Surprise???

All I can say about surprises is my father's green surprise Father's Day shirt.  You see, when I was much younger (probably about 12), on a trip to Virginia over Father's day my mother, thinking she was slick, slid my father's surprise gift into a shoe bag.  His gift was a green polo shirt.  It sort of stuck out from the shoes and my father, whose job it was to load and unload the car of course saw it when he loaded the bag in the car, but chose not to say anything.  Over the course of the 10 hour trip my mother was dropping hints and trying to tease my father who refused to play the game, making my mother more smug as we drove.  Finally when we arrived in Virginia and were unloading the car, my mother dropped one last remark for which my father proudly announced, "Are you by chance referring to this green polo shirt in the shoe bag?"  Oh it was not pretty watching her face turn red, as she sputtered, and just finally without anything to say in response let out a few choice words and got mad at him for discovering her surprise.  When she finally realized he knew from the beginning and was playing with her the entire trip, it just fanned the flames even more.  From that point on she stopped trying to surprise because she realized he was pretty quick and could figure it out with little effort if he wanted to.  It was also one of those stories that came up time and time again and the surprise green father's day shirt will go down in family history.
I tell you this story, because one it is now my job to repeat that story and allow it to go down in history, and two because it shows how surprises work in my family.  My mother, still trying to keep tabs on me realized that I was spending an awful lot of time at the pottery painting place in Fayetteville and might be working on more than one thing. 

Grapes Tile

To throw her off I made a tile that I will work into a tray, I think (or should I say that is the plan right now).  However she had a pretty good idea that something else was up.  So I regret to say that I have post dated this post because she would snoop the post and try to find her surprise, and I am not willing to make it that easy for her.  The first trivet I started working on was the one for her, however they ran out of a couple of the paints I needed.  I painted a cream background, with dark brown edges and added her initials in an Asian inspired font.  Then robin egg blue dots, to match the writing were added to the edge and chocolate brown dots were added to the middle.  Firing such a piece with a lighter color on a darker one could offer a complex situation and may not work.  However because of using the wooden end of the paint brush to add my dots, it worked out really well and I am excited to say I was able to offer her a partial surprise.  She knew I made her something but did not know what I had made.  Thus when she opened it she still had to make the surprise face and determine if she liked it, which I think she did.  I think the key to surprises in my family is just let it happen, don't give hints or clues, because someone will search for it.

A New Passion

Yes, it is true. I love all things crafty. As a matter of fact there are few crafty things that I will not attempt. Thus with the opportunity to teach an arts and crafts day camp as part of my day job I was able to introduce our youth to something I have not done before, pottery. Let me back up. The youth did not throw clay, nor do I. We decorate the preformed product. For them it was plates, bowls, or mugs (part of the group rate). When I went back a week later to pick up their finished products I was able to pick out my own to do.

Let me start at the beginning of my adventure. I travelled to Fayetteville, North Carolina to a place called "Just Claying Around." Once inside you notice tables with paint brushes, bowls of water, and a colorful plate full of numbers. The walls are lined with shelves that are loaded with various items begging for color and personality. The items range from small tiles to very large items, each with various prices. The price includes all the paint you can think to use as well as glazing and firing costs. The process is simple. You pick the item you want. The colorful plates are samples of all the paints they have. You pick your colors and paint lightest to darkest. Each time you paint you have to wait for it to dry. After about 20-30 minutes you paint over it again giving it three to four coats of paint to make sure it is solid. When you are done you pay for the item. Then it takes two to three days of drying before they dip it in a special glaze. Then it drys again before being placed in the kiln and being fired. I asked about things shattering and they said all of their products come from the same place to ensure the moisture content is even in everything they fire and very rarely do they have accidents in the kiln.

So about a week after painting (and let me say when you paint you are going on a vision because it does not look like you plan when you originally paint it) you get a call and go back to pick up your finished product. I actually started with two trivets, one for my mother and one for me. I found that having two projects to work on took the boredom out of drying. It so happened that I ran out of the paint colors I chose for my mother's trivet so my got done first. They wrapped up the other one and let me take it home to bring it back another time to finish.

For my trivet there were lots of choices and I was not quite sure what to do. I found a speckled off white for the background which ended up having a very colorful affect. Then I took a bright red and painted the edges and my initials on the trivet. I did not know when I painted it that the speckles would come through the red but it gives an neat and unexpected affect to my finished project. I picked up my finished project and took the opportunity to finish my mother's trivet as well as a tile that I hope to use in a tray. I will let you know how it turns out.

Knitting Trash?

This is sooooo cool. In case I haven't told you before, I have a job that allows me to be creative. As part of that I work with people who are way more creative than I am. I came back from a meeting one afternoon and found my co-worker, let's call her Christy, with a ball of grocery bag. To be more specific she had taken plastic grocery store bags, that we had in the office, and with the help of instructions she found on a craft web site she found on the Internet, turned them into a ball of plastic yarn. Basically by cutting the bags into loops and using slip knots to string them together there were no tied knots to get into the way of knitting. It took about four bags to create the small square I needed. Two things to keep in mind; it is probably best to use the same type of bag throughout the project you are doing because color schemes and bag densities are different based on the store bags you are using. The other thing to remember is that if you are not careful when you loop the loops together bubbles will be created when you knit so you have to pay attention when making your plastic yarn. This project was knitted with size eight needles and I would not recommend using anything small, as a matter of fact you might want to use larger needles. Overall it was a lot of fun and a great way to recycle. My next plan is to download some shopping bag patterns and make enough yarn to knit a new kind of recylced grocery bag. Thanks Christy for introducing me to this fun!