The other day, I was at the back of our property with Kyle with our tiller. Above us was this pine tree we believed to be mostly dead, yet behold these little pinecones were growing, cracking open actually. The sound was this bizarre melody of crackling, like rice krispies in milk.
This year I’ve been looking for ways to use my stash as completely as possible and use up what I have to make new fibers and new projects. One way I accomplished this was through color palette knitting and through the stripe hype sweater. But another project idea I had this summer was to try minimal colorwork knitting by “painting” with yarn through a mix of new cotton yarn I purchased and yarn extras my mom passed onto me. This helped stretch the teal cotton yarn I bought, underestimating how much I needed to make a t-shirt. It was an opportunity to make a “graphic print” t-shirt out of yarn, something I didn’t have in my wardrobe, but sounded like a fun piece to wear.
These are the yarns I decided to use for the landscape painting section of the garment. Cotton yarn that was originally purchased by my mom to create handknit dishcloths in a color selection of blue, green, and pooling gray-to-white-to-blue, a lime green cotton-bamboo yarn, and the teal cotton I purchased. The pooling yarn was perfect for the clouds. Each side of the garment is unique because of this pooling yarn like a real sky. The plain blue was used for water, the dark green for a marshy grown-up bank, and the lime green for sunkissed meadows of grass. The teal was used for a distant tree line that was framed by the clouds.
I opted to make this oversized with a short sleeve opening, somewhere between a vest and a t-shirt because I haven’t decided how I want to wear this. As a t-shirt of course but do I want this to be a layering piece in the cooler months of the year? Or do I want to make detachable sleeves? That is something I am still milling over in my mind. I did split the back of the piece in a moment of indecision, where I thought it would be cute to make it a short-sleeved button cardigan. I may do this in the future. I opted to keep the t-shirt structure for simplicity and the ability to wear it more quickly. I was impatient to wear it.
I love projects that utilize things I already own and use techniques I haven’t tried before. Since this project I’ve begun to learn proper colorwork knitting, it’s been fun. Thank goodness for YouTube and knitting books to make the complicated things, like learning how to switch colors, feel approachable!
How have you been expressing your creativity this week? Do you like getting crafty? Are you a knitter and have you tried colorwork knitting before?
A year ago, I started drawing geese. The Canada goose specifically. They’re a special bird to me.
I see them everywhere – on our walks on Bailey Trail, at the pond in town, flying over our house, on the side of the road, flying over the parking lot in Erie, and hanging out in the Lemur pond at Keystone Safari. They are my comfort animal, a reminder for me that I’m not alone.
God’s used them as a reminder of His promises in my life.
This is a sketch I did to practice the posture of the goose on land. Their necks, their postures, and the way their wings look have a completely different view from land to sky to water.
I usually rush through my drawings, but today I studied the example photo before I jumped in. I also used a technique I learned as a kid to use circles to mark the lines of the body.
Chalk pastel on paper. A squirrel finds her treasure, an acorn.
Oil Pastel and pencil on paper.
A duck who is a little odd but can’t help but bring a smile to her friends. She is autumn because autumn is a state of mind. At least that’s what her mantra is! So she will toss those leaves proudly like confetti and don her jack-o-lantern gourd as her crown. How did a duck get a pumpkin carved? It was courtesy of her squirrel friend, who carved it himself with his tiny paws. With friendship and joy, she is basking in the red and orange glow of fallen leaves. The splendor from the trees!
A tea set, one drawn from reality and one from fantasy. A picnic in my mind. Pencil and oil pastel on paper.
This teapot belonged to my grandma and I’ve always loved classic shape, delicate gold leaf lines, and romantic floral vignettes on the vessel and lid.
The tea cup and saucer, is a set inspired by flowers that I would love to own. It looks magical!
I find inspiration abundant when I am at home, my “home” home. The way my mom decorates brings me happiness! From the colors to the textures, it is a layered cake. There are some pieces that are quite old and have lived full lives before they found their way here. Others have a story, a memory attached that I think of, or a purchase memory itself, on one of our many mother-daughter outings as a kid. As I look forward to the future of decorating my own house, the warmth, and joy I feel being here is something I cherish and hope to instill into the new home we are about to settle into.
Candlesticks of glass, metal, and wood drawn in pencil and oil pastel on paper.
A perk of being on this small holiday of sorts from my life, and staying at my mom’s house means endless inspiration from her garden. Around Mother’s Day we went to a local greenhouse and found this hanging strawberry plant which beautifully displays its growing phases in lovely hanging tendrils.
I’ve been fascinated by the way strawberries grow, from blossom to fuzz ball, to fruit. I chose this little vignette as my first sketch because I liked how it displayed the life phases from new bud, to blossom, to fruiting, to baby berry, to unripe strawberry.
One Rabbit Riot 