Travel Pics

Early spring no leaves yet in the mountains.

For the last couple of weeks I have been on the road a lot.  Usually I have a lot of pictures that I put up as part of the Photos from the Road series.  Unfortunately, this time I was driving and did not get a chance to take many pictures.   It may be just as well, because most of the pictures would have been taken of traffic on the interstate.  I drove across a good bit of Virginia during the last couple of weeks. 

Spring is here, and the vacation season is starting.  It seems like everyone is ready get out and go somewhere.  The temperatures are rising and it feels great to get outside.  It was warm during the day.  Some days it was even warm enough for short sleeves.  It was cool in the evenings.  You needed a fleece. 

The travel was an interesting experience at this time of year.  At lower elevations most of the dogwoods and early spring flowers have finished blooming.  The oaks and maples have their leaves almost fully out.  At middle elevations everything is a the bright green of early spring and the early flowers are just starting to bloom.  At upper elevations most of the trees have no leaves on them yet.  The daffodils and forsythia have bloomed and the dogwoods are just opening up their blossoms.  The apple trees are blossoming up there.  It is amazing that the apple trees are able to withstand the cold weather and produce fruit when it is so chilly. 

My road trip ended up at the cabin.  We are still doing renovations up there.  I will have more on that on Sunday's blog post.  Today I wanted to show photos of our grilling out.  Usually in April it is cool enough to start the wood stove.  If the wood stove is going, my husband makes English Muffins and cooks them on the griddle.  This trip we decided that it was too warm to run the wood stove.  It might have been cool enough in the morning, but by afternoon the temperature was supposed to be in the upper seventies (Fahrenheit).  If we started the stove, the cabin would be roasting hot in the afternoon.  Once the stove gets hot and the cinder blocks of the cabin heat up, it stays hot for quite a while.  Since we were working we did not want to it to be too hot in there. 

Since he was not making English Muffins, my husband decided that he would make some Italian Bread and bake it on the grill so we would have fresh bread with dinner.  We have experimented a few times with baking bread on the grill.  We made Naan and we have cooked pizza dough on the grill.  There is a learning curve on cooking bread on the grill but we are getting better at it. Once the bread is on the grill, the top of the grill was closed so that it would build up enough heat to bake the break.  The bread cooks very quickly on the grill.  You have to make sure to check it often and turn it before it burns. The bread had a toasty, smokey flavor to it.  It was delicious.  

Dry rub on the meat.

The apple tree is blooming.

I made a steak rub and cooked the London Broil on the grill.  I guess I should say that I rubbed the steak and my husband cooked while I assisted from time to time by taking the temperature.  As a general rule at home he is not very interested in grilling.  Up there, he seems to enjoy it.  The charcoal is laid so that the grill has a hot side and a cool side.  The London Broil is seared on each side on the hot side for about five minutes each side, then moved to the cool side to finish cooking.  It was rotated during the cooking so that the meat cooked evenly.  Once the meat has been moved to the cool side the lid of the grill is closed to let the heat build.  A London Broil is a thick piece of meat.  It took about twenty to twenty-five  cook it to rare.  The appropriate temperature was determined by an instant read thermometer.  I think that type of thermometer is the bet cooking tool ever.  By using a thermometer my steaks and chicken do not overcook.

I feel embarrassed every time there is a picture taken of me up there.  I am always in my worst clothes and have been working like a dog all day so I am dirty and disheveled.  We decided to cook before changing so our clean clothes would not smell like smoke for the rest of the evening.  One of these days maybe there will be a decent picture of me. 

I think that a new grill is in our future; or at least a new grilling station.  The ground is not level up there.  We have to prop the grill with some boards so that it is stable.   We discussed the possibility of building a small level platform for the grill.  I think that a new project is in our future.    

Jack in the Pulpit

Regular readers know that I have been in a big time crunch for several days.  Sometimes live is just too busy to craft.  I really have been working hard to get everything accomplished so I can get back into my studio.  So far, I have not had time to sit down with the Lamb Soft Sculpture project.  Sewing the lame is going to take a lot of time and concentration.  It is one of those things best done when I have large blocks of time.  In the mean time, I am putting up a photo of another of my early projects.  I hope my readers will enjoy it.

This is one of my very early projects.  I call it Jack in the Pulpit.  It was so early in my crafting days that I was not even documenting projects at that time.  I cannot even remember when I made it.  It was sold at a Folk Art Society of America auction in 2011.  At least I am pretty sure it was 2011.  It could have been 2012.  It is hard to keep up with things after so long.  That is why I started the blog.  So I could keep track of things.

The Jack in the Pulpit is an anthropomorphic figure.  The Jack in the Pulpit flower gets its name because of its distinctive shape.  The flower is pitcher shaped.  The stamens are on a stalk that stand up in the center of the pitcher.  It looks very much like a minister preaching in the pulpit.  The name Jack is attached to it because Jack is an old (archaic) name for a nature spirit.  Therefore, you have Jack in a Pulpit much like you have Jack O'Lantern.

I guess you would have to call this a mixed media sculpture.  The Jack is a doll body made from wire, batting, string, and muslin.  The doll body is covered with  papier mache'.  The hair is glued on embroidery thread.  The flower is made from papier mache' with an armature of a cardboard roll and wire.  It is on a wooden base.  Everything is painted with acrylic paints and sealed with a wooden sealer.

I thought I had posted these photos on the blog once before, but I could not find it if I did.  I wanted to make sure that it was documented.  Who know, maybe one day I will be famous.

Large Johnny Cake Sculpture - Part 2

Building up the armature.

Today is another quick blog post.  I am sorry that I have had to interrupt my Lamb Soft Sculpture project but this week is really busy for me.  I have not had time to work on that project.  I have been blogging about one of my projects that was made but never put on the blog.  I was not blogging about it at the time because I was making this project as a birthday gift and I did not want it seen so it would be a surprise.  After that, I was busy working and blogging about other projects and never seemed to get around to putting it up on the blog.  In the long run it probably just as well.  For this week when I am really in a time crunch I have something I can put up on the blog.

Completed Johnny Cake

Last blog post I showed the drawing of the Johnny Cake face sketched on poster board.  Once I had a working drawing, it was time to build up the face with an armature.  For this project the armature was made of aluminum foil and masking tape.  There is not a lot of technique to it. Aluminum foil is rolled, folded, pushed, and mashed until it is approximately the shape you need.  It is taped onto the base with masking tape.

Once the armature reaches the desired shape I covered the armature with strips of newspaper dipped in flour paste.  The flour paste is no mystery; it is just all purpose flour mixed with tap water until a proper consistency is reached and all the lumps of flour have disappeared.  What is a proper consistency?  That is hard to describe.  It is not so thick that it is hard to cover the strips with an even coat of paste.  It is not so thin that it is watery.  The paste just coats the strips of newsprint without dripping off.  It is one of those things that you know it when you see it.

Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the project when it was just covered with newsprint.  I can only describe what I did.  I laid strips of flour paste covered newsprint over the front until the entire project was covered.  When it was dry I flipped it over and laid strips until the back was covered.  Once dry I repeated the steps.  There are four layers on the front of the project and three layers on the back.  Extra layers of paper mache' were added to help build up areas of the face.  The final layer being on the front and wrapping around to the back so that no ends of the newsprint showed. Then it was sanded until the project was (relatively) smooth.  After that it was painted and sealed with a high gloss sealer.  I added a hanger to the back of the project so that it could be hung on a wall.

It is one of those projects that sounds so simple.  It took a fair amount of time.  Each layer of paper mache' had to dry completely before another layers was added.  Maybe no one cares about Johnny Cake faces anymore, but a long time ago the story of the Johnny Cake was very popular.

Check back on Thursday for another "behind the scenes" post.

Large Johnny Cake Sculpture - Part 1

I am doing a quick post on the construction of my Johnny Cake face.  This project is made from poster board, aluminum foil, masking tape, newsprint, flour paste, white glue, and acrylic paints with a high gloss sealer.  I began the sculpture by tracing a circle on some poster board.  I used a dinner plate to trace the circle.  It has been some time since I made this project.  I think I cut two circles from poster board and glued them together with white glue.  This made the base thicker and more stable.

I am trying to replicate from memory a Johnny Cake face that my mother owned when I was a child.  I cannot say that it is identical or as well done, but it was as good as I could do at the time.  I think my skills have improved over the last couple of years since I made the face.  Maybe I could do a better job on it now. 

This type of sculpture is built up rather than carved down.  It begins with sketching the face on the flat surface of the poster board.  Last blog post I mentioned that if I were making this project now I had a couple of things I would do differently.  After examining it today, I have added one more thing to that list: I would start the face lower down on the circle.  Well, live and learn.  To grow as an artist is to try something and then try it again and see if you can improve upon it.

I am sorry now that I did not do more documentation in my early years.  When I first started out I was not taking any pictures of my projects.  My photography has improved over time as well.  I was not even any good at taking a picture when I started.  I only really became interested in taking pictures when I started to document my work.  Before the blog, I used to keep a written journal of materials and formulas used on a project.  One day I thought that it might be quicker to make entries if I was typing the information rather than hand writing everything.  So I started a blog for my own personal record.  Then people started reading it.  Now I have a number of repeat readers.  The more people read it the more detailed the blog became.  It just goes to show that taking a step in one direction can take you in another.

Check back on Thursday for the rest of the build on this project.

Large Johnny Cake Sculpture

As I blogged last post, I have a really busy schedule at the moment.  My crafting time for the next several days will be little to none.  I don't want to leave my readers with no new content, so I am interrupting my Lamb Soft Sculpture project to post about another of my projects done behind the scenes.  I will be blogging about the Lamb project again soon.  In the mean time, I hope that readers will enjoy photos of my other projects.  I have been meaning to put this on the blog sooner, but never got around to it.  I was always busy on some other project.  I am glad to finally find the time to document another piece of my work.


A couple of years ago, I made a miniature carousel from papier mache'.  (View my blog posts from January 15, 2013 through July 17, 2013 to see the entire build.) On the carousel were four Johnny Cake faces.  I had included the Johnny Cakes because years ago my mother had purchased an antique Johnny Cake face that was from a carousel.  I loved that piece of artwork.  It was a reminder of one of my favorite childhood stories.  And, it was from a carousel.  When I was little, my father used to take me up to a shopping center and to an amusement park to ride the carousels.  Hands down, riding a merry-go-round was and still is my favorite ride.

During the build I asked my mother about the sculpture and she said that she no longer had it.  She said that she wished she still had one.  She really enjoyed my Johnny Cake faces.  I decided I would build one for her.  I did.  Then I was in such a rush to get it in the mail so that it would come for her birthday that I forgot to take a photo of the completed face before I mailed it.  So the project did not get put on the blog at the time.  I finally took some photos of it while visiting.  But it still did not get put onto the blog because I was always blogging about one project or another. So many projects
so little time.


The top photo is my large Johnny Cake.  The following photos are the smaller faces that were made for the carousel.  Over the next couple of blog posts I will show the construction techniques I used for making the Johnny Cake face.


If I had one thing to do over on the large Johnny Cake project, I would have used a matte rather than a high gloss sealer.  Okay, well two things, I would also have taken more time on the eye.


My Sunday blog post will be about the construction of the Johnny Cake.  Check back then.

Lamb Soft Sculpture - Part 2

Last blog post I showed how I created a pattern for my lamb soft sculpture. I have made some progress on  the project, but not as much as I would have liked.  It is difficult to show you how much time went into just the little bit of work that is displayed.  Cutting out the pieces and marking them for sewing takes so much more time than people think it will.  It seems like it just ought to take no time at all for such a small piece.  It actually took a number of hours to get the project to this point.

One of the factors that took so much of the time was the fabric choices.  At first I was going to make the entire soft sculpture out of muslin.  Then I remembered that I had some leftover fusible fleece from the Victorian Belsnickel project.  Word association here:  fleece/sheep.  So I decided to use the fusible fleece in this project.  A lamb or sheep usually has very light hair around its face and lower legs and thick fleece covering its head and the rest of its body.  So I thought that if I fused the fleece to the muslin, it would give the lamb a more realistic (?) look if it had the fleece in those areas.  Then I thought that maybe I should just go ahead and fuse the fleece to all the parts because it would give the pieces more strength.  I was using some scrap muslin for the piece, and if I made a mistake on determining warp and weft I could have some distortion in the shape of the piece.  The muslin was ironed to remove wrinkles and then the fleece was fused onto it.  Maybe fleece was a good idea, maybe not.  It remains to be seen.

Anyway, once the fleece was fused, I pinned the pattern pieces on it and cut out the pieces.  Then I marked the sewing lines.  Some time ensued while I was looking for the tool used to trace the pattern line.  I did not find it.  I finally decided that it would be more time wise to just use another tool instead.  I used wax-free tracing paper and a bone folder to trace the sewing lines onto the fabric.  I had to trace the lines onto every  piece because there will be a middle strip (not shown in the photos) that will be used to give the lamb some extra width.  That took a long time.  The sewing line (in orange) is a little hard to see.  The fleece on the other side of the fabric give so much cushioning that I really had to bear down hard to make the line visible.  Maybe it is a good thing that I decided to go with the bone folder rather than the pattern tracing tool.  Those little dots that the tracing tool makes are hard to see even in good conditions.

So here I am, all ready to sew, and no time to sew it together.  My next couple of weeks are so overly scheduled that I doubt that I will get back to the project for a bit.  I would rather wait until I have time to finish it and enjoy working on it.  I don't subscribe to the work all night to get it done routine.  So the project will have to sit until I can get back to it.  It might be about ten days before I have new photos.

In the mean time, I won't leave readers without content.  I will be blogging about another behind the scenes project.  Check back on Thursday for photos of another project I have been working on behind the scenes.

Lamb Soft Sculpture - Part 1

Once again an apology for not posting on Thursday.  I was unable to access the internet.  We have been having an intermittent problem with access for some time.  Sometimes everything was fine and sometimes we would get a message server not found, and other times it would just start to load then sit there and spin.  It was very annoying.  Then, the next time you would try it, everything would be fine.  It was difficult to figure out what the problem was.  Yesterday the modem bit the dust for almost the entire day.  Then they were able to determine that our nine year old modem was not working.  They are sending us a new one.  It should be here in 24-48 hours.  I am able to access the internet today, so I am attempting to make a post.  Hopefully, the modem will hold up until I am finished.

I have started on the Lamb soft sculpture project.  Step one is to make a pattern.  I am sure that there is a lamb pattern out there somewhere, but I like to do my own work.  This is folk art after all.  If I used a pre-made pattern I would be making a craft.  Anyway, to make a pattern, I need to have some idea of the shape of a sheep.  I looked at a picture of a sheep and then tried to draw my own sheep by using the grid method.  It took a couple of attempts.  I don't know if the resolution on the photo is good enough that you can see all the erasure lines.  My first attempt looked more like a Doberman that had just caught you breaking into his junk yard.  But, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again.  Finally, I have a drawing of a sheep I can work with.  At least, it is sheep like.

Now that I have made a drawing of a sheep, it is time to use some technology.  I used this sheep drawing, which is six inches tall by four inches wide, to make pattern pieces.  I placed the drawing on my light box and traced the basic shapes.  The drawn pattern lines will be my sewing lines.  I cut about a quarter of an inch around the drawing to give myself some extra fabric for the seam allowance. 

Of course, this pattern is only drawn at six by eight inches.  At first, I considered just making a small toy using the pattern as drawn.  Working small requires a lot of effort and patience.  It is difficult to get into tight turns and hold onto small pieces.  On the other hand, working small requires you to just work on a more basic level and not do as much detail work.  Then I considered making a somewhat larger one. I don't know how big newborn lambs are, but I am guessing they would not be too large.  I decided to double the size of my pattern.  That would make the pattern roughly twelve by sixteen inches.  That may not be lifesize, but maybe three quarter size?  I will have to continue my research in trying to find out how big lambs are when they are new born.  So far, most of the information I have come across references their weight rather than length and width.

I could have made another graph drawing to enlarge the pattern, by at this point I decided to use a copier and increase my pattern to two hundred percent.  The size seemed more to my liking so I cut out the pattern pieces.  What you see are the basic shape pieces.  I still need some extra pieces to give breadth to the back and stomach and increase the girth of the lamb shape.  They will just be straight pieces of fabric sewn to the other pieces.  I am still experimenting with the width of the strips.

That is about as much as I have accomplished on the project so far.  It is spring, and my schedule is very busy now.  I will blog more on this project on my Sunday blog post.  (That is if the new modem has arrived or at least if the old one lets me get to the internet. 

Embroidered Denim Jacket - Part 2

I am two or three hours late getting the blog post up today.  We had a big storm last night and out landline and internet were knocked out.  The service was just restored.  Now that spring is here I want to remind readers that we have some fierce storms in this area and that if you don't hear from me for a week or two it generally means we have lost power or internet service.  The longest we have been without power was ten days. 

Last blog post I said that I would post on a project I have been working on behind the scenes.  I had posted phase one of this project back in September, 2015.  At that time, I had embroidered the cuffs and waist line of the jacket with pansies.  It was a lot of work.  In some places the denim was five layers thick.  It took a long time to finish that phase of the project.  At that point, I decided I needed a break from it before continuing on with the project.

I guess I picked up the embroidery again in February of this year.  For this section I will only be embroidering through one layer of denim.  On each side of the jacket I embroidered morning glories.  It has taken about two months to complete the morning glories.  I don't keep track of time on the projects.  My philosophy is that a project is finished when it is finished.  If I start stressing about a deadline, it takes all the fun out of doing it.  Just as an estimate, I would say that the morning glories took about sixty hours.  I probably have a hundred hours of embroidery in the jacket so far.  This is a project I do when my husband and I sit down to watch television in the evening.  Take a stitch, look up at the TV, take another couple of stitches.  It would be a bit faster if I was not watching television, but much faster.  I could embroider on a sewing machine, but then, I would not be trying to sew on a machine while I was watching television. 

There are two more panels on the front on each side to complete.  Each section will have a different type of flower.  Each panel is narrower than the one before.  The flowers will be different colors.  I want it to look like a flower garden.  I think I will stop at embroidering the front.  Sometimes you can do too much work on something.  Knowing when to call a project finished is as important as getting it started.

If I am not doing embroidery, I quilt in the evenings.  I chose to embroider this time because it is less expensive than quilting.  Embroidery thread is only forty-two cents a skein.  Fabric is now so expensive that it costs a lot to make a quilt.  However, anything you do repetitively gets old after a while.  Once I complete the denim jacket I will be ready to make a quilt again.

I will have some pictures of the lamb project on Thursday.  I am making progress.  I will be blogging the first photos of that project on Thursday.

Lamb? A New Soft-Sculpture Project

I am posting a day later than usual.  My apologies to regular readers who checked in yesterday.  If I had checked my calendar more closely I would have realized that the schedule was overloaded.  A morning appointment, an afternoon meeting, an evening that we exercise, and trying to cook earlier so that dinner would be ready for us to head out the door and the whole day was scheduled to the hilt.  Not only that, but spring has really begun.  It was just two days past the day that my husband first remarked that he had seen significant amounts of pollen on the car.  Then I decided that I would take a walk and enjoy the spring flowers in the neighborhood.  That was a big mistake.  I woke up Thursday morning with a bad case of allergic reaction.I could hardly bring myself to get out of bed, and I had the a busy day ahead of me.  So something had to give.  That is why I am posting today rather than my normal Thursday post.

I guess it would be worthwhile to tell you how this particular project came about.  It was one of those projects that have been in the back of my mind for a long time.  Years, decades ago actually, there was a craft project about that caught my interest.  I don't know what the actual title of the craft was but it can best be described as lawn sheep.  It was a plywood cut in the shape of sheep/lambs that was painted black.  Some type of fake fur was glued onto the body of the sheep, leaving only the black face and legs visible.  The sheep were staked out on the lawn.  From a distance, it looked like a flock of sheep grazing.  They were cute.  But like all crafts, they eventually fell out of favor after a while.  I expect that this craft fell out of favor fairly quickly because the fake fur would not have stayed clean for very long.  Anyway, it left an impression enough that it is something I recall from years ago.

Another trigger for this project was a Santa project I saw in a magazine years ago.  It was a nearly life-size Santa standing next to a large long haired ram.  I don't recall what the Santa looked like other than it was an old-world style Santa.  But I remember looking at that ram and saying I would like to make one someday.  Last year I came across a copy of that old magazine and instantly recognized the photo.  I may still make one someday.  However my initial project is going to be toy sized not life size.  At least I have an idea of how to make a life size one.  More on that if I get to the life-size project.

The latest trigger for this project was when I went to the Folk Art Museum while I was in California.  The gift shop had a handmade toy sheep.  It was fairly expensive, as most museum gift shop are.  I really had to talk myself out of the purchase.  The only way I could was to say, "I could make that."  Well, I am home now, and I really want to have a sheep.  So here I go, getting started on the project.

I don't have any photos for you yet, but I have started researching the project.  Perhaps you wonder why I need research.  I guess it goes to how little I really know about sheep.  I know it has four legs, some type of ears, a little short, stubby tail.  That is about all I know about what sheep look like.  What shape are the ears?  What do its hooves look like?  And as I found out, the short tail is unnatural.  A sheep's tails are docked.   I just had always assumed that the short tail grew that way.  I learn something from every new project.

What I really wanted to know has been somewhat hard to find.  What I wanted was a height to length ration.  After searching through some web sites of sheep information I have concluded that most people raising sheep care more about the weight of the animal rather that caring about how tall and long it is.  Also, there are many different brands of sheep that have different statures so the question might have been rather meaningless in the way it was framed.  I did learn a good bit about sheep along the way.  I finally turned to sheep anatomy, which gave me a basic idea of what the sheep body looks like.

From there, I started looking at what people have put on the internet regarding lambs they have crafted.  So far, most of what I have seen has been cutesy lambs that look like Lambchop (you must be this old to remember that puppet).  So far, I have not found a craft pattern for the lawn sheep or even a picture of one.  I am not trying to copy someone else's work, but ideas on what materials they used might be helpful.  However, it looks like I am going to be completely winging it on this project.  What I have found on the internet so far runs more towards toys for infants.

I may have developed a pattern for the sheep body by the next blog post, but that may be wishful thinking. For my next blog post, I will show some photos of another project I have been working on behind the scenes.  I hope to have some type of photo of the lamb project after that.