These colorful scraps aren’t just an inspiring filler, they come from eight years of doll making. A friend of a friend makes life-sized dolls which I will be sharing as soon as I get the pictures. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the remnants. Update. I just heard from the artist, Magdalena Jarkowiec. Here is her youtube video. I think one of the dolls needs to be sitting on a choob.
My friend Mimi Luebberman has a lamb farm in Petaluma where she is producing these beautiful yarns using plant dyes. She is even using cochineal, the Mexican beetle famous for it’s brilliant reds. This skein is dyed with my favorite color in the world, indigo. You can find Mimi at the San Rafael farmers market on Sundays.
What do you do when a ho-hum, wool skirt is much too long? The answer, a la Kelly: chop it off right above the knee and use the leftover wool to transform it into a work of arts-and-crafts. She complained that, “It took me hours and hours.”, which is code for, “I know. It’s amazing.” Nice work girlfriend!
Check out Kelly’s paintings and drawings at kellydefayette.com
As promised, I am sharing my progress of my new painting for my living room. It is well under way. I’m feeling like my rug design and painting imagery are finally merging into a single vocabulary. I’m seeing a whole series of these grid paintings happening this year.
Painting like this feels really crafty. It feels like I am making something that has some other purpose than adding embellishment to my wall. I feel like I am designing textiles to use for other objects and it makes me like the painting more.
I hope I can maintain the inherent wabi sabi nature of this without killing it.
I haven’t been able to keep up with entries because we just moved. It’s always way more work than you think it will be, isn’t it? One of the reasons I love this house so much is because it offers many opportunities for taking beautiful photographs of rugs, art, and other design projects. Of course, I am excited about redecorating and will share as the process moves along. This week it’s all about the perfect place mat. I’ve searched high and low for wool place mats that I don’t have to launder. I haven’t found any so I made a trip to Britex and bought some coat wool and will make them myself. The prototype is working brilliantly. As I thought, it looks spotless after several days of use. I promise to post step-by-step instructions with pictures.
This is the main room. I ordered a rug in a new design called Lace (that I might not be able to take home because we don’t have any rugs in the store). It was going to be in ochre with cream and gray. I hope I’m not in the store when someone buys it. I’m getting a sofa from Inside Modern made by Vioski. The fabric is a teal/kelly green weave. I absolutely can’t wait. If you are in the market for a sofa you have to go to Inside first and look at the Vioski line. The pricing is surprisingly less than you’d think. It will go where the chair and choob table are. I’m working on a painting for the redwood wall because I don’t have anything large enough in my collection. I’ve stretched a 4′ x 5′ stretcher in linen (also from Britex). So far, I want to use gouache to paint an orange grid over which I will paint some indigo shapes. It might not actually look anything like that. But, that’s how it goes.
This is the best feature of the house. It’s a double sided fireplace between the living and dining room. You can see the sheep skin on the hearth. I’m looking for a few small flokati rugs in different colors that are small enough to take outside and shake. Our son loves sitting here like a kitten.
I’ll share more as the project moves forward. This week we are getting a new shipment so I’ll post some images of some new designs that will be coming in.
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