Julie
LightNews LightNews
banner
rljulie.bsky.social
Julie
@rljulie.bsky.social
350 followers 220 following 73 posts
Art, books, travel, museums, dollhouses, knitting, fashion history, smashing the patriarchy, cats.
Posts Replies Media Videos
rljulie.bsky.social
The next Iconic Knit in miniature: this jacket, from an upcycled Hudson Bay point blanket, inspired by a variety of jackets in historical tradition but especially the modern iteration by @kittybadhands. Silk/mohair, 0.8 needles, this version is one I’ve been working on for months, off and on.
Miniature knitted sweater on a mannequin with green, red, yellow and blue stripes, patch pockets and a fuzzy collar. A small knitted sweater held in an open hand. Two young women wearing striped jackets with green, red, yellow and blue stripes.
June 4, 2025 at 12:53 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
#ShowMeYourKnits baby stuff! Tiny baby sweaters in 1/12 scale (shown in front of a miniature yarn shop roombox, handy for showing off the tiny knitting in general.) #miniatures #dollhouses #knitting 🧶
A miniature pink sweater with a collar and buttons, held in a large hand, in a dollhouse-sized room with shelves of tiny yarn balls and other knit and crochet examples and accessories.
March 31, 2025 at 1:04 AM
rljulie.bsky.social
For anyone needing a little emotional support…there’s a little Emotional Support Chicken. Made using an adapted version of Annette Corsino’s wonderful knitting pattern, adjusted for miniaturization. 🧶🐓♥️
A tiny knitted chicken made of thread, perched on a gold ruler to show it under 1” in length. Knitted in white thread with a red comb and wattle, and a yellow beak. A human hand is partially shown as well, to emphasize its size as no larger than a fingertip.
February 1, 2025 at 3:14 AM
rljulie.bsky.social
Cable day on #showmeyourknits and I just so happen to be revising the cable pattern I wrote for the Taylor Swift “folklore” sweater. Doing the “1989” one next. 🧶
Small scraps of knitting shown laying on a pattern drawn on graph paper. A small white cable-knit cardigan displayed on a miniature dress form. A human hand touches one sleeve, revealing it to be only a couple of inches high in size.
January 27, 2025 at 7:50 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
As I creak and wobble around the house following gallbladder surgery, taking an arsenal of medication, I am reminded that Andy Warhol died from complications of this same surgery. Sorry about that, Andy: here’s to you. #arthistory
Andy Warhol Self-Portrait, in which four different photographs of Warhol appear in an off-kilter grid, printed off-register in pink and black over a bright yellow background. His hair is wild, the distortion makes some of the renderings look like cartoons or aliens.
January 16, 2025 at 1:49 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
Thinking about the @gettymuseum.bsky.social today and all the staff and planning it takes to keep an art collection safe from wildfires. Preserving cultural patrimony isn’t for sissies. (Here, Gustave Caillebotte’s “Young Man at a Window.”)
A 19th-century painting in a gold frame showing a man standing with his back to the viewer, looking out an open window to a typically Parisian street, with buff-colored buildings in Haussmann-style architecture. The room in the foreground and his silhouette are darkened, leading the viewer’s attention to the sunlit street beyond him. The window’s baluster and opened pane of glass dissect the composition.
January 8, 2025 at 6:28 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
My cat Mo is very interested in my latest book of knitting patterns (by Sara Elizabeth Kellner). I told him if he doesn’t behave himself, I’m going to knit myself a replacement cat. 😉
A dark brown and black tabby cat sitting next to a book with a pretty floral cover, titled “Victorian Housecats to Knit.” A dark tabby cat sitting behind an open book, on whose pages are a knitting pattern for making a striped cat-shaped toy. The cat’s ears are up sharply and he has a rather astonished expression.
December 16, 2024 at 5:33 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
“December staggered in like a weary mud-encrusted vagabond who had been on her way to someplace else but whose legs had buckled and now she was here.” This novel caught me from the first sentence and has not let go. One of several Kenyan authors whose books I picked up in Nairobi, for perspective.
A colorful book cover showing a Black child in profile, light bright on her face, surrounded by orange, yellow and teal florets. The title in white reads “Things They Lost”, the author Okwiri Oduer.
December 15, 2024 at 4:06 AM
rljulie.bsky.social
Well that was fun! Thank you KSB Miniatures Collection for hosting a wonderful visit, and to Kaye Browning for her support, and so many friends who encouraged me, bragged my work up to others, and came out to celebrate this with me. Y’all are wonderful human beings.
A middle-aged white woman with glasses, shown in profile, smiling and looking into a dollhouse display behind plexiglass, in which a small knitted sweater on a dress stand perched in a wee alcove. A middle-aged white woman in sparkly glasses and a patterned jacket poses next to a dollhouse display, smiling. Barely visible in a room of the dollhouse is a miniature replica of Princess Diana’s “black sheep sweater”, a red pullover decorated all over with rows of white sheep turned in alternating directions, and a single black sheep on the chest. A red knitted pullover sweater with long sleeves, and rows of white sheep turned in alternate directions, and a single black sheep on the chest. The sweater is modeled on a dress form. The size in the context of the photo is difficult to determine. A row of eight white women in a variety of colorful outfits, arranged in front of a large dollhouse displayed behind plexiglass. At the center, wearing a teal pullover, is Kaye Browning, director of the KSB Miniatures Collection in Maysville Kentucky. One member of the party sports a red sweater with sheep on it, a version of the same sweater worn by Lady Diana in the 1980’s. Barely noticeable in this image, but peeking out just to the left of Kaye, is a 1/12 scale miniature version of this same sweater, on display in the dollhouse.
December 8, 2024 at 1:40 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
I’m traveling this weekend to visit this piece, which I made earlier this year, and which is now in the collection of the KSB Miniatures Collection in Maysville, Kentucky. This is a “first” for me: the first time I’ll see something I made displayed in a museum. #fiberarts #knitting #miniatures 🧶🐑♥️
A tiny version of Princess Diana’s “black sheep sweater” —a red pullover with rows of white sheep, and a single black sheep—displayed on a minuscule dress form, with spools of white and red thread nearby. Fingers of a human hand encroach on the scene, revealing the sweater to be about only 2 inches in height.
December 6, 2024 at 12:57 AM
rljulie.bsky.social
When a woman does it, it’s craft, but when a man does it, it’s art. Miniature knitting inspired by the designs of @crochetingmoonfairy fiber arts. #knitting done on 0.6mm steel needles, with silk sewing thread.
A light-skinned hand turned palm up, holding a scrap of knitting, with black letters on pink background reading “when a woman does it it’s craft but when a man does it it’s art.” The full piece of fabric measures only about 1 1/4 inch by a bit over 2 inches.
December 2, 2024 at 9:59 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
Do it! They’re incredibly satisfying to make.
A human hand shown close up holding two small hand-knitted chickens, white with grey stripes, yellow beaks, and dark orange comb/watttle. The shape of the chicken is stylized and reminiscent of folk art. The chickens are 1 1/2 to 2 inches in length.
November 29, 2024 at 7:13 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
This beautiful antique cat painting by some Russian great-great-grandfather of our Thanksgiving host looks a lot like my cat Mo. #catsinart 😸
A darkened oil painting of a brown tabby cat on a simple background plane, standing in profile turned to the right, with a wary expression on its face. The painting has thick brush marks in oil paint, the colors are subdued. The cat has white whiskers and white on its nose, ears, chest, paws and belly. The painting is framed in a plain flat wood frame with a gold inner lining.
November 29, 2024 at 3:42 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
From that time I perched a row of tiny sweaters on my bookshelf to appear in the background of my video meetings. (Nobody noticed them. They’re too small.) I love how tiny they look in the context of “the real world.” Also, I miss them! (These have since gone on to other collections.) 🧶 #knitting
A section of a bookshelf showing a row of five diminutive, miniature-scale dress forms placed between the books. on each one is a dollhouse-sized hand-knitted sweater in various complex and different patterns and colors. The sweaters are less than 3 inches high each.
November 26, 2024 at 2:36 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
The artist of the doll, John Darcy Noble, was certainly looking at this painted portrait of Carrie made by her sister Florine Stettheimer, now in the @columbiauniversity.bsky.social art collection.
A painting in a 20th century American Modernist painting style, showing a white woman in flapper attire (dress and feathered cap), standing to the right of a large pink dollhouse with columns and window balconies. In one hand she holds a cigarette, in the other, a miniature chair. Behind her in the far distance lies a house and fields, and in the middle distance a group of people gathered around a table. The painting shows parts of a curtain at the upper left and lower right, as if stage curtains are parted to reveal a theatrical scene.
November 24, 2024 at 3:55 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
The Stettheimer dollhouse is back on display at the Museum of the City of New York, and with it a series of dolls made for the house in 1976, including this one which represents Carrie Stettheimer herself. www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/a...
A stylized doll depicting a white woman in 1920’s fashion, with a painted face showing dramatic rouge and green eyeshadow. She wears a fabric hat with bits of real ostrich feathers, and scraps of lace make up her gown and decoration.
November 24, 2024 at 3:47 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
Isamu Noguchi #art #museums
A sculpture with a stack of grey stone cut irregularly, laid horizontally and held up by two wooden legs like a bench. The piece is displayed against a white wall and wood floor and spotlighted from above.
November 23, 2024 at 12:26 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
I read all these books so you don’t have to. This is the stack I built this summer working on my class “Size Does Matter: a History of Miniatures in Art.” If you love miniatures, dollhouses, art history, and the history of miniatures and dollhouses *in* art history, here is a reading list.
November 21, 2024 at 1:01 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
“They” say this algorithm is more customizable to each user than other platforms. So I’m feeding it/the world all my default subjects of interest in hopes that it’s so. Next topic: travel. Pics from my recent trip to Nairobi, Amboseli park, Lake Nakuru (Kenya).
Two rhinoceros grazing in profile with a red-billed oxpecker bird fluttering toward the ear of one of the rhinos A herd of zebras viewed closeup to create a mishmash of black and white stripes A lavender-breasted roller bird perched on the branch of a shrub, blue and purple feathers predominate A closeup of an African elephant, showing forehead, eyes and ears, with crackled and wrinkled skin and long black eyelashes
November 18, 2024 at 7:30 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
Next default subject: knitting! But in miniature. Make mine small…and with lots of math. #miniatureknitting #dollhouseminiatures
November 18, 2024 at 12:21 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
Next default topic: radical, trans-inclusive, intersectional feminism. If my peeps aren’t welcome I don’t want to be there. #paradoxoftolerance #smashthepatriarchy illustration by Devon Blow
November 17, 2024 at 7:05 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
Next default subject: #arthistory This Lavinia Fontana portrait of a noblewoman is on display at the Morgan Library, and shows a woman with both fabulous taste in jewelry and a very, very good dog
November 17, 2024 at 2:00 PM
rljulie.bsky.social
Default subject: cats. This one is not quite right, and it shows.
November 17, 2024 at 3:31 AM