« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »
Mike and I drove down to Prineville on Saturday so that I could check out the High Desert Wool Growers annual Fiber Market.
I felt lucky to find some beautiful hand-dyed wool roving at $2 a bat.
At last, I can do this felted rock project from Cynthia Treen's Last-Minute Fabric Gifts.
(Photo credit: Karen Phillipi)
If I could get on a plane today, I'd fly to Pittsburgh for the opening of Sublimation at the Brewhouse. This converted brewery offers artists studio, exhibition, and performance space to incubate projects and ideas.
Sublimation is a show put together by resident artists participating in the Distillery program at the Brewhouse. This career development program links artists with curators, critics and other arts professionals to broaden and deepen skills relevant to studio and professional practice.
The show will feature the mixed-media collage and installation work of Debra Tomson Williams, a friend of Two Kitties. Check it out!
This beauty uses a simple version of traditional Japanese shibori in the sweater felting process.
Betz White has a complete tutorial for this scarf on Knitty.
Knitty also has dozens upon dozens of fab knitting patterns that are a little left of center. I like Piggle .
Somewhere in all the flutter, Two Kitties had a birthday.
I started Two Kitties a year ago after stumbling upon Bella Dia .It was the first blog I'd ever read and I'll I could think was: HOLY SMOKES. I signed up with Typepad that same day.
The first few months were lonely. My sister, D., and Shalondra stuck with me through thick and thin. A year later, I get hundreds of hits every week from all over the world. I have a regular reader in Ankara, Turkey.
A few of my all-time favorite posts are: Fiberart International 2007 ; Lee Ming-Wei: The Letter Writing Project; My before and after pics of my art studio; How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare: Joseph Beuys, and What I Know For Sure. Just to name a few.
Some of the most popular items on the site surprise me. "Felted Sweater Projects" is the most often read category of Two Kitties. The posts that get the highest number of Google hits are: Free Vintage Embroidery Patterns and this piece on Paint by Numbers. About two hundred people each week find me by Google Image Search and look at the paint-by-number painting of a deer I found at Goodwill for $2. Most of them are German!
Some posts seem to bounce into nothingness, but become increasingly popular over time. Like this piece on Botticelli's Virgin and Christ Child.
The web is fickle. Your work stays out there indefinitely, and so readers trickle in, flood in, flood out, and also slowly melt away.There is nothing quite like having 20% of your subscribers dump you because you wrote a post about your own life instead of felted wool.
It still makes me nervous when I spend a lot of time on something and literally no one reacts. Positive or negative. Sometimes, after the fact, I lose my confidence and delete things. Just as often, I delete things that I worry don't communicate exactly what I wish to say about art or an idea.
And so I still struggle with the identity of Two Kitties. Sometimes I wish I had named it something else. That I'd chosen just Art or Craft or Life instead of trying to put them all on the same page. Mapped out my online identity like other bloggers do. Kept it focused on one or two of these popular ideas and just beat them to death until I created my own Heidi "brand", complete with etsy shop.
Then I remember that I started the blog because there was, literally, nowhere else for some of these thoughts to land. And then I found a whole community of people who love what I love. Some of them read it all and some just take a quick sip.
Whatever it is that brings you here, I hope you'll stay. I'm really glad you've found something meaningful on these pages. THANK YOU for reading Two Kitties - I'm looking forward to what comes next.
I love this website. It makes me want to go on picnics, or even start commuting to a desk job again.
Art history, like other kinds of history, favors the "great man" theory.
Museums are filled with larger-than-life battle scenes, made by man heroes about man heroes, in tragic, bitter, death scenes.
To determine the aesthetic value and relative importance of art made by women, art historians have traditionally ascribed "feminine" qualities to the work. And so, what women make is often cataloged by museums as decorative; precious; miniature; sentimental, and temporary.
Art history prefers monumental concepts and scale of Michelangelo to the selective or intimate portraiture of Anne Mee.Feminist art historians like Whitney Chadwick attribute this difference to simple dependence on binary oppositions within Western thought:
man/woman;
nature/culture;
analytic/intuitive.
(What about art/craft?)
Joanna Vasconcelos' intricate crochet over laptop and mouse; the doily a typical example of women's handiwork, an ultimately useless thing made by women with time on their hands. A simple household embellishment? Femininity quietly installed in the cubicle? Lace restraints.
I made it home. I've got two weeks of mandatory couch time, so I'm keeping busy working on three knitting projects.
Today, I finished the first one, the Portland Hat. I used Mountain Colors "Moguls" yarn, a favorite hand-dyed wool and nylon blend spun in Corvallis, Montana.
This pattern is a favorite in my knitting group. It's quick and easy and the special yarn gives it a great, bohemian texture. 
I'll be off for at least a week. Possibly longer. But I am thinking of you all the time.
In the meantime, please enjoy the archives. Pick a random date - your birthday? - and then wander from there.
Email topic suggestions. Whatever comes to mind.
Until then....
I'm just going to give it to you straight:
The way to get ahead is to do exactly what your employer asks of you. And then some.
I first learned this the hard way back in 1993 on a trading floor in Washington, DC. I could work like a machine, but I was still young (read: kinda arrogant and immature) and didn't realize that it wasn't always appropriate for me to give my input on every single item on the 'to do' list.
Toward the end of my years there, J. P.N. III said to me, [in frustration], "Just once, Heidi, I'd like to be able to ask for something, have it done, and not hear any crap about it!!"
But don't think of JPN as a jerk - he isn't - and we're still friends today. I was the jerk in this story.
Anyway. I never forgot that moment, but I don't think I really understood it until I became someone's boss. No - wait.
I didn't really understand it until I owned my own company, and my financial livelihood and professional reputation counted on employees being able to step up to the plate and fulfill a client's wishes. On non-negotiable deadlines.
I acquired this wisdom the hard way, but I'd like to share it with you for free.
Here is my advice:
1) From 9 to 5, put your own interests (and your personal appointments, cell phone, and PDA) aside. Spend your time doing the best job you can, checking things off the 'to do' list your boss has given you. You should do this whether you are the trading floor assistant or Vice President of the company.
2) You can give input when you have truly gained the experience and skills that you need to go off on your own with clients, the trust of your employers in hand.
3) Assume there is something to be learned by every task, no matter how menial. Humility, patience and respect might be just what you need.
Related life lessons?
"Treat your boss like a boss first, and a friend second. And maybe not a friend at all."
Also - "No matter how smart and successful you are, you will still find yourself standing in front of a photocopier on a regular basis. Get over it."
(photo credit: Flickr user: danielbeunza)
I made a quick pitstop at The Quilt Gallery on my trip to Montana and found a great book by Betsy Chutchian and Betty Edgell.
Cotton & Ewe: Quilts Pincushiuons, Pillows and Wallhangings looks like a quilting book from the outside, but on the inside, there are countless project ideas for people who love felted wool.
This wool throw is made from recycled wool sportcoats and skirts. It's very simple to make and masculine enough to give a guy as a gift.
If you'd like to work with recycled suits but need a smaller project, you might try making an acorn pincushion.
Simple instructions with photos are available online at Old School Acres' Acorn Tutorial. Have fun!
I bought a copy of Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion magazine to put inside a crafty care-package for my friend Helena in Scotland.
I'd never really looked at it before, figuring the magazine was more for mom-crafters than aging, childless types like me.
But you know? Some of the stuff in there is pretty awesome. Check out Men in Hats.
I found this great slipper project by Heather Ross in the February/March 2008 issue. The slippers are made with Heather Ross fabric and soles of felted wool. I've got felted wool. I've got fabric. I've got vintage ric-rac. Lots.
is that you can do things with them that you can't do with grown-ups.
A puddle of silk and a little interference.
This brocade will become an Easter coat for Lucy.
i am a little church (no great cathedral) by ee cummings
Meat Science by Pam Crow
Courage, by Anne Sexton
Kinky, by Denise Duhamel
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, by Billy Collins
Weird-Bird by Shel Silverstein
The view from my Oregon couch is very different from the view on my Montana couch. Something I'm thinking about since I after next week I'll be couch-bound for awhile.
I just started knitting the 'airy scarf' from Joelle Hoverson's book, Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. This is an ultra-simple pattern and I love the way it looks.
