Knitting an Army of Starfish

SUCH A GOOD PAINTING DAY! I need to savor this. I finally felt free. Like I was just going and going and pushing that something that keeps holding me back out of the way, shoving it into the corner to sulk. Shoo, you horrible something! Let me be with my paint and my freedom for today :)

I'm not sure if it's "finished," but it's for my abstract assignment.





This morning I've also been knitting baby starfish. Many, many baby starfish. Why, you ask. Well, for one thing, starfish are rarely recognized for their amazing starfish-ness. But that is not the only reason. I'm going to share a craft table during the Blueberry Festival with one of my friends this summer, and I thought they would be cute little things that I could sell inexpensively.

I'm also a fan of the fact that the supplies required is stuff I already have, and I can use up left-over yarn that I wouldn't know what to do with otherwise. :)

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.

Scarfuluppagus.

Thar she is! It's done. After a few slight problems (such as running out of yarn after 32 rows instead of 44) it's done, and I think it's pretty good for having never done any knitting before. Originally it was only going to be one color, then two, but I kept having less yarn than expected =O. The blue was a complete afterthought, and was leftover from a crochet project. Luckily, it was the same weight as the other yarn I was using. I actually think that the colors look pretty good with each other. It wasn't what I started out going for, but I think it has a fun, patch-worky look. To tie together all the colors, I went around the whole thing in the blue with a blanket stitch. It works. Ahm happy wittit! (fambly joke ^^)



I have already embarked on my next knitting adventure, believe it or not. I can't stop!! Last night I couldn't fall asleep because I was so worked up and excited about it. That seems to happen to me often. I guess not being able to sleep because you're excited is better than not being able to sleep for some other reason. The project that I'm working on now is a sweater pattern from the book Stitch n' Bitch. I like it because it's something that I would wear, is not super complicated (good for a baby knitter such as moi) but will also help me develop a few new skills (intarsia, 3-needle bind off, endurance haha ><) I went to a local yarn shop (or LYS as I've been told it's called in online knitter speak) a got the right needles and yarn, and started the front last night. I love that yarn place. It was like walking into a vast array of colors and textures, all piled high in wooden selves and in woven baskets. I wanted to stick my face into every skein to sniff the woolly goodness (although I restrained myself, as I have a cold and it would have been just plain gross for other shoppers) . . .SO EXCITED!!!!!!! Yipeeeeee. I am itching to go and continue clinking my new bamboo needles together.

Away I go, to feed my addiction :D

Ice Crystals and THE New Obsession (which is threatening to take over my life.)

A few weeks ago I got some really neat pictures of the ice formations on the windshield of our car. I never got around to posting them, but they're pretty interesting...and there is a TON of them (so I'm posting them now.) They remind me of peacock feathers. The same patterns occurred on our greenhouse, so I wonder if their formation had to do with the perfect weather conditions? I've never seen anything like it before. My fingers nearly froze off while I was shooting away, but it was well worth it. I edited the colors with iPhoto, for anyone who was wondering. Oh yeah, and my sister just figured out that you can CLicK on a picture and it gets bigger!! I was very excited about this discovery. You should be too. Even if you knew it already :}


















And what is this NEW OBSESSION of which I speak?
Knitting.
I taught myself 2 days ago from the Stitch N' Bitch book, and now I absolutely can not stop. I've been crocheting for years now and have always loved it, but I think that it's important to know how to do both, since they really are totally different. So far I can only knit and purl, but next I'm going to teach myself increasing and decreasing. Yesterday I started my first project, which is a ribbed scarf. It's coming along nicely; the tension looks good, and I've only had one crisis (which I cleverly averted. Gahh, dropped stitches.) Unfortunately, I ran out of the yarn I was using (alpaca, mmmmm....) and the skein I picked up was the last of that color (a gorgeous forest green with a rusty tint). Sigh. I think I may have to bite the bullet and learn how to change colors so that when I go to the store tomorrow and get a skein of a different color all is not lost. Let you know how things shape up. =]