Doiling Away All the Time

My vacuum pump was delayed one more week but it should be due to arrive today afternoon. In the meantime, the weather was cold and I could not be arsed to heat the workshop and start another project. So I have decided to spend some time exercising my bobbin lace making skills again.

Last year I have taken my grandmother’s old blueprints and I scanned them. And now I took the scans to photoshop and I refined them into a form that can be printed out.

As you can see, these are true antique blueprints, made with the technology that actually gave us the word.

For the printable templates, I have refined the curves a bit but I have done my best to preserve the original placement of pins and knots as well as the type of weave. My intention was to reproduce the old work, not to reinterpret it.

Doilies are insidious. You make the inner circle first and that is quick and easy. Then the next inner circle takes a bit longer but it is fairly quick still. The next one then takes even longer. And the outermost one then drags on and on for what feels like forever.

Bobbin lace making shows itself to be a reasonable upper-back and shoulder exercise. The bobbins weigh next to nothing but holding your hands at breast height for hours is not easy. It is not exactly hard work, but it is not as easy as some might think.

Regarding my technique, I am not at my mother’s or my grandmother’s level yet. I am not able to hide the beginnings/ends as well as they do, neither can I make some types of lace (the diamond shapes on the last one are fugly) as neat and regular as they do. However they both were making bobbin lace since childhood and for decades, whereas I only learned it last year, so I am not losing any sleep over not being as good as they.

Winter Wonderland 5: Miscellaneous

Well, it’s not the Arctic sea, but for a frozen puddle it looks dramatic enough.

A little chaffinch used the open ground under the trees to look for food.

The Nile Goose knows how to pose with a frame of tree branches.

Aaaand, save the best for last. It’s my absolute favourite. Taking pics of crows is damn hard, because the pitch black will just throw off your auto focus and they rarely keep still for long enough to adjust it manually. But in the bright sunlight, the auto focus caught on and the blue and green frame it perfectly.

Winter Wonderland 4: The Battle for the Skies

A buzzard used the opportunity to scout for food (and now guess who only had the 250 mm lens with her), but the crows were having none of it.

The Art of …

… illustration, by Al-Jazari

This is one of many whimsical illustrations from the ancient Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Inventions by Turkish artist Al-Jazari. I’ll be featuring more pages from this book from time to time. It’s a treasure trove of wonder.

The Elephant Clock, from The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Inventions, 1206, by Al Jazari. Image from Wikiart

Winter Wonderland 3: More Swans

The two juveniles must be about the same age. They are still smaller than their parents, although they have grown a lot since they first arrived, but they have always been about the same size and started out the same cygnet grey. Yet one of them keeps clinging to its baby colours, only reluctantly letting go of the grey and slowly turning white.

The Art of …

… illustration, by Theophile Steinlen

Des Chats by Steinlen, published by Flammarion, Paris • Artist: Théophile Steinlen 1857-1926. Image from Wikiart

Winter Wonderland 2: Swanlake meets Frozen

The swans are the mascots of the whole village. The old pair divorced and moved out some time in 2019, so last autumn they got a new breeding pair with two juveniles. They have shelter on a little island and get fed and I must say, they are remarkably relaxed for swans, especially since the pond has been busier than I’ve ever seen it. Can’t wait for Covid to be over and people going elsewhere again.

Still more Resin Fun

Two more pendants.

I also finished some more shakers, but I didn’t take pics. I really hope that this year the little Christmas market in my friends’ village can take place so we can put up a craft stall again, or my house will burst with finished trinkets.

I got myself a small set with “everything for UV resin jewellery projects” (except a lamp, I have one already), because I wanted to have some inspiration/ a challenge to work with (and needed new UV resin) and I was not disappointed. Sadly those monthly subscription boxes you can get in the US haven’t caught on here. I’d really enjoy those.

The pic doesn’t show the snowflake background, which makes it a true winter accessory.

Winter Wonderland 1

We’ve been having some snow over the last week, but on Friday we had snow on the ground AND brilliant sunshine and the good thing about home office is that you can decide to take a long break at midday and work when it’s dark. So I packed the camera and the Pokémon and went to the pond for a walk.

It’s too many pics for a single post, so you’ll be getting them over the next few days.

That’s the same pic, more or less, different camera settings. Takes you from brilliant to gloomy.

I love icicles. I was not that easy getting this perspective and afterwards jeans were wet.

Take a pic in the shade, and suddenly everything looks grey…

The Art of …

… graffiti, by Banksy

Rage, The Flower Thrower, 2005 on a garage in Bethlehem in The Occupied West Bank, Banksy. Image from Notes on Travelling

The Art of …

… landscape, by Winslow Homer

The Coming Storm, 1901, Winslow Homer. Image from Wikiart

Resin Art: Just some fun

Now, one of the good things last year was that we finally installed a “work bench”, i.e. my grandma’s old kitchen cupboards, giving me space to work on and where I can leave my stuff over night. The downside is that it’s in the unheated cellar room. Being fully underground, that’s the coolest room in the house, as it also doesn’t get any “spare heat” from that fucking huge wood pellet furnace. This makes working with epoxy resin in winter difficult. The epoxy is not really runny, and while curing you’re prone to “Kawaii sheen”: the surface gets matte and has some dots, much like the “soft, softer, do I need glasses” blurry filters you sometimes get in Mangas or animes. That’s not a problem when you cast something in silicone: the top surface is in the silicone and thus comes out shiny, but it is a problem when you want to topcoat something.

To solve the issue I dragged a gas heater we bought during renovations from the garage to the cellar and got a new gas bottle. This worked well the first time, but apparently there’s something wrong with the switch, so I can’t actually turn it to any setting apart from “starting” anymore. But I really, really, really wanted to do some resin, so I took the UV resin upstairs. You generally only work with small amounts and little stuff, so that’s ok to do in the kitchen. I just hope that the safety googles aren’t just labelled as “UV filter”, but actually are, or my eyes are fucked.

So here’s some less artsy and more cutesy projects.

A seashell shaker. The shaker form is epoxy resin. No reason to waste lots of expensive UV resin on it. Also: white UV resin doesn’t actually cure well, because the white pigment of course blocks the UV light from reaching everything below the surface.

A seashell charm. This didn’t turn out quite as well. I should have coloured the first blue layer a lot darker, but it’s still nice.

Look who didn’t mix her resin and her dye well enough… But I actually love how the dye separated from the resin. I sealed both sides well with clear resin to make sure nothing stains or sticks.

And now my favourite: the galaxy fox:

It’s got so much sparkle, and that’s sometimes the thing you really need.

The Art of …

… glass, by Dale Chihuly

These photos were taken at the artist’s Seattle Gallery called Garden and Glass. Photos are by Mike Heller Photography. and there is much more to see from the gallery at his site. I’ve chosen a few of my favourites and they can be seen below the fold.

From the exhibit Garden and Glass by Dale Chihuly. Photo by Mike Heller.

[Read more…]

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Doiling Away All the Time

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Winter Wonderland 5: Miscellaneous

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Winter Wonderland 4: The Battle for the Skies

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The Art of …

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Winter Wonderland 3: More Swans

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The Art of …

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Winter Wonderland 2: Swanlake meets Frozen

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Still more Resin Fun

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Winter Wonderland 1

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The Art of …

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The Art of …

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Resin Art: Just some fun

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The Art of …

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