I Pledge Allegiance

Knit American

New Look

While beginning to knit socks for my quilts for veterans sets, I realized all of my yarns are foreign although they are sold in America by American companies. Yes I did some screaming at Lion Brand Yarn because I am in shock they do not make but 3 of their yarns.

I am going to be focusing on hand spinning wool and knitting socks using American-made tools. Supporting American industries, whether sheep farmers or cotton growers is very important.

My artwork is currently sculpture of my animals and I will add posts here about those as well.

Saving Edward

One thing that happens with any type of metalpoint drawing is that the drawing fades.  For example, I gave my sister a drawing of a pear done in gold. It has faded out to be almost invisible.  That is because the metal interacts with the atmosphere, giving off particles.  Some metals fade faster than others, some, like aluminum, hardly fade.  I thought this was mainly apparent with gold, and I don't work in gold often.  However, when unpacking and checking some of my artwork, I found that some of my copperpoint drawings are fading.

Originally, metal was used for drawing before a painting was completed, being the original under-drawing of an oil or egg tempera painting. Some artists, but not many, work strictly in metal as a finished piece, and that was my position when I did many of my metal drawings.  But I don't want to lose Edward.  Edward is a character I have drawn a couple of times, and now he is fading.  I am going to paint him in oil over the copperpoint, and will do the same for some of my palest drawings.  Edward, fading, is on marbledust and rabbitskin glue on wood, and the surface the drawing is on can affect the fading effect.  "Chinese white" or Winsor and Newton Designer's Gouache in Zinc White give a surface that has slightly less fading.  Below is Edward, copperpoint:

and below are some other examples of copperpoint and fading:

Wait til you see these in color!

Update: I do love drawings in copperpoint, but I did have to save these from fading.  Below are "Edward" and "Best Face Forward" in their initial oil color layers:

I will be adding a few more layers of color before these are finished.

Update: July 31, 2017  Finished with "Edward" and "Best Face Forward" - copperpoint under oil under crayon, on wood. (c) laeom

For the first time, I am trying a replacement ant gel for my Uncle Milton's Gel Ant Farms.  I purchased the gel from Antgel and it was very easy to make.  The ants arrived today, and have been placed into the farms.  This will be an interesting experiment as to whether the replacement gel is as good for the ants as the original gel in Uncle Milton's farms. I have made a short video from today:  

New Ants Arrive- and Go Into Replacement Gel Farms

In a new video, I talk about using crayons and the coloring of an American Flag image, bith for stress reduction and for taking back your own sense of America.  

Coloring For Stress Reduction

And of course, crayons are wonderful for fine art as well:

"Pear No. 31" Simply Art Beeswax Crayons on paper (c) laeom

Recently I have been working with Spirograph. Yes, the spirograph from the 60s, and something I had as a kid.  I have a few videos on YouTube about Spirograph and PTSD, and today I added a video about using a spirograph design to make your own quilt motifs.  All the videos can be seen at this Playlist.

What I wasn't sure of when I first made the video was how well the transfer pencil would wash out. Below are photos of the test sample I did:

This first photo is the design transferred to fabric. In this case I used muslin.

 Below is the design, hand-quilted with black and purple threads, with much of the pink transfer showing.

After quilting, I washed the sample in very warm soapy water.

As you can see, all of the pink transfer washed out.

Below is the sample design after pressing. This is done as a "rag quilt" block, but it could be used in most quilting applications, anywhere that a design can be ironed on.

 UPDATE: I am only getting one use out of each design drawn with the Aunt Martha's pencil, meaning it has to be gone over with the pencil before transferring again.  I am looking at other transfer pencils for multiple use of one design. Below are some photos showing how I also used this same design to transfer onto cross stitch fabric.  I did re-trace the design with the transfer pencil in-between each transfer.  One sample cloth has been tea dyed.

If you want to knit yourself some simple socks, this vintage pattern from Columbia-Minerva is an easy one to start with.  I also have several patterns in my Etsy Shop, but the pattern below is very simple.

I took photos of the book:

I use these as bed socks because they do not have a heel and the toes are simply gathered and sewn.  They do also make a good thick boot sock.