STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Mr. Artisun recently hired our good friend and neighbor,

 Chris Love,

from up on the mountain,

 to come down and stay with us to put in our new stairway.

It turned out  so beautifully.

Chris is the one who built all the insides of my studio up at the cabin.

His design skills and craftsmanship are impeccable.

Then my husband was able to match the stain color on the under part of the stairs

 to the new flooring he installed last year.

Between the two of them we now have a gorgeous new floor and stairway.

(notice the sweet little table that Jim made from a slice of tree trunk we garage saled two years ago)

My Crafty Husband

Ever since I've known Jim, he has been handcrafting walking sticks.  He uses them occasionally when his back is acting up and it helps him as he walks the dog around the block.  So last year he started a new Xmas tradition   After Xmas instead of giving our tree to the garbage men, he cut off the dead branches , sawed and filed off the nubs, whittled off the bark, sanded the wood, stained it and then varnished it.  My favorite part on all his sticks is that he tries to find something unique to put at the ends.  I believe he picked up that cool carved ball from a thrift store or maybe it was from Home Depot.  Can't quite remember, either can he.  LOL  

Anyways, they are beautifully crafted, and he, I  and my son Zach, are working to get my shop up and running so that he can put up a few of his sticks for sale.  So watch for the shop to open soon.  The unfinished stick in the photo is from this years little stumpy tree we had.  Can't wait to show it off when he's done turning it into a gorgeous walking stick.

Oh Boy...A New Assignment -Twig Sculpture

And who will I test this out on, you ask??  You know, the man who supports all my artsy-fartsy adventures in fiber, Jimmy Sposa.  So first I made him walk around our complex collecting long vines from various bushes.  We hosed them down, then stripped off most of the leaves below.    

We used the thickest vines to build a foundation and copper craft wire to secure the join.  Then we began to weave every which way, not even sure where we were going with this.

At this point Jim wants to know what is supposed to be.  It's a sculpture of course.  Something interesting and decorative to look at.  He seems to think it will make a better hat  LOL

Jim's masterpiece above, and mine below.

From a couple different angles.

Tomorrow I'll show you another option for these beauties, so stay tuned.

Drop Spindles & Hand Dyed Rovings

After reading the article in Spin-Off Magazine this summer on building your own drop spindles, I knew I just had to try this as an assignment for my 3rd level 3-d kids. 

But first I knew I had to build one myself...

Oh boy.  But I was so busy getting ready to get back to school and get my classroom set up that I asked my husband Jim to give one a try first (below)

He looked like he was having so much fun with all the sawing, cutting and sanding that I just had to make the time to try one too (below)

I purchased 3 different hardwoods for the kids to choose from, oak, poplar and I forget the name of the other one, it will come to me LOL, and about seven different stain and wax choices.  You can see I'm already spinning yarn on my spindle above.  It actually works well  :)

So anyways, here are the results which I'm so thrilled about, including their hand dyed roving's they will be spinning both on their drop spindles as well as my spinning wheels.  Senior Kelsey Lee designed a lovely floral pattern, ...

and even put in some wood etched designs.  You can also see her different wood choices below.  And aren't her color ways in the roving's beautiful?

Senior Nandi Best also used 3 different woods and stains, wood burned all 3 pieces and then inlaid beads.  Wow!!!  I'm so excited by the results and can't wait to do this project again next year.  Maybe even make a couple more for sale. 

Happy Spinning Girls!

For EXTRA CREDIT tonight, on a piece of brown paper, cut out the shape of a drop spindle, and on the whorl section (the large part at the end) put your name and period on one side and on the other side put the name of the person's drop spindle that you admired the most from the ones shown above.

Jim's Handmade Xmas Gifts to our Daughters

Since Jim was recently laid off from his Executive Human Resources position at Taco Bell, he decided that he wanted to make his Xmas gifts this year rather then spend his savings. He's very crafty and comfortable making things so I suggested for his daughter Julie and my daughter Dani that he make them scarfs. So off we went in early December to thrift stores in our area and found many beautiful, soft merino wool and cashmere sweaters for under $2.00 each. I threw them in the washing machine with hot soapy water, shrunk and felted them, and them cut them up into sections. Jim took those sections, cut them up to the sizes he needed and arranged them into scarf position. I sewed them together for him (he doesn't like the sewing machine LOL) see above.

Then he picked out 2 different hand spun yarns (one of the skeins was spun by my friend Lori Lawson of Cap Fiber Arts and he used it in both scarfs) and needlefelted them onto the sweater pieces along with some unspun roving (hand dyed by Lori) and some small sweater pieces that he cut into various shapes (above). The next step was to wet felt the whole thing so the fibers would meld together (I think Jim enjoyed that past best of all cuz he got to work with hot soapy water and make a big mess LOL). And then he sewed on a few buttons when it dried (below).

These are close-ups of the finished scarf's details.

Jim let Dan pick out her sweater colors, rovings and yarns, and the pix above is Danielle's finished scarf, but Jim forgot to sew the buttons on so the negative space feels a bit naked ( you know I will get it back so he can put those buttons on LOL). Both girls loved their scarfs, and I know Dani took and wore hers in Utah over the Xmas break. Julie, send me a pix of you in your scarf in Manhattan.

A close-up above. Jim also made Dan a cute little headband to go with her scarf (below). Such a clever man I have, with such a big heart :)