I don't always land on my feet, but this time I hit the ground running.

At the end of the week I'm going to be face painting at a craft fair  So last night I decided to sort through my makeup and body art supplies (which was also influenced by the purchase of some new makeup...that Boots consultant at Target was amazing!)...

This was the result...of the sorting that is...

It also covered a good portion of my hands and arms....at 11:00 at night....RIGHT before bed.....some of my best work happens when nobody is around to see it. Which I suppose makes the term "best work" debatable. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around...blah blah blah...

I go outside every night to look at the stars and think, pray, BE.... Last night, all did up like a character from Cats, the musical! ...I'm laying on the driveway and all I can think of saying to God at all is, "meow". A few minutes pass without any consequence, when I see a shadow out of the corner of my eye. The next events happen in the span of about a nano second.

Shadow seen...thinking to myself, 'I've seen fox around here, coyote, a ginormous buck, antelope, dogs, skunk, do bears make it this far east?'....I sit straight up....staring at me not 3 feet away is a huge black fluffy cat, which jumps in the air vertically and changes direction, runs a block away.....I also jump vertically in the air and land on my feet.....forget to breathe...... In a nano second...that's not much time! ....to have a HEART ATTACK!!

I'm quasi running back into the house with a last glance up at the stars thinking....... "you're hilarious, mister".

Ren Fest

My...the summer has flown. Last thing I wrote about was the Ren Fest and now I'm facing back to school. We had a wonderful time, by the way...at the Ren Fest that is. Having twisted my ankle days before we were supposed to go made it an interesting day of hobbling around. I had considered dressing as a crazy old village woman with a cane, but I get to dress up so rarely as it is that I embraced my inner princess.

.............the kids on the other hand......well...(you'd think they've never seen food before!)

...eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we knit!...

This week is (hold on looking it up so I don't misinform) Craftsy knit in public week. That's the situation. So, I'm a crocheter. And a sewer. I just now realized sewer (Noun: An underground conduit for carrying off drainage water and waste matter) and sewer (A person who sews) are spelled the same way. Let us do away with the first definition for the time being. 

I can knit, but I am not a knitter. Dana came over a couple weeks ago to show me the colonial form of knitting and my 9 year old son is all "oh I get it!"*clackity*clackity*clack*... After about 15 minutes I yelled "QUICK! GIVE ME A CROCHET HOOK!!!" Ahhhhhhhhh.............brain happy. I can only knit very small dishrags, or dishrags that are very very small. I'd really love to know how to knit. Some of the things you can create are difficult to mimic with crochet. But I guess it just isn't my forte for now. 

Every Friday afternoon, some of my peeps and I meet at a local coffee shop and work on a project we have going, or just sit and have a nice cup o' coffee. I love the community. Friendships being built, learning a new stitch, laughing... Friends are a precious commodity ...and I'm thankful for the new ones I have. On the agenda for today....knitting!! (I'll be keeping a crochet hook close at hand...)

My son had an idea using hand knitting to create a turtle shell. So we gave it a try...and it really turned out fabulous. I think I will be working on this today to add to my Etsy shop soon. Just need to finalize the rest of the turtle body.

On a different note...

Just about all ready for our annual trip to the Larkspur Renaissance Festival. A day of eating and merriment ...and coming home looking like we rolled in dirt all day. Girls are going to be pirates, oldest boy a very tall peasant. The other two boys are wearing these acrobat baggy pants and leather shoes, going shirtless, and wearing bandanas. None of the younger ones have showered for days because they insist on being as authentic as possible. I'm not sure what I'm doing. About my costume that is....not about showering.

See, usually the way we like to do things around here (I'm not sure about other families) is that all the kids, at the same approximate time, approach me with comments such as, "I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING TO WEAR!!!", or "this doesn't fit any more", or "MooooooOOOOoooommmmmmmm I can't find the corset!!!" You get the gist of it. So then in my wisdom as a mother who is trying to instill responsibility in my children, respond with "don't make me come down and look through that closet I just told you to look through!" Eventually, I instruct them gently to only approach me one at a time and if I'm not helping them yet then to get outa my face. 

The two or three days prior to the ren fest, or Halloween, or any event really, involves me altering, sewing, bossing and coercing them into the outfits they end up wearing in the end. ...a little face painting, last minute additions, sometimes complete changes in costumes.....And then 5 minutes before we leave I'm throwing together an outfit for myself. 

Works like a charm every time!

felting is dangerous business!

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." - Bilbo Baggins


I'll tell you what else is dangerous...felting. It goes without saying that needle felting can be painful, if your aim isn't quite right. But I'm talking about wet felting. You know, when you take some nice, soft, fluffy roving of beautiful colors in your hand and you add soap and water and you knead it around in your hands.... At this point you might be wondering how this could be dangerous. Well, when you COMBINE it with going out your front door...

I'm working on making some stitch markers for knitting. Cute little felted Corriedale sheep wool pendants. And I'm rolling it around in my hands, and I open my front door to check on the water in the garden, and forgot to step down. *POP* goes the ankle. Those of you that have done this before are cringing, am I right?

If only I had listened to Bilbo.

But felting? Seriously? I mean, if you think of the least dangerous thing imaginable and subtract 100, you're left with wet felting.

Hi ho hi ho, its off to the ER I go.

  

twin sammich

This past weekend was the Estes Park Wool Festival. Dana, Deb and myself went. So much fun! All that yarn was almost too much to process. The colors...textures...smells... There were animals as well. Sheep, goat, llama, alpaca, rabbits. The angora rabbit hair is so soft you can't tell you're touching anything. It's incredibly tempting to raise angora rabbits and spin the wool. I actually found myself considering it for a few moments. As well as llama. The vicuña were adorable. Standing around in the pens making whining sounds, because they were standing around in pens, I imagine. The wool from a vicuña is the most incredibly soft and warm wool. My understanding is that they can only be shorn every 3 years. This makes the yarn quite expensive. This also means none of us came home with any vicuña yarn.

...adorable vicuna...

We stayed up late Saturday night giving a go at felting bars of soap. Tiny bars of soap we mooched off our host at the B&B. They turned out lovely. Deborah made an artistic sunflower and Dana a daisy. I made a pasture with a house on a hill. It looked kindof whompy, and I was sure it would fall apart first time in the shower. But it didn't. Although it DOES look like a tornado blew through the field. Going to have to experiment a bit more with those. Needle felting after wet felting seems to work pretty well.

Estes park is beautiful. Surrounded by mountains like a huge hug. We were visited by a couple elk at breakfast, and on the way out of town we saw maybe 8 of them frolicking in the lake. Already looking forward to going next year.

As for now, I'm confined to a boot cast, crutches, and my house. And like the vicuña, perhaps a little bit of whining...

How to make a felted wool ball:

You'll need 3 ingredients:
Wool roving
Soap (any dish soap or hand soap will do)

Water

Begin by separating out the roving, if its roving yarn (image A). If it's already been separated out (see image B), you can get right to it. Decide how large you want the finished ball to be. For roughly a 1" pendant, I use enough roving to make a loose fist around (image C).

Add as much soap to your hands as you would use to wash them. Then wet the roving with hot water, and allow the soap and water to saturate the wool. It will feel like you're kneading it to death (and be sure to not walk out your front door on this step). The agitation and soapy water will begin the felting process. The tiny fibers start to open up and grab onto each other. Rub around in the palm of your hand for about 5 minutes.

Turn the water to cold and while rolling the wool in your hands, begin to apply more pressure. If you're having difficulty getting it to hold together enough to actually ROLL between your hands, there is most likely too much soap preventing the friction to form a ball. Now alternate between rinsing with hot and cold water, all the while rolling between palms and applying more and more pressure.

If you find that there is a spot, or spots, where the wool isn't felting together, you can pick a little at the fibers and stretch them across the gap (image D).

Add a tinge of soap here and there as needed to lubricate the agitation process. At the end, you should be left with a ball of tight, wet wool. There shouldn't be much, if any, soap left in the wool. I gently squeeze out the excess water in a dish towel, and then set somewhere to dry. It will firm up and shrink a bit during the drying process.

Once it's dry, you can sew a small loop on to make a pendant, embroidery a design on it, and you've got a lovely necklace. They also make nice buttons...

Well done!

winging it

One of the things I love about Colorado weather is that it changes...often. A few days ago it was hot and sunny...clear skies. Yesterday brought with it thick clouds and thunderstorms. Today is gloomy and cool. 

I planted some vegetables in the small garden out front. Trying to squeeze as much as possible into the space. It looks like a plant mosaic. Some things are growing quite well. The rose bush appears to be have been given a spot ideal for it to flourish. The lavender, not so much. 

Which is fine. I'm an experimental wing-it type of gardener. A whole section of my yard got overrun with Yarrow so I decided to let it have its way. In the fall I'll just harvest it all and become experimental wing-it herbal lady.

When I'm trying something new I generally dive on in. Some months back, a friend and I were discussing how to make those felted dryer balls. Mine never actually got used as dryer balls. I think she might still be using hers. First I made one with a flower and then I considered making all the planets. It sounded fun to toss them all into the black hole that is my dryer. I haven't completely abandoned the idea yet...but it evolved, and I decided to go miniature. I made a variable ton of the little guys. I have an odd addiction to pulling them out of the dryer to see them all soft and cozy and felted. So now what? Smallest dryer balls ever...or...



Fuschua Mushroom Pendant Necklace
by Lady Lorien Designs on Etsy



They became my pendants. Voila! It's fun embroidering on them. 

It just occurred to me why I love gardening. Not because it makes my heart happy (although I'm discovering that happens naturally). It's something creative to do that sort of has a life of its own. Something I can invest in but watch it do its own thing. I feel no stress at all. And when it's thundering and starting to rain...well that's just plain heaven.

the message of self-expression

     This morning my 9 year old son gave me a hand written note, as he very often does. Usually it's a short story of some kind, or to tell me how much he loves me. Today it read,

"I love you so much mom. You are the best mom even if you kidnapped me from my real mom but I believe you are my real mom."

So basically, to sum things up, I'm the best mom ever according to my son, who sounds mostly certain I didn't kidnap him. Come to think about it..........ha, just kidding. All you have to do is look at my kids. They're like mini mes. Except my 15 year old. I'm more like his mini me since he's pushing 6'2". 

     Each of them have a unique way of expressing themselves, be it the way they dress, the notes they write, or the stories they tell around the table. The art of living. What comes to the surface from what's going on within. I suppose this could be taken literally with my son's note. What's really going on there is that most of my children have a very playful, and one could argue dark, sense of humor. (I have been threatening them from a young age that I would sell them to pirates if they misbehaved. Which they quickly embraced as the most adventurous concept ever. Now I joke that I'm going to sell MYSELF to pirates and who would cook their meals and be the best mom ever if that happened?)

      My forms of expression quite possibly change on an hourly basis. Now I'm writing, now I'm sewing, now I'm crying, now I'm painting on a tattoo to cover up a blemish, now I'm playing my djembe, now I'm dancing, now I'm selling myself to pirates. See what I mean? All those things we do to express what's going on on the inside...is art. When it comes to making things to sell, it's really just an extension of who I am. One can see hints of an adventurous spirit here or there...maybe some melancholy or humor... I love seeing the artist in the art. I think we all do. I see it every time I look at the stars at night, and at a mushroom. Grandeur, and whimsy. 

     I love my son's note. He told me he said it because he wanted to make me laugh. Mission accomplished. Well done little artist.

small victory

Well, I have officially launched my Etsy shop. I must say, this was a much more laborious feat than I had anticipated. Not necessarily because of time, or inspiration, or actually finishing items to publish...no it was much more of a personal issue. A fear to overcome. A bump, hurdle...ok you get the picture; there was an obstacle of some sort. Creating things and offering them to the world (more or less) forces oneself to answer certain questions. Does this express me truthfully? Am I enjoying this? Will it sell? What if others don't like what I make? Now for those of you that have undertaken a task similar to this, you know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? If we are honest with ourselves. There is an opening up...an offering... And I believe it is the scariest kind. Offering self, knowing it's a guarantee some will not accept. You are faced with a choice. Do you push ahead? Do you recognize the still, small Voice reminding you your worth doesn't lie in others, either by their acceptance, or rejection.
If you listen to that voice I think you will find that at its source is an infinite well of fulfillment. There will always be those that don't approve. If that is what you are listening to, fear will keep you from whatever it is for you personally.

My Internet was down a good part of the last week so my office became various coffee shops. I was sitting there, hazelnut breve latte in hand, staring at my iPad after checking and rechecking and rerechecking the things I was about to publish, and I exhaled, and opened shop. Done! A small victory. One less obstacle to overcome on this path.

There is a quote I have written at the front of my drawing journal...I like that it reminds me that there is something within everyone that is their's to share with others...a creativity...

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~Howard Thurman

Warmly...Lórien  

crochet flower ring by EowynRose

first musings

     Hello nice to meet you. My name is Lórien. No, LOR-e-UN. No, EEE. Not EYE...Yes you almost have it. That's ok. No you can't just call me Lori. Well are you familiar with The Lord of the Rings? You know the forest? Oh you haven't read the books yet? Oh, ok just part of the first movie but fell asleep? What about the car in Back to the Future... ? Spelled differently but said the same. Ok. Good luck remembering it.

     That's about the way most introductions go. Often a nerdy type will get all excited and tell me how their favorite part in the book was when Gandalf told them to run fools and what do I think. I think my parents were correct in naming me what they did. I revel in the long introductions. Or maybe I revel because they named me after an enchanted forest in a book written by an iconic English professor from the 70's who liked smoking pipes and talking about God.

     I've 5 kids, 2 dogs, and 2 fish. I mention the animals because most days it's really like I have 7 kids and 2 spacy looking goldfish that have been alive a lot longer than any other goldfish I ever had growing up. Most likely they are enjoying the insanity of things and refusing to die in case they miss out on something.

     At any given moment it looks like a bomb has gone off in some factory. During Christmas, for example, involved was a yarn factory, glitter factory, multi-bird feather factory, shoe factory (reference previous paragraph in which I stated I have 5 kids) and dirty dishes factory. I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a factory that specializes in dirty dishes. If you are anything like me you do a pretty good job on your own of accomplishing this without a factory getting involved. 

     At the moment, it looks like a bomb went off on my head...but then again I haven't gotten out of bed yet.

     I am addicted to ideas. I can spend entire hours jotting down things I've come up with to create, or being inspired by what others have made, or thinking of new ways to make what I've already come up with to make. A cleverly formed cloud can set my brain into a hum and whirl of ideas, and all my kids can do is sigh and pat me affectionately on the back. 

     On the flip side, if I am not being inspired, I can just as easily WASTE entire hours staring depressedly into space. This is most likely a major contributor to the dirty dishes bomb.

     I have been determined to create for as long as I can remember. And I've dabbled: woodworking, textiles, metalworking, food, faux and mural painting, beadwork, wedding planning, worked at Whole Foods for awhile...had a paper route once....ok I'm getting distracted. SQUIRREL! Friends have often said to me, "you NEED to be creating and making a living doing it". I never disagreed with this statement, but often ran with an idea only to discover that there are things like taxes, and selling...involved in taking an idea from the brain, to the crafting room (affectionately known as the Gypsy Office and followed by the statement, "don't go in there! There are bombs going off it isn't safe!), and then out to the rest of the world. Maybe it's partially because of being able to see all sides, all options...which can be overwhelming. And maybe in part because I don't like selling things to people. I had a job painting Henna tattoos at the mall one time, and part of the job involved approaching people and convincing them they needed a tattoo. "Hi, so I was..." "I'm not interested" "ok". I figure, if a person really wanted a Henna tattoo, they would come on over. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this that has the superhero power of selling will completely not understand what I'm talking about. For the rest of you, want to go grab a coff..not interested? ok.

     This past Christmas a quirky fact about myself became frustratingly evident to me that I'd like to share and this seems like a good time to do it...if only because it just occurred to me and if we were having a conversation I would say it now in a slightly different tone. You know? Like a side thought? Anyways... One of the items I was selling over the holidays were mushroom ornaments. I love love love mushrooms and was inspired by the whimsy of the different kinds of mushrooms in creation and imaginings of my daughters to create magical little mounds. The problem I had was not in the creating of them, or oddly really even in the selling of them, but rather in the letting go of them! I had genuine sadness when one would sell. As if each one contained a small portion of my soul...and I remember a couple of times at a particular show moving an item to the back of the display so it WOULDN'T sell. Now this might strike some of you as odd at best, but I realized something about myself as an artist. I create with LOVE. I make things that I love making and when they find a home, the buyer, or gift-receiver is receiving an item that has the soul of this artist put into every stitch. ............I wonder if making a birth certificate for each item would be over the top...........hmm......

     I believe I've unofficially nailed down what I am going to do in the arena of creativity and this is really not my coming out blog so much as waking up with some things to say and taking the opportunity to jot them down. Sort of like journaling with the hope that other people want to read what I'm thinking about and now seems as good a time to start as any. 
     All of this started when I was a little girl. Whittling sticks around a campfire with my sisters and dad. Making delicious mud pies (of COURSE I tasted them. How on earth would you know whether you needed to add more leaves??)....  My dear friend Cara and I co-conspired our ideas and came up with Éowyn Rose. As a single mom and passionately adventurous free spirit, I am determined to channel the ideas I have into a journey that expresses who I am, provides for my children and I, and makes my heart happy to be doing what I do. 

     These are the rumblings of the artist. The muses before the launch. I'm still not entirely sure what it will look like (often I'm cutting something off or sewing something on as its heading "out the door"). You can be guaranteed that it will be full of whimsy, may inspire you to take an adventure or see the world in a new way...and it will have my heart thrown into it.