exists to create art which reflects the beauty and the glory of God, to use art to comfort and encourage people, and to inspire others to pursue the arts.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Beloved lost his job of 18 years. It was a blow, but we believe that it is a blessing from the Lord. We are now free to move back to Florida and take care of his ailing parents. We have a lot of work to do to prepare for this big move. In an effort to raise money for the move, I will be selling off most of my art pieces. I will auction some on ebay and sell some right from this site. Mr. Beloved is applying for jobs in the Central Florida area and we are preparing to put the house up for sale. Please pray for us.
I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.
I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!
After cultivating my loom, I was pleased to pluck from it two lovely dish towels and three cute little dish cloths. I am happy with my harvest and I thank the Lord of the harvest. I removed the fabric from the loom, tied the warp threads so that it would not unravel, washed the fabric in hot water in the machine, dried it in high heat in the machine, measured out the towels and cloths, zigzagged on each side of the intended cuts, made those cuts, and hemmed the towels by machine and finished the corners by hand. I love them!
Beginning the weaving. Who sees the mistake that I did not notice until I took this photo? It is not the edge curving in, which I was a little bit stressed about, but it worked out in the end.Finished and removing the fabric from the loom. Did you figure out the mistake that I made?I tied the warp threads and then trimmed them so that they would not become a mess in the washing machine.Before washing, the weave is very open. You can see through the fabric.After washing and drying, the weave has closed up, the fabric is softer, and it is much smaller. LOL! The fabric came off the loom at 30 inches across, but, after washing and drying, it was 24 inches across. I will have to remember that, in future. I didn’t measure the length before washing.So soft…A view of my hems. The corners were so thick that I had to do them by hand. There is probably a better way to do the hems….TA-DAH! I love them. I have already used one of the cloths for dishes, tonight, and one of the towels. Mr. Beloved asked if they would be absorbent and they are. Wonderful! Now, I am going to start planning my next weaving project.
You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Clara the Faithful Spinning Wheel and I have been spending a lot of time together. I got the hang of the cotton much quicker than I expected and I have gotten two bobbins full of it and have plied half of it so far. It is working out very well. It is soft and silky and such a pretty color. The color shows up different in photos, because of whatever light is available at the time, but, trust me, it is a very pretty golden green. They say that naturally colored cotton gets darker as you use it and wash it. I can’t wait to see for myself.
A bobbin full of single ply naturally colored cotton. It is not in a good light, so it looks more yellow that it actually is. But, it is as soft and silky as it looks, though. While spinning cotton I appear to get an awful lot of lint all over me and the surrounding area. That doesn’t happen with wool, for the most part.This is two ply cotton and the color is more realistic. To ply singles together, you put the bobbins of singles on a lazy kate (a rack to hold the spools) and then take the yarn from each one that you want to ply together and pull them out, put them together, attach them to the leader on the bobbin which is on the spinning wheel, and spin them together in the opposite direction that they were spun to start with. It is fascinating…
Westmoreland Song for the Spinning Wheel
by William Wordsworth
Swiftly turn the murmuring wheel!
Night has brought the welcome hour,
When the weary fingers feel
Help, as if from faery power;
Dewy night o'ershades the ground;
Turn the swift wheel round and round!
Now, beneath the starry sky,
Couch the widely-scattered sheep: --
Ply the pleasant labor, ply!
For the spindle, while they sleep,
Runs with speed more smooth and fine,
Gathering up a trustier line.
Short-lived likings may be bred
By a glance from fickle eyes;
But true love is like the thread
Which the kindly wool supplies,
When the flocks are all at rest
Sleeping on the mountain's breast.
I am going like gangbusters with the fiber arts, right now. I found some crochet cotton in my stash, warped with the white, and used some multicolored for the weft and made a few dishclothes. During that weaving, I discovered how to tighten up the edges, so the end of the weaving is the best part, but it is all useable.
Showing the warp. You can also see a warp thread that is tighter than the rest. That thread had a knot in it from manufacturing. While I was winding the warp, I just forced it through the heddle, but didn’t realize how it would affect the weaving. So, when I got to it during the weaving process, I had to stop, force it through the heddle, again, and weave without using the heddle/beater until I was past the knot. I used a comb and it was not as neat and tight as the rest of the weaving. LOL! I am always learning something the hard way. After I got the knot taken care of, that thread was stretched all out of whack, so I had to put a weight on it to keep it tight until I finished. The weight was more than I needed, so that is what you see.Nice tight edge. Not perfect, but so much better.You can see some of the loosey-goosey edges that have already been wrapped on the beam.Getting ready to take it off the loom.Yay! It looks good, considering.After putting through the washer and dryer it tightened up and softened up. I love it! To cut it apart, I sewed a very short zigzag stitch on my machine and then cut right next to the seam. I don’t care much for fringe and to turn over a hem would be much too bulky. I love it just the way it is. I don’t know what I want to do with that long piece. I may cut it up into dishcloths, too.A lucet which I found while tidying up the studio. This is a tool used for making strong cord out of any thread. They come in various sizes from teeny-tiny to big enough for a large rope. When I found it, I took a short piece of purple yarn and tried to remember how to use it. You can see that at first it is loose while I am trying to get the rhythm. Then, at the end, I got it.Ready, with some misgivings, to try to spin cotton on Clara The Faithful Spinning Wheel.Well, that thread doesn’t look half bad.It works! I don’t know why I had such a hard time before, but it works this time. Part of it may be that I have little to no tension. Before, I had the tension set as for wool and the cotton would not stay in my hand, let alone actually set a twist. Now, I have plenty of time to get some twist into the yarn before feeding it onto the spool. It is so soft and silky. Beautiful!I got my order of warp yarns and started warping the loom, again. I am going to try to make dish towels. I was very ambitious and warped across the whole loom. Whew! I think I took on a little more than I can handle, with the warping. I have a feeling it will be a circus when I get back to it.
Below are some more paintings for sale. Varnished and ready. They are all 8×10 oils paintings offered at $100 each.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me', cried
The Lady of Shalott.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I have an oil painting on the easel, which I am letting dry so that I can do the next layer. I have an oil painting almost ready to be varnished and sent to its new home. So, I decided to dust off the ol’ loom and do a practice piece. What a nightmare. I wanted to use yarn that I didn’t really like and didn’t have any other use for, but I think that was a mistake. It made things very difficult. It is not good weaving yarn: weak, stretchy, and too fluffy, at least for me. So, even though I put on about 12 feet of warp, I cut it off well short of that, because I couldn’t take the fight with the yarn anymore. Of course, I understand that a small part of the fight was my lack of skill, but that yarn is yucky! LOL! It looks nice, though, and is soft.
I have about ten pounds, more or less, of cotton sliver (washed, combed, and carded cotton ready for spinning) that I have had for almost 25 years. I need to learn how to spin cotton on my wheel. When I bought it I also bought a drop spindle to spin it on. I did actually use the drop spindle for a little while, but it is a very slow process. When I spin, I want some significant yardage and quickly. Spinning cotton on the wheel is very different from spinning wool. Wool is easy. Well, I need to learn to do it, so I guess now is as good a time as any. Actually, 20 years ago is better. LOL!
Judging by the baby shower registry, Peter Rabbit is a favorite, so I decided to do a bunny picture. This was a practice one, but it turned out so well that I decided that it was the final one, also. LOL! It is approximately 9×5.5, but I haven’t decided how to frame it and whether to trim it or not. It is ink and watercolor on cotton paper.
A baby is born with a need to be loved – and never outgrows it. — Frank A. Clark
This is a little 8×10 oil painting of one of the bridges at Ariel Foundation Park in Mount Vernon, Ohio. I can’t seem to paint a straight line to save my life (unless I want a wavy line). LOL! Oh, well. This is from a photograph that I took a year or two ago during this time of year.
Below are some photos that I have taken recently right around home. Most of them are from walking around the yard. I did not get out to take autumn photos early enough. But, these are pretty good, I think.
The original of this one had an electric pole, a phone box, a stump, and some gasline markers in it. I did a lot of work to remove them. I like it better now. We have a big clump of wild asters in the back “nature preserve”. The Nature Preserve is a brush pile that is growing a few trees, blackberries, raspberries, goldenrod, poison ivy, and all kinds of other things. It is also home to many birds and small animals. We will not be burning it. It will rot down and grow trees.Our neighbors mulberry tree. We have an awful lot of mulberry trees around this neighborhood.A little Virginia creeper in our rotting log pile.Glamour shot of a lovely maple leaf. I tend to pick up every beautiful leaf that I see. I have to control myself because there are about a billion of them and I can’t keep picking them all up. LOL!The same mulberry tree. I love the dark trunk against the light leaves.Another neighbors beautiful tree.Not sure what this is. I thought it was Virginia creeper at first. Then I thought it was poison ivy. I don’t know. It is pretty, though.
The photos, below, were taken at White Oak Farm. Bonnie drove me around in the golf cart and Toby walked along beside it, with the leash on, of course. Good boy! LOL! He really did well. I was wondering how it would work. At first, he was a little antsy, but then he settled in and just trotted along. He will do anything to not be left behind.
This is the main way through the pine woods.I moved over a little and aimed down the same way.Bonnie made this and said it was created by intelligent design. Of course!Beautiful woods.The chipmunks and squirrels were taunting me. I couldn’t catch them on camera. So, I settled on this fern.As I was getting set up to take the photo of the fern, I almost stepped on this little egg shell nestled in the moss with the acorn for company. I cleared some leaves off of it and thought it was nifty shot.Some hawthorn berries (haws) which I picked off one of our trees, today. They are so pretty on the tree, but I can’t get a good picture of it, because the berries don’t show up in my photos. Check out that thorn! I got one in my shoe the other day, which just missed my toe. Youch! That would have been bad.
I hope everyone is enjoying the lovely autumn. Autumn. I love that word. I have loved it since I first heard it in second grade.
I have been reading… Yeah! I need to keep better track of the books that I finish. I don’t remember them all, but I can give you some highlights. I read Rebel Yell, The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S. C. Gwynne. So good! Oh, how I love Stonewall Jackson! If you care anything about him or are just curious, I recommend this book. I got it on audio and the reader was wonderful. It took me a month to get it done, but it was so good, I never got bored and had to make myself finish it. Mr. Beloved is working on it, now, so I get to hear it all over again. Yeah!
I listened to the audio version of The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Oh… If you should decide to listen to an audio version of it, please do not listen to Michael Scott read it. Wrong inflections, mispronunciations, mechanical voice: PAIN! The story is so good that I kept going. I had gotten it during a two for one credit sale a while back or I would have gotten a refund. That was one book that was a chore to finish. The story is very good. Find another reader.
I am now working on Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, plus several other books. Every once in a while, I think to myself, “I ought to stop this reading several books at a time and just stick to one.” But, then, I get impatient and think that I will never have time to read all the books before I die, so I pile them on. LOL!
Two quotes today! Wow! LOL!
There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection. — H. G. Wells
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. — Albert Camus
Today, a friend came over to paint with me. We followed a watercolor tutorial by Makoccino on youtube. We made messes, had angst, and ended up loving it. She said something about the mood swings of making art. I said, “Now you know what I go through all the time.” Excitement at beginning, hatred and depression at the ugly stage, falling in love with it as it develops, despising the end of it, falling in love again after an eye break. LOL! It can be exhausting.
Our messy play area:
Hers:
Mine:
My favorite is the one on the left. I hated the one on the right so much that I flung paint all over it and now I love it. LOL!
It was fun having an art play date. We will have to do more in the future.
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘You too? I thought I was the only one.’ — C. S. Lewis
This little girl was such a wiggle worm that I think I took a couple hundred pictures and got about four or five good ones. LOL! But this particularly one made it all worth while. Charcoal on light grey paper, 11×14.5.
A child is a curly dimpled lunatic. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Virginia C. McCoy Fine Art 
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