Pillow book IV, day n+8, and other oddities

Finally! Finished sewing all the little tulle pages together. Here they are, laid out (with 1 swiss cheese/die in the middle, more on that later), in the 'starting position' of the game. Except 1) the pillow case isn't made yet, that's just the piece of fabric laid out on the pillow form; 2) there will be 6 words along each side (5 on each side are shown, the extras are all piled on the left bottom corner there). Each word is 8 sheets of tulle sewn into 3 'pages'.



Here some of the pages have been turned. The words are still legible when 1 page has been turned, but becomes illegible when 2 pages have been turned.



See this entry for previous day on this book.

Although I had Sara make me 2 dice, I've decided to use only 1 for this piece. For obvious reasons, looking at the photo. Which means I have an extra die for another piece! So wheels are turning for that. I'm very happy with the way the dice turned out, and I think Sara was too. When I brought it to the critique group meeting last night, people's reactions were great — they couldn't figure out if it was a block of cheese or a die.

I have appt with Aaron (photog) next Wed, so much better pictures of all the pillows will be coming in the later part of next week.

Found a few different types of beads that I can use as spacers for book III, and also had the plexi cut for book II and III; I'll need those for display at the Tennessee show.

So, the odd bits.

Now, I always have strange dreams, usually of the down the rabbit hole variety and although things tend to be very involved, they move along pretty quickly without much time for me to think. But last night was a little different. I dreamed that I was considering buying a portable oven that's also a pet carrier, and it's all inside this suitcase, which looked suspiciously like this broken suitcase that I've been trying to figure out what to do with. In real life, I do have a broken oven AND a broken suitcase, AND a pet.

Anyhow, in this suitcase, half of it is an oven and the other half, a pet carrier. But there's only 1 door, and 1 latch. I kept on looking at it and looking at it. Whoever was trying to sell it to me kept on saying how my pet would be perfectly safe in there, all the while the oven is going, but I was dubious. I put a chocolate cake in one half, and a small dog in the other, but I couldn't bring myself to shut the suitcase, thinking why didn't they just put a door on each half, then I'd feel so much better about it.

I must've decided to not trust the oven/pet carrier — the last thing I remember was me eating the unbaked chocolate cake batter.

Somewhere along the line, a tipsy Mrs. 5000 also made an appearance, throwing yellow plastic cups all over a book arts conference!

Had another coyote sighting tonight. At this rate, I'll be able to do my own daily coyote blog. This one seemed like a young one, still had a bit of a puppy look.

Pillow book IV, day n+7

Oops, did I say that I'd have pictures today? I lied, apparently. Did a lot of sewing on book IV, and am about 1/2 way through all the little pages that need to be sewn together. Still need to sew the pillow case itself, and the critique group meet tonight help me decide which fabric to use (I had a lighter and a darker to choose from, and although preferred the darker, wasn't sure that the text would show...everyone thought the text showed just fine).

The group also had a great suggestion for how to finish book III, so that was great. So this was the previous entry on book IV.

The group reviewed the information the gallery at Austin Peay U sent; they had lots of pedestals, but I'll need to order 2 plexi sheets as support for the 2 larger pillows.

Pillow book IV, day n+6

Still no pictures (but I really should've taken some). Finished basting the tulle pages for book IV (took 4 hours!); decided the layout and orientation of the words. See this entry for previous day on this book.

Finally hemmed up book II (so the pillow form is no longer exposed on the underside). Still working on how I want to finish book III, but did make a couple of decisions on that today.

Pillow book IV, day n+5

Continued to hand baste the tulle pages today, but only got in an hour's work in the studio. It was, otherwise, a busy day for errands. Sara brought over the finished swiss cheese-dice today, and they're great! Picture tomorrow.

Random movie: Sweeney Todd. OK, so I've seen this a couple of times on stage, and enjoyed it both times, but somehow, the movie was...boring. And they way over-did the squirting/dripping blood thing. I thought so even during the opening sequence, so I guess I should've seen it coming.

Pillow book IV, day n+4

Time to get back to work. But first, a picture of Laura's inspiring coat, which she drew on to match her purse:



This is the game piece. For a list of all the words in this piece, this this entry. Here you see Brother and Recognize in 8 layers of gocco printed tulle. I had originally figured I'd only use 6 of the 8 that I printed for each word, but after stacking them up, the individual flaws didn't really show much, so I've decided to use all 8 sheets.



Here they're pinned up 2 layers each, to make 4 pages. But looking at these, I think 2 layers is too faint.



So I decided on 3 pages of 3, 3 and 2 layers, with the 2-layer being the bottom page. Here are the 2 3-layer pages:



I also now realize that the gray fabric I bought for this is too dark, and actually I'm really liking the pieces over white. So I'll be heading back to the fabric store tomorrow and see what else I find.

One lazy day begets another

...and so nothing was accomplished in the studio today. I did do all my Sunday chores, some of them twice, but I'll spare you the details. Although it felt pretty good to not work today, I must admit.

How time flies! As promised, I gave the Good Prince a haircut tonight. And looking at the aftermath on the floor, there's but one tenth of what used to be there 18 years ago. Clean up is easier, yes. When I took the sheet out to shake off, the tree by which I do this is now 20 feet tall, and it was just 2 and half feet tall when I first shook out the haircutting sheet standing by it.

And now I have to wear bifocals to cut his hair!

We'll have been in the house 17 years this summer. And have we improved upon it since we took up residence? Nooooooo...

2008 Sock Mending Party!

No work was accomplished today because it was the 2008 Sock Mending Party —

2 coats
1 sock creature
several pairs of pants
and many, many socks were repaired.

In addition, a white coat arrived, well, white, and left with green circles on it; some embroidery was completed; and a quilt was on its way to being finished.

Chicken hat had a great time, as did the rest of us.

The cello was brought out and we had live music as we mended.

What a great way to start 2008! And now I'm off to laze around and read.

Pillow book III, day n+5

No pictures today, but I finished the edges of the tulle pages of book III. Again, took a lot of experimenting to get the tension right on the serger for this task. Of course, now that I have the edges sewn up, I see some other problems with the book which I'll have to deal with. See this entry for the previous day on this book.

Still decluttering the house. OK, I said I wasn't going to clean for the Sock Mending Party, and I'm not really cleaning. But really, there's a lot of old junk mail, old not-junk mail, old postcards, old magazines, old paper work of all kinds, that need to be dealt with.

OK, so here's a somewhat entertaining tale. This actually happened a few days ago, but it took me a bit to figure it out. We had a pretty foggy night, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, and I went out for my evening walk a little later than usual. Anyhow, I was walking along my usual route, and I looked up and saw this dog down the street. It had seen me already, and it was frozen in mid stride with one leg in mid air, just tracking me as I walked towards it. I thought perhaps it was tied up to the tree or something, and thought what a horrible night to leave your dog out like that; it was cold and wet.

As I got closer, I could see that it was not tied to anything; it continued to track me without moving. I thought about going over to check it out, but had second thoughts since it was behaving so oddly. At the corner, I turned onto the side street (away from the dog). I walked a few steps and turned to check on the dog. Well, it had moved and was walking towards me, but as soon as it saw me looking at it, it froze again.

I continued on my route for another half a block before I looked again. And this time, the dog had changed directions and was paying me no attention.

I think I've decided that it was a coyote. It was definitely the right size, shape, and color, although it was fluffier, but that might be a winter coat. They're definitely around in the neighborhood, and I heard one baying in the middle of the night about a week ago.

So that's my encounter with the "friendly" neighborhood coyote.

For a daily dose of coyote stories, check this out.

Pillow book III, day n+4

I got lazy yesterday and didn't document, but, I didn't do a whole lot in the studio and we got home really late from the movie and I just wanted to get something to eat and get to bed. So a quick note about yesterday — I was invited to submit a piece for the Lake Oswego Chronicles exhibit for 2008 and had to submit a proposal for what I was going to show, which of course I have yet to make. Anyhow, this all happened back in early December. My deadline for sending in an image is mid Feb, even though the exhibit won't be until June, so I figure I better get cracking on that. So yesterday was looking for materials for the piece I've promised. But mainly, I worked on putting the house back together after Portland Open Studios. Yes, that was months ago; and yes, it always takes me months to put all the furniture & artwork back to where they all belong.

So, today. Well, I'm now 2 issues behind on Pudding. The last two issues of Pudding, in fact. People have asked about PhotoEZ and StencilPro as potential replacement materials, should the unfortunate day arrive when we can't get Riso screens anymore. The two products seem extremely similar and it took me a little while to find where they talk about the differences. (I should note that their data on the Riso screens are NOT correct on the page!) Anyhow, ordered myself two different grades of the StencilPro to try for one of the two remaining issues of Pudding. Not sure what I'll do for the other issue yet. But the two will probably go out together as a double issue.

Anyhow, back to pillow book III in the afternoon. Decided on the text/captions for the pages, and printed them on Rives Lightweight on the inkjet printer. And here they are, sewn onto the tulle pages. There's a dreamy quality to this picture...I think it's the weird light combination (camera flash + full spectrum light directly overhead), and the way the pillow was just kind of sitting on a chair piled high with stuff.



See this entry for the previous day on this book.

Random Movies! We saw 2 in a row (2 nights in a row that is). So yesterday was National Treasure, the Book of Secrets. It was VERY BAD. The night before was I'm Not There, which was really interesting for about an hour and half, and then really boring for another 45 minutes — after I got over the ingenuity factor, there wasn't much else there. Not for me, anyhow.

Pillow book IV, day n+3

OK, the words for book IV were printed today. Here's the laser printer output that I used to flash the screen. All the words were crammed in there to fit the larger gocco screen (slightly larger than 6"x9"). I think the smallest gap is about 1/3".



I put down ink blocks between the words and printed 8 copies of each word. And here they are, all printed. They were printed one word at a time — I'd print a word, scrape off the ink, towel off the spot, and move on to the next.



And here's a detail of 'You.' This was not a clean copy (thus I needed to print 8, in order to get 6 good ones). When I peeled the print off the print bed, any movement between the tulle and the newsprint would cause these smudges, if I wasn't super careful. So this is one of the smudged ones. And on text, any defect is instantly detectable!