the peaceful peacock

winter 2

Posted on 24 January 2010 | 3 responses

The win­ter lasts a long time in Montana.

A looooooong time.

We are cur­rently in the throngs of Win­ter 2, the post-Christmas lull before the real deep-freeze mad­ness sets in.

This year we have been graced with plenty of still, blue skies and pre­co­cious black birds to waken our dreary eyes.  A refresh­ing prepa­ra­tion for our next season.

Still Win­ter.

Hang in there, say the black birds. Make new plans for gar­dens and sum­mer­time frills, fix the parts of your insides that ask for atten­tion still.

Thank you for your mes­sage, Brother Birds.  You hang in there too.

back in the saddle.

Posted on 21 January 2010 | No responses

Before Annabelle was born, I laid out a plan of what I thought I could actu­ally achieve with an infant and a tod­dler underfoot.

I knew that phys­i­cally cre­at­ing would be a chal­lenge (to say the least…) so while she was very, very tiny and liked to sleep all the time, I learned to make my own hand­spun yarn.  Once the wheel became too excit­ing for tiny hands to resist, I moved into the next phase of the plan, switched gears and focused on lay­ing out the web­site of my dreams.  I have been deeply immersed in learn­ing the skills to make this happen–not an easy feat.  It’s just about there though and I’m pretty sat­is­fied with the over­all appear­ance and set-up (like the bare bones of my gallery!  take a look!)

And so comes another shift.

The time has come for me to drag my moth­er­ing hor­mones away from the chil­dren (some­times kick­ing and screaming–me, not them) and into the stu­dio for a few hours a week to hit the machines.  We have a sum­mer mar­ket com­ing up you know…but don’t say that out loud because I start get­ting a lit­tle frayed around the edges.  The plan was to begin cre­at­ing inven­tory in Jan­u­ary and I hon­estly can’t stop myself.  I just walk into my stu­dio, sit down, and auto­mat­i­cally start stitch­ing things together.

Slow and steady.  That’s me.

And that’s a tall order for a woman whose mind fol­lows the pace of the speedy lit­tle rabbit.

This year I plan to offer a wide selec­tion of hand­spun yarns, a vari­ety of knit­ting and cro­chet acces­sories (like the hook and nee­dle cases), and a lim­ited col­lec­tion of hand­made cloth­ing of my own design.

Which just might uti­lize my skills in hand dye­ing and/or applique, like this cus­tom skirt in the works:

And due to the unex­pected arrival of the girls last fall, you just might see an appear­ance of some hand­wo­ven goods.  Like belts.  Maybe.

So click your heels three times, whis­per a spell and it might come true.….….

incubating…

Posted on 16 January 2010 | No responses

Remem­ber when I told you about this?

I have an idea.  And it involves a lit­tle good natured mis­chief:

and an old tradition:

The only time I ever heard Ernie lament about being par­a­lyzed was when we would pass by the statue of John Boze­man, found­ing father of our fair city.  He would say, “You know, if I could walk for a day the first thing I would do is dance on his grave.”

Cheers, Ernie.  I’ve got a good one for you.

>click on images for sources<

first time

Posted on 14 January 2010 | 1 response

get up on it

Posted on 11 January 2010 | 3 responses

Bench Mon­days. That explains a few things.

From my obser­va­tions in this side of the blo­gos­phere, it seemed that every­one had sud­denly been over­run with mice or some­thing.  Well, it just so hap­pens that it’s Mon­day and I have a pair of shoes to show you, so I’ll be jump­ing on the band­wagon for a bit.  Benchwagon?

Nice how these things work out sometimes.

As part of my chal­lenge of the utmost kind, I decided to take a fairly hideous pair of shoes (found in a free pile) and see if I could breathe new life into their tired, old soles.

They started out dirty, kind of weird shaped, and very beat up and funky-in-the-bad-way.  I ruth­lessly scrubbed them in the sink, let them dry out for a week, and cov­ered them with the fab­ric that I made from my first run on a rigid hed­dle loom.  Let’s focus on that instead of the crooked nail­heads, shall we?

There might be some more mod­i­fi­ca­tions (wood­burn­ing on the base per­haps?) and a lin­seed oil fin­ish, but that’s the gist of it.

And never is there a photo shoot around here with­out a helper:

No mice around here.  Just a bunch of cra­zies suf­fer­ing from cabin fever.  Hope this Mon­day is deliv­er­ing new views for your clan too.

well now, don’t you look pretty…

Posted on 8 January 2010 | 1 response

New theme. More tin­ker­ing to come. Like a swap of that lovely ban­ner image (which I adore but I didn’t take the pho­to­graph and that won’t do).

For now, a big thank you and a court­sey to the site devel­oper Damien Flux, who cre­ated this open source theme for Wordpress.org.

it’s the *new* style

Posted on 1 January 2010 | 1 response

Happy New Year!

This will be the year when old is good again.

And by that, I mean like this:

I wish I could say that I made this lit­tle beauty, but it’s a gem that I found on Etsy in my lat­est round of research.

My research for ~ a chal­lenge of the utmost kind ~ that is.

Begin­ning today, Jan­u­ary 1, 2010, I will be abstain­ing from buy­ing any new item for my per­sonal wardrobe.  I will be mak­ing my own clothes or buy­ing them from sec­ond­hand shops, scor­ing bits from free piles, and con­cen­trat­ing on cre­at­ing a look that works for a stay-at-home-mama/ fiber artist/writer with ease.  (Edit:  except for tights.  And sun­glasses.  So there.)

First stop:  house dresses.  Just like my gram used to wear.  The pat­terns are queued up and ready for their mish mash of alter­ations, the prac­tice fab­rics are washed and pressed.  And there will be a dress just like the one you see up there.  Yessiree.

Are you ready to join me on a jour­ney into the good old days?

a new little project. just for me.

Posted on 29 December 2009 | 7 responses

Hi there.  Did you miss me?  There was a whole lot of hul­la­baloo going on around here for the last cou­ple of weeks but now we’re on to bright and shiny new things.  As the New Year approaches, I’ve been think­ing about one thing in particular:

New Year’s Resolutions.

Not part of my usual agenda.

This year how­ever, I have come across an idea that I like so much I’m will­ing to make an excep­tion. Not so much out of the tra­di­tion of cre­at­ing one of these lists, but because it will be a point of time that’s easy for me to remem­ber.  I also dis­cov­ered the year-long chal­lenge right before Christ­mas and knew much, much bet­ter than to begin and end such a feat right in the midst of chaos.

May I present Dot­tie Angel’s “Chal­lenge of the Utmost Kind” ~

If that’s too tough to read, the gist is that I will not be buy­ing any new arti­cle of cloth­ing for myself for one year (unless it’s hand­made).  This isn’t actu­ally a stretch since I rarely buy any new item of cloth­ing for myself, the chal­lenge for me is to actu­ally sit down and make myself some clothes.  And unlike most of the par­tic­i­pants in this dandy lit­tle chal­lenge, I do plan on mak­ing my own underwear.

This Res­o­lu­tion (cue the dra­matic voice and music) comes about out of neces­sity more than any­thing.  I’m happy to say that as the babes grow, the mama con­tin­ues to shrink.  After three years of being preg­nant, nurs­ing, being preg­nant, and nurs­ing some more, this mama is pretty ripe for a new wardrobe.  Moth­er­hood changes a woman in a myr­iad of ways, both phys­i­cally and men­tally, and none of my old clothes fit any­more.  Phys­i­cally or mentally.

So there we have it.  As I steadily work on build­ing my inven­tory for this summer’s mar­ket, I will be con­cen­trat­ing on mak­ing cloth­ing that I would wear myself…this new self that is moth­erly and respon­si­ble and wants to wear clothes that look pretty but are durable enough for me to wipe my hands on through­out our messy, puts-the-speed-of-light-to-shame kind of days.  Unique and tai­lored and with nurs­ing access but not in an obvi­ous way.   A lit­tle funky and off the beaten path but able to with­stand what­ever laun­dry set­ting I put them on.  Kid proof.

Those kinds of clothes.

Stay tuned for “the big reveal”, as lady Tif puts it.

for an audience of one

Posted on 12 December 2009 | 3 responses

Dear Gram,

I got the dreams you sent–I can’t tell you enough how good it was to hear from you again.  Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you but I don’t think I quite under­stood it at first.  I have so many things under my fin­ger at the moment that it takes awhile for things to soak in sometimes.

You’ve prob­a­bly seen the two lit­tle ones by now ~ your pres­ence at their births was pow­er­ful and clear.  Thank you so much for all of the lov­ing pro­tec­tion, espe­cially dur­ing Nico’s surgery a cou­ple of months ago.

He’s back to his old self again..which can be some­what aggra­vat­ing since he’s two now.

Miss Annabelle is grow­ing at light­en­ing speed.  Her first tooth has erupted and she has a fine time chew­ing on ol’ mama while the rest pop up.  We love to make her smile so we can see the soli­tary pearly white stand­ing proudly in her lit­tle pink gums.  We haven’t tried the whiskey on her yet but a nip here and there sure helps me get through the teething.  So far she seems to like turkey jerky well enough to help them cut through.

She’s quite a char­ac­ter.  I’m start­ing to think the mys­tery nose might belong to you. (Like the sweater? S’s mother was kind enough to make one for each of the kids when they were born.)

The days are intense with our sweet Irish twins (18 months apart…what were we think­ing?  hahaha) and I wish you were here to tell me sto­ries about your life as a mother.  I always loved the story about the time that the boys got into the flour and threw it all over the kitchen–I can envi­sion it per­fectly now that I have two lit­tle ones with that same dev­il­ish sparkle in their eyes.  I’m sure you had a mil­lion more just like it that would help me smile through the rocky moments around here.  It’s good to know that dream­s­peak is a lan­guage that we share now too.

I bet­ter get back to the kid­dos ~ Nico is tir­ing of his cars and is start­ing to throw things at the tree again.  Please let the ladies know how much I love the ideas for the dresses!  It might take a lit­tle while for me to get them under­way but I’m see­ing the ideas emerge with great clar­ity, bit by bit.

I miss you. I miss you every day. Still.

much love ~ julie

the coozies are coming! the coozies are coming!

Posted on 9 December 2009 | No responses

Run ye to the Com­mu­nity Food Co-op and fetch a cou­ple for the hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions sure to come.  These unique coozies are made from post con­sumer recy­cled wool sweaters and scrappy bits of felt.

AND crafty mamas, there will be a pat­tern listed in my Etsy shop right quick.  For real this time.  Like early next week.  Just in time for last minute stitchiness!

Felt your sweaters!

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