Between getting the kids’ curriculum sorted out, and sorting out how I’m going to manage school, the house and life in general I haven’t had much time to focus on knitting, or spinning or sewing. Oh yeah, I paid my application fee for my school today, sort of an eleventh hour thing, I should know by tomorrow morning if I’ve been accepted.
Without my regular soothing activities to keep me occupied and with the general disruption of my wood turning activities I’m going certifiably bonkers. Discovering that you’ve developed severe allergies to certain woods when you are a wood turner is, to put it mildly, rather depressing. I would be more depressed, however; the migraines that were daily kicking my ass have been reduced to the weekly kicking of my ass, it’s hard to feel deeply bad when I feel better physically. Bonkers, but not depressed.
Case in point: Polymer clay.
My relationship with this medium has been iffy. In high school the technique for making a gradient mix from one color to another was to make five g’zillion tiny balls of both colors and work from one end to the other in tenths. So if the gradient was blue to yellow, you’d start with 10 blue balls (mixed together), then 9 blue balls plus one yellow, then 8 blue plus 2 yellow, and working that way until you had 10 yellow balls. God help you if you made a mistake or didn’t mix the clays completely because they then had to be shaped into tiles, baked and then labeled and stacked.
As you can imagine, for someone like me (who tends to have the attention span of a hamster on caffeine) sitting around blending balls of clay and making squares was not my favorite thing.
After that experience, I was in awe (and I still am) of people who can really work polymer clays. Not to say that I completely avoided the stuff, I’ve used it for dolls and small distorted and freakishly crispy charms, and I’ve read books about working it but it just didn’t click for me.
However, as of late, without knitting to keep me sane and happy and armed with new books on this mysterious subject, I ventured gently into that colorful realm.
First, I learned the Skinner blend, which sounds like a dangerous dance move but is actually a way to make a smooth gradient without five g’zillion little balls of colored clay. The technique is named after Judith Skinner who is– apparently– a freakin’ genius and my new personal hero. Judith Skinner is saving the world from blending five g’zillion freakin’ balls of clay and for that contribution to humanity we cannot thank her enough.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit (so of course I need to tattle on myself and be done with it) but I think I own more polymer clay and clay tools than most people who use the stuff on a regular basis. A few things I had for other purposes, but most of it was given to me by friends and family for the express purpose of enticing me to work with it.
As it is with all things crafty I tend to sit on art supplies until I’m either inspired or in dire need of a particular something. Usually the latter. I may sound like I’m joking when I say that I could open a craft store using only what I have on hand; I assure you, it’s no joke. I am capable of giving away boxes and bags and purging the house of unwanted clutter in every conceivable way, however art supplies have a way of reproducing in my presence.
Next I read up on making canes from polymer clay. The technique is fascinating, you start by making a thick coin shaped picture, in the same way that you’d put together tessellating tiles to make a mosaic image, filling in the negative spaces with a background color. When that part is done it’s time for what’s officially called “reducing” but I like to think of as “controlled smooshing”. This makes a long shape with the image submerged only to be revealed with by cutting a cross section. So far I’ve done a few flowers, a somewhat failed honey comb pattern, and a random pink pattern made by extruding clay through a square disk.
I don’t know how to describe the process other than it’s completely magical. I am now eyeballing everything that can withstand the curing temperatures as a potential object to be embellished this way. I have designs on making stitch markers, needle protectors, and buttons. I could probably manage to work on canes well into old age without ever learning a new technique and still be endlessly entertained by the potentials.
There are so many other techniques, like knitting and woodworking, 15 minutes is all it takes to learn to make something presentable but because of all the applications it would take a few lifetimes to really master the medium. And like knitting and woodworking the devil is in the details. All the tickle points, all the techniques and details are really stimulating and curious.
I decided to take a bit of a risk and try for a more complex shape, and made a skull cane. I built from the teeth and bottom jaw upwards, the most difficult part seemed to be the nose holes. I think next time I’ll the jaw more substantial, but all in all I’m happy with the result. I cut off part of the cane and reduced it to make the smaller skull, and the flower was supposed to be a daisy from yesterday’s experiments but ended up looking sort of skeletal so it fits well with the skulls.
