/fines. (If you want to see these secret pictures that may or may not exist, just message me on flickr, and I'll friend you.)

Bleh, I don't know if I'm overreacting, but a friend who yarnbombs was putting up a tag and got stopped by a police officer, who said it might be considered "mischief" and that they'd been noticing all the yarn things, so drawing attention to less cosy street art is probably not the best plan.

It seems unfair to talk about yarn bombing but not show anything, so here's the piece I put up tonight! Green acrylic yarn in a lacy pattern from this book (which is quite good, it has written and diagrammed patterns, which is nice). It's the first piece with a label attached!



It's on a tree! This is the first tag I've put up that fits around a normal-sized tree! Very exciting. Sorry for the terrible picture, my camera doesn't seem to like darkness.

On the way back I also stopped my the Michaels dumpster, and found these awesome plastic bucket things:



Ooooh, maybe I could use them for dying yarn, I wonder if they're watertight....

Dumpster diving ftw!

Evolution

I know I've remarked on this before, but my style really has changed a lot in a few months. Consider the following: (remember Bill Nye?!)



These are my three "Steampunk Garden" cards. The second and third were made as requests for cards similar to the first one, 2 weeks and 4 months after the first one. They're all basically made the same way, with rubber stamps, flower punches and beads, but I feel like the mood is really different in all of them. Pretty sure I'm getting better at layering colours effectively? Feedback is always welcome.

Man, I really want to get some more ink. I have eight ink pads (5 dye, 3 pigment) and they just never seem to be enough for all the stuff I want to do. Ink and stamps are so *expensive* though, even unmounted. I've found some AWESOME stamp sites which have the bestest stamps, and unmounted too, but getting lots is expensive and I never have any money.

/rant>

This ink, by the way, is pretty great. I must find somewhere online to purchase it cheaply.

ATCs

Some new ATCs! This first one I made a while ago but only recently unfinished; it's crocheted, stiffened with mod podge, and has a wire guy climbing on it.




Next is a multimedia collage similar to a card I made a while ago.



The second collage is simpler (only a couple cut up images and some rubber stamps), but I really like the colours in it.

People Are Strange

I posted a few brightly coloured pencil crayon ATCs on flickr and ATCsforall the day before yesterday (see my previous post). As of today, I have two people asking for trades for this card:



I like the card well enough I suppose, but it's the one I like least out of the pencil crayon ATCs I made. I like the colour combination, but there's not really any colour blending, and some of the vine edges are blurry from when I coloured the background in. I think it's the worst coloured in of those cards, and I prefer the content of the other ones.

I've noticed before that my tastes do not line up with most of the general population, I guess this is just confirming that. But still. Weird.

Pencil Crayons

I've had a lovely set of artist-quality pencil crayons for a while now, given to me by a lovely friend who was not using them. I've never really tried drawing with pencil crayons before, it's pretty different from pencils, but I just love bright colours so having with with these. I feel like my ATCs have gotten a lot more sophisticated in the last few months - a lot of that is due to getting reasonable art supplies but it's probably also because of actually spending time on them, and getting used to making art. I haven't taken any visual art classes since grade 8 (when I was 12) so there's a lot of really basic stuff I don't know much about yet. Like colour wheel things! My sister explained it to me over the weekend, and it is already being helpful.

The above ATCs are traded in a swap I made on swap-bot, but I have some still available as well! Here are two:

Yarnbombing!

I was on vacation with my family on the the Bruce Peninsula and I found a giant ring thingey (that ships used to tie up to, I believe?) and it was PERFECT for yarn bombing! I knitted a tag but I only had about half a day, so I didn't have time to make it go all the way around, which was sad, but I like the way it turned out well enough. I crocheted a frilly border on it too.