Feel the Warm

We're cooking, wrapping, unwrapping, enjoying the tree. And packing for a short trip. The cat doesn't know yet that he can't go.

May you feel the warmth and Light of the season!

Shadowed Leaf

Another kind
of brown leaf.
From a bush
alongside
the road.

Mountain Moment

Doodling in my journal, this time with a tech pen so I can move the ink in all directions (compared to a dip pen).

Listening to the coverage about the lost Mt. Hood climbers, I thought of the uncompromising mountain compared to fragile bodies.

This emerged.

Dragging the dropper

Forget brushes and conventional painting tools, how about just dragging the paint on with a stick?

In this case, I used the dropper-lid of Dr. Martin's w/c. The way the blue feathered out on damp paper was unexpected.

I put the orange on with a natural sponge.

Movin' down the road

After I swirl color around and it comes to adding ink, I usually regret (just a little) not planning ahead. After letting the paint dry, I see what comes to mind for embellishment.

This time it was a row of telephone poles, something to balance the blue weight, something to carry a vague theme of moving on, communicating. Something detailed to balance the blue swiftness.

These are strange poles with triangle tops, but I was working with a dip pen and India Ink on w/c paper, so only careful strokes worked to block disastrous spatters and blobs.

This image now reminds me of a Kansas sunset as we drove the long, flat highway home from Grandma's house.

Making mountains

I love swirling color on, then adding ink to see if I can make shapes. The results never match my hopes, but I still love the potential and the freedom of it.

W/c and a gel India Ink pen, on 140# paper.

Tall doodle bird

Filling
a side
of
a journal
page.

I think
he's a
kind of
penguin
totem pole.

A rare breed.

Got my Flickr back

I've switched to the new Blogger template. Easy! And at the bottom of the righthand column, a Flickr Badge of a few drawings and mini-paints.

Click any pic to see the fullsize one on Flickr.

New journal

I bought this in an art museum while on a trip months ago and have just made it my new journal volume. I LOVE the paper!

Smooth as Bristol paper and no media I tried penetrates to the other side, neither India Ink nor paint nor marker. And it's not particularly thick paper, either.

Macro crazy

I never had an easy, fast camera for closeups until this Nikon. So I took it for a walk today.

Even asphalt patterns look good in this late afternoon gray/blue December light. And a drab boulder becomes interesting.

Plunge into the blue, blue paint

Pure color is often enough. This evokes sparkling, inviting pools, calling us back to our earliest form.

And yes, the salt is there, making textured blooms.

Season's greetings

Doodling again, thinking: there's the red/green of the season, the mask we sometimes wear for social events, and yes, the true joy of creation.

India ink and w/c on 140# paper.

Blending in

Speed bump on the hall rug.

Chaucer says, "Cats nap where they need to."

Doodling in Moleskine again

Mixed media: dip pen in India ink, w/c pencil and watercolors.

Just to play with overlapping and ink on the smoothness of a Moleskine sketchbook.

I like how the w/c beads up on the bead shapes.

Noro wall piece

This started as a piece for practicing stitch patterns and turned into something I wanted to hang on a wall. The color changes of Noro make anything work!

I put it on my front door for better picture taking (as I need all the help I can get). It's about 12" long, 6" wide.

The bobble-looking things are actually tiny vertical strips, where I knit back and forth on 4 stitches to create a straplike structure, then continued on in that row, which made the strap pop out.

Cat closeup

The real version of this drawing in a Moleskine. She closes in, reminding me it's time to get up and make breakfast.

Fair Isle and more hats

This summer I learned how to make cables, lace, intarsia and fair isle. I'm posting the most recent items, since they're the ones at the top of the clutter.

I just finished this fair isle idea/design that turned into a hand muff. (Would anyone use this?) I wanted to do a pattern on circular needles, but not a hat.







I did the cuffs on dpns (for the non-knitters: double pointed needles), then increased sharply to make the center section have enough stitches to fit on a 16" circular. Fit concerns came afterward--the muff seems a bit big, but the double thickness of fair isle makes it warmer.





I did a pastel baby hat to practice fair isle in a smaller form. The adult hats are ones I wear. The thin orange one is from sock yarn. The gray one, in bulky yarn, turned out to have a cloche shape (which you can't see) because I picked up from the cast-on edge to make a brimlike strip.

The pale gray background is a granite step under an overcast sky. The camera works great; the photographer needs training.

These are all quick knits. I started with no particular plans. I like to just knit (in the round, in this case) and see what develops.

Mini sweaters with meaning

An artist in San Francisco asked for sweaters for her red sweater project.

It's been taken down now, but my four were in there, somewhere.

Some of the hats

First of some knitting pics, before I go off to work, before I take more. Four of these went to Rabbitch to distribute to cold, homeless heads on the streets of Canada. She has distributed 75 items, thanks to us web-oriented knitters.

The black/white one is my first item made with fair isle color stranding. I use my own spontaneous patterns for all these. I knit like I draw--small items made up as I go along.

Posting again

I just got a camera I love, Nikon Coolpix P4, and can take pics of all the knitted items that have flowed off the needles in recent months. And there might even be drawing again, if anyone out there hasn't totally given up on me.

I've lost count of all the things I've knitted, but will show the evidence.