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One of Av’s professors from high school opened a rare and first edition bookstore a few years ago, and inside amongst all the books, he featured a couple of kinetic sculptures on the walls. They really fascinated me, because I’d never seen anything like them – they were beautiful and calming and….just one of those things to just hang around to watch for a while.

The artist – David C. Roy – who made those pieces, has his website here.

(updated with a new video:)

I also really like Tom Haney’s artwork – he makes these really original pieces that move or dance with pushes of a simple lever. I’ve seen him at a few shows, and he’s always really good about showing everyone how everything works, etc. Very nice. He’s going to be at Kentuck later this year.

A company in the UK sells these very simple kits to make animated pieces from paper – some of them are *so* cute!

About four years ago, Av and I purchased this piece from Bud and Suzi Richards (from Springville, AL) at the Bluff Park Art Show. It represents a 1864 report that Bud found about a spying soldier during the War who was wearing a flying contraption. It was the first automata piece they’d made, and we didn’t waste any time getting it.

 

 

About a week or so ago, we stayed one evening at the Hilton Garden Inn in Montgomery. This was our first visit there, and the hotel seemed nice. We were upgraded to one of their suites and the basic breakfast was included.

This hotel is situated inside one of Montgomery’s corporate parks, and it was pretty empty the weekend we stayed there (since I guess most of their business is M-F).

This trip, we stayed at the JW Marriott in New Orleans – it’s the hotel that was formerly the Le Meridien. We had a really nice stay.

Our room:

The beds are soooo comfortable, and they had robes hanging in the closet (I love that!). The bathroom was pretty small, but that was okay.

The lobby is pretty:

One thing I also liked was that it’s one of the hotels where you dial one number and that person will take care of everything (valet, late-night room service snack, etc.). BTW, the valet was pretty quick, too.

While Av was working, Leslie and I walked all over the Quarter. Overall, the hotel was really nice and we wouldn’t mind staying here again.

We had a nice time at the Jerry Brown Arts Festival this weekend. It was small – probably only 20 or so artists – but we met some really nice people, and brought home three things…

This is a pretty different-looking vase (the inside vase part isn’t full-length – it goes down about halfway) made by Ron Morris, who teaches at Bevill State. Ron and his wife are both **really** nice and fun to chat with.

Ron calls it his ‘pie plate’ vase, because of the nice detail along the edge – that made me like it even more:

This little birdhouse was made by Mark Williams from Bogart, Georgia. I’m going to hang it up outside this week:

Mark also made this:

I know, she’s a little….different! I say she looks like she has stage fright, but Av’s not so sure (heh!).

Mark also does a lot of face jugs (there’s a little about the history behind face jugs here).

Valentine’s Day was sooooo nice! For one thing, Av had this beautiful orchid delivered (orchids are my favorite flower/plant of all time) – and this one has lots of buds, so it will be flowering for at least the next couple of months at least! So pretty!

My big present was a lithgraph by Nall (my favorite artist). Av (the best husband anybody could ever have!!!) left it unframed so I could pick out how to have it done. I could theoretically do it myself in a style complemetary to his, which might be really interesting and fun…..and if it all fell apart or I didn’t like the way it turned out I could just take it to a frame shop and have it done in a more traditional way. Hmmm……

Av got a cd and his other thing hasn’t arrived yet…so I’m not going to say yet what it is! 🙂

We also traded kiddie Valentines (mine were Hello Kitty and Av’s were Star Wars), which we added super-corny sayings to, and last night we opened each other’s card box to read them out loud – they were **hilarious**!!!!

I hope everybody had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!!

Today, I finished my latest scarf, and when I got done, I thought adding some fringe would make it look softer and even nicer. This scarf was made by knitting together these three yarns:

Ironstone Yarns ‘Hot Stuff’ #1747, Trendsetter Yarns ‘Dune’ #84, and Euro Yarns ‘Glitz’ #769.

I made the scarf on size 17 needles, and all rows were six knits. I’ve been thinking while knitting this one that it looked a little more bulky than I thought I would have turned out; I guess because of the weight of the three yarns together plus the large needles, it looked more ‘chunky’ than I had expected. When I did the bind-off of the last row, I just looked at it for a while, trying to think of what I could do to make it appear more…graceful, I guess. I decided to make lots of long fringe on both ends, and it made all the difference!

Below – my supplies were: my scarf, scissors, the yarn to make the fringe out of (I used the Euro Yarns ‘Glitz’), a crochet hook, and I used one of my knitting needles as a measurement guide for the length to cut the fringe.

Here’s the end of my scarf. I took the crochet hook down through one of the knots and out the end:

Then I looped a length of my fringe onto the hook (I just took my knitting needle, cut a length of yarn 2x that length, and folded that in half…the fringe can be as short or as long as you like – for this one I was thinking long would be best…you can always cut down the fringe if you think it’s too long):

I pulled the hook up and back through, carrying the fringe yarn:

Now I just pulled more of the fringe through further to make a large loop. The large loop is what you pull the ‘legs’ of the fringe through. This allows the knot to be made:

I pulled the ‘legs’ of the fringe through the large loop:

Then just pulled the legs and pushed the loop down, making a nice knot:

Now just add as many more pieces of fringe as you like. Although this scarf was knitted six knits per row, I added more than six sections of fringe – I stopped at fourteen on each end of the scarf. That made it look really nice and full:

I like it so much better now!