wildflowerknits

Quick note to let you all know I’ve been re-arranging in the shop over the past couple of months and that means pulling lots of yarn from shelves and moving displays- and yarn- around. Which means I’ve added considerably to the sale bins. You can see the sale yarns on the website here. I thought it would be less clutter in the shop to display them online instead. If you’re local and see something on line you are interested in, just ask when you come into the shop and I’ll pull it out.

There’s also a section online for yarns by the bag. Right now there are only a few up but if you check back from time to time, I’ll be adding new ones as the older listings sell.

Our holiday open house was a huge success if smiling faces were any indication.

holiday open house

Our “wall of color” $3.00/ball sale was a real hit with the bargain hunters, too!

wall of color sale

The weather that day was anything but what we’ve come to expect for this time of the year. No snow falling, no chilling temperatures. I was so taken by surprise with the huge turnout that I didn’t get a chance to talk to many of you- or to mention the new holiday projects. I’ll do a special post about them later. Thanks to all who came and a special thank you(!) to Mal and Audrey for so much help that day! Didn’t get a picture of the food table. By the time I thought of it, there wasn’t much left to photograph.

Tags: holiday knitting, open house, sale yarn

Beginning this weekend, Wildflower will be open on Sundays from 1 to 5pm. We’ll continue to stay open 6 days a week throughout the months of November and December. We’ve got a lot planned for the season beginning with the Holiday Open House November 8th from 1 to 5pm. Hope you have a chance to stop in. Sadly, the Howler will not be catering (busy running a restaurant again in Costa Rica) but we’ll have good eats- promise!

The Holiday Open House is when we bring out new projects for the holiday season. We’ll have an array of projects- some quick ones that can be made on short notice- for holiday gift giving. No pictures here, but I’ll just say there will be some jewelry, wine cozies, ornaments and more…

A lot of other shops downtown will be hosting Open Houses that day, too, so be sure to visit Strecker Nelson Gallery, Emerald City Market, Gaia, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Lilacs on the Prairie, Amelia’s, Della Volce and I’m probably forgetting a few more… but you get the point. See you then if not before!

Planning for the fashion show had me pretty spun up this year, but I’m happy to finally be writing to say it was a great success. Thanks to all that helped make it one. We had a great bunch of models and backstage help, wonderful garments and catering by Howler Cafe that was over the top fantastic.  I’ll post a few pics here and you can see more on facebook.  Also a special thank you to the emcees, Sally Yahnke and Susan Berhow. Susan even stepped in at the last minute when Mary Anne called in sick that afternoon. We’re sorry you had to miss it, Mary Anne! I am always tremendously grateful for emcee’s. Oh- and thanks to my husband, Steve for the photos!

Nicole Peters modeling "Wisteria" knit by Tamara Moots

Brittany Stevens modeling vest in Plymouth Tweed by Kennita

Tags: fashion show, knitting

Still need to get some facials, but for now here are a few more pics of Batty and Hazel… this time Batty has gained a little more personality.

Hazel and Batty

wings are beginning to form

Tags: bat sculpture, felted bat, hazel tully, knitted sculpture

hazel and batty

Some of you have heard about Hazel’s bat project. It’s been a tough one to photograph so I couldn’t post pictures until there was a little more to post. I think I have a few now that begin to show the progression. It’s going to be a while before she’s finished- school has started and she’s immersed herself into other art endeavors, but Batty will evolve,  and I’ll keep her alive here on this site.

She started with a wire armature which can be seen in some of these first pictures, then knit and felted pieces as she did with the owl:

batty in progress

batty in progress

batty in progress

here’s another favorite of mine:

more to come in part two…

Mark your calendars for Sunday, October 11th at 7pm for Wildflower’s Fall Fashion Show. It will be held at the Manhattan Arts Center on Poyntz Ave, followed by a reception catered by Mark Desmet, of Howler Cafe.

We have a lot of beautiful designs for the show, but would love to feature anything you all might submit. The only criteria is that the yarn needs to have been purchased at Wildflower- preferably within the last year or two, although not mandatory. If you have something to contribute for the show, please let me know as soon as possible. I will need all garments and pieces by October 3rd to finalize the show.

My daughter, Hazel, knows how to knit. It’s not her passion like it is mine. She has always knit for the most part with function in mind. I guess that makes her a “project knitter” rather than a an “obsessive have to be knitting for the sake of knitting” process knitter like me.

At this point she really has no interest in knitting as anything other than a medium. I must have first realized this when I watched her learn to finger knit and she turned spools of knitted tubing into magical little animals. All those years before I had tried to teach her to knit and it was obvious she didn’t take to it for the same reasons I did. She had no interest in that soothing movement of fiber moving rhythmically through her little hands…

When she later decided to learn to knit with needles it was solely with a project in mind: she needed a new bag for school.

She knit her new bags for each school year, maybe a few belts and scarves in between, but that’s pretty much it.  She treats knitting as an art medium and  sculpts with the yarn.

This summer she made an owl as a gift that turned into a work of art. The owl represented something  pivotal for her and she is now working on a life size fruit bat. I thought I’d share some of the owl pics here.

First, the owl in progress:

and the finished owl:

Tags: fiberart, hazel tully, knitted sculpture

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written here- or at least since I’ve published here. I usually write on this blog on my weekends at home- but our internet access has been limited for the past 3 weeks.  “Someone” in our house used up about a month’s worth of allowed bandwidth in 3 days… gotta read the fine print in those agreements. We’ve been slowed down to dial-up speeds, making us realize how spoiled we have become…

stay tuned…

coming soon…

Hazel’s owl pics…

My son, Ray, likes to keep busy.  His room is a sculpture studio and a nightmare for those that like to keep a meticulous household. But we encourage creativity above all in our household, so he is free to create to his heart’s content. A couple of years ago he began to take computers and other electronic and mechanical appliances apart and use the parts along with wood to make his sculptures. His room has slowly been filling up to the point he doesn’t have the space to work on his projects, so one morning early this summer this is what I woke up to:

our kitchen transformed into ray's workroom overnight

He routinely stays up much later than us, so I suspect this kind of thing happens more often than I know- he was just too tired on this one night to put everything back in his room before going to bed.

I’d like to post some pics of his wooden pieces, but at the moment his entire bedroom is empty and awaiting renovation (also all his doing; like I said, he likes to keep busy…). He’s been boxing up all the mechanical parts and miscellaneous pieces of precious junk and storing them in the garage for safe keeping. His furniture and the rest of his room now fills our hallways. He’s ripped up the carpet, stripped the wallpaper and is now in the process of spackling to prep for the painting. So things are a bit cluttered for photos of artwork in our house right now…

However, he and his dad took a sculptural welding class this summer at the Johnson County Community College and I can share pics of that with you here instead.

First a little background: We live in the country on the edge of prairie in a fairly new (less than 30 year old) development with gravel roads. We walk a lot here and over the almost 20 years we’ve lived here, we’ve had a habit of picking up metal we find in the road. Lots of railroad ties and whatnot:

part of the selection

other pieces

Ray gathered what he wanted to make his sculpture and then took a picture of it to recreate during the class. To make a 3 week story much shorter, more pics:

ray in class

assembling from the picture

I may be biased, but I think the kid’s got talent…

the finished project: (his dad did help with the welding)

finished welding project

Tags: ray tully, welded sculpture