Various projects

Remember Thing-A-Day?  Well even though I haven't posted I have worked on a "thing-a-day" consistently.  Between drawing, crocheting, knitting, and writing I have definitely kept up the crafty spirit of the "thing-a-day" mission.

That being said I have several things I have been doing.

First of all, stitchmarkers!

I did these amber stitchmarkers.  Stitchmarkers come in handy when you are working on big projects so I always like having several handy.

Letter stitchmarkers.  I would have made one that said crochet; however I couldn't get all of the beads to fit on my head pin.  I love these.

I ran out of things to do, obviously.  I've been knitting (or attempting to knit) lately so these seemed appropriate.  Funny I haven't done one single purl as my project called for a garter stitch.







Well here is my knit project:

I am making an earring holder.  I have an empty black frame that would make a great earring holder.  Crochet isn't too conducive (in my opinion) to being a holder without employing some kind of mesh pattern and those tend to be a distraction from the earrings.


I tried but got really irritated of the stitches so I cut it off early.

I placed some earrings on it to see how it would look.  I'm happy with it.  I nailed it to the back for lack of a better idea of how to get it on there.







I made one commissioned hat from the Saturday before last that I will deliver to the customer this weekend.  I also did this project.  I won't post for the sake of keeping my blog g-rated lol.  I may work on a swimsuit in the future. 

Ongoing projects

This is the crochet hook holder that I had worked on.  It is much better in cotton and sturdier.  I will probably make another one...it took roughly an hour or so to make it.  The pattern?  I just made a sc rectangle with a shell border on three sides, a long chain with a cowrie shell attached to the end for the enclosure...can't get any simpler than that.

 I made this crochet mesh cap.  Since this was a practice one I made it for myself to at least see where I can  improve it.  The ribbed brim really stretches so I will probably make less rows than 72.  I did this in a 4 (G) hook which works fine...I think I will want more slouch in the future so I'll probably just change the hook size for the body or add more rows for longer hair.  It's cooler than a hat.  Will I sell them in my artfire?  Maybe once I improve the pattern.   I will make a few more tams.  I am interested in doing another Africa tam with a drawstring and the older style brims I used to do.








I am working on some baby koalas.  I received a call towards the end of March from my alma mater.  They want to renovate the freshman dorm and quite frankly that renovation was long overdue.  I offered to donate my baby koalas with purple scarves and two C's embroidered into them to the college surcie shop with all the proceeds going to support renovating the freshman dorm.  Koalas are the school's mascot.  The director of alumnae affairs loved the idea so I'm going to meet with her next week about it. 


I attended the Columbia College senior show yesterday.  It was a great show.  I spoke with my old professors and some of the students that I knew.  I finally picked up a package from one of them that I was supposed to have gotten nearly a year ago.  Well I don't make it over there very often, the college is not near where I live or work.  The kids always love going to shows not for the art but for the food.  Can't much blame them though lol.

Last weekend we had taken them to the Columbia International Festival.  They thoroughly enjoyed that.    I hadn't been to one since high school so I was looking forward to it also.  We were given passports at the door and had to visit the exhibits to get signatures or stamps from the representatives there.

 This was a Native American show that took place on the center stage.

 Isn't this a gorgeous crochet hat?  This was at the South African exhibit.  I love the stitch.

The picture to the right was the Turkey exhibit.

 To the left is part of the Phillippines exhibit and the picture to the right is from the Mexico exhibit.

This picture shows the kids with the Chinese panda.  It was really cute.  There was a little girl, no more than four or five, that was signing the passports for China.  When she signed my six year old's my six year old told her "thank you" in Mandarin Chinese.  Boy was that little girl surprised!  There was a gorgeous parrot at the Australia exhibit.  It was pink and light gray and I had never seen one like it.  A beautiful bird.  So many interesting items and great people.  We even got to see the parade of countries.  We had a great time.

What have I been up to?

Well I'm still crafting, slowly but surely.  I did another crochet hook case, this time in cotton with no pockets.  It holds all of my hooks (over 20) with room to spare for 13 more + stitchmarkers.  I did a few ACEOs the other night while watching Hancock and placed them for sale on ebay.  ACEOs are art cards, editions and originals and are 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches. 

I Want Some!  I had some new gouache paint I wanted to try out...I can't say I am pleased with them.  They were more opaque than transparent unlike the other gouache I used to use so I am on the fence about them.

Lunch!

Peekaboo!

Peaceful Reflections.

The Stalker.

Curiosity.  This one is a little older---I completed this in May of 2010 and for some reason kept him around.

Here is a portfolio piece I am working on.  I was cleaning (hence the scattered supplies) around my workspace.  This is far more complete now.  These hands are drawn from life which limits my time that I worked on them (I only do life drawing from natural light).  My portfolio work is a far cry different from my ACEO work to the point where there is a definite style divergence. This piece is part of a series that is going to consists of 2d and 3d work.  It kind of segues from my previous series, Lost Within, and touches down on psychological aspects of the Black experience in America more so than the spiritual which is the primary catalyst for the Lost Within series.

This is some old work.  All of these are ACEOs except the woman and child.  That is 5 x 7 inches.

I probably won't sell on ebay for awhile now.  It's been over 3 months since I last sold and I'm not pleased with some new changes they have implemented since then. The final value fee now applies to postage, too. They are doing this to stop people overcharging for shipping. Now we would have to put up postage to cover these fees. If we charge free shipping, then PayPal takes it as price of item, and we pay more fees there, too.  This mean we as sellers have to counter this with an increase in our prices for the buyers.   I understand they want to discourage sellers overpricing shipping but I wish they had kept this change to the problematic areas such as electronics and not art.    I wish I could find another market for ACEOs.  So far ebay has been good to me for those.  I only sold one on Etsy (over the course of 2.5 years) and haven't really seen anywhere else where the art has flourished.  I will probably just start doing swaps and selling the prints I have left over to test the waters in my artfire.