Lisa Brunetta - Eco Art and Craft, Wire Sculpture

New house, new house! We got the keys last night. Internet guys are here now. We are moving in gradually, lots of rooms to decide what to put where. The sculpture is so we don't brain ourselves on that dining room light. Yay us!

Side quest crafting, all the way. This is the latest batch of tumbled stones. My first batch I sent through all four stages of tumbling rocks. Three grits, one polish, five-ish weeks! They are shiny, and I can tell I have more to learn.
Some edges are rough to the touch. There are dimples the process didn't smooth out. I love them!
I have ideas about working with the imperfections, which may percolate for a while. I'm in no creation hurry. I can ramble.
Also, I'm enjoying how my hands wrinkle. I've spent a lifetime cupping things in my palm.
Enjoy the week!

Time to get ready for the cooler weather. When you're a wire artist there's lots of plastic-coated wire handy to help block your new handspun woolly shawl. shawl pattern by Danny Oulette Knitting, created 2022-2023. Colours blended by me. Shawl knit by me! I'm excited to wear it.
Bonus, I also washed the hat I made the winter before. I'm ready!

I've revived my blog! Check it out, it's all colourful.

Playing with fiber and fibre. Renting equipment. A Story. Blog post about blending fiber. September 2023 update, what I'm up to now. The Great Summer of Blending.

Fiber (or fibre) blend number four! In calling it "A day at the beach. " Silk in the grass at the bottom and the sky at the top from my dye removal side quest. Simple overlapping stripes of color (or colour). Some Angelina for bling.
I got to play with my markers for the "recipe" (maybe "pattern"? "Map?" I'm open to suggestions, lol!)
Hard not to abandon the blending and play with spinning this one. I hope to section it in the stripes and make art yarn to weave into a background for a soft-ish sculpture. Yes, there will be wire involved. I think those bicolour (or bicolor) bits of fleece I reserved would make great grasses.

The dye removal side quest is complete! I carefully practiced my cinnamon bun rolling skills when wrapping my silk in paper to absorb the excess dye. Then I steamed the silk for 45 minutes. I learned the hard way not to crowd the rolls in the steamer!
I got significant color transfer to the paper. Fun by-product, I'm going to use the paper in other projects. But I still needed to take another step to remove more dye.
So I did a couple washes with Synthrapol detergent, a detergent that can both prepare your Fibre for dying AND remove excess dye from hand-dyed Fiber. It suspends excess dye in the water. I soaked it up with colour-absorbing sheets, the kind quilters use for their washing step.
It is considerably brighter. Still losing some color, but not enough to worry about. The turquoise and yellow is going into Blend Four.
Onwards!

Cottage break this weekend. We fixed stuff and other stuff broke. I dismantled this wall. It's drying in there now. Hung out with Cersei the doggo. Someone else's cottage. Someone else's dog. I love that I get to enjoy both!

It's been a rainy start to the weekend, but I was able to get out and see at .9gardens (I hope that's the right one!) near Elgin, Ontario.
It was opening day today and the only photo I took was of the chicken henhouse. It's not even part of the show!
Which was wonderful, a fun tromp through nature and experiencing the installations interacting with it. Jill's writing desk snuggles in comfortably under a tree by the river, read the poem burned into its surface, and perhaps write a postcard to a tree. Or about a tree.
And do check out the "auto-sketching" (please do remind me of the terminology if I have this wrong) install in the barn. A noticing of place, and fascinating.
Also, I discovered I can buy Ched-a-corn at a small market in Smiths Falls! I bought them out, maybe wait until next week. Notice I didn't tell you exactly where, lol!
Blend number four is on the table, I'm calling it "A Day at the Beach". Sun, sea, sand, sky. Markers will help with the layers planning.
Soaked the silk five times and I'm calling that sample well and truly desaturated. I have ordered colour catchers and Synthrapol detergent. That colour is only sitting on top, mostly. And I have it in three different colourways! I hope I can salvage some of that vibrant, but with that white core, it will tint paler for sure.

Art yarn blend number three was a lot of preparation of fibre.
I flick carded some wool locks and rescued a rolag that was too tightly rolled (a freebie I pulled from the class grab bag one year). It broke down nicely.
I played with the blend order, because before I started I divided the whole shebang into four equal parts. Later batts from this blend have the pink concentrated in the centre.
I'm calling it "Fuzzy & Bunny". It's roughly 70% fine wools, 20% silk, and 10% mohair and angora. Lots of floaty bits in the air!
I already have an issue with the silk I wanted to include in blend four, it's not colourfast. Now to research what I can do about it other than keep rinsing until the water runs clear and the colours are only a hint of their former selves.
Any input would be welcome!
And I blend on.

Blend two results. There are 13 blends. Just sayin '.

Blend Number two came out sleek and shiny feeling, thanks to the silk and the soy fibres. Again, four batts total of approx. 50 grams each. I got a bit more striping (which I was going for) because this blend has more colour variation than Blend One. A word of caution though, consider a mask when you blend the silky, light-as-a-feather soy most particularly. Firbre prep means opening fibres up, and it produces much dust and fluffy bits in the air. I also covered my power bar outlets, because fire hazard! Lesson number two, if you feed the soy in sideways, you're getting fibre spiderwebs. Which could be interesting. On to the next blend, my drum carder is a rental, I have to hustle! Pink in the next one. #safetyfirst #blend #wool #handspun #artyarn #design #engineering #cantbreathe

Finished experiment number two for the corespun art yarn. The batts and dizzed p**f mountains are weighing in at around 50 grams. Labelled and set aside examples of the fibres I blended. More notes. The perfect recycled container to store my current samples. And a 14-inch tree of life wire sculpture I finished earlier this year. I'm keeping a hand in.

Time for some fibre blending! I've got the blends arranged by colour of "no need to clean the drum carder" between batts. I've started with the lightest and I'm playing with preparation. I've spilt the first colour into four batches, the first batch was made with the drum carder, the second was blended on the blending board and dizzed off with a vintage button.

It was a technical spinning week at , looking at different ways to combine twist and grist and blends in general for handspun yarn. Then for fun we played with some novelty yarn techniques. And a couple of raindrops on leaves photos from this morning, because pretty!

Lonster has settled in on the cabinet and has made a lizard friend. We set them up with a bowl for snacks.

Home again after another amazing week in Haliburton. Packed my stuff into the , who needs a station wagon? Then it exploded into the studio! And look at my little garden corner, bursting with lettuce, dill, mint, and lavender! There's a mystery plant in the planter, but I think I took that pic mostly for the if I'm being honest.

These are the materials I've been handed so far. It multiplies every day!

This is Lonster. He is a Washi paper lamp monster. More pics when I get back to a proper computer.

I only brought one-foot lengths of wire with me, so I had to improvise my signature. I usually do this with one piece. The lamp is looking great!

Washi paper lamp, building the frame. For the rest of the class my hands were covered with rice glue.

Morning before class starts at . and paper lamps today and spinning next week! Yay! This is my backyard at the Airbnb.

Knitting video fun!

Finishing, handspun shawl, Pt 1: Off the Needles! Show & tell and accidental cast-off tutorial This video is primarily for my friend Alice, who has been following my progress via weekly video calls for over a year now. I handspun all this yarn; I recei...

I've been working a lot with fibre of late. I'm in this Spin Off Gallery, go take a look!

Gallery of Handspun Mends Visible mending’s popularity has been on the rise. We asked our readers to show us their mends, and we love the creativity displayed here by mixing handspun yarn and other types of threads with an assortment of wearable and useful objects.

I WON POKER NIGHT! Photo by Patrick, last night. 10-person table! this month.

My mother's cottage decor is wonderful and whimsical! I have enough photos for three more sets of ten! Let me know if you would like to see more. She is such a talented maker!

Weekend cottage time! Had to let down the hair and get out the wide brim linen sun hat as insect protection. Mosquitos and blackflies still got me.

Ate a delicious tenderloin with trimmings, prepared by in a cast iron Dutch oven with coals from the campfire.

Spun some great Shetland wool on my Electric Eel Wheel 6.0, with a fabulous lake view. Yay for charging units!

Got productive and sorted the toy hoarde, rescuing a couple of wee explorers and amassing a giant bag of broken things to haul to the trash.

My treasures from the cleanup, a mesh bag from an old badminton set (I have plans), a random string of shell beads (no plans, but beads! ), and a tiny decorative birdhouse, because so cute.

Loved it all!

I did some more flower drying this weekend. Such gorgeous Bleeding Hearts, Forget-me-nots, some chive flowers and a lonely strawberry flower. Got out my flower press and my drying mix. I will check the results in a few weeks, or when I remember.

I found more than tulips during last weekend's jaunt to the Ottawa Tulip Festival, everything was in bloom. Look at the shapes on those branches!