I love photos that take themselves when I accidentally hit the shutter button! They end up about color and texture, and movement. I am sharing a few with you today that I’ve taken in the last few days. I have no idea what they might really be, but I like them as they are.

I watch myself with interest, as sometimes I’m very much into controlling outcomes. Other times I’m absolutely artful and in the moment. I’m glad I can do both but I wish that I could choose ahead of time which response I might have to a situation!

In this case, I was taking other controlled photos and just happened to hit the camera button while doing other things. And in this case, it turned out well.

Check out this website (scroll down to July 20), a call for work. In her words:

This first month, I will post a full-blown picture. Just to get us warmed up.

Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to save the still life and use it as the inspiration for a piece of art. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO LOOK LIKE A STILL LIFE. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO LOOK LIKE THE PICTURE.

You can:

-analyze the colors in the picture, and use those to knit something.
-go to the beach and make the still life in sand.
-applique it as a still life.
-felt it.
-quilt it.
-paint it.
-cut it up and put it together again.
-throw it into photoshop and manipulate it.

On the announced day (about 1 month later), you post a photo of your “still life” on your blog or photo page. Send me the link, and I’ll post them all here.

It’s cool, I like the idea. I am not sure if I’ll take time to participate but I bet someone out there reading this will. Right now she has a link to someone who did a digital remanipulating of the photo as her contribution. Check it out!

My friend Susan Hensel (Sue H.), moved to Minneapolis a year or two ago. I have known her since her days in Okemos, Michigan as part of a team of three women at an art center/gallery called Wyrd Sisters (I taught polymer clay for them, this was maybe 1990 or 1991).

I lost track of Sue H. for a while after Wyrd Sisters closed. However, I found my friend Susan Swartz at a polymer workshop in Chicago (we had first met online) and she encouraged me to try eraser carving (soft print block making, often paired with mail art activities) and the online group called the Carving Consortium (CC). I joined the CC and learned a lot. I didn’t know that Sue H. was also pursuing eraser carving in a big way, in East Lansing, only maybe 15 minutes away.

Somewhere in there, I got into a book on non-jewelry polymer clay art (Polymer Clay, by Jacqueline Gikow) with one sculpture and several Hershberger Art Kazoos. Later yet, I got into Luann Udell’s book on eraser carving (the first mainstream book written on the subject).

Well, the printmaking got me a bit interested in the possibility of making books. I figured I’d make covers of polymer and pages printed with my own images. I might even stamp the polymer before baking, as well.

This happened just about when I started to get a little bored with making polymer clay art. Nevermind that I can tell you a book full of reasons why it’s the best medium for any artist and how you can do so much you’ll never get bored. I just needed to branch out a bit.

So I took a class from Susan Hensel, on how to make a simple type of book. And when we started sewing the spine, my gut had a physical reaction. I knew I must start pulling threads again! I had done a lot of sewing and some embroidery during my first marriage, but somehow I threw out the baby with the bathwater and stopped cold turkey. With the bookmaking class, I learned that my next step was not bookmaking at all, but fiber.

So Sue put me in touch with Nancy McRay who was at that time teaching weaving at a community ed program in East Lansing. I took a short class on weaving with Nancy, and she told me about a 3-D feltmaking workshop by Joan Livingstone, coming right up. I had always loved wool, so this sounded quite fascinating.

I ended up going to that workshop. I loved it! I made a large vessel, like a purse shape, and then I covered a pink plastic yard flamingo with gray wool, his own little sweater! I was hooked.

So I went home and surfed the Internet on Wool. And I somehow found myself at socknitters.com. And I knew that moment, that my life would change! And it did.

I was working on a computer project for a client at the time, and I knew better than to go to the yarn shop until the project was done. When I had tucked in that project, I went to Yarn for Ewe. Ruth helped me find a pattern, yarn and needles (I had never knit in a circle before, never used DPNs, never did a project needing purl stitches or decreases). I went home and in 10 days I had a pair of socks that fit! And that was just over 4 years and 119 pair of socks ago. And I’ve never looked back.

So why do I tell this? Well, when I discovered feltmaking I had an idea for the Fabric of Friendship project. I told Sue Hensel. She thought it a great idea. At that point she was in a new partnership with Nancy McRay (now of Woven Art yarn shop/gallery) and Leslie Donaldson (now of Scene Metrospace in East Lansing). They had a space called Art Apartment. They encouraged me to follow through with that idea, and I did the show.

So now Sue is out of state. I do call her from time to time (there is nothing like the support of another self-employed woman). She has a new space in Minneapolis (I was born in Golden Valley, a suburb of Minneapolis). I told her I wanted to do another big project. A sculptural/artpiece knitting and crochet exhibit. With wall hangings and sculptures made at least primarily with knitting or crocheting. Yarn is assumed but absolutely not required.

We expect to show the accepted works in July/August of 2006. The call for work will go out in September, so that artists will have time to create works that do not currently exist in any form.

If you wish to be notified of the call for work on this show, either send me an email at Lynn AT ColorJoy DOT com, or sign up for Susan Hensel’s yahoo list. Sue’s list is called:

SusanHenselDesign

You can go to http://groups.yahoo.com to access it.

Officiallyaknitter, my knitting student, is a naturally curious soul. She is now interested in spinning so I loaned her a spindle and gave her some fiber, and she’s off and running.

She writes to share this spinning link which she enjoyed. It is a sort of introduction to spinning for a novice using a drop spindle to make yarn.

I’m too busy to spin these days, unfortunately (spinning is not my work, knitting is, and I do more work than not these days). I always dream of spinning on the porch but this year it has been so hot and sticky on the days I had off, that it has not worked out for me. However, some of you may enjoy the link and it could easily be good timing for a new adventure, during this vacation season.

Photo today is some yarn I spun several years ago, it was my first two-ply yarn. One strand is fat merino-cross in solid pinkish-purple, the other strand is multi blue/turquoise/purple/hot fuschia which was spun thinner. I love this yarn! I have not yet knit with it, we’ll see what it becomes someday.

If you haven’t discovered Marie Irshad’s Knitcast.com site yet, do check it out. Marie has been interviewing interesting knitting folks and posting it on her site. You can download it to your ipod or you can just listen to the interviews on your computer. I can’t tell you how late I was awake one night listening to one interview after another. It’s so interesting to me how different we knitters can be, and all interesting in our own way.

Marie just finished interviewing me. It was a sort of comedy of errors getting the interview… Monday we tried, and first my microphone did not work, then my internet connection kept blipping out and losing my voice, so the recording was unusable. Then Tuesday morning, our internet provider was not working, and it was not just us but a large area that I think involved more than one state.

Fortunately, Gone Wired Cybercafe came to the rescue. They have a different provider and a more dependable connection. They let me bring my microphone down there, and Marie interviewed me without a hitch. It is good to know who your friends are when push comes to shove!!!

Marie will let me know when my interview is up for you all to check out. Meanwhile, go on over there and listen to the others who were interviewed before me!

I’m still catching up on my weekend photographs! Friday night when I got home from Monroe and the machine knit workshop, I ran over to the new Aladdin’s Delight restaurant. It’s run by the same folks who run New Aladdin’s at Frandor, where I sometimes dance (when I’m lucky).

Friday, it was Nyla’s turn to dance, and at this fairly new location. For the local folks, this is in Okemos in the Target Plaza. It’s halfway between Pier One and Marshalls, next to Gags and Gifts. There was a deli in that space last year.

Brian met me there, and we had a great meal. Their food is always excellent!

I also got to see Nyla’s daughter, who was the first child I ever knit for. (It was a lace baby dress in Dale of Norway Baby Ull… unfortunately, the only photos I have of it did not come out at all.)

The child is three years old now, and really fun and smart. Three years ago, though, she was just barely over 3 lb (1.4 kilograms). I’m so thrilled to see this child so happy and healthy now!

Here’s a photo of Nyla dancing. Beautiful, wouldn’t you agree?

I am counting my blessings again. I spent the day Sunday with my friend Altu and her family. Her mother, a sweet woman, is visiting from Ethiopia. I call her Mama because she recognizes that word. Mama and I share only maybe 6-10 words between two languages. We love each other, anyway. It’s amazing how much you can love someone who you can not even talk with.

I took gifts, so she can take them back to loved ones in Ethiopia. I knit four pair of wristwarmers and had a nice group of photographs printed out to send back. Several pictures of the two children turned out so well, I just had to share! Mama was delighted.

So I had the best of days. I saw Mama again, and I spent the day with Altu, I saw/talked with several of her sisters and brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews. It was a large crowd… not my favorite thing, but the people made it worth the trouble.

You know, talking with Altu and her sisters is just so alive! I don’t know what else to call it. Folks who have taken the choice to make a huge move… to come to another continent where the culture is vastly different and the language is not your first, seem more conscious about life and choicemaking. These folks I saw Sunday are passionate people who laugh big and smile a lot. I ate great food and laughed and smiled until my face was tired! What else can a woman want, but good friends and a smile?

Here’s a photo I took of Altu at her restaurant this past week. Look at that platter, full of all sorts of good food (this is the veggie platter for two) that she made. And what an artform this is, both in looks of the platter and the taste. Yum! Second photo is me with Mama. She seems to evade cameras a lot, so I’m delighted she wanted a photo with me this weekend.