It's been awhile...

School started up again, so I've been immersed in that since my last post (not that I mind. I was actually starting to feel slightly stir crazy.) What have my creative juices been producing since then? Quite a bit, quite a bit...with a few rough patches. I'm taking painting this semester, and I've been having trouble "finding myself" in that medium and working with it in a way that feels right to me. I need to learn to let go. Of what I'm not sure. I need to learn to stop being afraid. Of what, again I'm not sure. But things are coming around. I'm still wondering, not knowing where to go or what to do or how to approach what I want to achieve, but it feels more contemplative rather than panic.

I'll rewind back to where I left off last time, and then move forward through my various projects in chronological order until I'm alllll caught up.

5. Knitting. I finished that sweater that I mentioned getting started on in my last post. It has skulls on the sleeves, and is nice and warm and cuddly. Since then, the knitting bug has continued and manifested itself into a striped hat with a pompom, fingerless gloves with cables, and a very special eccentric head warmer (it's too sacred to be called such a trivial thing as a "hat") made out of a yarn named Ruthiferd. More on that coming up next.

4. Spinning. While poking around the knitting books at Barns and Noble one day after Art History, I cam across a book that inspired me to no end (not only as a graphic artist, but as a person with a budding interest in fiber arts): Intertwined: The Art of Handspun Yarn, Modern Patterns, and Creative Spinning.
That was it- I HAD to learn how to spin. Spinning has a wholeness which has become scarce in our society, which is unfortunate. We are so disconnected with who we are and what we are capable of. What are hands can do if we let them handle the materials around us. It has a humbleness too, because the yarn produced is the result of the efforts of many individuals coming together- animal, care-giver, shearer, etc.

So I got myself a drop spindle, romney fiber, and a 10 minute lesson from the woman who sold them to me. And I went at it. The one on the right is my first yarn which is 2 ply. After that came Ruthiferd, with whom I tried something more creative. I spun a thin single and then plied it with some rug yarn laying around, letting the places with too much twist fold over on themselves and make cute little doodlies :)
For a while I let them be themselves, their yarn-ness. But then I wanted to feel them through my fingers again, and so I made the head warmer.




3. Knitting. Again.

This is what Ruthiferd and Mr. Romney 2-Ply decided they wanted to be.

It encompasses my skull perfectly; nice and loose, but it's thick and heavy with lots of body, so it's kind of like wearing a slightly itchy really weird looking (and I say that fondly) helmet. My bedside light strongly agrees. Suits him, don't you think?

2. Planning. Enter Painting Class. Planning for my "narration of a place triptych" was not an easy task, considering I was creating a whole race of plant-bee-ant-like beings with a collective
consciousness who lived in hive-pod-like things. What a blast had I, yes I did. Pages and pages of sketches and ideas and thinkings, where I studied and documented these beings who did not yet
exist outside of my brain. What were their growth patterns? How did they relate to one another? Did they need to eat? How did they reproduce? Are they nocturnal? Questions, questions, questions. But the biggest question is: How on earth do I illustrate this in a painting???





1. Painting. One thing I have to remember: I'm not going anywhere unless I try. And sometimes trying means failing, but you need that failing to know what fails and what succeeds.