One of six children, I was raised by a busy mom, who instilled in me a love of fabric. Though I learned to sew and knit at a young age, it was the arrival of my first grandchild that pushed me into action. A long-time knitter, I am now ready to explore all things fiber.
About two weeks ago, we received a text message with a surprising photograph.
To the casual viewer, this may look like an ordinary, but happy day for my two loves. But this was no ordinary day for the little one. She had just received her first haircut! Gone were the messy locks, constantly hanging down over her face. Gone was the daily task of putting in the band to make the wonky ponytail. These delighted expressions and giant smiles just grabbed my heart.
I had to sketch this scene.
Sketch with lines drawn in black Ultrafine marker.
Final portrait with watercolor wash added.
I’m delighted that I was successful in capturing the emotion that I saw in the photograph. The portrait was sent along with Lu’s birthday present in yesterday’s mail. I can’t wait to hear about her reactions when she opens the box.
This project got its start as an example for a shawl design class I taught in August. It is also a response to the situation I’ve been griping about called Left-over Sock Yarn.
Some of you may remember this photo.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Once I truly looked at the yarn that was in the bowl, I realized that I had the makings of a multi-color garter ridge shawl. After discarding the red and green yarns, I took a cue from my own advice about color value and separated the leftovers into two piles – darks and lights.
The medium blue ball in the center is the connector between the lights and darks. I also tossed in the very pale blue full skein with a thought that it could make a good border.
The light yarns went into one bag, the darks into another. Starting with the medium blue yarn I cast on about 30 stitches and worked three ridges of garter. Initially I chose yarns by randomly drawing balls from each bags, alternating light and dark and knitting as many rows as I felt like before changing colors. But very quickly, a desirable pattern emerged – four ridges of light alternating with three ridges of dark. The extra ridge of light separated the color changes.
After working the black yarn, I started over with the darks – blue, brown, royal blue, teal, black.
I call this my Sea and Sand shawl.
Once I get up to around 300 stitches, I’ll choose a color to make the border. My creative juices are flowing as I consider pattern options. Since it’s a shawl border, the pattern must be very stretchy. First I thumbed through Barbara Walker’s fabulous “Treasury of Knitting Patterns”(published in 1968) where I spotted a few possibilities. Here’s three that meet my criteria:
All three could work very well. I’ll be knitting some swatches of these patterns.
Thank you Barbara Walker. Your book is truly timeless.
Yesterday I found a feather in the back yard and wanted to render it in graphite.
I decided the drawing would be a self-portrait of my hand holding the feather. Since I am left-handed, it was easiest to hold up my right hand about ten inches from my face and draw what I saw. To render the feather, I attached it to a binder clip and placed it on top of a thread spool on my work table. The tricky part was drawing each part in the same scale, so that it would look life-like.
Contour sketch with a few tone and shade indicationsFinished sketch, tone and shadows intensified, also a few more lines.
This didn’t take too long to draw. During the process, I began to appreciate how tricky it is to make a drawing of a hand. I had to keep adjusting the alignment of my fingers as I worked. I wondered if I should include a cast shadow. Ultimately, I couldn’t figure out where to draw the shadow, since I was holding the feather up and away from all surfaces, so left it out.
Maybe I can convince someone to model for me so I can make a sketch of two hands.
This week I got all ambitious to make some pants for L.L. I haven’t sewn clothes in years and years. But I wanted to respond to my daughter’s righteous indignation on the options provided by the clothing industry for little girls shorts. She complained that every pair she found were tight and very short – effectively sexualizing toddler girls. “Boy and girl shapes at this age all identical, yet the boy shorts are loose, comfortable and several inches longer than the girls.
She ended up purchasing boy shorts for her daughter.
So I wanted to make a fun, colorful garment that I knew LL would enjoy wearing.
As a maker, I also had the goal of using materials that I have on hand.
In the end, I did purchase a pattern, since I don’t have knowledge or skill in pattern-making.
I chose this one, because. along with the pants, it provided patterns for tops and dresses and sizes up to 4 – leaving the door open for me to make additional items of clothing in the near future.
Here’s the crazy fabric I chose.
It is a sturdy 100% cotton, leftover from a valance I made for my laundry room window. How about those zig-zags!
To challenge myself, I decided to match the zig-zag lines in the hems.
Here they are, all finished this morning.
Construction details I added were faced hems and a cotton jersey casing for the elastic at the waist.
I was happy that the fabric includes some of Lu’s favorite colors: blue, pink and green. I’ll bet that she already has several T-shirts to match.
Flowers are a popular subject for beginning watercolor students. So far, I have not been attracted to this subject. If given a choice, I would prefer to paint an animal instead of a flower. But today I decided to go for a rose.
And not just any rose. I picked a multi-hued rose, very close up. Obviously, I was ready for a challenge.
This photograph was chosen from a free-usage website, most likely Unsplash. Unfortunately, I saved it to my folder so long ago that I can’t remember where it came from. I was attracted by the assortment of warm colors. I especially like the magenta hues, because I recently purchased a tube of quinacridone magenta.
Day One.All the initial washes are in placeDeeper values and a little bit of detail
I used my Prismacolor pencils to emphasize the veining in the petals.
I’m reasonably happy with my first effort. But in retrospect, it would have been wiser to pick a rose of one hue – a red, red rose – for my initiation into painting flowers.
Daily Fiber 