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Art

Open Print Exchange – Prints Received

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I said I would update this post once I received the prints for the exchange, and here I am, better late than never!  I believe this arrived at some point in May of 2022, but of course, beekeeping season is really ramping up at that point and posting about it just didn’t happen until now which is my low point before the season kicks off.  Anyway, these are the 9 prints I received in the print exchange – all of these are 7cm square and are all pretty different in terms of technique, subject, paper, color, etc.  It’s so interesting to see how many different things you can do with one tiny little press!  Click the Open Print Exchange Link to see more detail about each print.

The prints, top row, left to right:
“Untitled” by Yoko Sugeno – Open Print Exchange Link
“lulu the wonderdog” by janine howe – Open Print Exchange Link
“Bunundrum” by Miles Elliott – Open Print Exchange Link

Middle row, left to right
“Ottocat” by Olena Ingerova – Open Print Exchange Link
“Shorebirds” by Kristin Bickal – Open Print Exchange Link
“Precious” by Sara Hindhaugh – Open Print Exchange Link

Bottom row, left to right
“Blue Banded Bee” by Heather Davidson – Open Print Exchange Link
“Still Counting” by Michael Laungjessadakun – Open Print Exchange Link
“Saturnus” by Adelaide Hunter – Open Print Exchange Link

Art

Holiday Card 2022

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This is the annual holiday card for December 2022, now that everyone has received theirs!  Every year, I put together a non-holiday-specific art card that works both as a greeting card to send holiday wishes to friends and family, and it functions as a way to flex some creative muscles and put together a little piece of functional art.  This year was a screen printed card with four color layers (yellow, green, gold, black) and an additional credit line on the back and a greeting line inside for a total of six passes of printing.  I was SUPER happy with how this came together and will likely use variations of this for the honey business this year.  For registration and to get the layers all lined up, I had printed out the design on cardstock and attached long tabs to the registration guide to line up each layer – you can see the little registration marks on the corners of the green screen below the card.  I also added 3 layers of painters tape in the corner of the registration guide to act as a sort of backstop to set each card every time so they’d all end up in the same place.  Is this the easiest way to do this?  Absolutely not.  Did it work pretty well and was cheaper than shelling out for registration pins and tabs?  DEFINITELY.  Was it perfect?  Not quite.  Anyway, so using that method, I first laid down the gold, then the yellow, then the green, and finally the black, leaving each layer to dry a couple of hours in between.  Wintertime low humidity meant it went pretty quick and I had the whole set of 43 (plus 12 test prints on cardstock) completed in two days.  I printed them on a bunch of blank cards I had picked up when AC Moore closed a few years ago, so I had a stash of kraft brown and plain white at my disposal. Not sure which I like best, to be honest!  The paper didn’t mesh super well with the ink and there’s some weird bleeding that didn’t happen on the plain cardstock tests, but I think the white paper has some shiny coating on it that makes it a little fussy.  In the end, I was REALLY pleased with the design and how they came out, and I hope the recipients enjoyed them as well!

Genealogy

Christmas Dinner Menu – Victoria Field, 1941

Yet another find from grandma’s scrapbook was this menu that grandpa sent home to her.  He was stationed at Victoria Field in Texas for the Army Air Force, and this was the menu distributed to them for their Christmas meal on December 25, 1941.  An airplane decorates the front and the back has the menu which includes a pretty decent spread as well as desserts, cigars, and cigarettes.  The whole thing has a red cord tied around it and the inside is blank, maybe to save time/ink by just printing on one side of the paper and folding it in half.  Grandpa sent back lots of these, and it’s neat to see meals served to troops training to leave for war soon.

 

Gloves/Mittens

Evja Mittens

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Evja Mittens
Started: 28 Jan 2022
Finished: 5 Feb 2022
Pattern: Evja Mittens by Skeindeer Knits
Yarn: Locust Hollow Alpaca/Sheep in natural colors black and white
Needle: US 4 / 3.5 mm and US 6 / 4mm
Notes: I picked up the yarn from local farmers market friends and calculated it was somewhere around a DK based on the number of wraps per inch and the weight of the skein and reported yardage.  The white skein clocked in at about 14 wpi and was 4.2 oz (1.9 oz remaining at the end) while the black skein was about 12 wpi weighed 4.7 oz (2.4 oz remaining at the end).  Both were listed as approx 200 yard skeins.   Overall, this was a pretty quick knit, I found the needle sizes to be spot on for the yarn and pattern, the length and width fit perfectly, and the blend of sheep and alpaca fibers make for a delightfully warm and comfortable pair of mittens!  So, now here’s where I admit that as much as I respect the Norwegian thumb and the history of the knitting tradition, I deeply dislike how they fit and sit on the hands.  Our thumbs sprout out the side of our palm, not the center, so the Norwegian style thumb where there gusset begins just off center of the palm tends to twist the pattern on the top of the hand when worn and it just _feels weird_ to me.  Usually I’d hack the pattern and transition this to a “sore thumb” style (the thumb gusset starting on the side ‘seam’ of the mitten) instead, but I’ll be honest with you, it was a hell of a month and I thought just this once, I’d go ahead and do the pattern as written since I didn’t have the brain power to make the adjustment anyway.  I mean, it’s okay, and they fit, and they’re really pretty, but it’s definitely not my preference when it comes to mittens.  In the end, I’m still pretty damn proud of how they came out and will absolutely wear them tons!

Genealogy

Old Postcard – .. and send me home

 

Grandpa sent dozens of postcards to grandma while he was away with the Army Air Force, and it was neat to watch them go from being addressed to Miss and then Mrs after they got married.  This one was sent July 22, 1942 from Foster Field, Texas and there’s no stamp because postage was (and still is, in some places) free for the military.  Grandpa just wrote “Free” over the stamp box and it got straight to grandma, no problem.  I’m only posting the front of the card, not the back with the message since that feels a little too personal, but the back indicates the postcard was published by “Southern Card Co., Sa. Antonio, Texas.”  It’s a pretty funny postcard and seems to have a number of variations I saw on a quick google search.  The postcard has an image of a donkey and says, “I’m Out On a H.. of a time! When I can’t stand, tie this to my buttonhole, steal my pocketbook, wind my watch, and sponge my clothes, tie this tag to my [ass] and send me home.” There’s a space for name/address, then at the bottom, “Keep this out of the newspapers, and tell my wife it was an old stomach trouble.”

Postcard with a donkey that says, "I'm Out On a H.. of a time! When I can't stand, tie this to my buttonhole, steal my pocketbook, wind my watch, and sponge my clothes, tie this tag to my (image of donkey) and send me home." There's a space for name/address, then at the bottom, "Keep this out of the newspapers, and tell my wife it was an old stomach trouble."

Genealogy

Christmas Menu 1943

Another find from grandma’s scrapbook was a series of holiday mess menus grandpa had sent home from various posts.  This one in particular was from 25 December 1943 at Foster Field, Texas and featured a message from John J. Glennon, the post chaplain.  The menu also mentions the mess officer, Lt. Ned N Sweitzer and Mess Sergeant M-Sgt. H. E. Anderson, and there’s what might be a cover design credit to Pvt. Stanley S. Karafin.  It seems like a pretty standard menu with a turkey dinner, vegetables, and desserts, but notably missing from this one, at least when compared with others, is a mention of cigarettes and cigars below the desserts!  Short and sweet today – I have a few more of these to post, but I’ll line those up for future posts.  Click any image to see the full size.

Finished Objects, Gloves/Mittens, knitting

Bee Mittens

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Bee Mittens
Started: 28 Jan 2022
Finished: 5 Feb 2022
Pattern: Hey Bee-Otch Mittens by Drunk Girl Designs
Yarn: Valley Yarn Huntington in Mustard (0024) and Chocolate (B118) – 21 grams remaining of the yellow and 20 grams of the brown.
Needle: US 0 / 2 mm
Notes: Okay, so they’re not quite exactly to pattern, but as a beekeeper, I kind of wanted just plain bee mittens even though I deeply appreciate the bee pun.  So, I repeated the “Bee” part from the left mitten to the right once I got to that point in the chart, otherwise I left everything the same in the pattern.  I probably would knit the thumb another 5-6 rows longer (it was still a little short even after having added an additional 4 rows), and would swap out the thumb increases to run along the border to the mitten body instead of along the center outside of the thumb.  The construction just feels wonky and fits weird?  I’ve never done thumb increases this way and, it works, but it’s definitely not my preferred method.  Also, the patterning on the thumb made the float situation a hot mess on the inside.  If I knit these again, I’d probably just invert the design on the palm for the thumb to keep things tidier inside the thumb.  There were lots of long floats in this pattern, so it involved a good deal of managing those floats while knitting and then futzing with the finished piece to pull the too-long ones into submission, but it’s 100% worth it for the final result.  This designer does SUCH a gorgeous job on the colorwork designs and this is the second pattern of hers that I’ve knit, and I’m super happy with the finished mittens!

Genealogy

Mothers’ Day Postcard

 

Every once in a while, I remember I have something in the genealogical stash that lines up with the holiday at hand!  This postcard was found in a box of grandma’s things in a set of postcards that didn’t belong to her or any family member.  I honestly have no idea how she came across them!  I had contacted someone via Ancestry.com who was related to the person most of these were sent to, and neither of us could make a link.  Anyway, today’s postcard was in that set and I only found it online one other place, so I thought I’d share it today.  The front is printed in tones of blue with “Mothers’ Day” at the top, a photo of a woman, and carnations framing a poem that is as follows:

To Honor Our Mothers
Just one such kindly face,
A heart so filled with grace;
Gift of the One above,
A mother, and her love.

The back says it’s No. 212, price $1 per 100 by Meigs pub. co., Indianapolis, Ind.  Made in the U.S.A.  Someone wrote in pen what appears to say, “Compliments of the Epworth League 1934” – the Epworth League being a Methodist association for young adults that existed under that name from 1889-1939.  Grandma was Methodist, so it’s possible this was actually hers or her mother’s, or that the link between her family and the family mentioned in the postcards lies in a connection made through the church.  As far as who that woman on the postcard is, it doesn’t appear to be of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mothers’ Day, and I couldn’t find anything more about who she might be even after doing a Google Image search and trying to find the author of the poem.  If you happen to know, definitely drop me a comment!!