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.

Dreaming

This is a very simplified sketch
of a pottery (and tottery) giraffe
who always makes me smile.

W/c on 140# Canson.

A Fall Breeze

. . . a craving to draw swept over me today. Hey, I think I could get back into the paper/pen pool!

I may have knit up a lot of the obsession (learning techniques of lace, cables, silks and softness) that possessed me recently. Fiberwork will remain an ongoing part of my creativity though.

I'm sorting out the drawing pointy sticks from the knitting pointy sticks and looking for paper with the right tooth.

(This imagined scene is from earlier this summer, just to add color to the post.)

Sunset over water

Abstract swaths of color that evoke memories. Watercolor on drawing paper.

Doodling

I took a break from fiber art to play with water and paint in my Moleskine w/c book. As always I'm torn between black/white sketches and color, realism vs abstract.

So I alternate and get better at neither.
But it's all about enjoying the process of creating.

The face is from a statue I glimpsed, then interpreted. The shadowing is random, using w/c crayon and water wash.

Just the middle of the middle

This is a scan of the center section of an abstract (a 16x20). Now it looks to me like Kansas grasses against a summer sky (my birth state)--but I didn't plan that.

Did you know the geographical center of the continental US is in Kansas? I was there in June, so the image rose to the surface in my painting session.

Process: Dr. Martin's w/c, some straight out of the dropper then washed with water, on 140# paper.

Fiber landscape

Getting an image of an item on a scanner is seldom a success, but here's a section of a recent experiment with freeform knitting. Just to say I'm still here making things.

Felting this (heating, matting and shrinking the fabric so the stitches disappear) is an option, though I hear white doesn't felt well. I'll try this again with feltable colors.

Catch that biker!

Chaucer likes to sit on top of the TV and pat the moving pictures. The time he was trying to catch cyclists was hilarious!

Photo in lieu of art pics. Will get the digital camera going soon on recent creative projects.