The Gryphon's Feather Studio

On Riddle Road

Sometimes I shoot images because the content sets fire to my imagination and the rising smoke and resulting ash end up as a story. (the written kind)

This one is in progress.  

© 2013 lkludwig, all rights reserved.

 

Being Human: I have QUESTIONS

I was hanging out last night with my niece, while she gets caught up on one of our favorite supernatural soap operas, Being Human (SyFy).

I have burning QUESTIONS...
What is Donna, the witch, going to do with dead Ray? or ghost Trevor? 

How about how Donna left out the whole you're gonna rot unless you eat living creatures part when explaining the rules....

Who is Kat's "famous Revolutionary War hero" ancestor? 

Where is Liam? I mean he got shot, got stabbed, and then a whole episode without retribution?

Are the vamps going to eat Veggie-wolf Pete? Aidan didn't declare him off limits...

Does Blake's character remind anyone else of the Twilight series' Victoria?

No one in the hospital morgue noticed that Erin's cause of death was suffocation? Don't they autopsy people who die in hospitals? 

Why would the werewolf who was watching Aidan and Blake from the SUV while Aidan explained to Blake about the "vaccine" show up at the vamps place to be dinner? Why wouldn't he have run to Liam to tell him Aidan was a very not-dead undead dude? Was he just really that stupid? 

Nick ate Zoë!!!  Will Zoë come back as a ghost now that Nick has eaten her? Being Nick's dinner is going to put a monkey wrench in her reincarnation clinic (aka as the newborn nursery.)

Is Sally really going to let her self rot? I don't think so. 

How is Aidan going to turn Bubble-boy without getting caught?

Yes, I really watch this show.

Attempting to climb on board a moving boat

Trying to get back into the swing of blogging is much like being swimming along in a fast moving river and trying to climb aboard a boat also moving along in the quick current.

There's always so much that I had wanted to share that has floated on by that I've often given up without even trying to climb back onto my blogging boat!  I decided I would do a bit of show-and-tell while I get my sea legs back! So, here goes....

(Quick! Look away now, if crafty show-and-tell annoys you.) 

This winter I knitted up neckwarmers and mitts for family, friends, neighbors, and teachers.  The neckwarmers are great for littles because they don't experience the "unwrapped & dragging on the ground" effect that often happens when you put scarves on small children and send them out to play.  Mitts are always just so good.  For the littles' knitted goods, I used a wool-blend yarn that was safe to launder, and didn't have a dye lot. I did everything in garter stitch, with bulky yarn and big needles. Not only do things knit up quickly this way, replacing a missing mitt is easy enough to do.

Here are a few of the pieces:

neckwarmers and mitts for Sunny and Maggie

The "masculine" neckwarmers for Gryphon and Joe (along with mitts for Gryph.)

neckwarmers that headed out as gifts...

 

mitts that headed to a neighbor's (terrible photo; sorry.)

my set

 

Other notes:

I made the various flowers and leaves from bits of felted sweaters I have in my fabric stash.  The felt balls were from a pack given to me by a friend several years ago.  

meet my little friend

Meet my little friend. He's a sweetie, but he tells me it is lonely in my studio when I'm away. I understand lonely far too well, so I am making him a bunch of friends to keep him company. 

I love that they are so teeny! They make me want to quote Where the Wild Things Are- "I'll eat you up; I love you so."  

 Here's a peek at three of the dozen or so I have underway:

(the quarter is there as a size reference.)

 

I'll be putting some of them up for adoption (listing them for sale), along with a variety of other goodies, in the next week or so.  

re: create - slippers

With the cold weather upon us, I realized I needed a new pair of slippers; my pair from the past few years had been too worn out to last past March.  Buying a new pair of slippers wasn't an option, so with necessity being the mother of invention, I repurposed some items I already had to make a pair of slippers for myself.

I used two previously thrifted items, both found new with tags: a pair of Ryka sneakers and a J. Jill re:create cardigan. I ended up not liking the way the sneakers looked on my feet, and I accidentally put the cardigan in the dryer.  The sweater didn't felt at all but it did shrink quite a bit. I loved the embroidery and trim on the sweater, so I added it to my fabric stash.

(of course, I forgot to take "before" photos: luckily, Google images came to the rescue.)

        +

 

 

 

 Together, they made a cozy pair of slippers, with soles perfect for mad dashes outside for taking out the trash, letting out the dogs, or running out to the garage for this or that.

 

=

I used the two front panels to wrap around the shoes.  I fed the mary jane straps through the sweater "wrap" and covered the straps using the trim from the cuffs of the sleeves. One side of the trim was ribbon and the other sweater, so I simply cut a slit into the sweater side and fed the strap inside.  The buttons, also from the sweater, are purley decorative; I cut away the sweater from the velcro on both the strap and shoe.  Some places are securely glued, others sewn.

I'm really happy with how they turned out.  

A Bonny Pirate Queen

Desk-to-Drafting-Table Mod

I have posted some photos and an explanation of a mod to create a drafting table out of a desk over on FB.

note: the ratchet folding bracket came from Lee Valley.

they are also sold by the pair at Rockler.

 

WIP

 

I've been getting ready for artfest, and thought I'd give a peek at some paintings I have in-progress that I plan to take along to show.

 

this one is 20x24, mixed media- acrylics, pastels, charcoal, watersoluble media, etc.

 

 

and this one is 12 x 16, same sort of thing, with half an antique doll dress embedded in the painting.

I found that it's hard to take a quicky iPhone photos of dark-hued paintings; so my apologies for the images. I'll re-shoot once they are done, but now I'm outta here to run a couple errands..

only the heart remains

 

 

one of my favorite songs:

 

 

I hope your Valentine's Day was lovely.

one of those "YES!" moments