Thursday, November 30, 2017

Advent Countdown

Preparation

Today is the day before the December countdown to Christmas starts. For Advent and Christmas this year our family's theme is " He Shall be Called" - referring to the names of our Saviour. So on this site I will be putting, God willing, a short daily devotion and photo of a corresponding small polymer ornament.

Anyone is, of course, as every year during Advent, welcome to double post with your creative endeavours.

Preparing the Way

To introduce the theme and what will follow on subsequent days throughout Advent, here is a brief meditation on the names of God.

Song (To be set to a tune later when tune-maker returns)
He Shall Be Called

Word of God who made all things,
Lion of Judah, King of Kings,
The Bread of Life on which we sup,
The Living Water springing up,

Light of Heav'n and Morning Star,
Dearest Jesus, Thine we are.
Though Thou our guiding Shepherd art,
Yet as a Lamb you take our part.

In a manger Jesus lies;
Angels praise Him in the skies.
As Shepherds kneel before Him low,
So to the stable let us go.

Alpha and Omega Thou,
True and Faithful then and now,
Oh, lead us Jesus as Thine own,
Up to Thy heav'nly shining throne.




Introduction – Pre-Advent
God is much too glorious for any mere human to look at Him. When Moses, the great man of God, asked to see Him, God graciously gave Moses as much of his request as he could survive: God passed by him and covered Moses with His hand so Moses saw only God's backside and would not be consumed by God's Holy glory. Exodus 33: 21ff
But, while we cannot know God through our sight, as we usually like to ascertain the qualities of things on earth, yet God has revealed Himself to us through many names. He has personal names, title names, and descriptive names. They all refer to the one God, and each tells something about Him, but not the whole of Him at once, for we cannot with our finite minds understand the whole essence of God – it would consume us, for imperfection cannot stand with Perfection.

God gives Himself the personal name of “I AM.” A wondrous array of meaning is wrapped in these two short words. “I” stands for a personal being, a unity of self, with self-knowledge, and one who differentiates Himself from others self's. This is a hint of the creative nature of that being, that He made things outside of and separate from Himself, yet things that only existing as extensions of His creative energy – for if God stopped thinking of any one of us or any one thing, that thing would cease to exist as if it had never been, even in memory.

“AM” is the essence of being, of existing, and if referring to a “self” then also of living. When the
“I” says he “is,” then he is self-referential, meaning he has knowledge both of himself and things related to the concept of being. What does it mean to exist and know you exist? It implies some activity, at least of mind, and some awareness of abstract qualities, like goodness and language and reason and truth.
“AM” is a present tense verb, occurring now. For this “I” all is current, making Him eternal, outside of time, with no beginning and no end. If God is the eternal “I AM,” subsisting in Himself, then He must necessarily have power to carry on that existence, which leads to the other attributes we associate with divinity: omnipotence, and so forth. We could carry this further, but this sets forth the idea of the complexity of the name God gives to Himself.
When God revealed Himself in some ways to His creatures, people put what they discovered of God into their own languages. Vast troves of words have been written about the various names and titles of God, Yahweh, Jehovah, Lord, LORD, and all the descriptive names for Him. In this Advent season we will focus on some of the descriptive names of our Lord.



Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Little Elvish People

Last Project

My helpers are going home tomorrow, so we have been working hard to finish their final project (and fun stuff like decimals and possessives). Before I went on my trip they each sculpted a head for a small figure. This week we got them painted, and made bodies and hair and clothes and accessories.







The heads are paper clay. The hair is silk roving. The clothes are silk, flannel, felt, laces, and what we dug out of my boxes.

Hundreds of tiny hand stitches made these outfits. 



Evelyn’s 



Katrina’s 

Note the boots.






Now they head off to their new home.




And around all that my Heinzelmädchens were a great help in putting up Christmas decorations.
Best wishes with yours.







Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Painting and Portrait


From Leah:





My finished painting from painting class! This was a picture I took at the Pacific ocean. I'm working on a cow now.


From Sarah:


Some Portrait class stuff:

Twenty-five minute quick sketch/shadow study:


Face "mapping":


I cannot get faces to look how they're supposed to -- like, EVER. This is one of the reasons I have procrastinated for years on doing my own children's picture story book, despite several relatives, friends, and acquaintances agreeing that I should try such a project. I can't make something look like the same character over and over, with their different expressions and sundry camera angles. Does anyone else struggle with this as much as I do? Or have you in the past, and now possess the magic drawing formula? If so, I would verily like to hear it! :)

Monday, November 27, 2017

Comments and Tote

Posting - Not

I have been having trouble again getting my comments to post, so I will do so here.
Katie, I love your creative leaves project and the “ mixed media” you used for it.

Pam, those quilts are truly inspiring. I could wish I were a quilter. Alas, not, but I like like having them. Yours.
Thanks for showing us what you saw.

Tote

On my return from my trip, I had more birthday gifts awaiting me. One was a pretty handmade tote bag from my sister. Christmasy on the outside, owly on the inside, to go from season to season. It went along on our recent excursion to the Brockenhaus.






The girls have elves in regress, so we hope to have them, if not done, in some state of  almost finished to show you. Time is fleeing fast.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Fall Projects

I have done only a few art projects lately.  




This one was inspired by a print I saw using a Shaker "Tree of Life" motif.  The Shakers used this often to decorate their work, always very simple and symmetrical. 




I don't really care for too much symmetry, but I tried to keep the "simple" aspect. The background is watercolor on watercolor paper and for the trunk and branches, I put that paper on my sewing machine and stitched away!  That part was challenging-- it's hard to "steer" the paper and I realized that there isn't a lot of room on the machine for paper to fit.  I had to curl it up sometimes.





 I cut the leaves from Gelli prints I had made and glued them on the tree.




I have some other ideas to riff off this one-- I might try it with felted wool leaves next.


Speaking of wool... "Fiber Days" with our local wool expert started again for the cold seasons here.

The kids were so excited and it was just lovely to spend a rainy day playing with wool (away from home, where we were getting a little stir-crazy).




The kids did some little needle-felting things by putting some wool into a cookie-cutter and then poking with the needles.  Usually they love starting these, but then get worn out on all the poking necessary to finish.  They end up with little blobs of half-felted wool...  But they also got a lesson in making "dryer balls".  These are hard balls of felted wool used to help clothing tumble efficiently in a clothes-dryer.  "Junk" wool is used for the center and then the ball is wrapped in white roving with colorful bits added for decoration.  The balls are put into old pantyhose to hold them together, each one separated with twist-ties.  We made 22 that day, all sprawled all over the the kitchen floor, and then all the balls were put in the washer with a load of clothes.  The agitation felts the wool, then we peeled them out of the pantyhose to see the results!



I really enjoy needle-felting, so I worked on a little pumpkin.  I used some pretty dyed wool that had not been carded smooth, so it had some natural crimps and wrinkles.  I really liked the texture and it gave the pumpkin (or maybe it's really a gourd?) a "warty" look and interesting texture.




I was really happy with how this turned out.  Much better than some previous attempts at needle felting.  I put it with the rest of my fall decorations, which are not coming down until at least the day before Advent starts.  (Even though on Instagram everyone has been decorating for Christmas for weeks already).

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Quilt Art

I attended this year's last quarterly meeting of my quilt guild and once again came home so inspired and just simply blown away by all the beautiful fabric art I saw that day. I have some photos to share and I'm sure you'll see why it made me want to pull out the sewing machine and use it to make art!


The quarterly meetings begin with a coffee fellowship time and proceed to a business meeting, this time holding election of officers. At the end of that portion of the day is a "Show and Tell" when any member can show their current projects.

This lady said that this was her very first quilt- a crib size for a grandchild.

Wonderful for a first quilt!

Interesting effects with the curves cut into angles


This is a winter or even Christmas quilt, with red cardinals. So beautiful!


Terrible photo but I hope you can see how lovely the simple design and colors are.


Another child's quilt
Crib quilts are manageable projects. I have gotten several done also in the last few years. This one is colorful.

This was on a table at the back and I just thought it was adorable!





This quilt was present to represent what would be taking place at the next meeting in February. The guest speaker then will be a woman who imports Japanese yukata cotton fabrics. She also hand dyes them and will be displaying her quilts and telling about her visit to the International Great Quilt Show in Tokyo!
After reading about Sarah's visit to Japan I immediately recognized the vermilion in this quilt! The trunk show of quilts next time will also include quilts made with the classic Blue and Whites. Looking forward to it!

There was a wonderful lecture on threads and machine quilting by a thread expert from the Superior Thread Co. I will share that educational experience in another post.



After the lecture, several of us went to the library where the art quilt club had a show of their beautiful fabric artworks.






Just like all art works, every creator has different inspirations, techniques and styles.
This group all represented African designs and fabrics.




This is a detail from the quilt above with "drawings" by machine stitching. Wow.



A beaded fringe embellished this one.



This gorgeous wall hanging is a tree that represents the four seasons.


Spring blossoms and summer fruit (glass beads)

Autumn leaves and the bare branches of winter.

If you notice the zippers, the title was "Zipping through the Seasons"


The artist used layers of fabrics and many stitching styles to "paint" her scene. I noticed the machine stitches that made bark on the base of this tree.

The same artist made this pheasant quilt


Layers of fabrics with machine quilting outlining leaves.





 










 




 Notice how the different machine quilting patterns enhances the fabrics and look of the piece.



I have so much to learn and to try!

More in another post.....