MsFledermaus Arts

May 14, 2020September 1, 2020

Vintage skills, modern needs…

Hello, my dears, and I hope you and yours are staying safe and feeling well. These days our strategies for this are all over the map, from being able to shelter in place to having to navigate a potential dangerous landscape daily in order to keep body and soul together. I hope whatever you have to do to stay safe is working out okay, and I hope we all can keep it up until better days come…

For myself, I’m kind of a mixed bag. I still report to my workplace, but far less frequently, and I’m kept abreast of things more and more by online communications. When I’m physically at The Jade Mines I channel my inner Howard Hughes with disinfecting, washing, masking and gloving. Everything I touch gets wiped down, or I wash myself, or both. I never talk to another coworker without a mask on, and most of them have masks too. A few days a week we have fun online lectures about art in the galleries, newsletters from our director and our personal department, and a handful of coworkers keep reaching out to me to see how I’m doing, and vice versa. Eventually we’ll reopen, and I’m still trying to picture what that’s going to look like for us. I try not to let the uncertainty and fear get the upper hand, but I won’t lie, there are bad days. I worry about my friends, my family members, strangers I admire, and everybody still out there holding things together as best they can. And I’m going to keep worrying as long as this goes on, because that’s how I’m wired…

So what do I do when I’m not at the Jade mines? I’m trying hard to keep busy. There’s a lot of new yarns to put up in the shop now, and I’m so grateful for the kind folks who have stopped by for a look. I’ve been making embroideries too, and am surprised both by their happy receptions and by how fun they are to make. (So far all the ones I’ve finished are spoken for, but there’s a few ideas for embroideries to offer in the shop soon.) I’ve been painting a bit, and sketching a bit, here and there. And like just about everybody else, I’ve been baking. One thing I’ve expanded this spring is my garden–I have a large garden trough to keep tasty plants away from ravenous wild beasties, and I’ve been growing little scraps of veggies and fruiting plants in the kitchen…

Tiny green onions in a skull shotglass make me so happy!

I’ve also been hand sewing things, with helpful Youtube tutorials from loads of helpful people, and hypnotizing my friends with short videos of my spinning on a support spindle…

You are getting sleeeeeepy…because spinning is preeeeetttyyyy…

All these activities, besides being soothing and interesting, are actively helpful right now. All those handsewing tutorials helped me make masks for myself and for my family and friends. (Also I can now whip up a decent skirt and repair my clothes when I need to.. Thanks, Bernadette Banner!) The baking has it’s own rewards. (Lemon pound cake? Yes, please!) The spinning wheels help with my exercise routine as well as help me plow through my fiber stash, The embroideries lift my mood and help fine tune my fingers. The gardening comforts me and feeds me a little. (Right now it’s a very, very little. It’s still chilly here in Minnesota. But I’m looking forward to salad and eggplants, hot peppers and lots and lots of onions in the garden.) and I’m also glad to see other people doing the same thing I am; trying out older skills and fine-tuning them to help get through an increasingly worrisome modern world.

I hope we all get through okay to the other side of everything. And I’m taking everything I’ve been learning with me to the world on the other side of the pandemic, whatever that will look like. I hope you will too. Stay safe and be well…

April 3, 2020

Quarantine…

I’m at home, mostly. By mostly I mean that here and there I’m at the museum where I usually work, keeping the lights on and the doors locked. The rest of the time I’m here, trying to deal with my own brand of Covid-19 anxiety by attacking projects. I’m one sleeve away from finishing a sweater. I’ve been embroidering something for a coworker. and I’ve been making lots and lots and lots and LOTS of yarn. I moved my favorite spinning wheel, Hester Hestia, down to the living room, and I’ve been watching movies, Youtube tutorials, and various friends playing music live while I spin. It’s comforting to still have my friends, even at a distance.

A few pretty, pretty yarns to while away the hours…

Otherwise? Social distancing, baby. Delivered groceries, verrrrry cautious walks around the neighborhood. I’ve been trying my hand at fabric masks, with a bit of frustration. And I won’t lie; the times I go in to work I have terrible panic attacks before and after I go there. I have asthma, so I have lots of worries about contracting the virus. I’m just really grateful the museum is trying really hard to take care of it’s employees in real, practical ways. And I’m grateful I live in Minnesota, with a lot of people trying really hard to do the right thing, whatever that needs to be.

At the moment we’re under Shelter-in-place, so I’ve put the website on vacation mode until I feel it’s safer for me to mail out yarns. I’m also closing down the Etsy site for a variety of reasons. But if you need yarns soon and want something special from me, just shoot me a message and I’ll see what I can manage for you. Just stay safe, and hang in there, and I will too…

March 7, 2020April 3, 2020

Adjusting…

As time moves merrily forward, I keep finding new and exciting ways to make the world around me more interesting. Ways like more odd embroidery!

(Did I mention Nightshade is really, really fun to embroider? Because it is!)

Also, I illustrated a smallish, charming book for the excellent writer, Tansy Undercrypt!

“The Utmost Propriety” can be ordered online at lulu.com! Toss a coin to your inker! Oh valley of plentyyyyy…

But mostly I’ve been slowly, every so slowly switching products from my Etsy shop to here, and thinking of new yarns to make for spring. I won’t lie, this winter has been tough for being creative. I’m hoping this spring will be better. But that said, I’m looking forward to some new things to try, and I’ll share them with you all. And I’m grateful for your kind attention and support,..

November 3, 2019April 3, 2020

What am I doing? Nuthinnnn…What am I doing nuthin’ with? Welllll…

Wool. Lots and lots of wool. That’s what I’m doing nuthin’ with. And I’ve gotten a bit brave and added things to the online shop here, too. Now that I’m a bit more comfortable using this system I can keep adding inventory as I finish projects. Which will make room for more projects.( You see how this loops in on itself. Yarny things forever, wool without end!) I just ended up buying more wool to spin up, since (gasp) I’ve been emptying bins while spinning more yarns. Cant have that, can we?

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of creative stuff lately. Not that long ago, I did a spinning demo for my workplace, which I enjoyed immensely. I managed to get all the way through Inktober, something I’m very proud of. I repainted a dresser as an anniversary gift to my husband. And today I’m at the end of a very nicely long staycation where I did a variety of creative things.

But now I think I could use a giant nap…In fact, I definitely do…

April 6, 2019April 3, 2020

A Few New Things…

Hello again, my dears! My website has had a little work done recently, so I have some nice additions! Like… *deep breath*… a little shop. Right here. Where you can buy pretty yarns, knitwear and weird things I make! I wanted to step away a little bit from the Etsy site and have something a bit more personal. And here it is! It’s still in it’s early, humble stages, but I’m very excited about this step, and as always your comments and opinions are welcome and treasured…

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to add new skills to my fiber interests. I bought a rigid heddle loom, and have been experimenting with big, drapey shawls. Also, I’ve been playing with embroidery. (In this case, to cheer up a sad friend, but I enjoyed it enough to try to make a few things for sale. Stabbing things over and over in pretty ways is oddly soothing.)

I finished up the Krueger sweater and it’s new owner is very pleased by it. I’m a bit torn between offering the pattern I developed in a pdf or just writing it down on a piece of torn, weathered parchment with some very suspect stains all over it and sending it off in the mail to would-be knitters. Honestly, I think it has to be the second way. Besides, it’s so much fun getting odd things in the mail!! Also, since I have some leftover yarn from the project I should whip up a hat and mitt set for this October. As always, I have too many projects and not enough hands…

Also, I want to thank my sweet husband, Matthew Cohen, for setting up the new site and for his generosity, patience and kindness. None of this would be remotely possible without his help, and I’m lucky beyond words…

So, watch this space for new things to pique your interest!!

August 3, 2018

A Knitting Mercenary Project: The Krueger Sweater, part 1…

From time to time I take on a custom knitting project for someone. Maybe a friend, maybe someone online who needs something they just can’t get any other way. Recently a friend of a friend had a very interesting request for a project. He was a Freddy Krueger impersonator, and needed a custom sweater. A Freddy Krueger sweater?!? Really?!? How could I pass up a project like that?!

So we met at a coffeeshop, I took some basic measurements, as well as photos with a sweater he already had. There was a lady in Britain who made old-school Krueger sweaters in bright greens and reds, and it was a gorgeous bit of knitting. But this incarnation was from the TV series instead, and needed a more olive hue instead of the cheerful Christmas-y colors of the early films. So, ready with my measurements and the pattern I had written out in my notes, I was ready to tackle this thing…

But there was a snag, at first. The kind of colors I saw online for this particular project were, shall we say, kinda bright? Certainly not the slightly sinister tones I needed to make the sweater look right when it was finished. And the nice, dark olive I needed was unavailable in any of the online shops I checked until it occurred to me to try Amazon. Even then, a tea rinse would probably be a smart idea to sadden those bright hues a touch. I was using Plymouth Encore, an excellent acrylic/wool mix yarn that’s a decent pick for a sweater that may see a lot of wear and needed some easy washing. Did it have enough wool to pick up the tea? The answer, happily enough, was yes, and my samples had a slightly browner hue…

So, now that I had a strategy, it’s knitting time!

Freddy Krueger sweater — I am enjoying how the reverse stockingette for the red stripes adds extra dimension!

May 1, 2018

A few pretty things…

Moving seems to take forever. And when you’re finished, there’s always More Stuff to Do. You’re never really done moving in. But I do feel like I’m settling in now. The new Craftroom makes spinning very easy, and painting is much easier with a table committed just to that. So I’ve been making lots and lots of yarns…

December 1, 2017

Ms Mausi and the Inherited Stash…

Greetings, fellow knitty-fiends! I realize it’s been a while since I put something up in this space, but I’ve been busy, in ways I didn’t intend to be. Quite a few things happened over the summer, but what really took up a lot of head space for me was losing my mother. She died in June, and I spent (and spend) a lot of time processing her death.

The hardest part is going through all of her things. Like me, she was artistic, and I’ve been going through her paints and projects, many unfinished. It’s the unfinished ones that really hurt the most to find. Some of it’s glorious, some of it’s awful, and it takes time to really sort everything out. There’s also huge tubs full of movies. so many movies. And mostly, except for the odd animated film, the kind of wonderfully grody, cheapy-budget horror films we both loved so much. I now have every Saw movie, however many they made so far. And other great movies I’m looking forward to watching, like, “Doll Graveyard” and “My Mom Was a Werewolf.” There’s also loads of books, also mostly scary horror or weirdo mystery or funky things Nostradamus said.

But the unfinished projects are the saddest.

At one point I couldn’t look at the unfinished crocheted farmer couple she had been working on any more, and busted out some of her yarns to crochet tentacles for the lady’s unfinished legs. Oddly enough, not only did it make me feel a little better, but the couple looked much more…interesting…

And while I have a photo to share of the couple, It’s not loading right at the moment, and the dolls themselves are in a huge stack of boxes by the china hutch… Yes people, we’re moving! To a larger house with a very nice attic space that will become my new craftroom. It’s a very bright spot after some very dark times.

But there’s still lots of packing to get through first. Le siiiigh…

May 1, 2017

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting Chapter 6: The Gauge Swatch…

Hello there! Yes, there’s more blathering about the perils of tip-toeing down the perfidous path of knitting! You poor darlings!…

Bunbun the Kitty insisted on helping me with my illustration. Stealing the pen and lying on the paper is not super helpful, Bunbun.

Chapter 6: The Gauge Swatch.

So now you’ve been knitting for a little while, and you’re feeling confident! You can cast on like a pro, you have stopped dropping stitches and your garter stitch is nice and even. So’s your stockingette. You can purl with the best of them. Your pot holders and scarves are wonders of knitting to behold. And you no longer have the new-knitter tight-clutch anymore. Not you! And you’ve become so confident with your knitting prowess that you look at helpful instructions about gauge swatches and are all, “Hah! I don’t need to do that! That’s for the noobs! Not me! My gauge is clearly 4 stitches to the inch on size 8 needles with worsted! Perfect!”

Oh, you poor doomed soul…

1: Start a fun sweater pattern with unfamiliar yarn you just brought home. Look at the gauge measurements and go, “Eh. That’s pretty much what I knit anyway. I don’t need to eat up time making a gauge swatch I don’t need.”

2: Snuggle the yarn. It such pretty yarn. It cries out to be a sweater! *your* sweater! Right now! Right this second!!

3: Cast on with wild abandon and start some ribbing. Stop two rows in and think, “Huh, these stitches are a little stretchy. But it’s ribbing, it should be fine. I think I need a glass of wine!”

4: Pour yourself half a bottle of wine and put on The Craft. Knit happily for several hours. Notice the yarn is sliding a bit loosely, but merrily knit on. Marvel on how the wine keeps your fingers nice and loose while you knit.

5: Finish off the wine and yell happily at the movie. Cheer on the magical catfight at the end. Then look down at the cosy knitting on your lap and realise it’s HUUUUUUGE…

6: Curse at your wine-sozzled fingers. Curse at the movie you were enjoying so much 5 seconds ago. Curse at the pretty, pretty yarn and the pretty, pretty circus tent you’ve been making all this time. Curse at the ghost of Elizabeth Zimmerman, who so sweetly kept reminding you to do that gauge swatch before you got all crazy with that yarn. Curse curse curse!

7: Should you rip it out? Should you rip it out? Should you? You should, you know. Frog that bastard and start over. All the way over. Correctly. Like the knitting badass you know you are. You can do it. Even though it’s hours out of your life. And that sweet magical catfight you watched. It’s there, right where the stitches got extra loose. You were laughing so hard, and that was the last glass of wine, too. Man, that was good stuff…

8: Keep knitting anyway. Decide instead of a shapely pullover it’s going to be a tunic. Keep hearing the psycho mom from Carrie chanting, “They’re all going to laugh at you…they’re all going to laugh at you…” Stubbornly plug on. Of course, now your gauge is too tight because you’re wound up. Try not to get too tight on the neck ribbing. Mutter evil things to yourself…

9: After much cursing, another couple of nights with wine and more horribly funny schlocky movies, you’re done! With your circus tent! That has bits that seem too tight!! Hear the sweet voice of Elizabeth Zimmerman in your head, reassuring you that blocking can fix a lot of things. Hope to hell she’s right, or you’re going to go find her grave and yell at it for a while. She’d understand. She was that kind of lady.

10: The tunic, after blocking, is…really not that bad, actually. Friends compliment it, and really appreciate that off-the-shoulder look you’ve got going there. Smile graciously. Smile nervously. Promise the ghost of Elizabeth Zimmerman a nice bottle of wine if she won’t tell the other knitters the truth. And for each and every new project, a gauge swatch shall be knit. Pinky swear…

My illustration of my sweater woes. It’s shaky because of the aforementioned cat-problems. Please don’t mind the extra cat hair. Bunbun helps the only ways he knows how.

April 28, 2017

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting, Chapter 13: Lacework.

Eventually there will be some extremely jacked-up illustrations for these little knitting chapters. When I get to it. Which might take a little bit. So you’ll have to imagine the kind of horrible things I could draw for these pages. If you think of something particularly good, feel free to tell me about it…

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting, #13: lacework…

1: Buy delicate, expensive mohair yarn. Snuggle it. Dream of the wonderful shawl you’re going to make.

2: Look at patterns. Beautiful, eyesearing patterns you’d be completely insane to try. Even just reading the patterns makes your brain cells cringe. Pick out an easy lace pattern you can’t screw up too badly. Promise yourself you’ll tart it up with beads and a cool border later on.

3: Snuggle the yarn some more. Awwwwyeahhhhh…

4: Start your shawl. It’s gorgeous! Light, airy, shows off your snuggly yarn perfectly! And it’s knitting up quickly!! Beam with pride. And putting in an emergency saving strand, in case you mess something up? Nah. No way can you mess up something this simple. You’re a better knitter than *that.*

5: Bring your project to work,can let your coworkers coo over it and pet it. Then realize you missed a yarn over…3 rows down.

6: Swear. Swear like a biker. Swear like a biker with an itchy rash. Because it’s mohair, which resists all attempts to fix anything. Swear like a biker who has to unknit 3and a half rows of freakin’ mohair. Think about leaving the mistake and crocheting a goddamn flower over it or something. Nobody would know. But you would. You would know. Forever…

7: Undo 3 and a half rows of lacework, muttering nastily to yourself. Hope like hell you don’t drop a stitch or jack up the other yarnovers too badly. When a helpful friend recommends frogging it instead,laugh the laugh of the knitting damned.

8: One hour later, finally get to your mistake and fix it. Feel the rush of beautiful, flawless stitches. Snuggle your yarn some more–its your friend again!! Ignore the coworker who says, “can’t you just buy that at a store?” No, my dear. You cannot buy this kind of yarny satisfaction.

*You will be repeating steps 6-8 at least three more times, possibly more. I recommend inventing new swears for each flaw, to keep things fresh.

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