Making Time

i love these posts from green bean baby about her mother’s house, chock full of fun collections. i wanted to join in the fun.

my mother is an antique dealer. she has been for as long as i’ve known her. there was a constant flow of objects in and out of the house. i always wondered whose things they were. in our house, we had late 19th century photos of people… and visitors would ask “oh who’s that?” as if it was a relative! i was surprised when i realized that no one else hung pretty pictures of strangers up.

i also grew up being used to furniture appearing and disappearing. i was especially sad one day when an “ice cream parlor set” of a round table and wire chairs had vanished from the kitchen. apparently someone had come to view something else at the house, and decided they would buy that too.

let me point out, she makes very little money from the antiques. it just all goes back into ‘inventory’. she swears she clothed us on her earnings, but i know how much she makes. i try to get her to admit it’s “a hobby” but she refuses. while she could make more money making lattes, she enjoys it very much. it’s a labour of love.

she’s retired now, but before- she worked full time as a nurse, and then she soaked, ironed and mended loads of linens everynight. i was used to seeing her busy all the time. she an i both know we’re alot alike.

these photos are some i took of one of her booths (in memory lane antiques).

she literally said: you can pick anything you want! and i didn’t take anything! i wish i got one of these red and white checked table cloths… but at the time i had just sold or donated many of my worldly possessions and collections, i could not bear to take one more thing.

michelle at green kitchen shows off a “racoon” she made recently… yes, it was meant to be a bear… but i have to agree it does look more like a racoon!

i keep on trying to make bears, and fail. what makes a bear a bear? i have to figure out face proportions, and ear placement. i put the ears a little too close to the top of the head… and it didn’t look right. so instead…
look at the cute mouse it became! you can see i went over the ears with two single crochet rows, so i could make the ears bigger. (still not sure if this mouse would like his ears even bigger?)

then, i used the wool to ’shape’ the face, bringing in the eye socket area (and anchoring it to the nape of the neck, so it made cheeks. and i put the nose where the bear’s chin was going to be.

whenever i start a new animal, i begin with the belly, then do the head. then one arm and one leg. the ears are last. it’s not until the ears that i know exactly what it might be. i think i need to start with sketches, and see if i can plan ahead to actually make a bear!

EDIT: Newsflash… I was just surfing around (up early, hoping to sign up for backtack) and found that another mouse appeared when Fiona from Hop Skip Jump was trying to make a cat! Mouse is the new ‘one size fits all’ animal.

“Somewhere around 10pm panic set in when I realised my fat cat looked more like a bear of some sort. Cursing the (far too ample) glass of wine I’d had earlier, I forged ahead. Then I mucked up the arms and had to make some more changes to her body… and suddenly around about 11pm, a mouse appeared. A skinny kind of mouse at that, too. Thankfully, a happy accident.”

*And* it was posted on the same day as mine was!

this is thought to be the oldest existing ragdoll in north america: Bangwell Putt, great name!

Clarissa Field of Northfield, Massachusetts, was born blind in 1765. This doll was made for her and she fancifully named it Bangwell Putt. Bangwell lacks facial features but her ten carefully constructed fingers suggest the importance of touch in Clarissa’s world. Bangwell has a homespun body and is dressed in 18th century fashion, including corset. Clarissa kept Bangwell until she died in her eighties. Bangwell Putt is thought to be the oldest surviving rag doll in North America.

i love this website, and how you can zoom in!

Last year, my friend Orla and I made a peice for a show in Sligo at The Model (gallery) called Solo: Do your own thing . The brief was simple: make a site-specific work involving ’sheep’. We took this loosely.

Here you can see a close-up. We made a green crocheted landscape in the Bar Bazaar cafe shop window; these were meant to look like field lines from above. And we had a basket of wound up wool in the cafe and invited passersby and people sitting in the cafe to make their own pom-pom sheep and hang it! We put up two or three to start, and were so happy to see people making their own ’sheep’ as the weeks went on. (see more pictures of other works in solo05)

When we were preparing the work, Orla and I spent an afternoon trying to figure out the best way to prepare it so people would be able to make their own pom-poms. I tend to over-think most things, I’m more concerned with “What is the RIGHT way to get this done?” I had started cutting out individual pom-pom templates out of cardboard. Orla has a more relaxed: “What is the EASIEST way to get this done?” It was our first time ‘collaborating’ and it was an eye opener for me.

After some more research we stumbled upon the most obvious, simple and effective way! Just wrap it around your fingers, tie around the middle and snip! I just saw some more clear instructions online at Bella Dia. She has photos there. (Orla and I had made line drawings and photocopied them).
I think it was a reminder for me that effective does not always mean perfect. Yes it would have been great to send everyone home with their own pom-pom template, but really this would have been a pain in the butt. And I think the final result is more charming; some are big or small depending on who made it.